Shots were fired in the chaos; I didn’t even know who was shooting, or at what. The attackers retreated, though none of the bullets hit them, or at least we didn’t find any bodies. Two of us were injured, however. The man with the mangled hand was hit in the thigh by one of the bullets; the other bullet pierced Jufus body. Our guide collapsed under a tree; he applied pressure to the wound, but blood was seeping out fast. His face grew pale. His lips trembled.

When the chaos had given way to cold contemplation of what had just happened we saw that the gun belonged to a Dutchman with a mustache. When he realized what he had done, that his shooting blindly might well have cost us our lives, he put the barrel of the gun into his mouth. He screamed when the hot barrel burned his tongue. It was an embarrassing moment of weakness, even he knew it, so he tried again. He quickly pushed the gun deep into his mouth, then pulled the trigger before he could feel the pain of his burning flesh. None of us tried to stop him.

Jufus was having difficulty breathing and his eyes had lost their focus. We held on to every second with him, hoping he would tell us which way to go.

‘It’s no use going anywhere,’ Jufus whispered. ‘The world moves in circles; there’s no way out. Time is a wall, time is prison, and you are a shell . . .’

He kept on going for what seemed like hours. Either he said the deepest things or he made no sense at all. There was just one thing he said that made sense to me. It was his last words to me before he died. His eyes were clear when he said it.

‘We’ll see each other soon.’

The sacrifice

The wounded slowed us down, but – out of some misguided human compassion – we didn’t leave anyone behind. We left a bloody trail for our attackers, and we knew that we could be attacked again at any moment.

We had lost our leader, our direction, and our tools. We were completely alone in a hostile world, and we understood that at best we had days to live.

But this was what we wanted, wasn’t it? This was why we came here. This is why you will come here as well. To be lost. To be alone. To vanish.

When we stopped to rest, we could hear the distant, tormented screams of the kidnapped travelers, but we just went on eating quietly. We shared the last of the apples and chocolate that the cult members had on them.

Nora sat in my lap. She was shivering.

‘We can’t fall asleep now,’ I said tiredly.

‘The human brain is a huge, complex entity,’ she answered in a hoarse whisper. ‘There is no single moment when all of its parts are switched on. In a certain sense, you are always asleep. In a certain sense, you are dreaming through your entire waking life.’