Sasha is 10. He was born the year everything started to stop in Supsa. His mother, Galina Seergevna, tells of his birth and shudders when she describes the condition of the hospital. There was no supply of electricity, no sort of comfort. Sasha has lived his whole life in a world where nothing works. In a world where you don't even bother to try the lights and taking a bath requires bringing water in from a well at the neighbors, heating it on a wood burning stove, and speeding through the washing ritual before all that heat has escaped. But he is a normal 10 year-old boy. He picks on his older sister, wrestles with the neighborhood children,and has started a business of selling cigarettes: 25 tetri for a pack, 30 if you buy on credit. He loves pumpkins and carves at least one every year for Halloween, a foreign holiday celebrated in a distant land.