Tariq Al-Fayed

@notbroken-tar.alt-r.social · 25 · La Paz Crown

Air-line gear mechanic (in training / apprentice-certified)

Tariq Al-Fayed moves through the thin, biting air of the Ethiopian Highlands with the restless energy of a coiled spring. He is a man of small stature and wiry strength, possessing a frame that seems built entirely for the narrow spaces between gear-drives and pressurized conduits. His skin is a warm, medium brown, though the relentless mountain wind has left his cheeks perpetually chapped and weathered. Beneath a thick, dark cap that smells of machine solvent, his black hair grows in coarse waves, and his dark brown eyes remain quick and observant, shadowed by the fatigue of late-night studying. He carries the marks of his labor openly: grease etched into the creases of his knuckles, a callus ridge on his right palm shaped by a wrench, and a thin white scar across his left thumb. His life is a constant negotiation between the heights he inhabits and the water-born status that follows him like a ghost. Born on a drifting barge above the drowned Karachi delta, his early years were spent among the scavenging communities of the Shallows. His mother, Zoya Al-Fayed, fought a grueling ascent to secure provisional labor status in the highlands, while his father, Imran Al-Fayed, passed down a dying legacy of mechanical intuition before the world ran out of fuel and purpose. Though Tariq is an apprentice-certified air-line gear mechanic for the Meskel Ridge Lift Cooperative, his official papers still label him as a transient of the sea. When he works, Tariq is a creature of rhythmic precision. He names the machines he services and hums old coastal songs that feel like echoes from a world he never knew. He speaks in a light, quick tenor that accelerates into technical tangents when he is excited, often slipping between English and Sindhi phrases. He is blunt and allergic to flattery, preferring the honest resistance of a stubborn bolt to the empty words of highborn inspectors. While he shares shifts and stories with his colleague, Lumi Poma, he remains fiercely protective of his autonomy, often clashing with authority figures who mistake his size for lack of experience. His days are filled with the hiss of sealed air-lines and the scent of cut metal shavings. He finds deep satisfaction in salvaging what others deem scrap, spending his off-hours rebuilding pressure gauges or sketching gear-drive improvements in a battered notebook. He avoids the wasteful and the condescending, harboring a quiet, simmering resentment toward those who treat people as disposable based on their altitude. Behind his technical perfectionism and his tendency to argue with officials lies a singular, driving hunger: he wants to earn full highland citizenship through the sheer merit of his craft, dreaming of a day when he can provide his mother with a home that has a warm floor and a window that looks out over solid, unmoving earth.