Eventually I did see our car, safely parked at Queen’s Hospital. While volunteers assisted the wounded, I went to look for my wife. Sometimes there’s an advantage in being head and shoulders above most people. I walked into an open area where hundreds of people were queuing to give blood. Ela spotted me. I heard her call out and she came towards me, crying, hurrying through the crowd.

Ela and the boys had been a mile or two from the port when the planes came over and the attack began. They drove off the road and huddled together until the planes left. Since she was unable to get to the port, Ela turned round and took the boys home, later returning to the city to find me. It was such an impossible scene that she decided to go to her sister’s house where she could listen to the radio. Luckily, Malia and Ishy’s house had survived the attack. It was when Ela, her sister and brother-in-law heard the call for blood donors that they made their way to the hospital, where they’d been waiting in queues for several hours by the time I arrived.

‘You need to go to Emergency,’ Ela said. I didn’t know why she was telling me this until she took me to Ishy and Malia, who were keeping their places in the queue. I could see they were horrified at the sight of me, streaked in oil as I was and wearing only a greasy piece of cloth about my loins. It turned out I had burns to my neck and back, and my hair and eyebrows had gone.

‘Emergency’s overflowing’, I said, ‘with those who’ve lost limbs, stomachs and faces blown away, lungs full of smoke, vomiting oil, suffering deep burns. Have to get back to my ambulance.’

Then I passed out.

That was useless. By the time I had properly come to, Ishy had spoken to some people who had finished giving blood. He came back with a young man who would take over my driving job. I went outside and sat in the shade until Ela and the others came out.

How relieved I was, on the journey home, to know that we had all survived. On this terrible day it didn’t seem right that I should suddenly feel happy. Ela was talking about me needing a doctor. ‘One of your mum’s cures will be fine,’ I said, and it was.

Ela’s mother trekked back along the paths towards the mountains, taking the boys with her. They returned with a bundle of leaves. My mother-in-law made a healing salve and gave me water from a special spring. The moment it passed my lips I felt the goodness of it.

We learned later that nearby airfields and bases were bombed, too. Hangars were destroyed and rows and rows of planes, on their knees as though awaiting Sunday blessings, were annihilated.

Chapter 12

Oriwia