In Rachel’s garage I found newspaper reports of the Aïn Deb massacre, some from here, some from the bled, Le Monde, Libération, El Watan, Liberté . . . There was a big pile of them. Rachel had highlighted the stuff about us. It ripped my heart out just reading it. There was something sick about it too, the journalists talking about genocide like it was just another story, but their tone was like, ‘We told you so, there’s something not right about this war.’ What fucking war is right? This one’s just wronger than most. And you end up imagining all the horror, the shame, piled up on the grief. I had a film of it playing in my head for days, it made me sick to my stomach. This sleepy old village in the middle of nowhere, a moonless sky, dogs starting to bark, mad staring eyes appearing out of the darkness, shadows darting here and there, listening at doors, shattering them with their boots, inhuman screams, orders barked across the shadows, terrified villagers dragged out into the village square, kids bawling, women screaming, girls scarred with fear clinging to their mothers, trying to hide their breasts, dazed old men praying to Allah, pleading with the killers, ashen-faced men parleying with the darkness. I see a towering bearded man with cartridge belts slung across his chest ranting at the crowd in the name of Allah, then decapitating a man with a slash of his sabre. After that, it’s chaos, carnage, crying and screaming, limbs thrashing, savage laughter. Then silence again. A few groans still, soft sounds dying away one after the other and then a sort of heavy, viscous silence crashing down onto nothingness. The dogs aren’t barking now, they’re whimpering, heads between their paws. Night is closing in on itself, on its secret. Then the film starts up again, only more graphic this time, more screams, more silence, more darkness. The stench of death is choking me, the smell of blood as it mingles with the earth. And I throw up. Suddenly I realise I’m alone in Rachel’s house. It’s pitch black outside, the silence is crushing. Then I hear a dog bark. I imagine shadows slipping through the streets. I calm myself as best I can and I sleep like the dead.

Rachel wrote:

I’ve decided, I’m going to Aïn Deb. It is something I have to do, something I need to do. The risks don’t matter, this is my road to Damascus.