Shared remembering, a precious part of our relationship, has pretty much vanished. How can I now restore to her memory the important days that should not be forgotten? Not the big, important events, but hundreds of tiny ones that we have reminded each other of over the years. Once we were driving in New Mexico, and if you looked through the window on the left-hand side of the car you saw a lovely sunny day; but if you looked through the right-hand one there was rain pouring down the pane. A quite unique moment of pure beauty! What if she’s forgotten it forever? But how good that she doesn’t remember all those sad and difficult days. There would be justice in their remaining forever in oblivion.

“Are you related?” asks a nurse.

“She’s my wife.”

But when I say, “She’s my wife,” that is a simplification, she’s more than that. For instance, in 1993, during the siege of Sarajevo, a murderer pointed the barrel of a Kalashnikov at my chest. And she stepped between the gun and me.

“What happened to me?”

“Early in the morning on the second of April, it was raining. I decided to make coffee. You got up from the sofa and went to the bathroom. I spooned finely ground coffee into the filter, then I poured water into the machine, and then I heard a cry from the bathroom, your voice. But ten seconds earlier you had been laughing! I went to the bathroom and found you doubled up, you said your arm was numb and you couldn’t feel your hand or your fingers. Shall we call an ambulance? No! You came back to the sofa, but when you tried to lie down the pain got worse, so you sat up again. I called an ambulance. They came quickly, but when I opened the door they complained about the long corridor they had to walk along. Our building has an incomprehensibly long corridor. ‘By the time you’ve walked down that corridor, the patient might have died,’ said a young man in a blue uniform. They took you to the hospital, a scan showed that you’d suffered a stroke. And here we are now on the oncology ward, they thought you had cancer, but that’s wrong . . .”