88 pages • 2 hours read

All We Have Left

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016

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Chapters 51-54Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 51 Summary: “Alia”

Alia describes the unspeakably terrifying sound of the other tower imploding and the roar as “[…] the entire building just falls” (321). Travis pushes her to the floor and draws Alia’s face against his chest to protect her from the engulfing smoke; she clings to him with all her strength. Alia comes to the realization that she is not a superhero, and that her survival is contingent upon her ability to walk down hundreds of steps. Travis, dazed, says that “Gramps always used to say that they [the Towers] would never fall” (322).

It is Travis who realizes that the Tower that the pair occupy is in danger of falling as well, and tries to wet Alia’s hijab to shield her face from the overwhelming smoke. When she refuses, he wets her shirt and instructs her to use it as a shield, telling her “We’re going to get out of here alive, okay?” (323). The narrative has come full circle at this point, returning to the moment of dialogue between the two that opens the book.

Chapter 52 Summary: “Jesse”

Jesse and Adam view the remainder of the memorial and she tries to imagine “[…] Travis and Alia on a similar staircase […] as they flee the smoke and the flames” (325). She considers searching for Travis’s picture among those of the victims–not the cocky high school senior depicted in all his hometown newspaper articles, but “[…] the Travis who was here that day, desperate and scared” (325). The pair pass through hundreds of memorials and artifacts, searching for some evidence of Travis and Alia.

Chapter 53 Summary: “Alia”

Travis and Alia continue crawling toward the staircase door, encountering random cards from broken Roladexes and photos of happy young children–the detritus of office workers’ possessions that now litter the disaster scene. When the pair are nearly struck by part of the office wall and ceiling, Travis grabs Alia’s hand and pulls her down the now unoccupied staircase. Alia realizes that Travis is choking on dust because his grandfather’s shirt is too small to pull over his mouth. She unwinds her hijab from her head and forces him to allow her to gently wrap his neck and mouth with it. Travis is overcome by emotion at this gesture, as well as his realization that he has lost his grandfather’s ashes. Alia assures him that his grandfather was there when the Towers were built, and “He’ll be here when they die” (329). She takes the lead as they continue down the stairs.

Chapter 54 Summary: “Jesse”

As their tour of the memorial continues, Jesse and Adam come upon a black and white picture of a young girl in a head scarf, captioned as “Alia Susanto” and listed as missing. She is wearing the scarf that was found with Travis. Adam holds Jesse tightly and she tries not to cry. She feels “[…] like a leaf fluttering in the wind, shuddering and falling down, down, down” (331), and is distraught at the meaninglessness of the deaths of all the victims.

Chapters 51-54 Analysis

The characters of Alia and Travis start to experience the true horror and tragedies associated with the fall of the Towers in this section. Overcoming fear and shock, Travis again demonstrates a growing sense of nurturance and self-sacrifice as he encourages Alia to cover her face from the smoke and tells her that they will survive. Conversely, Alia abandons her previous childish tendency to view all events from the perspective of her superhero, Alia; she comes to terms with her lack of magical powers (e.g., flying) and realizes that her capacity to survive will be based on her own physical and mental endurance.

She experiences further epiphanies as the pair fight their way down the deserted, smoke-filled staircase. She realizes that her desire to fight her way up to find Ayah is wrong, and thinks that he would want her “To get out. To stay alive” (328).

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A role reversal occurs when Alia realizes that Travis is wearing his grandfather’s shirt, and that it’s too small to pull over his mouth for protection. While she refused to allow him to remove her headscarf to protect her own face, she insists that he allows her to wrap it around his face to shield him from the smoke; as her fingers brush his cheek, “[…] he closes his eyes briefly” (329). This gesture signifies the sea change in their relationship: Travis is the recipient, rather than the provider, of protection; Alia offers him a small gesture of support and protection that he may have never expected to again be a part of his life. In doing so, she realizes the power of her own faith and leads the way down the stairs. This creates another parallel in the relationships of the two siblings with significant others: Alia assumes the lead in the descent of the staircase in an attempt to help Travis survive, much as Jesse led the ascent of the frozen waterfall during her first climb with Adam.

Jesse suffers a sense of vicarious traumatization as she and Adam view mundane office paraphernalia (photos, eyeglasses, shoes) recovered from the rubble of the Towers. Finally, the pair come upon a poster including the photo of Alia wearing her hijab for the first time–the same photo taken by her friends on the morning of 9/11. The depiction of Alia as a girl of Jesse’s age “[…] small and feisty with a happy smile” (331), brings the realities of the tragedy home to the young woman. Travis “[…] was a kid who liked to play music with his friends” (331), rather than the unlikable character who was such a source of embarrassment and conflict to her father. She weeps and wonders at the meaninglessness and extent of this unfathomable loss of human lives.