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MARCHING POWDER

‘Who was involved in the escape?’

‘I was asleep, major.’

He asked a few more questions. Each time, I kept my answers short and polite, not wanting to give him any excuse to hit me.

‘Turn around, inglés,’ he ordered. Then, to the guard, ‘Smell his breath.’

The guard stepped right up to my face and commanded, ‘Breathe out.’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing, major.’ He sounded disappointed. When he stepped back, I finally saw who it was. I knew that his voice was familiar. It was Pizza Boy.

I was ordered to stay standing against the wall and they locked the door behind me when they left. Once the others were accounted for in the courtyard line-up, they were returned to their cells. No one was fed or let out for two days. Nothing more happened to me, except that they took away my television. The others were beaten for drinking, Samir to within an inch of his life for trying to escape as well.

The first thing the guards had noticed in the morning were piles of sand and rock in the bathroom area. Initially, they probably thought the damage was caused by the storm, but when they saw that Samir’s door was bent open, they raised the alarm, thinking there had been a breakout. That was when the guards raced in and started beating us.

But Samir hadn’t escaped. This time he had fashioned the planks of wood from his bed into a ladder, but still couldn’t make it over the wall, not even placing his ladder on the bathroom roof. Instead, he began burrowing through the wall, using only a knife and spoon he had stolen from the human rights lunch. There were two walls. Somehow, he had made a small hole through the first wall, only to find that the gap between them was filled with sand, which started pouring out all over him and all over the roof. The hole got bigger and the sand didn’t stop flowing out. With all the weight piling up, the roof collapsed, crashing into the bathroom below and sending sand and debris flying everywhere. Samir made it back to his cell, where the guards found him in the morning, unconscious, with sand all through his hair and clothes.

Since he was already in trouble for attempting to escape, Samir tried to take all the blame for the stolen contraband, saying that it was his