I will append the observation only, from the horror-benumbed apprehension of a boy shorn at one blow of mother and father, family, clan, tribe and city, that this was the first time my eyes had beheld those sights which experience teaches are common to all battles and all slaughters. This I learned then: there is always fire. An acrid haze hangs in the air night and day, and sulphurous smoke chokes the nostrils. The sun is the color of ash, and black stones litter the road, smoking. Everywhere one looks, some object is afire. Timber, flesh, the earth itself. Even water burns. The pitilessness
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