Decades Wrapped In The Dark
Perhaps it was summer. Perhaps it was spring. But the same miasma of stinking sewage stench sauntered in here. The Suakin Island Reformatory, ah the irony of it, was neither jail nor prison. It was a place where sanity was purloined. It was the netherworld of eternal damnation. A building designed especially for those who got no bail and received no parole.
A thousand men, young, old, pickpockets, peddlers, poisoners, assassins, all incarcerated for life in solitary confinement, caged in separate boxes placed one above the other like a mucky beehive. Each cell was a hollow cube, barely four feet high; can't sit straight, can't sleep right. 115 concrete blocks, I had counted and counted and counted over again, ran around me, only to be broken by the thick metal door which had a little square with evenly placed iron bars, shut over by a wooden roll down through which they supplied two loaves of dry bread and stale water twice a day. And that too was cut off every time there was a mourning in the constabulary. A lavatory pan sat by the end of every cell, with no water supply. It didn’t matter if you hadn’t come here as a criminal, but if you go out, you sure will be one.
How many years I have been here, I did not know. How many men had died in this cell, I did not know. Standing on my knees, I clasped my hands together, praying to God, beseeching him to take my life. Sometimes I wished for these taciturn walls varnished with schadenfreude, to eat me up. Sometimes I would hold my breath and tighten the grasp on my throat, trying in vain to escape from this agony. Alone. Famished. Alive.
I lay there scratching the ground, with nothing left but my twisted spine and crooked body. Footfalls of cap-toe shoes approached. I put my hands over my ears, wringing them and hit my head on the floor. Someone had died. I pulled my hair and screamed as the sounds came closer. One day they'll come for me too, I thought, but why not today, oh why not now? The footsteps came to a momentary halt as they stopped by my cell.
I gasped, walking on my knees, inching forward to the tiny square. Jangling keys danced through the other side of the door. They only opened your door twice—once you're dead, or worse, for physical torture. The key made its way in, sliding through the door, making a total of five audible clicks. A final note of heavy clunk like a Timneh parrot rolling its tongue and mimicking the sound of a trigger on an empty gun resounded and the door was pushed open.
"Please," I cried, "I beg of you, please don't hurt me." Having lived in the darkness for many long years I couldn't open my eyes. I put my arms over my eyes, trying to block the rays of light that stampeded on me.
"Stand up, old chap," he said, hitting the ground with his truncheon. I moved my arms slightly, my palms still stretching forward in an attempt to obstruct the light. I could fathom he was a young cop, buzz cut, clean shaved, clothed in a perfectly pressed dark blue uniform. When I first came in they were in khakis. God knows when they changed it. I thrust my hands on the floor, standing on my knees and slowly placing my shins forward. As I stood up, my head hit straight on the roof and I fell on my knees again.
"Come on old chap, wake up. You’re being released! Your boy has come to pick you up," he said in a directive tone and walked into the cell, tapping my shoulder with his truncheon. This wasn’t real, I was very sure about it, but the pain in my knees argued the obverse.
"I have no son," I said, staring into his silhouette face. "I have no kids."
"Oh really?" he bent down, removing my handcuffs. “Then consider yourself lucky!”
"Water," I gasped, falling on the ground. My eyelids fluttered pushing me again into the pitch black void. He slapped my face thrice, grabbed me by the collar and shook me altogether. Muffled voices and fast-moving footsteps tried to wake me up, but in vain. The darkness could not be shaken off. And there was the pain, the pain in my bones. When they lifted me up, it ran through my whole body. My feet failed. I couldn't rear up. I couldn't move, speak, or open my eyes.
It could have been a few hours, or maybe more. When I tried to open my eyes I saw flashes of images. I could make out a burly man in his mid-forties standing in a distance talking to the young cop I first confronted.
"He was telling me he had no kids," he said to him, his eyes focused on mine.
"Ah, he's been here for a whole twenty three years. What do you expect him to remember? Did you try asking him his name? He would have probably told you he was never born!"
Chuckles followed as I turned my head, trying to decipher the place I was in. A car. A classic Chevy Kingswood.
"You ready for home, sir?" a voice asked, almost scaring the wits out of me. A friendly young man with short blonde hair, neatly gelled to give it a smooth look asked me, his head turned towards my direction, hands steady on the steering wheel. I did not know what to say. I did not know who he was. But for some reason, his face seemed vaguely familiar. I shut my eyes tight, trying to escape from this phantasmagoria. This will end soon. And I'll wake up in my hollow cube again. Scratching the metal door, counting the concrete bricks, casting about for bread crumbs, I'll be there again. Alone. Famished. And perhaps, alive.