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my defences: the spray, the lighter, the flashlight, and the snakebite serum.

That night I lay close to the fire.

Again I began hallucinating. Kevin crept up on me in the dark. He saw the fire and found me sleeping. He could tell I had eaten some of the rice and beans.

You should share, Yossi. You should always share, he whispered. There isn’t enough food for both of us. So you thought you were going to make it out of here without me?

He smiled to himself, lifted the machete, and smashed it down against my skull.

No! No!

I came back to reality terrified, my heart pounding, drenched with sweat.

Kevin, Kevin, please come! Believe me, I haven’t abandoned you. I’ll wait for you. I won’t eat any more of the food.

I trembled and whimpered. The fire cast menacing shadows. Beyond its light was only jungle and darkness, and I was afraid. ‘Man of action, man of action,’ I whispered to myself, and curled up in the mosquito net.

It was my fifth day alone in the jungle. I had never been so lonely, so completely cut off from human companionship. It was unbearable. For the first time in my life I realised how much I needed the company of other human beings. I remembered a book I had once read criticising Barbara Streisand’s singing about ‘people who need people.’ People