It was an ordinary morning. Shire sat at his desk eating the bread brought by the orderly, without washing his face or brushing his teeth after getting up.
This seemed unhygienic, something Shire would not have done before.
But after returning from the Gelibolu battlefield, experiencing trenches filled with blood-covered soil that reeked of manure and the stench of corpses in the air, he no longer cared.
Tijani held up a newspaper toward Shire and said, "It's amazing, isn't it? You can actually see people's bones!"
"What?" Shire, mouth full of food, mumbled a reply.
Tijani handed the newspaper to Shire, pointing at a picture: "This, Madam Curie's invention."
Shire paused when he heard "Madam Curie," his chewing slowed involuntarily.
Of course, Shire knew who Madam Curie was; he had grown up hearing her name. He just hadn't realized that Madam Curie lived in the same era as he did.
