#human interest

It’s 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday and Armaan is in his element: standing in a kitchen, bouncing between a grill and a stove and a deep fryer, assembling a meal for hungry customers.

Nothing else about the last month has been normal. Not the flaming mountainsides as he fled Clinton, not the living arrangements, not the work locations or the general uncertainty. Armaan spent a year learning to cook in one of Toronto’s fanciest restaurants. Now he’s stirring sauces in a trailer parked at an elementary school overlooking a smoky little town.

Armaan ladles gravy into a container, steams a mix of vegetables, checks a deep fryer. The temperature has dipped to 30 C. It’s considerably hotter inside the trailer, which Armaan is sharing with another cook. A helicopter carrying a bucket rattles overhead. In the distance, a large plume is visible.

In the parking lot, two dozen firefighters wait. Their day done, they squat beside the road, scrolling phones; lounge in pickup trucks, arms draped through open windows; chat with Armaan’s boss, Manmeet Sra, as he prepares containers and positions sauces.

Around 8 a.m. on a Sunday in late July, Sra’s phone rang. Could he feed some fire crews? Sra, already preparing for an event that day, asked when and how many.

“Tonight,” he was told. They needed dinner for 270 firefighters. The next day, they would need breakfast, lunch and dinner for even more people.

The following days were a blur. Armaan and his colleagues would wake up every day around 4 a.m., head to the Hungryysh food truck in the middle of town and start working. As firefighters poured into the area to battle the flames, more and more meals needed to be cooked. Within a couple of days the crew was cooking 450 breakfasts, 450 lunches and 450 dinners. They would finish after midnight, briefly sleep, then do it all again.

"Sir, you are right. You could have me killed right now," said de Worde simply. "You know that. I know that. But you won't, for three reasons. The officers of Borogravia tend towards honor. Everyone says that. That's why they don't surrender. And I bleed most distressingly. And you don't need to, because everyone's interested in you! Suddenly, it's all changed!"

"Interested in us?"

"Sir, in a sense you could help a lot right now. Apparently, people back in Ankh-Morpork were amazed when...look, have you heard about what we call 'human interest,' sir?"

"No."

De Worde tried to explain. Blouse listened with his mouth open, and at the end, said:

"Have I got this right? Although many people have been killed and wounded in this wretched war, it's not been of much 'interest' to your readers? But it is now, just because of us? Because of a little skirmish in a town they've never heard of? And because of it, we're suddenly a 'plucky little country' and people are telling your newspaper that your great city should be on our side?"

"Yes, Lieutenant. We put out a second edition last night, you see."