We held our embrace in the fire

They set fire to our house. I could hear them laughing when they did it, using words I didn’t understand. But I understood the flames, the smell of smoke. We tried to get to the back of our home where there was a window just above where our daughter Leh Un usually slept. I thought she was still there when I saw a blanket lying on the floor but she had left it in her rush to get away. If she was there the fire would have touched her. It missed me but caught my wife. The fire caught her and I fell back on to the floor. I don’t know how that happened. Maybe it was the wind, the hot, angry breath that came into our village. I’m not sure. I know I banged my head and I know it took a moment just a moment for me to see again and when I looked up my wife was kneeling in flames by the window. She did not say anything but her mouth was open. There were no screams. Her beautiful black hair was writhing in the fire and falling to the floor but there were no screams. The fire had caught her clothes, her beautiful shirt she had made with her own hands. I loved it. I love her. The way she looked and the way she smelt. But not then, the smell then is still in my nose. Now. I can feel the heat on my skin. I can smell how she burned. It’s terrible. Was terrible. Still, she did not say anything. There was nothing to cover the flames with. Leh Un’s blanket was on fire too and there was no water, nothing that could stop the fire covering her body. Her eyes were still open even as the flames started to take away her skin and I could not stop it, I could not stop the fire. Though she made no sound I could still hear her cry, l reached into the fire and held her. Like we did before we slept or when we woke to the forest song. I did not feel the fire and I pressed my face to her, put my arms round her and I hoped that maybe the fire would come to me, that the flames would leave her body and come to mine and I would rush out and throw myself at those soldiers, make them burn like they made my wife burn, let them feel the pain that she held so silently. But our touch did not last. The flames would not leave her and she raised her flaming arms and pushed me with such strength that I fell back against the wall watching as her eyes closed and the face I had known since we were both children disappeared into the fire.”