The eagerness went out of his face and for a fleeting moment the scowl returned. ‘I promised my lady a poem. She is educated, you know. A teacher. You will write a poem for me. For my lady.’

‘You want me to write a poem for you?’ I tried to mask the surprise, the confusion and, yes, the eagerness in my voice. He was offering me a chance to write.

‘I am glad you understand. Her name is Janice. She has been to the university. She has class. Not like other girls. She teaches in my son’s school. That is how we met.’

Even jailers fall in love, I thought inanely.

‘At first she didn’t take me seriously. She thought I only wanted to use her and dump her. And. Also. We are of different religion. She is Christian, I am Muslim. But no problem. I love her. But she still doubted. I did not know what to do. Then I saw one of your poems… yes, this one.’ He handed me the poem. ‘It said everything I wanted to tell her.’

It was one of my early poems, rewritten from memory.

‘ “Three Words”. I gave it to her yesterday when I took her out.’

‘You gave her my poem?’

‘Yes.’

‘You… you told her you wrote it?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. I wrote it again in my own hand,’ he said, unabashed. He had been speaking in a rush; now he drew himself together and, as though to reassert his authority, began to pace the room, speaking in a subdued, measured tone. ‘I can make life easy for you here. I am the prison superintendent. There is nothing I cannot do, if I want. So write. The poem. For me.’

There is nothing I cannot do. You can get me cigarettes, I am sure, and food. You can remove me from solitary. But can you stand me outside these walls, free under the stars? Can you connect the tips of my upraised arms to the stars so that the surge of liberty passes down my body to the soft downy grass beneath my feet?

I asked for paper and pencil. And a book to read.

He was removed from the solitary section that day. The pencil and paper came, the book too. But not the one he had asked for. He wanted Wole Soyinka’s prison notes, The Man Died; but when it came it was A Brief History of West Africa. While writing the poems in the cell, Lomba would sometimes let his mind wander; he’d picture the superintendent and his lady out on a date, how he’d bring out the poem and unfold it and hand it to her and say boldly, ‘I wrote it for you. Myself.’