Postface

Fifteen years ago, we received a phone call in the middle of the night. Our building was on fire and we needed to evacuate. The smoke was thick in the corridor, but, after a brief panic, we made our way to the escape stairs. We walked down from the ninth floor, our nine-year-old leading the way, with me behind her, and my husband carrying our six-year-old at the back. When we got to the ground, we realized that both my husband and son only had one shoe each. Also, we were all wearing our pajamas and it was cold. Graduate students lent the children blankets. As we watched the fire brigade go in, I suddenly remembered that we’d left one living being behind: Elvis, our turtle. I was horrified. But it was only much later, once we’d realized that the fire was located in one single apartment, and that the worst that happened was one melted fridge and a stench of smoke for several weeks afterwards, that I started to grieve for our nearly lost stuff: our books, our children’s toys, our important papers, and the beautiful carpets we’d began to collect: in other words, our home. At the time, that wasn’t what struck us as urgent. What mattered was that we weren’t adequately clothed, and that we’d left our pet behind to die a potentially horrible death.1Close