Mamun Zahir

Basic Information
Current year: 2023

Age: 20

Appearance: He's a stocky boy, with a square nose and well built body that's just the right balance between strong and quick. But we're ignoring the thing that tends to jump out first—the scar. From above his right eye across to below his left ear Mamun has an impossible to conceal scar several shades lighter than the rest of his face. Not that he hasn't tried to hide it, his fringe is grown out like that very deliberately, but it still tends to show. The scar also passes through his right eye, which is now intact but useless.

Early life
Every other para has a little something in here that sets of the time bomb for their later life. Not Mamun. He was an average child in almost every way, aside from the occasional life-threatening asthma attack. The only thing you might see as unusual was his attachment to his younger sister Ladli. She clung to him incessantly until seeing the two of them apart was a rare occurrence. As they grew up it became less rare, but their closeness was arguably even more unusual. Mamun changed from a typical child to a typical teenager who played video games, did his homework on the bus and played in a band with an embarrassing name. It was only when he turned seventeen that things changed in a moment.

Adult life
[TW violence] For Mamun's seventeenth birthday, the whole family went to stay with their relatives at their farm in rural Maine. It was something of a family tradition to have the seventeenth birthday all together, the same way it was tradition for the newly turned seventeen year old to help out on the farm with their elders. Mamun was happy to go along with this, until he was pinned down in a barn by his extended family who insisted he had to survive a few hours with a knife in his head to prove his worth to the family. Who knows if it would have killed him, because his mother burst in to help him...in vain. Instead of going in, the knife slashed his face, and as he and his mother tried to run, she was killed by her own sister.

Mamun ran off in a random direction while bleeding heavily and terrified. His family's farm was remote, but he managed to make it to the nearest town, and received some medical care. Still paranoid and grieving, he left that town as soon as possible and discovered through gossip and rumors that he'd been blamed for his own mother's murder. Disheartened and with a very obvious identifying feature, he fled again, making his way further and further south until after several months he arrived in Boston in Massachusetts, and ended up living on the streets there for a while, until he got into a knife fight with another kid in an alley, and the both of them ended up in the ER.

By now Mamun was wary of hospitals and afraid of being recognized, so as soon as he'd established he wasn't going to die, he rushed out of the hospital only to run into the older brother of the kid he'd just stabbed. While this wasn't the best way to meet, the conversation ended...not badly, and with an invitation to join their gang. At this point, Mamun really had nothing to lose.

Over the next few years, he was part of a gang that, while he didn't know the details, was part of something larger and criminal. It bothered him, but the idea of starving to death on the streets alone also bothered him, so he stayed, and did a lot of things he wasn't and still isn't proud of. The brighter side of this was the friends he made, and his boyfriend Tristan. Stabbing his brother was a less than auspicious start, but the two became incredibly close very quickly, and while neither of them were particularly pleased with their situation, they both understood that from where they'd come, there was absolutely no returning.

Until the years rolled round and Mamun realized it was getting close to his sister's seventeenth birthday. He knew his family had never been punished for what they'd done, and that possibly his sister even believed him to have killed their mother. And that meant that when she turned seventeen, maybe they would do the same to her. This time there would be no one to save her.

This presented a problem, because Tristan didn't want him to leave. More to the point, Tristan didn't want to lose Mamun, and wouldn't travel back up to Maine with him. So even though they'd become the most important person in each other's lives, they decided maybe it was time to part ways. Mamun left the life he'd made in Boston and came back up to where his family lived, unsure if anyone would even have him back.

He made it just in time to save his sister from the same fate he was subjected to three years ago, at which point Ladli very quickly understood what had really happened and took revenge accordingly. To his slight surprise, Mamun found himself welcomed back by his immediate family, who didn't question where he'd been, desperate for things to go back to normal.

Mamun struggled with this. He'd been living a much more dangerous life than them for the past few years, and his family's routine felt alien to him now, even though he was thrilled to see them again. Luckily for him, danger struck again in the form of a zombie apocalypse. His family were among the luckiest people in America—as the undead came for them in hordes, a foreign military swooped in and locked off a portion of their city, that just so happened to have their house in. None of their family enjoy having the military around, but it's better than dying. And Mamun does his best as something of a threatening presence to keep them safe, but with his sister's antics as they are, who knows how long that'll last...

Ladli
Things are, and always have been complicated with his little sister. Obviously as kids they were close, maybe too close, but not in a particularly unhealthy way. It was just unusual. When he was forced to leave, Mamun felt the loss of his sister keenly, mainly because she was always there with an endless stream of chatter and without her, his world felt quiet. But gradually, he got used to it. He still missed Ladli, but he had to admit his life was a lot simpler without her in it.

She was still his main reason for returning to Maine. He was prepared to leave his whole new life just for a chance to save her, and considered it very much worth it when he succeeded. But he didn't prepare to reconnect with her the way he has. The reality is that during their three years apart, the two changed drastically, and have struggled to reconcile these changes with what came before. Mamun has recognised her destructive streak, having seen it before in many people during his time in Boston, and in making this connection he's subconsciously blamed himself for it. He hates the murder and havoc she brings about, but feels unable to criticise her after all the things he's done himself.

He still cares deeply about his sister, and definitely believes she can improve. But while he still feels close to her, the truth is that he doesn't really know this new Ladli very well, and nothing about their relationship is going to change until he understands that.