'The whole time I expected someone to shoot me in the back, the whole time I saw my sister before me in my mind, and I ran so fast that my bare feet barely touched the stony ground. It wasn't really me who was running, it was the life inside me that ran, and I knew they would soon catch up with me and then I would die. Later I learned that there are moments in life when you become whatever you are doing. In those moments I was a pair of feet and legs that were running – nothing else.

'I reached a spot where the path divided, and I ran to the left, although that was not the way we had come. I came to a steep slope and could go no further. Then I made for where there was no path, following the edge of the steep cliff until it began to slope downwards and it was possible for me to slide over the edge and slip down towards the valley spread out below. They still hadn't managed to catch me. When I reached the bottom of the valley I stood up and for the first time looked back. I could not see the bandits anywhere. I kept on walking through the valley, which was quite flat and seemed to be endless. When it grew dark I stopped near a tree and climbed up into the top branches. I was very thirsty and had to use my last strength to heave myself up into that tree.

'In the early dawn I set out again. I didn't know where I was going; I thought about my mother and my sister, about my father and the burned village. But I also thought about the brother I had refused to kill and the man with the hard, squinty eyes. I was only a boy, but I had already killed a man.

'Late in the afternoon, when my lips were cracked with thirst, I came to a small stream. I drank my fill and then sat down in the shade of a clump of thick bushes. I still wasn't sure that the bandits were going to let me get away. And I didn't know what to do. I remember the terrible loneliness I felt sitting there next to the stream.