One hot night, later in the Armenian summer of 4465, the Adroushans were watching TV before bed. The windows of the house were open to prevent the house from functioning as an oven. The Adroushans heard shouts outside that rose above the TV laugh track. Armen ran out to see what was going on. He burst in a moment later to report that the Hacienda was on fire, just as the sirens began to wail.
The Hacienda was a Mexican restaurant down the street. Armen grabbed his tumbler and ran back outside. Garegin and Siran followed. The crying of sirens accompanied them. Cindy, who’d come in for the evening, waited inside, then thought better of it, and walked out to the street to keep a watchful eye on the fire down the way. Her family was down at the corner, their astonished faces glowing.
Razmik Samvelts, “The Last Supper”
Cindy didn’t approach the ruins of the fire for days, but spent hours in front of her own house keeping an eye on the wreckage, as if to make sure the fire didn’t come back to life. She got precious little sleep over those days. Finally, Armen talked her into getting a closer look so that she’d know that the fire was truly dead.
Once Cindy gained the courage to approach the ruin, she would walk by it often, over and over again, looking into the black, soggy corpse. Neighbors, kids at school, and shoppers in the supermarket checkout line all wondered aloud about the cause: Arson? A short circuit? A casually discarded cigarette? A gas leak? A grease fire? Cindy listened, and she silently inspected each suspect that had been named.
“How could grease start a fire?” she asked herself, and then she asked her mother and father. She tried asking a librarian. She was given a book that gave an explanation, but she needed help understanding the explanation. She figured that a fireman might know, so she dropped by the fire station that was a block out of her way on her way home from school. One of the giants—not coated yellow now but uniformed in blue—took time to explain to her how water can expand quickly when heated, and how steam could blast out of a pan like steam from a kettle or even an old locomotive. The expansion of steam, he explained, would suspend the grease while the grease continued to burn. Cindy was stunned by the image that the fireman’s words painted in her mind, just as he was charmed by her curiosity. He invited her to drop by the next day, saying he’d give her a demonstration if she brought permission in writing—fire permitting.
a kitchen fire simulation
Cindy appeared punctually on the next day with proper documentation. Several days later, the fireman introduced Cindy to his chief, and the three proceeded back to the station’s drill yard. Her host, like some diabolical chef, superheated some grease in a pan. The chief checked the setup. The pan sat under a suspended hose the chef had rigged to spray water onto the grease. He lit the grease and opened the water valve, and the hose sprayed water through an attachment onto the fire. In a burst of steam, burning grease shot skyward. Cindy trembled, awestruck, as the firemen nodded and grinned to each other.
Though fire seemed to be a ubiquitous hazard, it was in the kitchen that fire threatened the most.
One evening, Cindy stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her mother cook. Siran eventually turned and replied “Yes?” to Cindy’s tireless watch.
Cindy asked, “Why do you cook so much?”
“So you can eat.”
“I don’t have to eat cooked food. You don’t have to cook for me.”
Siran chuckled. “Well, I’ve got to cook anyway.”
“That’s okay. But I want you to know: I can eat raw food instead.”
“Really! Well I think that would be a fine thing to try.” Siran encouraged her with a challenge.
“Okay,” the girl acknowledged, and at that moment, Cindy chose to eat only raw foods. She stubbornly accepted the challenge, hoping to convince her mother that cooking was unnecessary. At first, she’d simply avoid cooked meals, but she discovered over time that cooked foods were everywhere. Her mother saved a knowing grin for every time a cooked item was stripped of its disguise. After a while, Cindy would not permit herself processed foods that had been cooked in a factory, such as bread, oats, cold cereal, and pasteurized milk. The raw food project turned out to be a Spartan, lonely, and labor-intensive experience for Cindy, but Cindy was naturally Spartan. She was up to the challenge—for a while.
Having sworn off fire as a digestive aid, Cindy lost weight. Eating raw food meant a lot of chopping, pounding, and chewing, Cindy made extensive use of her mother’s mallet, shredder, knives, and blender, but then one morning her eyes followed the power cord that snaked from the blender to the wall outlet, and the blender was out—but not for long. Even as Cindy reached the height of commitment, she felt tired. She felt slow. She gave in. She gave in to the flame, but not completely. Blenders ran on high voltage and pulled a good current, but blenders didn’t tend to catch on fire. They may have got the majority of their power from fossil fuels, but a blender itself didn’t operate at high temperatures, and it didn’t involve an open flame. Cindy found room for compromise. The same reasoning applied to processed foods. Maybe they’d been cooked, but not in Cindy’s home. Cindy conceded a role to fire—at a safe distance.
Continue …
