‘I’m sure—I know where we are. Stop asking me,’ came his terse reply. She was worried, but he couldn’t deal with her fear as well as his own. He just needed to focus. At every turn he knew he was getting closer to the airport. But he could also see the fires ahead in the darkness, forcing him to make another turn away from their destination. He could see the fire dancing and knew that it was moving from torch to body. He had underestimated the neighbourhood, he had made a mistake and now he needed to focus. This was an exam question, nothing that could not be solved with a deep breath, an enquiring mind, and an excellent memory.

Left and then left again would bring them out on Ave Maria Road, five blocks from the hospital. If they could just make it to the hospital they could call home, call the airport, call anyone, and wait until the roads were clear. He saw Ave Maria Road, there it was. Four more blocks. What was the Sinhalese word for four? Why did he think of that? What was the Sinhalese word for bucket, he asked Nala repeatedly.

She scoffed at him. ‘I know the word,’ she said angrily. ‘I know why you’re asking, but I know as many words in Sinhalese as I know in English, as I know in Tamil. Have you forgotten I am an educated woman?’

He barely heard her, but he hoped her irritation would distract her for a few moments. He forced his eyes ahead.

‘Don’t look,’ he whispered. Cars upturned like Darwin’s giant tortoises, stranded, limbs flailing and then still, stripped of their tyres. Scorched objects by the side: charred and collapsed, blackened and fused to smoking garlands of rubber. Some were large but some were small, the shape of his grandchild, sleeping in the back.

At the end, all were foetal.

‘Don’t look, Nala,’ he whispered again, wiping the tears away.

Three more blocks. They couldn’t breathe. But neither of them wanted to open the windows. Glass and metal were the only barriers between them and the smell that would wrap itself around their memories forever. Suddenly he thought about the day his sister Lali died, like a fast flashing scene on television, its incandescence glimpsed between changing channels. He shook the picture out of his mind and focused.

They were almost there. There were precisely ten houses between this junction and the next. Then one more block, one more right turn, and they could stop. They could survive.