In the late 1990s, in the shadow of war in Afghanistan, a man stood with his son in front of a mud-brick home. He was not a man of wealth but a man of relentless will. My father. He worked wherever he could — in distant villages, high in the mountains, under the harsh sun — to keep us alive. When bombs fell, he carried me to safety. When sickness struck, he found a way to buy my medicine, even if it meant going without food himself. I had tuberculosis. The kind that kills quickly if you can’t get treatment. There were no hospitals nearby. No steady income. No safety net. But there was my father. And my father never stopped fighting for me. In refugee camps, he lined up for hours to get bread rations so I wouldn’t go to bed hungry. When work was scarce, he walked for days to find a job. When I dreamed of becoming a doctor, he didn’t laugh. He looked me in the eyes and said: "Never give up. No matter how far you have to go.”That dream carried me across continents. It got me to saf...