They say they’re rebuilding it, which is a blessing. It is located in northern Armenia, on the edge of this endless, flat valley surrounded by mountains. So flat and endless that you can’t even see the mountains on the far side. If you drained all the water out of the Red Sea and found a city at the bottom of it, that would be like living in Gyumri. In 1988 it was destroyed in an earthquake. Seven years I ended up living there for two years. Nothing had been rebuilt. Whole city blocks lay in ruins — factories collapsed, streets with ripples in them, schools where classes of hundreds of children were killed in an instant. They’re finally rebuilding the city, I’m told, which is good, but it shall always be a ghost city to me, devastated yet beautiful, like our souls.