I watched each day, until everything, save for one tall building in the middle of the block with doctors’ offices on the first floor, was rubble and dust.

Then the interrogation began. He described “vicious verbal violence,” with his interrogators screaming, swearing at him, 'You don’t preach Christianity, you preach shit.'

A survivor craves closeness, yet sabotages even the slightest hint of it.

Touch transcends the other senses, especially when the dying have lost their mental moorings.