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analysis;
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So a certain NPC who may or may not be named Kite rubbed in Zohra's face about how he has no home and supposedly nobody cares about him, etc., etc. And, well, Zohra half-realizes that Kite is a liar and half-believes him—or rather, that he's right. Which might sound like the same thing, but Zohra knows that Kite lies and will do whatever it takes to break you, having seen the horrors during the raid and what he's done to his friends during the recent torture sessions. However, he can't deny that there are some truths in what Kite's saying that he's always been aware of, even before Kite brought them up.
The thing about Zohra is that, for all of his idiocy and energy and carefree attitude, he's a person of logic at heart, if not coldly so at times. And overall, that leads to a bit of a pragmatic and maybe even awkward view on friendship. I mean, this is the guy who treated the revelation that he was in love with Pia like some kind of war situation where he had to devise tactics (do I strike??? Do I retreat???)—
(He'd be much better at this if I ever canon updated him, at which point he'd have been longtime friends with Pia and Peria as well as having plenty of subordinates as allies, but he's still at a point where he literally has no friends in canon, so.)
First off, Zohra is very much a product of his upbringing—that is, as a soldier who's had the mindset of "do whatever it takes to survive" since he was three. He wasn't necessarily an anti-social child, in that it's mentioned he had friends... who died because they weren't strong enough. Whether through war, human experimentation, abusive training, or the whole "kill everyone else for the right to survive" matches Roland seems to occasionally force on them (for all we know, Zohra could've had to kill his friends before), it seems like all of Zohra's friends have died by the time he joins the Hidden Elites at age ten, which doesn't make for a healthy view on attachments. Zohra doesn't necessarily reject the notion of attachments, and it's shown that he's pretty friendly outside of his duties (which is a lot more than you can say about his associates), but he doesn't go out looking for them either.
Even putting aside the fact that Zohra's friends are implied to have kept dying while he was growing up, the group he's now in really isn't conducive to friendship. Firstly, they could very easily receive orders to kill one another, and no, the country does not give a damn as to whether you might actually like the person or not—you're going to kill them or it's your life that'll end. Furthermore, relationships among the Hidden Elites are based on fear and respect, which is a very different thing from actual friendship. It's touched upon when Zohra is an adult—Sion notes that he wasn't even remotely shaken when his fellow Hidden Elites were brutally killed before him, because he didn't actually consider them his allies. Zohra himself is very well-respected among the Hidden Elites, but does he doubt that any one of them would kill him if ordered to? No way. Again, it's your life or another person's, and as someone who would've always chosen his own three years ago, Zohra's really in no position to judge for trying to save your own skin.
One of the main things, however, and the one Kite was likely referring to the most, is the fact that Zohra is still fundamentally a nobody. Not even in a self-deprecating away (because he's a super awesome genius and knows it, okay), but in that he knows his life is worthless to the country. First, he's a soldier—aka someone expected to dedicate his life to the country and die for it (this wouldn't be so bad if Roland weren't a country really not worth dying for). Secondly, he's an orphan, and more than that, an orphan in a country that feels like it can do whatever it wants with orphans because hey, it's not like you have any family left who'd care! Thirdly, not only does he no longer have family, but his parents were slaves anyway. That is, Zohra's not even just a commoner—he comes from what's essentially the very bottom of society. To digress a bit, this is likely part of why Zohra's so arrogant, because he's (almost quite literally) never had anything that he didn't work for and/or deserve. In turn, though, it's why he's initially pretty desperate to never lose any of it, contributing to his callous assassin persona.
Consequently, Zohra does kind of view how much people might care in terms of how much he has to offer. That's how he grew up, after all; whether you were allowed to live or not depended on how much your life was worth. He thinks he's the most amazing person in the world (after Pia, of course), but people won't necessarily realize that, bah. Still, he wonders (well, not usually, but after the whole business with Kite): say, if he weren't good at magic, if he weren't argumentative, if he weren't a genius—would Morgan still be friends with him? After all, she seems to like him because he teaches her magic and gives her opinions to bounce off of. If he didn't have that, would she thus find him boring? He knows that he's not ever going to lose any of those things, so he's not actually worried about losing Morgan's friendship, but it's food for thought. Zohra is not used to altruism, or people honestly caring just because. It's always been about what value you can offer in terms of skills and power.
Anyhow, as Kite said, he has no home, because honestly, does he even want to think of Roland as his home? The country that wouldn't let his parents and friends live and that won't even let him live now that he won't be a mindless puppet? Later on in his life, Zohra deserts Roland and never looks back. It's pretty clear too that he (and Pia and Peria) have no love for their mother country, given that they were intending to crush it before it got too powerful.
And more than that, Zohra knows that back home, Kite is entirely right when he says that Zohra is an outcast, wanted by nobody. He won't follow orders anymore, so he no longer belongs in Roland, which demands complete obedience. Nobody actually gives half a damn about him (aside from Ryner, but Zohra sincerely does not see Ryner as a friend—an acquaintance whom he'd be willing to be friends with if they could get along, but not really a friend). There is literally nobody aside from the aforementioned fellow outcast who would be sad if he died and Zohra knows it. It's not something he's sad or lonely over—it's just a fact of life. He intends to change that once he finally leaves Roland and finds Pia, who is, in some ways, his hope: someone who gives him something meaningful to reach for when the rest of the world won't.
... Haven complicates things, though. Namely, the Justice Cabal, who are really the first people in years to declare Zohra a friend and ally. Zohra understands the concept of true allies well enough (and he does think that what the Justice Cabal has is the 'real' thing), but he's never really applied it to himself, because again, Hidden Elites. Before the Justice Cabal, he doesn't know what it's like to have an ally whom you can trust with anything in life, sans Ryner (and that was, in a way, out of pragmatism; he knew Ryner had no reason to betray him because Ryner was, as said, a fellow outcast who had every reason to hate Roland as well). And so, he actually finds it a bit difficult to fully see himself as a member of the Justice Cabal. He doesn't actually think about it much and it's also not something he's sad about, but he's mentioned it a few times. Consequently, he knows never to mention it around them again, because wow, they're strangely touchy about this!? He's pretty sure he's not as close to them as they are to each other, because they grew up together and come from the same world and have fought together, etc. He's just the guy they roped in a few months ago and though he enjoys being with them and he's sure they enjoy his company too (why wouldn't you, gosh), that's not the same thing as having an ~unbreakable bond~. There's also the fact that for all of his talk about how he's a ~hero~ and does the ~right thing~, he's too cynical to believe that justice can prevail on a large scale. That's just a slight problem.
In any case, he sees the Justice Cabal as a group that's fun to be around and whom he can count on in a fight, but all things considered? Not much more than that. He'll call them his friends and mean it and knows they mean it too when they call him a friend, but he also realizes that they throw that notion around a lot. Again, friendship =/= unbreakable bond. He sees his love for Pia as the latter, but he's also not madly in love with the Justice Cabal, sooooooo.
He's pretty sure they'd be sad for a day or so if he died (for good). Maybe more than a few days for, say, Noire, because Noire is nice and mopey. He thinks it's pretty stupid, because like he argued with Morgan about, he'd rather they spend that time doing productive things than mourning him. Sadness is an unproductive emotion and something that gets you killed if you dwell in it for too long, and it's almost insulting to him that he would be the cause. At the same time, he accepts that grieving when people die is 'normal' and he's just the weird (reasonable?) one here.
... That said, when I say 'a day or so', I mean it. He kind of doesn't think anyone would feel sad over him for any longer than that, whether it be over something bad happening to him or outright death. Not because he has low self-esteem (believe me, he does not have low self-esteem—), but because, again, there's just such an utter lack of productivity in moping for that long! This admittedly comes from, as cruel as it may be, his own view. He can't fathom being sad for more than a few days because there's... no point? At all? People live. People die. That's reality. After that point, he'll just be a memory that'll fade away.
(Part of it does go back to his belief that he's not as close with them as they are to each other, though. He does think that they might mourn for longer if it was for one of their own. Because being closer = more mourning, right? He's not jealous; it's yet another fact of life to him.)
And so, Kite is actually right in that sense. At the end of the day, he won't matter. They won't care forever. And he doesn't want them to, if it'll hold them back—at the same time, it is admittedly a bit lonely to think about.
strength;
What is true strength?
Not running away, protecting those important to me, what is…
... Zohra has lots and lots of feelings about strength. Heck, it's practically the driving theme of his intro mini-arc of sorts—what defines true strength?
And so, to give the context behind Zohra's mindset (though honestly, if you don't know every detail about Zohra's past by now from RPing with me, even without having read his intro, shame on you—), he comes from a country where strength is all that matters. The only thing that determines the worth of your existence and whether you get to live or die is how useful you can be to the country, and for a soldier like Zohra, that's how strong you are. And considering that it's been like this for him since he was three, it's pretty much all he's ever known.
Ever since he was three and saw his parents be killed before his eyes for being considered trash, he realized that if you didn't have power, you wouldn't survive.
On that note, while he never seems terribly broken up over it, a large part of this stems from his parents' deaths, because even for Zohra, watching your parents die in front of you when you're only three is just a tad scarring. We're not given too many details on Zohra's parents, aside from the fact that they were slaves and, again, were 'disposed' in front of him for being considered trash by the country, but one line about how they'd stopped walking forward implies that they might've given up on life (at the very least, they probably weren't the most determined and strong-willed of people). At any rate, this incident is what sparks the mindset that sticks with Zohra for the rest of his life: the weak will die. Again, his parents were considered worthless to the country, as they were weak—socially weak, mentally weak, physically weak, however.
Thus, two sentiments were born from this: one, those who serve no purpose don't get to live, and two, those who can't keep moving forward no matter what also don't get to live. For a three-year-old who, as a child of slaves, likely had virtually no support and was thrust into the military life, it left quite an impression. Specifically, he had two choices: either give up the way his parents had and die for it, or do the opposite of what they did—do whatever it takes to survive.
If he hesitated, then it'd be all over with that. It'd be his turn to become nothing but a corpse…
He'd die as a weakling.
So, well, cue the borderline sociopath Zohra is at age ten. Zohra, at this time, is actually an excellent example of the Punch Clock Villain, in that you see that he has no real malice towards his targets. That's all they are to him: targets. It's his job. At the same time this makes him sympathetic, though, it also makes him unsympathetic, as he effectively demonstrates how callous someone would have to be to kill anyone because it's their 'job'. It's explicitly stated that he doesn't really differentiate between people when killing them and that he feels nothing when he does so, regardless of whether they're a man, woman, adult, child, good person, bad person, etc. On the flip side, when off-duty, he's friendly enough, and it's mentioned that he had friends/allies—who are implied to have all died while he was growing up because they weren't strong enough either like his parents, therefore reinforcing the notion that the weak always die.
Thus, to Zohra, as a soldier and assassin who's had it drilled into his head that you can only survive if you kill before you can be killed and never give Roland a reason to think you're useless, 'strength' is equated to 'ability to survive' which in turn is equated to 'kill anyone who gets in your way'. He doesn't think it's the morally right thing to do—it's the pragmatic thing to do. If someone has to die, then honestly, what reason do you have to choose someone else's life over your own? You might as well look out for yourself.
As a result, Zohra essentially scorns the ideas of compassion. They're nice things to keep in mind when you have the luxury of doing so, but in a life or death situation, they just get in your way. Being soft makes you hesitate, which gets you killed. Moping over all the trauma in your life causes you to stop moving forward, which gets you killed. Falling in love makes you do stupid things, which gets you killed. And so on and so forth. To Zohra, if it won't contribute to your survival—if it's an outright detriment to your survival—then it's something he wants nothing to do with.
In short, Zohra's definition of strength is this: how efficient a person is in what they do, and how well they can kill off their heart to do it.
... And then along came Pia! And, of a more depressing nature, Biore's death. The effects of the first incident can be summed up as Zohra seeing what 'true' strength is, in that Pia (aside from being ridiculously strong on a physical level) is able to survive on her own terms and live life how she wants to, which is perhaps all Zohra really wanted. The effects of the second incident are that Zohra, who kind of suspected it all along, now fully realizes what he means to the country: i.e. nothing. Even if he's strong, he'll never be more than a tool they can throw away at any time like they did to his parents (again, it's implied he was subconsciously aware of this, but denied it because he didn't want to acknowledge that nothing he did would ever matter).
So, three years later, we have... Zohra. Aka the Zohra he is now.
“Ha, haha. I see… so I'm weak…”
Keep your opinions to yourself and do what the country says.
Because you're weak, you have no choice but to live in fear and do what the country says so that you won't be killed.
Your opinion means nothing.
Even if you're strong, that means nothing.
The thing about realizing that you're utterly worthless to the country no matter what you do by sheer virtue of not having been born a noble is that it's actually really freeing! It means that Zohra no longer has to really be paranoid about his survival the way he once was, because, well... firstly, nothing he does will really contribute to it, will it? He can kill as many people as Roland asks him to, but the 'value' it gives him is nothing but an illusion. He no longer feels like he has to rely on the country for survival, as he realizes that in the end, they'll probably kill him anyway. And with that, he no longer has to be the perfect assassin—he's quite proud of being a 'failure' now, in fact. Really, the worst they can do is torture him (which Zohra doesn't seem horribly affected by) or kill him, and again, if you know you're ultimately going to die anyway, does it really matter when? At least this way, he can die proud of who he is.
And now that he can properly live for himself rather than Roland, Zohra has the opportunity to honestly consider what he wants out of life. He still cares about being strong—he'll always care, seeing as how he was basically conditioned into it, but his idea of what strength is has changed. Even if he became the strongest person in Roland, he'll always be weak on account of the fact that he's still depending on Roland to grant him the right to live. Thus, with that revision, he no longer thinks of strength purely in terms of how well you can fight. Or, well, part of that still remains, but in the sense that Zohra is now much more willing to fight fair and square—because isn't being able to beat your opponent even without dirty tricks a certain brand of strength? That said, despite claiming that it's his policy to fight honestly, Zohra is... still arguably one of the dirtiest fighters in the series, welp.
More importantly, and perhaps how Zohra primarily sees strength now, is strength on an emotional level. The notion of being able to move forward no matter what still applies, but unlike before, where it was about being able to discard your morals to do whatever you had to, Zohra acknowledges being able to stick to your morals as strength. Again, you can torture him, threaten him, try to kill him—but he will never again change who he is for someone else ever again.
Because in the end, which is more important: the number of years in your life or how you live those years? Once upon a time, it was the former. Now, for Zohra, it's the latter. He doesn't care if he were to die right now, as long as, when he dies, he can say that he doesn't regret anything.
But Zohra smiled. An innocent smile – the kind that belonged to children.
“I won’t die. More like, I can’t die. If I die from something like this, I’m not fit for that girl…”
Therefore, opposite to the him who was determined to survive at all costs, Zohra is now... very lax about his well-being! It's explicitly stated in the novels that he's decided to throw away his fear of death and, well, it shows. He's not suicidal by any means, and he'll occasionally show something akin to panic when his life is in danger, such as when he threw up a self-destruction Rule Fragment in hopes that Lucile would take care of it (giving Zohra time to escape), and he was all DEAR GOD PLEASE LET HIM SUCCEED. On the other hand, Zohra knew that Lucile might not have been able to do so, meaning he... threw up a self-destruction Rule Fragment half-expecting to die and take Lucile and Sion with him, so.
In general, though, Zohra has an attitude of "if I die, I die." To him, it's about cause and effect, really. You're killed because you lacked the necessary skills to survive in that situation. Which, in turn, is why he feels the need to throw himself at strong opponents, since that's how he'll develop the necessary skills for survival, and if he dies in the process... Well, c'est la vie. Death is a natural part of life, and it'll come for everyone at some point or another. Sure, he'll fight it for as long as he can, but again, all that really matters to Zohra is that he can be proud of his life when he finally does die. So in a way, Zohra wouldn't see his death as a sad matter—just an inevitable result of whatever.
On that note, however, that's not to say that Zohra's just THROWN PRAGMATISM OUT THE WINDOW or anything. He still believes that one can be too soft-hearted, and that, to a degree, it's necessary to get your hands dirty for your ultimate goals, because honestly, you can't really expect to get what you want so easily. However, he refuses to go around killing innocents or people who can't fight back the way he once did. Now, it's a matter of "if you're a soldier, then seriously, you should be prepared to give your life up on the battlefield for your beliefs??" He's willing to do the same, after all.
In short, Zohra's definition of strength now is this: how well can you stay true to yourself and what you believe in and still be able to move forward and get what you want in the process?
So a certain NPC who may or may not be named Kite rubbed in Zohra's face about how he has no home and supposedly nobody cares about him, etc., etc. And, well, Zohra half-realizes that Kite is a liar and half-believes him—or rather, that he's right. Which might sound like the same thing, but Zohra knows that Kite lies and will do whatever it takes to break you, having seen the horrors during the raid and what he's done to his friends during the recent torture sessions. However, he can't deny that there are some truths in what Kite's saying that he's always been aware of, even before Kite brought them up.
The thing about Zohra is that, for all of his idiocy and energy and carefree attitude, he's a person of logic at heart, if not coldly so at times. And overall, that leads to a bit of a pragmatic and maybe even awkward view on friendship. I mean, this is the guy who treated the revelation that he was in love with Pia like some kind of war situation where he had to devise tactics (do I strike??? Do I retreat???)—
(He'd be much better at this if I ever canon updated him, at which point he'd have been longtime friends with Pia and Peria as well as having plenty of subordinates as allies, but he's still at a point where he literally has no friends in canon, so.)
First off, Zohra is very much a product of his upbringing—that is, as a soldier who's had the mindset of "do whatever it takes to survive" since he was three. He wasn't necessarily an anti-social child, in that it's mentioned he had friends... who died because they weren't strong enough. Whether through war, human experimentation, abusive training, or the whole "kill everyone else for the right to survive" matches Roland seems to occasionally force on them (for all we know, Zohra could've had to kill his friends before), it seems like all of Zohra's friends have died by the time he joins the Hidden Elites at age ten, which doesn't make for a healthy view on attachments. Zohra doesn't necessarily reject the notion of attachments, and it's shown that he's pretty friendly outside of his duties (which is a lot more than you can say about his associates), but he doesn't go out looking for them either.
Even putting aside the fact that Zohra's friends are implied to have kept dying while he was growing up, the group he's now in really isn't conducive to friendship. Firstly, they could very easily receive orders to kill one another, and no, the country does not give a damn as to whether you might actually like the person or not—you're going to kill them or it's your life that'll end. Furthermore, relationships among the Hidden Elites are based on fear and respect, which is a very different thing from actual friendship. It's touched upon when Zohra is an adult—Sion notes that he wasn't even remotely shaken when his fellow Hidden Elites were brutally killed before him, because he didn't actually consider them his allies. Zohra himself is very well-respected among the Hidden Elites, but does he doubt that any one of them would kill him if ordered to? No way. Again, it's your life or another person's, and as someone who would've always chosen his own three years ago, Zohra's really in no position to judge for trying to save your own skin.
One of the main things, however, and the one Kite was likely referring to the most, is the fact that Zohra is still fundamentally a nobody. Not even in a self-deprecating away (because he's a super awesome genius and knows it, okay), but in that he knows his life is worthless to the country. First, he's a soldier—aka someone expected to dedicate his life to the country and die for it (this wouldn't be so bad if Roland weren't a country really not worth dying for). Secondly, he's an orphan, and more than that, an orphan in a country that feels like it can do whatever it wants with orphans because hey, it's not like you have any family left who'd care! Thirdly, not only does he no longer have family, but his parents were slaves anyway. That is, Zohra's not even just a commoner—he comes from what's essentially the very bottom of society. To digress a bit, this is likely part of why Zohra's so arrogant, because he's (almost quite literally) never had anything that he didn't work for and/or deserve. In turn, though, it's why he's initially pretty desperate to never lose any of it, contributing to his callous assassin persona.
Consequently, Zohra does kind of view how much people might care in terms of how much he has to offer. That's how he grew up, after all; whether you were allowed to live or not depended on how much your life was worth. He thinks he's the most amazing person in the world (after Pia, of course), but people won't necessarily realize that, bah. Still, he wonders (well, not usually, but after the whole business with Kite): say, if he weren't good at magic, if he weren't argumentative, if he weren't a genius—would Morgan still be friends with him? After all, she seems to like him because he teaches her magic and gives her opinions to bounce off of. If he didn't have that, would she thus find him boring? He knows that he's not ever going to lose any of those things, so he's not actually worried about losing Morgan's friendship, but it's food for thought. Zohra is not used to altruism, or people honestly caring just because. It's always been about what value you can offer in terms of skills and power.
Anyhow, as Kite said, he has no home, because honestly, does he even want to think of Roland as his home? The country that wouldn't let his parents and friends live and that won't even let him live now that he won't be a mindless puppet? Later on in his life, Zohra deserts Roland and never looks back. It's pretty clear too that he (and Pia and Peria) have no love for their mother country, given that they were intending to crush it before it got too powerful.
And more than that, Zohra knows that back home, Kite is entirely right when he says that Zohra is an outcast, wanted by nobody. He won't follow orders anymore, so he no longer belongs in Roland, which demands complete obedience. Nobody actually gives half a damn about him (aside from Ryner, but Zohra sincerely does not see Ryner as a friend—an acquaintance whom he'd be willing to be friends with if they could get along, but not really a friend). There is literally nobody aside from the aforementioned fellow outcast who would be sad if he died and Zohra knows it. It's not something he's sad or lonely over—it's just a fact of life. He intends to change that once he finally leaves Roland and finds Pia, who is, in some ways, his hope: someone who gives him something meaningful to reach for when the rest of the world won't.
... Haven complicates things, though. Namely, the Justice Cabal, who are really the first people in years to declare Zohra a friend and ally. Zohra understands the concept of true allies well enough (and he does think that what the Justice Cabal has is the 'real' thing), but he's never really applied it to himself, because again, Hidden Elites. Before the Justice Cabal, he doesn't know what it's like to have an ally whom you can trust with anything in life, sans Ryner (and that was, in a way, out of pragmatism; he knew Ryner had no reason to betray him because Ryner was, as said, a fellow outcast who had every reason to hate Roland as well). And so, he actually finds it a bit difficult to fully see himself as a member of the Justice Cabal. He doesn't actually think about it much and it's also not something he's sad about, but he's mentioned it a few times. Consequently, he knows never to mention it around them again, because wow, they're strangely touchy about this!? He's pretty sure he's not as close to them as they are to each other, because they grew up together and come from the same world and have fought together, etc. He's just the guy they roped in a few months ago and though he enjoys being with them and he's sure they enjoy his company too (why wouldn't you, gosh), that's not the same thing as having an ~unbreakable bond~. There's also the fact that for all of his talk about how he's a ~hero~ and does the ~right thing~, he's too cynical to believe that justice can prevail on a large scale. That's just a slight problem.
In any case, he sees the Justice Cabal as a group that's fun to be around and whom he can count on in a fight, but all things considered? Not much more than that. He'll call them his friends and mean it and knows they mean it too when they call him a friend, but he also realizes that they throw that notion around a lot. Again, friendship =/= unbreakable bond. He sees his love for Pia as the latter, but he's also not madly in love with the Justice Cabal, sooooooo.
He's pretty sure they'd be sad for a day or so if he died (for good). Maybe more than a few days for, say, Noire, because Noire is nice and mopey. He thinks it's pretty stupid, because like he argued with Morgan about, he'd rather they spend that time doing productive things than mourning him. Sadness is an unproductive emotion and something that gets you killed if you dwell in it for too long, and it's almost insulting to him that he would be the cause. At the same time, he accepts that grieving when people die is 'normal' and he's just the weird (reasonable?) one here.
... That said, when I say 'a day or so', I mean it. He kind of doesn't think anyone would feel sad over him for any longer than that, whether it be over something bad happening to him or outright death. Not because he has low self-esteem (believe me, he does not have low self-esteem—), but because, again, there's just such an utter lack of productivity in moping for that long! This admittedly comes from, as cruel as it may be, his own view. He can't fathom being sad for more than a few days because there's... no point? At all? People live. People die. That's reality. After that point, he'll just be a memory that'll fade away.
(Part of it does go back to his belief that he's not as close with them as they are to each other, though. He does think that they might mourn for longer if it was for one of their own. Because being closer = more mourning, right? He's not jealous; it's yet another fact of life to him.)
And so, Kite is actually right in that sense. At the end of the day, he won't matter. They won't care forever. And he doesn't want them to, if it'll hold them back—at the same time, it is admittedly a bit lonely to think about.
strength;
Not running away, protecting those important to me, what is…
... Zohra has lots and lots of feelings about strength. Heck, it's practically the driving theme of his intro mini-arc of sorts—what defines true strength?
And so, to give the context behind Zohra's mindset (though honestly, if you don't know every detail about Zohra's past by now from RPing with me, even without having read his intro, shame on you—), he comes from a country where strength is all that matters. The only thing that determines the worth of your existence and whether you get to live or die is how useful you can be to the country, and for a soldier like Zohra, that's how strong you are. And considering that it's been like this for him since he was three, it's pretty much all he's ever known.
On that note, while he never seems terribly broken up over it, a large part of this stems from his parents' deaths, because even for Zohra, watching your parents die in front of you when you're only three is just a tad scarring. We're not given too many details on Zohra's parents, aside from the fact that they were slaves and, again, were 'disposed' in front of him for being considered trash by the country, but one line about how they'd stopped walking forward implies that they might've given up on life (at the very least, they probably weren't the most determined and strong-willed of people). At any rate, this incident is what sparks the mindset that sticks with Zohra for the rest of his life: the weak will die. Again, his parents were considered worthless to the country, as they were weak—socially weak, mentally weak, physically weak, however.
Thus, two sentiments were born from this: one, those who serve no purpose don't get to live, and two, those who can't keep moving forward no matter what also don't get to live. For a three-year-old who, as a child of slaves, likely had virtually no support and was thrust into the military life, it left quite an impression. Specifically, he had two choices: either give up the way his parents had and die for it, or do the opposite of what they did—do whatever it takes to survive.
He'd die as a weakling.
So, well, cue the borderline sociopath Zohra is at age ten. Zohra, at this time, is actually an excellent example of the Punch Clock Villain, in that you see that he has no real malice towards his targets. That's all they are to him: targets. It's his job. At the same time this makes him sympathetic, though, it also makes him unsympathetic, as he effectively demonstrates how callous someone would have to be to kill anyone because it's their 'job'. It's explicitly stated that he doesn't really differentiate between people when killing them and that he feels nothing when he does so, regardless of whether they're a man, woman, adult, child, good person, bad person, etc. On the flip side, when off-duty, he's friendly enough, and it's mentioned that he had friends/allies—who are implied to have all died while he was growing up because they weren't strong enough either like his parents, therefore reinforcing the notion that the weak always die.
Thus, to Zohra, as a soldier and assassin who's had it drilled into his head that you can only survive if you kill before you can be killed and never give Roland a reason to think you're useless, 'strength' is equated to 'ability to survive' which in turn is equated to 'kill anyone who gets in your way'. He doesn't think it's the morally right thing to do—it's the pragmatic thing to do. If someone has to die, then honestly, what reason do you have to choose someone else's life over your own? You might as well look out for yourself.
As a result, Zohra essentially scorns the ideas of compassion. They're nice things to keep in mind when you have the luxury of doing so, but in a life or death situation, they just get in your way. Being soft makes you hesitate, which gets you killed. Moping over all the trauma in your life causes you to stop moving forward, which gets you killed. Falling in love makes you do stupid things, which gets you killed. And so on and so forth. To Zohra, if it won't contribute to your survival—if it's an outright detriment to your survival—then it's something he wants nothing to do with.
In short, Zohra's definition of strength is this: how efficient a person is in what they do, and how well they can kill off their heart to do it.
... And then along came Pia! And, of a more depressing nature, Biore's death. The effects of the first incident can be summed up as Zohra seeing what 'true' strength is, in that Pia (aside from being ridiculously strong on a physical level) is able to survive on her own terms and live life how she wants to, which is perhaps all Zohra really wanted. The effects of the second incident are that Zohra, who kind of suspected it all along, now fully realizes what he means to the country: i.e. nothing. Even if he's strong, he'll never be more than a tool they can throw away at any time like they did to his parents (again, it's implied he was subconsciously aware of this, but denied it because he didn't want to acknowledge that nothing he did would ever matter).
So, three years later, we have... Zohra. Aka the Zohra he is now.
Keep your opinions to yourself and do what the country says.
Because you're weak, you have no choice but to live in fear and do what the country says so that you won't be killed.
Your opinion means nothing.
Even if you're strong, that means nothing.
The thing about realizing that you're utterly worthless to the country no matter what you do by sheer virtue of not having been born a noble is that it's actually really freeing! It means that Zohra no longer has to really be paranoid about his survival the way he once was, because, well... firstly, nothing he does will really contribute to it, will it? He can kill as many people as Roland asks him to, but the 'value' it gives him is nothing but an illusion. He no longer feels like he has to rely on the country for survival, as he realizes that in the end, they'll probably kill him anyway. And with that, he no longer has to be the perfect assassin—he's quite proud of being a 'failure' now, in fact. Really, the worst they can do is torture him (which Zohra doesn't seem horribly affected by) or kill him, and again, if you know you're ultimately going to die anyway, does it really matter when? At least this way, he can die proud of who he is.
And now that he can properly live for himself rather than Roland, Zohra has the opportunity to honestly consider what he wants out of life. He still cares about being strong—he'll always care, seeing as how he was basically conditioned into it, but his idea of what strength is has changed. Even if he became the strongest person in Roland, he'll always be weak on account of the fact that he's still depending on Roland to grant him the right to live. Thus, with that revision, he no longer thinks of strength purely in terms of how well you can fight. Or, well, part of that still remains, but in the sense that Zohra is now much more willing to fight fair and square—because isn't being able to beat your opponent even without dirty tricks a certain brand of strength? That said, despite claiming that it's his policy to fight honestly, Zohra is... still arguably one of the dirtiest fighters in the series, welp.
More importantly, and perhaps how Zohra primarily sees strength now, is strength on an emotional level. The notion of being able to move forward no matter what still applies, but unlike before, where it was about being able to discard your morals to do whatever you had to, Zohra acknowledges being able to stick to your morals as strength. Again, you can torture him, threaten him, try to kill him—but he will never again change who he is for someone else ever again.
Because in the end, which is more important: the number of years in your life or how you live those years? Once upon a time, it was the former. Now, for Zohra, it's the latter. He doesn't care if he were to die right now, as long as, when he dies, he can say that he doesn't regret anything.
“I won’t die. More like, I can’t die. If I die from something like this, I’m not fit for that girl…”
Therefore, opposite to the him who was determined to survive at all costs, Zohra is now... very lax about his well-being! It's explicitly stated in the novels that he's decided to throw away his fear of death and, well, it shows. He's not suicidal by any means, and he'll occasionally show something akin to panic when his life is in danger, such as when he threw up a self-destruction Rule Fragment in hopes that Lucile would take care of it (giving Zohra time to escape), and he was all DEAR GOD PLEASE LET HIM SUCCEED. On the other hand, Zohra knew that Lucile might not have been able to do so, meaning he... threw up a self-destruction Rule Fragment half-expecting to die and take Lucile and Sion with him, so.
In general, though, Zohra has an attitude of "if I die, I die." To him, it's about cause and effect, really. You're killed because you lacked the necessary skills to survive in that situation. Which, in turn, is why he feels the need to throw himself at strong opponents, since that's how he'll develop the necessary skills for survival, and if he dies in the process... Well, c'est la vie. Death is a natural part of life, and it'll come for everyone at some point or another. Sure, he'll fight it for as long as he can, but again, all that really matters to Zohra is that he can be proud of his life when he finally does die. So in a way, Zohra wouldn't see his death as a sad matter—just an inevitable result of whatever.
On that note, however, that's not to say that Zohra's just THROWN PRAGMATISM OUT THE WINDOW or anything. He still believes that one can be too soft-hearted, and that, to a degree, it's necessary to get your hands dirty for your ultimate goals, because honestly, you can't really expect to get what you want so easily. However, he refuses to go around killing innocents or people who can't fight back the way he once did. Now, it's a matter of "if you're a soldier, then seriously, you should be prepared to give your life up on the battlefield for your beliefs??" He's willing to do the same, after all.
In short, Zohra's definition of strength now is this: how well can you stay true to yourself and what you believe in and still be able to move forward and get what you want in the process?