To evacuate, we needed to get to the ground, but we were on the roof of the highest building in the compound, a blazing fire on our heels. I was terrified but not alone. Eighty Americans ran across the rooftop with me, jumping four feet to the searing roof of the second building and then another twelve feet down to the roof of the auditorium.

The Americans helped me get Tilly from one building to another, one man easing her down while another readied to receive her. I saw the glint of a ladder propped against the side of the building, the flicker of red lights beyond a cluster of trees. Shouts in a language that sounded simultaneously foreign and familiar.

I crossed scorched earth for the second time in my life, unsure if it would be my spirit or my knees to buckle first. Unsure which fire would shape my destiny and which would burn me. Unsure if what I was running toward was any better than what I was running from.

Chapter 25

“Are you leaving too, Leo?” Tilly said, rubbing off bits of adhesive from the crook of her arm. It was three in the morning, and we were in Leo’s home, a three-bedroom apartment in a quiet neighborhood. He had insisted on bringing us back here, though it was obvious he was responsible for most of the other people in the mission. We’d been taken directly to the hospital, where doctors and nurses had sorted through the exhausted and injured. Tilly had been laid out on a stretcher with crisp white sheets that turned her paler. They’d inserted a needle into her arm and dripped clear fluids into her veins. She’d now removed the gauze and tape, but the adhesive clung to her papery skin.

“We’re evacuating all non-essential staff. I’m staying on.”

Leo looked exhausted. He’d been taken to the British embassy while we went to the hospital. At some point in the middle of the night, the army declared the streets safe for travel. The Americans were rounded up and divided into groups. Leo made sure Tilly and I were among the twenty people taken to his home. Leo’s wife, unfazed by the swell of people in their living room, had turned their modest space into a shelter. She distributed saltines, mandarin oranges, clothing, and cups of water. People sat shoulder to shoulder on the sofa and on the living room floor, knees bent and heads resting against the wall.

Leo stepped away for a few moments, returning with wet hair and a fresh set of clothes on. He took a seat in the living room next to the phone. The calls didn’t let up.

“I’m sorry, which press did you say you were with?” Leo asked, squinting to hear the response come across the line. “Right, right, okay.”