“I once dreamed about a great fire that broke out at night at
Nasser Aftab's House of Carpets. In Aftab's showroom under the
queen-post trusses were layer upon layer and pile after pile
of shags and broadlooms, hooks and throws, para-Persians and
polyesters. The intense and shriveling heat consumed or melted
most of what was there. The roof gave way. It was a night of
cyclonic winds, stabs of unseasonal lightning. Flaming debris
fell on the carpets. Layers of ash descended, alighted, swirled
in the wind, and drifted. Molten polyester hardened on the cellar
stairs. Almost simultaneously there occurred a major accident
in the ice-cream factory next door. As yet no people had arrived.
Dead of night. Distant city. And before long the west wall of the
House of Carpets fell in under the pressure and weight of a broad,
braided ooze of six admixing flavors, which slowly entered Nasser
Aftab's showroom and folded and double-folded and covered what was
left of his carpets, moving them, as well, some distance across
the room. Snow began to fall. It turned to sleet, and soon to
freezing rain. In heavy winds under clearing skies, the temperature
fell to six below zero. Celsius. Representatives of two warring
insurance companies showed up just in front of the fire engines.
The insurance companies needed to know precisely what had happened,
and in what order, and to what extent it was Aftab's fault. If not
a hundred percent, then to what extent was it the ice-cream factory's
fault? And how much fault must be – regrettably – assigned to God?
The problem was obviously too tough for the Chicken Valley Police
Department, or, for that matter, for any ordinary detective. It
was a problem, naturally, for a field geologist. One shuffled in
eventually. Scratched-up boots. A puzzled look. He picked up bits
of wall and ceiling, looked under the carpets, tasted the ice
cream. He felt the risers of the cellar stairs. Looking up, he
told Hartford everything it wanted to know. For him this was so
simple it was a five-minute job.”
— John McPhee, The New Yorker, 1980
(later included in Basin and Range, 1981, pp. 82-83)