Part I
The Iron Gate
“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”
~Joseph Stalin~
Prologue~
The wind was sharp and powerful as it wiped through the land. Puffs of painful sand wiped up with it, swirling into something worse than the wind. In the midst of this desert storm was a person, a boy, curled up and tucked under a blanket. When the dust storm clears, he sits up, shakes the dust off his clothes and body, and begins to walks forward. His clothes are layered black, a long scarf, flowy shirt, and billowy pants. The scarf wrapped neatly around his head and draping over his shoulder. He stops for a second to take a sip of water, then continues. On and on into the endless wasteland of a desert.