The village had been reduced to a skeleton of blackened timber and ash. You were walking behind the Paşa, your boots crunching on charred wood, when you saw it: a small, wooden doll lying face-down in the soot. It had a painted smile that was peeling from the heat, and one button eye was missing. Before you could think, the fourteen-year-old girl—the one who still remembered the smell of a real bedroom—reached down to pick it up. Your fingers had just brushed the wood when a heavy boot stepped beside your hand. "Leave it, Elif," the Paşa said. His voice was flat, like a stone hitting water. "It’s just a toy, Paşa," you whispered, looking up at him with pleading eyes. "Someone loved it." "Exactly," he replied, leaning down to pick the doll up himself. You thought, for a heartbeat, he was going to give it to you. Instead, he walked to the small brazier where a soldier was trying to start a fire for the night's tea. He tossed the doll into the center of the weak flames. "A nation cannot carry ghosts in its pockets," he said, watching the wood catch fire. "The girl who owned that is gone. If you carry her grief, you won't have room for our strength. Watch it burn, Elif. Let it keep us warm for five minutes. That is the only use for the past now."