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The Quake in Setopati

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936   323   2   1265 GET NEWS ALERTS A rain of bricks. I thought somebody was hitting me from behind with bricks. Surprise, anger. What the…!  My instinct was to turn behind, to look, to react. But the earthquake gave me no time. Everything happened in the fraction of a second. The next thing I can remember, I had slid down the stairs midway to Mangal Hiti, and was lying pinned on the ground. A latticework of heavy pillars of wood and bricks, the debris of a temple that had collapsed behind me, pinned me down. It took me a while to register this thought: “This is real. This just happened.” This wasn’t fiction. This was the real deal, the apocalyptic accident of unimaginable horror that we think will lie safely within the pages of books and on the screens of the cinema, but never experience in real life. The incident I’d imagined would never happen to me—until it did. I could raise my head a bit, and I could see the light through the