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bedrooms he heardrem sobbing. He found her and his wife crouching on the floor, the rest of the bedroom stripped empty. Nilüfer clutchedrem to her chest and rocked her like she was a child.
    “smail?” Nilüfer cried, panicked, her eyes pleading.
    “He’s safe,” he said.
    “Where, Sinan?”
    “He’s safe,” he repeated.
    “Where? Where is he?”
    “We have to get out of here.”
    Sinan took Nilüfer by the shoulders and helped her stand. She wouldn’t let go ofrem’s hand, and he had to gently prize his wife’s fingers loose before lifting his shaking daughter to his chest.rem was too heavy for him, but it didn’t matter. She clung to his neck and cried huge sobs that convulsed her body and made her harder to carry.
    “rem,
can
m,
” he said, whispering in her ear. “You’re okay. Calm down. You’re okay.” He repeated this through the leaning hallway, into the stairwell, and down the cracked steps until the passageway came to a dead end of fallen concrete slabs. He setrem down and in the darkness ran his hands over the rough cement, trying to find a way out, but there was none. They should have been on the second floor, but the second floor was gone.
    “Ahmet?” Nilüfer said. “My brother!”
    “I know,” he said, and he reached behind to touch her on the wrist.
    “Oh, God,” she said. “Gülfem, Ahmet, Zeynep.” She yelled into the wall, but the sound was stifled. “Oh, God!”
    Sinan took her in his arms and held her.
    “Nilüfer,” he said, “you have to be calm now.”
    She stopped yelling and breathed deeply, and when she grew calmer he began to panic. He didn’t know what to do. His chest constricted and his mind wouldn’t work. His head pounded as though his brain were bashing up against his skull.
    “Upstairs,” Nilüfer said. “The Türkolu s’.”
    She took his hand and he grabbedrem’s, and Nilüfer led them back up the stairwell. When they reached the neighbor’s threshold, Sinan didn’t even think of knocking, but simply threw open the unlocked door and entered their neighbors’ apartment.
    “Mehmet!” he yelled, but there was no response.
    They ran together down the leaning hallway, past the kitchen and into the front room; the wall was gone. This apartment had been on the third floor, but now it sat on the ground, the two floors beneath it a crush of cinder blocks and broken glass.
    They teetered out into the darkness of the destroyed town, down nearly thirty meters of rubble. They scrambled over ledges of concrete, stepped over kitchen sinks, jumped across crevasses of rooftops, and the whole time, with each step, Sinan was afraid he might be stepping on his son. He tried to place his feet lightly, but he had to walk, had to lead the rest of his family down, and there was no way to be weightless.
    “Forgive me,smail,” he said to himself.
    A water main broke beneath the street, and a rush of water burst into the air. The alarm of a crushed car bleated out a call and headlights flashed on and off, and in each strobe-light flash Sinan glimpsed the outlines of the destroyed town. People were scaling walls, hugging in the street, scrambling out of broken windows. Strafed by the light, their gestures looked mechanical, the clipped preciseness of limbs moving by degrees, and he hoped this might be a terrible dream. But it was real—he felt the dust landing on his skin, the grainy scratch of it in his lungs, the fingernails of his daughter scraping his palm.
    Finally they reached the street, and he led Nilüfer andrem to a little space of green that used to be the center of the traffic circle.
    “Don’t move from here,” he said.
    The light from the car alarm caught Nilüfer’s face and the look scared him; her eyes were distant, as though a film had clouded over her pupils. He shook her lightly to make sure she understood him. She nodded her head, but it was the movement of someone who could no longer hear, someone who wasn’t there anymore.
    “rem,” he