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alone. You’re getting on my nerves.’ Might he have mentioned me? He pushed her back. But she took no notice. She had found someone to love and that was that. By the time they had taken ten steps they were out of sight, masked by the wall of the regimental offices, and I could only guess at my sister’s insistent courtship, her coquetry, her blandishments, the candour of her face.
    I can only guess, too, at what will happen to me here. No one has come to ask me questions. There has been no opportunity for me to clear my name, or to answer any charges or complaints. Those other young men whom I meet in the latrines or in theshower block are firebrands from the university or leafleteers or the sort who pontificate on platforms. They sing defiant songs as they wash. I do not know the words – or tunes. From them I hear about ‘the kitchen’ where, they say, all prisoners are overwhelmed, stretched out naked on an unhinged door and clipped by ear and toe to magnetos. There are hoods and chains and electric prods. There is a punishment called the crate. Another called the handstand. Sometimes it is silent in the kitchen; that is when, they say, electrodes have been placed upon a detainee’s teeth and the current switched on. Then, no one ever screams.
    Sometimes I talk to a man who is more my own age. He, too, like me, was taken from the street. But he was carrying posters and a pot of paste. Our only hope, he says, is the women at the wire gate. If only our names could be smuggled those few yards, then we would be safe. Do I know people who could set us free? But others warn me not to answer. They say this man is a soldier in disguise, an informer. Then they engage me, too, in whispers. Which soldiers do I think would take a bribe to carry a note outside or to mutter a name at the gate? To what lawyers in the town should they address their messages? What am I, other than a legal clerk, unmarried, underpaid, unremarkable in every way? What faction do I represent? They do not trust my answers – so I tell them aboutBeyat, my sister and my hope that he has taken word of me to her. ‘You must talk to him,’ they say, insisting that I remember all their names. ‘Perhaps he will be our postman.’
    F OR MUCH OF the day I stand on my bunk and look out, with one eye shut, upon the town. I have devised my own clock by the comings and the goings at the gate, by the shifts of soldiers passing through the frontier of wire, by the exercising squads in the barracks yard, by the times when the kerosene lanterns are lit on the nut stalls in the street. I know that when the raffia screen is lifted in the nearest window of the regimental offices, the woman clerk who sits there will light a cigarette to start her working day. A match flares in the glass. I know that when the klaxon calls, conscripts will run across the yard below to queue for their soup and potato at the canteen door. I know which conscripts will squat in a circle, playing dice, which will kick a ball against my wall, and which will sit alone. I know when work is done: the raffia screen comes down again, the office workers and the off-duty soldiers make their way into town, the army chauffeurs button their coats and start the engines of the government cars, and the soldiers at the wire gate push back the women waiting there. There is the woman with the headscarf. She comes at lunch time and stands immobile with an unfurled portrait of a man. Thereare the white-haired women in the black clothes who have the energy of pedlars, blocking the way of every man who exits, holding up their lists. There is the fat girl with the flag, the tall woman with three children, the bandy one, the girl with short hair, the stocky woman who bangs on the bonnets of passing cars. There is the pulse of flame from their charcoal brazier at night.
    ‘H OW’S my sister?’ I asked Beyat while he stood and supervised the cleaning of my cell. ‘Old Slobberjowl?’ he said, and made a gaping,