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My stomach cramps and I feel disturbed when I talk about the bad days me, my father, Mikhail, and all the inhabitants of Sur went through as we investigated and awaited what would come out of the unknown. The bitter taste lingers in my mouth.
The local government, headed by the Turk Yusuf Dameer, and my fiancé Mikhail of course, with the help of many of the city’s notables, tried to make whatever preparations they could to withstand a crazed attack. The attack was no longer a possibility but a bald fact, as real as the world, as real as the sky, as rain, as the most familiar faces.
Government envoys who went out of Sur to investigate and reconnoitre came back hungry and thirsty, panicked and despairing. Others didn’t return at all. There was a story about a woman from the Falata t
