The schoolboy in me, of course, had completely missed the point. Ukraine has not known mass violence for close to three generations. Every time politics came to the street the nation exulted. Independence was a time of passionate kisses and cheers for the blue and yellow flag. The last revolution in 2004 was more rock concert than rebellion: peaceful, dramatic people power.

Ukrainians thought slaughter in their city as impossible as we do: it could not happen. It was like a film. This is what people always say about unthinkable events. But it was sounds and smells that had really scared them. That stuck in the head.

That night, Nataliya had eight people in her apartment, a Maidan squat. They started to unfurl the thin mattresses she handed them onto the parquet floor. "We are all the first and the second circles of trauma." The lights went off: the Maidan fighters, paramedics, night doctors, daughters, supporters, friends began to breathe.

Nataliya could hardly be seen. Her orange-rimmed form glided round the room. Tinny Indian music began tinkling away. "Breath, slowly: and if you start to sob, sob, and if you need to scream, scream." We breathed for an hour. And inside me, picture-thoughts began to swirl. Russian tanks. Right Sector. Black Hundreds.

"Breath fast now, deeply, deeply." I heard it in others before it began in myself. The oxygen-overdose. The hyper-ventilating. The sobbing. The moaning. The writhing. The moans of the Maidan. Nataliya and the Maidan psychologists touched us. Their shapes I could barely see; placing their hands on hearts, soothing, helping the paramedics to scream.

Collapsed, exhausted — the Maidan psychologist pulled the sheets over us, covering us up to the neck. Pixels, lights, picture-thoughts danced through me. Then dimmed. Time passed. I heard sobbing. Then slept.

Lights were switched on. Nataliya was speaking: "I hope we are better now. If you feel heat burn. If you feel pain in your heart, it is not your heart, it is the war. It is the situation in Crimea. You are not having a heart attack. This is not heart disease. This is the fear of war.

"We met some men from Crimea on the Maidan. The men told us to leave it, leave us to our fight. Let us sort this out. Don't come. That is the way we all die. That is the way there will be blood everywhere — in the streets, the forests, in the cars, in the prisons, in the baths — so don't go. If you have a heart flutter, you are not having a heart attack. This is the fear of war. Take valerian. And drink some hot milk with honey."