The reaction of human beings to us, of people to us and to our need, helped in the healing process tremendously. Right from the time when we were moving from one evacuation center to another, the friendship I formed among those people — we were all sufferers, we had lost so much. I remember, particularly, our first evacuation center, when my wife and I had no shoes, and there were broken glasses all over the place, I mean a ruined city. ((Without Shoes)) And if we had a cut, that might result in tetanus or whatever. And a women, I think Sue is her name, she had two cats, one black and the other white, which she held very tightly to her chest, a lovely women.

And she saw me, and I was trying to move, and she said, “Ah, come.” There was a piece of plank, I think, plywood somewhere, and then because the whole place was thrown with debris, somehow we were able to break those flat plywood frames into pieces, and she shaped them like a pair of slippers, and I would tie a rope around them, and I put them on and I was looking like a Trojan, because I had to tie the ropes around my leg up to my knees, and then I was taking my step one after another, so that the frames will not slip off my feet. These were some of the things we did in the evacuation center. The depth of humanity that no book can — no writing can really account for this in full.