On Sunday, Mohamed Sabry Soliman
I heard a glass break. Then the first thing I felt was the heat. It came out of nowhere. Then I looked to my left, and the older woman near me was on fire.
She crumpled to the ground, the flames following her. This all happened in no more than two to three seconds.
The next few minutes—it couldn’t have been more than one or two—felt like an eternity. My world completely narrowed, rendering me oblivious to my surroundings, to the shirtless man not more than 15 feet away who was yelling “Free Palestine” at us and who had another firebomb in his hand. It never dawned on me that I might be in danger, too, until later that day when I watched a video of the scene that showed me with my back turned to the man, completely unaware of his presence. “Run away!” I told myself through the screen, watching the video. But in the moment, I didn’t. I couldn’t.
