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Then they poured kerosene over me, soaking me and filling the air with its smell. After that they seemed to lose interest in me. As they walked off one casually flicked a lit match my way. The kerosene went up with a whoosh, and as I slowly charred all I could see was yellow-blue fire and smoke.

When the flames subsided I was still sitting in the same position, back to the wall, my legs stretched out before me. I could only see out of my right eye. I could not move at all, of course, not even my eye, and so my field of vision was small.

The first thing I noticed was all the smoke in the air. A great deal of destruction had been going on while I had been burning. Off to the side was a car, upside down, yellow flames still pouring out of the windows. Pieces of stone and shattered pieces of glass littered the ground around me. Off to the right I could hear shouting, screaming, and the crash of metal on metal.

One of the pieces of glass caught my attention. Large and triangular, it lay propped up at an angle against a wall, close enough, and positioned just perfectly, for me to be able to see myself in reflection.

It was interesting. It was so interesting that I forgot all about what was going on elsewhere. That could not possibly affect me anyway. Whatever was going to happen to me had already happened. It was the results of that which arrested my attention now.

What was that object, like a black doll made of coal? Was that I? I was forced to the conclusion it was. I could not see all of myself, but I could see my face and part of a shoulder. This meant that the black thing that lay in the foreground, which I could just see but on which I could not focus, must be one of my legs.

Well. I studied what used to be my face.

First impression: this is not I. It cannot be, despite all evidence to the contrary, be I. That hairless, black head, with the skull showing through where the forehead has been burned away, cannot possibly be I. Yet it must be I.

I had no lips. My goatee, like my hair, had been burnt off. My teeth showed, burnt brown by the fire, and above them the left eye was a blackened pit. My right eye, somehow, was still intact, and this is why I could still see.

I did not, I decided, want to see what the rest of my body was like. It was probably fortunate that I could not see it.

Things were happening on the street. First came a few men with iron rods and machetes. Some of them had orange rags round their heads. Then more of them, and between them they dragged something. This object turned out to be a woman, pulled along by the arms. She wore a long black dress, probably all that was left of a burqa. Her feet dragged on the ground, her head hung forwards, the hair hanging forward and obscuring her face. She may have fainted or may have been already dead.

They flung her to the ground directly in front of me. Knives flashed, once, twice; the clothes parted from her body and fell around her. Her breasts sagged on her chest, and the quiff of pubic hair lower down looked inexpressibly pathetic. Not that I could see it long. Using an iron rod, someone forced her legs apart. Someone else pulled his pants down and fell on top of her. He bounced for a moment, and as soon as he got up another took his place. This went on for some time, after which they poured kerosene all over her and set her on fire as well.

As the fire engulfed her, she began writhing and screaming. She must not have been dead after all. But she neither writhed nor screamed long. In a few moments she lay still and burned to a cinder like me.

After a long time I became aware of more movement on the street. This was a group of heterogeneous individuals, some in ordinary clothes, and others, bearded and in skull caps. A couple were brandishing guns and firing in the air. They went past me without a glance and passed beyond my view.

The light had long shifted, and I could see my reflection in the glass no longer. Night was falling fast. It must have been many hours that I had lain here. Time had lost all meaning. I no longer even thought. I just lay and watched what I could.

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