In this way, every day was a day of resurrection. Adding detail, the footfall on the geometric floor of a souk, the laughter of children outside his flat, the stunned flies of summer. And when sleep did overwhelm him, to a dreamless abyss, he’d wake gasping for air and reach for the compass on the bed beside him, the only possession they had allowed him to keep on religious grounds. Hamza had not prayed for years, although he had not told them this. The compass had been a gift from his grandfather when he had come of age. They had smoked shisha together and he had pressed it silently into his palm. They had sat for a while, nothing but the blue smoke and the sound of the bubbling nargilah. Hamza had opened the case, looked at the names of the sixteen winds marked on it. Held their names in his mouth for a moment. Greco. Levante. Scirocco. Osto. His grandfather had watched him, his aged, damp eyes narrowing as he inhaled the perfumed smoke and suggested to him gently that being a man meant knowing where you were from, knowing where you were going and knowing how to find the qibla in order to pray.

He had little sense of time; the windowless cell put paid to any natural rhythms, the only real indication of day and night the changing of the guards outside his cell in eight-hour shifts. A little less noise at night. He knew their footsteps by now. The older guard called Adley, gaunt and irritated, his resentment at being given such a menial job palpable in the agitated flick of his cigarette. When he learnt that Hamza smoked, he pushed a cigarette under the door, knowing full well that Hamza had no way to light it.

But it was the other one that Hamza disliked the most. The younger one they called Owens. He was broader, fair-haired and thickset, his tongue sharp with ambition, a certain swagger appearing in his gait when unwatched by others. Hamza had seen his type at checkpoints. Asking for papers and studying them for too long, disappearing to talk to colleagues in booths, enjoying any discomfort. Thriving on any expression of impatience you made and punishing you for it even though you had committed no crime. He had seen his type a thousand times, making old women wait, frail and tired in the searing sun, simply because they could. But it wasn’t Owens walking down the corridor now. Hamza lay listening. It was someone else. An older footfall, heavier, soft-bodied, at once urgent and defeated. He waited for the murmur of voices and the metallic sound of the keys to subside. The door opening. Hamza didn’t react. The sound of breathing. A bag being placed on the floor. The weight of the door being locked once again.

‘Hamza?’