They left her alone in a cell, while one of the Black Marks walked me around the compound outside. I remember those big men in their dark uniforms and how afraid I was of them. I remember it was cold out in the courtyard. I remember a rearing horse, hooves loud on cobbles and men shouting. Each time they took me back to the cell, my mother looked a little more grim.

Silently, she pressed my skinny body to her.

Then there came a moment when they took me away and kept me in another room. Maybe for several days. I remember bowls of some horrible porridge and crying in the dark under a thin blanket and sometimes a scream in the night that I was sure was my mother. The next time they took me back, my mother was gaunt.

“All right,” she cried, “I’ll talk, just please, let my son go.”

Mr White took us both to another room – there seemed an endless number of blank, cell-like rooms. This one had a table in the corner, behind which sat a man who wrote down everything Ma said.

I had backed away into another corner, hoping not to be noticed. What was more frightening – the way Mr White just stood there with his hands behind his back, or the way my mother spewed out names, dates, possible scenarios? The man at the table scribbled and scribbled, until Ma stopped talking, and there was only her panting and the man’s pencil racing across the page.

“You’ve got what you want,” she whispered, “now let him go.”

“Of course,” said Mr White sincerely. “I am going to let the boy go – you too – because I am a great believer in examples. The Director is a great believer in examples. You shall be an object lesson for the others.”

My memory here is both clear and hazy at this point. There are tiny jumps in the narrative, perhaps from when I blinked or maybe because I don’t want to remember everything. But there are certain facts.

Mr White threw something into my mother’s face.

With a gasp, her hands flew to her eyes. She collapsed onto the floor, crying out in pain.

Then Mr White was calmly pissing on her. The sound filled the room; there was no other sound. The little boy that was me was glued to the wall in horror. Mr White shook himself off, and buttoned up his trousers. He and the other man left the room.

The boy that was me cowered in the corner, frozen, not knowing what to do. I couldn’t even run to my mother. She was on her hands and knees, hair all over her face, retching. Somehow we must have got back to the house, but that part in my memory is blank.

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