• 5 •
When the roar of battle grew intense and the catacombs of Majd Square filled with blood, I could not honestly be certain I was alive. I could hardly see, and felt I was flying, running, or being buried in a deep hole. I did not know what was real.
Everything around me was vague, and my eardrums almost burst, swollen from the screams ringing in them:
‘Down with traitors!’
‘Down with kufr!’
‘Down with atheism!’
‘Allah strengthen the Righteous One!’
‘Allah honour the Righteous One!’
I think we spent hours outside of time and sensation. By we, I mean the weak and vulnerable who had fortified themselves in these tunnels nothing like a fortress. When we started to sense time again, and meaning pulsed in our paralyzed minds, everything, in the sense of everything old and blossoming,
