It groans in the West-North corner of our apartment. I do not know why its wailing brings Wuthering Heights and the Irish banshees to my mind. Only this household is without a child. The lightning flashes as in some Hollywood horror episode. We wonder whether to stay or depart. We opt to spend another night in our not-very-spacious car.

I used to boast about being fearless at critical points in my life, which amounted, according to those who were familiar with my lifestyle, to being of the reckless type. Now the least aberration in the familiar rhythm of our apartment, the faintest unusual sound, causes a considerable amount of apprehensive alarm, bringing my eyes not in the direction of the no-longer-cerulean sky, but to the balls of crystal that dangle from my little bedroom-chandelier, whose refracted lights have become my Richter scale. The walls that were already fissured with the passage of time, and financial mishaps, are now the focus of a derailed and dire life.

Inflation has been the preoccupation of our minds for the past ten years, then Corona became of a more paramount importance, in a country torn by war vultures and opportunists, and now the recurrence of tremors in the wake of the devastating earthquake is the leitmotif of every discourse in this afflicted town.

The affluent have been competing in restoring the elegance of their abodes. Other people have abandoned their hazardous hearths and become displaced. Most live like birds, with one eye wide open throughout the night, in anticipation of the predicted apocalyptic event for which modern clairvoyants are preparing the public. Hearts are cracked and fear is seeping into their arteries every second of the day and every night.

Conspiracy theories abound and the blue light which is usually associated with earthquakes has become the factory-bred culprit. Geostorms feature in movies, so there must be some real ones around. I nod to the allusion but focus my mind instead on the resuscitating, good looks of Gerard Butler, a Celt par excellence.