zin

In one letter, she wrote that she was taking their dog Zin to obedience class and that she had left him a jigsaw puzzle on the table.

Shopowner Thant Zin, 28, who is from a town in Sagaing unaffected by the quake, mourned the collapse of centuries-old pagodas and temples in his area.

“There is nothing for us to do in Myanmar because of the war,” Zin Aung says.

Zin Aung says it is a sanctuary, compared with what they left behind: “The situation in Myanmar is not good, so we are taking refuge here.”

As the sky turned scarlet one evening, Zin Aung ran barefoot through the cloying mud onto a monsoon-soaked pitch, ready for a different kind of battle - a fiercely fought game of football.