AlJazeera
Published On 24 Oct 2021
Dori, Burkina Faso – Lying concealed atop his bus while watching armed men murder people below, the only thought that brought Abdoulaye Diallo some comfort was the hope that if he died on a Friday, a holy day in Islam, he would go to heaven.
“I knew I’d be killed…[but] if I died on a Friday my paradise was guaranteed,” Diallo tells Al Jazeera, sitting in Dori, Burkina Faso, a town in the country’s Sahel region to which he fled. “So, I recited some Quranic verses while on top of the bus awaiting my death.”