It’s hot outside and Taher sweats as he carries the food to the goats. He can hear laughter from inside the house. His little brothers and sisters playing happily, too young to lend a hand, too young to understand the hardship. After he’s fed and watered the animals he kicks a rusty tin can round the yard. The sun is touching the horizon now, the heat slipping away as the stars rise in the east. A majestic spread of brilliance in the heavens over the desert. Taher imagines the stars are the glittering floodlights above a football stadium. It’s the World Cup final and he’s the best player on the pitch. He flicks the can up and over his shoulder and then boots it against a wall. ‘Goal!’ he shouts as his mother’s voice floats out into the night air. It’s dinner time. He looks over, seeing her silhouetted in the door to the house, his father behind carrying bread to the low table, his little sister Kaya on the floor at his mother’s heels.

Then the world explodes, a fireball erupting from behind his mother, a heat hotter than a thousand suns searing through the air. Night turns to day and the scene imprints itself, scorching deep into his memories like a brand burned into the side of an ox.

His mother is torn into three pieces, her chest and head slamming against the wall, her legs and lower torso spiralling into the air, one arm flailing to the ground and rolling into the distance. He sees Kaya run out into the yard, for a moment thinking she might be saved but then realising her flesh is melting before him, peeling away in layers as she burns, her screams mercifully dying with her in a few seconds. From inside the house nothing but the roar of flame, his father and three other siblings in there somewhere. Dead or dying. Gone.

Taher runs towards the house but the heat is intense. He raises his arm to protect his face, the wash of flame scorching his skin. He staggers forward one step, two, three, but it’s no good. He can’t get any closer and even if he could there’s nothing he can do. Everyone he knows and loves is already in the hands of God. He falls to the floor and crawls away through the dirt, passing out among the goats, their frantic bleating the last thing he remembers from that awful day.