All We Have Left

Alia leads the way up the stairs toward Ayah’s office, as the smoke grows thicker and the smell of jet fuel grows stronger. They meet two firefighters, and Alia explains that they are trying to find her father. The older man tells her to turn back down, saying, “If I were your father, I would want you to get to safety. We’ll find him, I promise” (295). She begs them to call someone to advise them that Ayah may be in his office, but the men explain that their radio signals are not going through. Alia, defying instructions, tries to run up the stairs; however, the firefighters block her way. Travis pulls her back down the stairs as Alia wonders why she hadn’t told her father that she loved him that morning.

Jesse’s father awaits her in the dark when she enters his shop in order to return home. He asks who she had been with on the street. Jesse thinks that “[h]e knows who he is. I can tell by his voice” (296), and responds that she had been with Adam Ayoub. Torturing her by prolonging the conversation, her father asks Jesse why she felt it wise to spend time with one of the people who had killed