I walked on as slowly and steadily as I could. I flinched often when the sticks smacked into my face or across my ear, but I never cringed or cowered or raised my hands. To keep my hands at my sides, I clutched at the legs of my jeans. And the attack, which had begun with frenzied violence, dwindled to fewer blows as I walked the gauntlet. It ceased altogether when I reached the last men in the lines. It was a kind of victory, seeing those men lower their sticks and their eyes as I passed them.
The overseers and several guards brought me through the prison, in the darkening evening, to one of the many dormitory blocks. The large, high-ceilinged room was twenty-five paces long and ten paces wide. There were barred windows that gave views of open areas around the building, and there were two tall steel gates, one at either end of the room. In a bathroom near one entrance, there were three clean keyhole toilets. When the guards locked us in for the night, there were one hundred and eighty prisoners in that room, and twenty convict overseers.
One quarter of the room was reserved for the overseers. They had their own stack of clean blankets. They arranged them with free space all around, and in piles eight or ten thick to provide soft beds. The rest of us were squeezed into two lines in the remaining three-quarters of the room, with a no-man’s land of about four paces between our part of the room and the area claimed by the overseers.
Each of us had one blanket, taken from a neatly folded stack at the crowded end of the room. The blankets were folded down their length, and placed side to side on the stone floor against the long walls. We lay down on the narrow blankets, with our shoulders rubbing against one another. Our heads touched the side walls, and our feet pointed in toward the centre of the room. The bright lights remained on all night. The overseers on night watch took turns to walk the length of the room between the rows of feet. They all carried whistles on chains around their necks, which they used to summon the guards in the event of any trouble they couldn’t handle themselves. I soon learned that they were reluctant to use the whistle, and there was very little trouble that was beyond their power.
The overseers gave me five minutes to wash the drying blood off my face and neck and arms, and to use the immaculately clean squat toilet. When I returned to the main room they offered me the opportunity to sleep at their end of the room. They assumed, no doubt, that my white skin was connected to a supply of money. And they may have allowed themselves, in some small way, to be influenced by the fact that I’d walked their gauntlet without running. Whatever their reasons, I couldn’t do it-they were the very men who’d beaten me only minutes before, the men who’d transformed themselves into prison guards-and I refused their offer. It was a huge mistake. As I walked to the far end of the room, took a blanket from the pile, and put it down next to Mahesh, they sneered and laughed. They were furious that I’d rejected the rare offer to join them, and they conspired, as cowards with power often will, to break my spirit.
In the night I woke from monstrous dreams with a piercing pain in my back. I sat up, scratching at my back to find an insect about the size of a small thumbtack attached to my skin. I wrenched it loose, and put it on the stone floor to examine it. The creature was dark grey, fat, swollen almost to round, with a multitude of legs. I squashed it with my hand. Blood spurted out. It was my own blood. The creature had feasted itself on me in my sleep. At once, a foul smell filled my nostrils. It was my first encounter with the parasite known as
