The New York skyline shines bright outside the arched bedroom windows of the penthouse suite. A year ago, I would’ve felt utterly alien in these surroundings. Since meeting Mossie, my life has turned upside down and I’ve gotten a little too used to the finer things in life.

And yet, a year ago my life wasn’t regularly in mortal danger and I didn’t have the weight of generations of oppression by a blood-sucking regime on my back. I was a blissfully unaware art student ...