Waiting for Maria

Prologue — Long ago.

Sir Frederick Freeman was the Governor-General of amalgamated Nigeria under British rule. A man of few verbs, taciturn and snobbish, he was credited with several reforms and policies that upped British income from the colonized lands in the nineteen-forties. The locals feared Freeman and carried out, without a whimper, his orders to the last. The reason for that was not too far to seek. The Freeman Fort, a medium security detention facility the governor built in the hinterland, ensured compliance. Due to its name, people did not easily recognize it for what it was, but its high walls and towering iron gates spread the news: Freeman Fort was indeed a prison yard, worse than the Native Authority Prisons.

It is still a prison to this day, albeit dilapidated, its parts crumbled. The original structure had been of mud-fired brick. People used to say that if it had not been built under the white man’s supervision, the whole building would long have collapsed like the ruins of Pompei. Intellé used to say that if Mandela had been imprisoned here, he would not have survived the ordeal, and if at all he did, he would not have resembled a human being.

The facility was located on a rocky road, fifty odd miles from the nearest city. Midway on that hilly and winding road, a narrow path descended tangentially six hundred yards into the valley. Freeman Fort squatted in the middle of a large enclosure like a monster, ready to pounce. The haggard walls were discolored by age. Holes peered at you from between the bricks gradually succumbing to the elements. A cluttered gutter, probably a moat, snaked around the miserable facility.

Opposite the gates, a few scattered kiosks composed the official quarters of the wardens. A small community had progressively sprung up to service the establishment. There was a mammy market, with makeshift rickety tables and stalls. A vulcanizer and an oily mechanic shed stooped, bookended by aged, discolored vehicles. Half-naked children dotted the quarters at intervals, larking about in the middle of errands. A couple hawked wares. One ran alongside a discarded bicycle wheel, while a toddler, admired the arc of his urine.

Sixty years after it was put up, Freeman Fort’s intended capacity of a hundred had been exceeded five times over. Now, it housed over five hundred inmates, some of whom were not criminals, or at least have not been proven so. The majority of the inmates, indeed, awaited trial. True, successive federal administrations had added extensions here and there to fortify the weakening edifice, but these were staff-centric, not for the inmates. For the latter, crossbars were added to the decrepit windows and dissembling walls and passages, the colonial ones having long corroded by the wear and tear of time. The perimeter wall was heightened and capped with spiral barbed wire. These additions earned the facility promotion to a maximum-security jail. The caliber of its residents also rose a notch. Whereas in the past, tax dodgers and peace breakers were the sole occupants, now, dangerous criminals were incarcerated here too: people who murdered their biblical neighbors one way or the other, or engaged in other heinous crimes. Society put them away here, to wait for death.

Freeman Fort, like many such institutions, was H-shaped, with each wing housing a gender group. The connecting belt had initially quartered the prison administrative services, but this proximity proved too dangerous for the staff. Now, newer blocks contained offices, interrogation and visitors’ rooms. The connecting aspect remained mere passages and observation posts. The sumptuous aroma that wafted from the officers’ refectory belied the ration served the inmates who were fed in their cells. Plastic or wooden saucers were shoved through the metal grills. The dish, when it came, contained a miserable quantity of a watery substance. Intellé called it the starvation diet—death by slow motion.

End of sample. From Waiting for Maria.