My cousin’s son left for Parma to work in a factory, his engineering degree not recognised here. For what? His mother tells me his salary, converted, is less than my own, after the rent there. Meanwhile, our own town’s last good *mistri* for repairing watches closed his shop last month. We chase distant dreams while letting what we have at home vanish.

Last week, while walking past the old market, I saw a young man practicing his kata in the empty fish stall — the movements were sharp, but his eyes were empty, like he was performing for a judge he'd never meet. In our village, my mashi used to say the real fight is in the waiting, not the striking. Competition rules have turned kumite into a dance of points, but kata still holds the memory of the ground, the breath, the poverty that taught us