I have been terrified of fire since I was a little girl. Not bonfires or the flames found in fireplaces, but house fires. When I was a child, I used to lie in bed every night and plan my escape route if the house caught on fire. I planned to run down the hall, grab my brother, carry him back to my room, break my bedroom window with a vacuum cleaner tube, climb out and wait on the upstairs porch for rescue. I worried that the flames might follow us out onto the porch, and whether I should jump off the porch holding my brother, or drop him down first and jump after. I worried about making it back down the hallway after getting my brother – maybe we should just go out his window? Except his window didn't face onto a veranda, just a sloping roof that I was worried we would slide right off.

As an adult, I still worry about fires, and it’s a bad part of the world for someone with fears like mine. They put bars on all the windows here, which leaves me with visions of being fried alive as I frantically press myself against the unyielding bars. When I was finally able to afford a good apartment in Tashkent, I found one on the second floor, with no bars on the windows. The landlady wanted to put bars on the windows, and I wouldn’t let her. I would fall asleep at night thinking contentedly of my escape route, although I did tend to wonder if I should drop the dog out the window or jump holding her. If I didn't have the dog, I could dangle and drop, but she’s probably be safer in my arms. Kir eventually promised that I could drop out the window on my own, and he’d toss the dog down to me before jumping out the window himself. After that all I worried about when I feel asleep was the danger of one of Uzbekistan’s nuclear reactors melting down, and since I couldn’t make an escape plan for that, I just didn't think about it all that much.

The house in Ashgabat, much though I love it, has bars on all the windows and only one entrance. We looked for a place with no bars, but as you may recall we had to find this house in a hurry because the old one was confiscated by the police. And it’s a perfect house in every other way, and what are the odds that you’ll have a fire?

Well, last night I had a fire. A fire I slept through, but a fire nonetheless. The dog woke me up at six in the morning, asking to go out, so I went down and let her out without really waking up. I puttered around a little waiting for her to come in, and then went and peed myself. When I looked in the bathroom mirror, my face was covered in black smudges. Which I realized came from my blackened hands, leading me to finally recognize that the smoke smell wasn’t coming from the neighbors but from my kitchen.

There had been some kind of wiring problem, and the entire ceiling of the kitchen was charred black. Ash was everywhere, all over the kitchen and the living room, too. There was so much ash and charring it was hard to tell where it had even come from. Nothing seemed to have burned, though, despite the ash and the charring. I let the dog in, turned off all the power to the first floor (thank god for circuit breakers) and went back to bed.

Of course I couldn’t sleep. I kept waiting for more fire. What really bothered me was that we have a smoke alarm in the kitchen, and it either didn’t go off or I didn’t hear it. Both answers are scary.

This was followed, today, by a disaster at work that I won’t really go into. But I feel like an idiot, and I made my project look bad in front of one of our funders. So I suck, big time. I wish Kir was here. To tell about the kitchen and the fuck-up.

Every cloud has its silver lining, though. The landlady is going to have the kitchen, the family room, and the living room repainted. And I didn’t get fired or anything.

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.