For the martyrs of the Syrian revolution.

I write, with fumbling fingers.

I write blindly.

I exist in the real world but, as I write about it, I begin to disappear.

I look at the people around me as though I were one of them. I hear the roar of real aircraft, but I tell myself: it’s just a detail in a wider story.

This is my second testimony to the saga of Syria’s slaughter. After A Woman in the Crossfire, I am forcing that gap in the window back open, letting in a thin ray of light, just enough to reveal the many layers of hell.

I am the storyteller who considers your short lives, who holds you in her gaze, just as we used to on those long nights, when we laughed out loud, guessing which of us would be struck by the next shell. I’m doing this for your sake. I can only conjure you up in my mind, and build your stories into pillars that reach from the earth up to heaven.

I am writing for you: the betrayed.