‘Who did this?’ Donovan asked in French, and his voice that was little more than a whisper made him sound like a father talking to his child. But there was no reply and the prisoner’s gaze was riveted on the table. He took another sip of the water and his hand was a little steadier. Donovan lit a cigarette and gave it to him and the man touched his face lightly, slowly tracing its contours with the tips of his pulped fingers as if struggling to recognise it as his own. Then for the first time he looked at us, one of his eyes a distorted purple clot, and I could do nothing but meet his stare. What did I see in it? What I remember now was that I didn’t see the anger that I might have expected, so much as shame. I guess shame that someone had done this to his flesh and in so doing had dishonoured him and the essence of who he was. It’s what has always been done and what we still do – damage the possession of self, erode every core element that serves to form who we are until all that is left is a husk. Only the strongest can survive, those who despite everything are able to turn torture into confirmation of their moral superiority and embrace martyrdom with an even greater zeal. But in those moments I was grateful for Donovan’s solicitude, his expressions of contempt for those who had inflicted the beating. So when he started to talk it was with a promise, a promise that I offered in my voice.

‘I can trade you. Trade you for one of ours. I can send you home. Back to your family. I’ve done it before, can do it again.’

The prisoner took the cigarette out of his mouth and the exhaled smoke seemed to leach from the pores of his broken skin.

‘You help me and I’ll get you out of here, move you somewhere safe until I organise a trade,’ Donovan told him, ‘and what you need to tell me means nothing to your people any more because we both know how this is going to end, so there’s nothing to be gained by you holding on to what can only bring you great suffering.’

Turning to me, he asked if I had translated his words – he had heard the waver in my voice – and there was suspicion in his eyes for a second as if he thought I might have substituted my words for his. And if I could have used my own words what would I have said except begged him to tell Donovan whatever it was he wanted to know so that all of us could be somewhere other than in this room that was devoid not just of air but any sense of – and I’m struggling for the word but perhaps humanness comes closest to what I mean. Because all three of us were indisputably less than who we were although we may not have fully understood it or grasped either how intimately we were suddenly linked in that reduction. When the prisoner spoke his voice sounded as if it came from somewhere far off and the whispery words seemed almost smothered by the smoke from the cigarette so that I had to lean in close to catch them. And when I translated for Donovan he nodded in a way that suggested what he was hearing confirmed everything he already believed.