All We Have Left

Alia recalls Travis lying on top of her to protect her from the falling debris until, suddenly, the wind tears her from his arms. She relates that she reached out toward Travis, and he lunged at her with both arms. Suddenly, in a cloud of dust and smoke, she found herself “[…] flying through the air” (347).

The narrative reverts to the present day, and Alia tells Jesse that this was “[…] the last time I saw him” (347). Jesse asked how Alia finally escaped the Tower; Alia responds that she has no idea how she did so, or why she had enjoyed the privilege of survival when so many others had perished. She merely recalls waking up on top of a smoking mountain of rubble, and staggering into the street to join “[…] a few people, just ghosts that moved slow and dazed in the smoke” (347). Alia recollects that she had felt the sense of somebody next to her, holding her hand as she climbed across twisted metal beams and fires to escape; however, because medical personnel had attributed all of her memories to the effect of a concussion, she had never shared this sense of having been in the presence of a guardian with anyone else.

Alia further recalls that she had laid unconscious in a hospital for two days; her parents had assumed that she might have run away again, and had distributed her image via a missing person’s poster. Ayah, Alia’s father, had escaped the Tower helping an injured co-worker down the stairs, and no one was aware of her presence in the World Trade Center on that day. She grieved the loss of Travis when she saw his New York Times obituary, and was angry at his father because she felt that he had caused Travis to feel cowardly. Later, she had tried to call Travis’s dad, but the pair had screamed at each other on the phone prior to her being able to relate his heroism to the grieving father.

Alia also alludes to the fact that her parents requested that the hospital keep her identity confidential, due to the escalating anti-Muslim sentiment that manifested after 9/11. She describes the sense of unity and healing that occurred in New York City after the tragedy, noting that “It became my city after that, even though when I moved here I didn’t want to stay” (352). When Jesse questions why this tragedy occurred, Alia responds, “We can’t just focus on the darkness of the night, or we’ll miss out on the stars” (354).

Alia’s husband, John, returns to the apartment with their baby daughter, whose name is Hope.