Twenty years ago, the scientists set the earth on fire.
They said it was an accident. Just temporary. But still, the ground our goats once grazed on bubbles and melts, and our house smells of sulphur.
Everyone else left, but not Father. “Hell or not,” he said, “it’s our home.”
He died soon after, choked by fumes. Enesh and I stayed. We had nowhere to go.
Now we’re getting visitors. Men in suits and large black cars. They say they’re going to do something about the burning.
We’re a developing economy. It’s very important, they said, to safeguard the gas.
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I wrote this after reading about the Door to Hell, near Derweze in Turkmenistan. The story’s not entirely accurate – it was lit in 1971, so it’s been burning for 43 years now.