I’m overwhelmed with a feeling of such tenderness for my son that I have to bite the inside of my cheek. It hurts, but at least it stops me from bursting into tears.

All of a sudden Sam peers at me and says, “Daddy ouch?”

I nod. Daddy ouch, but a good kind of ouch.

I don’t get around to telling Marie-France. Sam and I are waiting for the metro, and as the “wy-elv” sound approaches, so does the sad, drunken accordion player. He trips over a strap dangling from his instrument and barges into me with his shoulder, knocking me off balance and tearing my hand from Sam’s. I fall onto the tracks directly in front of the oncoming train.

Not yet! Please! It’s too . . .

DAY TWENTY-FIVE

Henri

I tumble out of the moving jeep and cover Marie-France’s body with mine, shielding her head with my hands. The jeep rolls forward a few yards and crashes into a wall. Nelson, our driver, slumps forward over the steering wheel. He dies on the edge of the road through Wau in the Bahr el-Ghazal region.

The boy with the machine gun is young, perhaps thirteen, but his eyes are as old as death. I’ve seen many of these old, tired children. Too many. We stare at each other until he lowers his gaze and lets the rifle slip from his thin fingers, as if he’s awfully tired of always doing the same thing, killing and more killing and yet more killing. It must be hell to keep living the same life over and over again, repeating every hour, every mistake, every wasted moment.

Marie-France rolls into a ball behind the jeep. I see her grab her green camera bag. Ever the pro, I think, even now.

The heat flickers before my eyes, and for a moment I think I know how the picture is going to turn out. For a further second I also know that Marie-France will sit alongside the editor in chief at the light table, going through the slides and contact sheets. Their bodies will touch and negotiate something. At the end of these negotiations, after a few weeks and glances, the two of them will be naked, moaning and writhing around inside each other. Years later, there will be more tears.

I see all this in the blink of an eye. My eyes are running, my head’s throbbing, and I feel an insatiable thirst.

One of the company doctors to whom my editor in chief Gregory sent me told me that I had no more room in my brain. It was crammed with images, hyperrealistic footage and polytraumatic emotions that I’d absorbed over the years as if I were a sheet of blotting paper. They’d never been processed, “in therapy, for example, Mr. Skinner.” But can therapy ever drive the war from your mind?