On 7 April, an armed mob stormed the seat of power. The president's cortège broke out of his besieged headquarters, firing live rounds on the rebels as they attempted to smash through the back windows of his luxury car. 

"Freedom or death!" they shouted. A makeshift field hospital was set up amid the shuddering machine-gun fire. Sleep-deprived doctors did the best they could, but when battling the trademark shots of sniper-fire they were helpless. Bullets had been fired into buttocks. This technique causes internal bleeding and a swift death. The morgue filled with unidentified corpses. 

The following day megaphones are placed on the mosque. Arabic wailing echoes along Soviet boulevards as the imams chant for the dead. Today is a day to stay indoors. "Kyrgyzstan is lost," says an old man in a tattered jacket watching the anarchy played out on the television. "Kyrgyzstan is lost." 

You can hear the Bishkek morgue as the car pulls up outside the drab concrete block in a leafy suburb — the unmistakeable primal wail of the bereaved. There is a family on the driveway. Three girls are choking from hacking sobs. A hooded young man clasps his puffy, reddened face in his hands. "They murdered my brother on the square. He had gone there because the people were suffering." 

A woman in a floral headscarf curses incomprehensibly. "They shot my brother, the snipers shot him. He died for the people." 

I can hardly bear to look at their faces. The wailing mother is being supported by her daughters. The brother of the murdered protester buries his head in the crook of his sister's neck. 

"Bakiyev must come to Bishkek for a people's trial," she shouts. "We can show you how he was killed. We can show you he was shot by sniper fire from the front, not from behind like his people claim." The men are moving briskly down the driveway to the metal doors of the subterranean morgue. They pull their shirts over their mouths and clasp their hands there — to keep out that smell, that taste. Grim-faced pathologists unlock the gate. They have been working overtime. A freshly printed notice is pinned next to the doorknob. 

"FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL HELP DIAL THIS NUMBER."