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of remorse for giving in to his wife’s hospitality.
    He watched the streak of black water beyond the rooftops, and the city lights strewn around the bay like a necklace. The tea-black sky floated above him, punctured with only three stars, just three tiny pinpricks. At night in the village there were more stars than night sky, more worlds out there staring back than there were people in the whole of this city, probably more than there were people in all of the world’s cities. He wanted to return to Yeilli, he wanted his children to grow up in the shadow of the mountains, but where would he get the money for the trip? How could he leave the business? How would he make a living there? He wanted to explain this to his father, tell him that it was best to stay here, for his children. There was nothing in the South—no jobs, no schools, no future. But even as he built his argument in his head, his father’s angry face appeared, and doubt clouded his logic.
    The breeze felt like air blowing off an open fire. He heard the metal droning of cranes at the docks, a place that never stopped moving. You could hear its machinery grinding away at all hours of the day, during prayers, waking before sunrise in the morning—it didn’t matter, the sound was always there, like the scrape of gnashing your own teeth together. He could see a party boat floating close to shore, the white lights strung from its bow reflecting against the black water. As it got nearer to shore Sinan heard the thumping of music from loudspeakers and watched dozens of people dancing on its flat rooftop. The sound was distant and sad, like the echo of some lost pleasure. But as the boat drew closer to the dock, he heard individual voices, the laughter of women, a deejay announcing a raffle, and the clapping of hands. The deejay played another song, and it was so loud that Sinan got angry because he thought it might disturb his family’s sleep.
    Then there was another sound, an odd low rumbling like the shuddering of a tank coming down the street. And at first that’s what he thought it was, one of the police tanks on patrol, but the rumbling grew louder and it seemed to be rolling across the water toward him, toward the town.
    He sat up, looked for a ship leaving the docks, searched the sky for a plane, but the sound wasn’t right for anything man-made. Then, in the distance, out of the black water, flashed a brilliant spark of green. The flash was so bright that when he blinked there were little bursts of green blindness in his vision. The rumble had separated itself from the sound of the boat and had become something wholly distinct, a horrible growl. He looked at the party boat, hoping the sound was some new type of music. The shining hull bobbed out there silently, reflecting itself back on the water, but all the dancing people had turned their faces toward the growing sound.
    Sinan had an instinct to get back to his family, he tried to run for the stairs, tried to get back to them, but his feet skipped out from beneath him and he found himself facedown on the cement rooftop. He rolled onto his back and lifted himself up, but above him the sky shifted, sending the stars falling across the sky, their pinpoints streaking in his vision.
    He got to his feet and wrapped a fist around a piece of rebar, and when he did he looked toward the bay where the boat lifted on a wave of water, rose into the air like a toy ship, tipped sideways, listed, and spilled its passengers into the surging sea. There was nothing to think about it because it was something unbelievable, something in a terrible dream, and as soon as he did think, They won’t make it, the building directly next to his own dropped from his vision. The crash was so loud that it was like the silence of blood in his ears.
    He heard screams, explosions of gas lines rupturing, the bursting of water pipes thrusting up pieces of road, even the sirens of car alarms, but none of these sounds could be isolated;