I loved her too, I wanted to tell him. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I thought of her young and beautiful body now lying somewhere in this building, on a slab, cold and inert. The emotions inside me were wild and confused and I just couldn’t seem to think clearly.

‘But I had to do it. I know some of the people there today didn’t even know what it was all about. They thought it was fun to march and carry placards and sing… but some really understood. And I couldn’t let them down.’

He looked at his hands and his shirt, as if seeing the blood and grime for the first time. The side of his head was swollen where the baton had hit him. His neck and cheeks were all bruised and swollen where the boots had trampled on him. ‘It’s all so messy.’ He turned to me and put his hand on my arm, and now there was a sad smile on his face. ‘One day, you too will have to stand up for something. And it’ll take you by surprise. I just hope yours won’t be so messy as mine.’

9

The police came the next day in their jeep. They parked in Egunje Road and dispersed in pairs, going from house to house, searching, asking questions. They said a curfew had been declared on our street: nobody was to be seen outside before six a.m. or after six p.m. Muda the pharmacist, and two other shop-owners who had POVERTY STREET on their signboards, were taken away, to return four days later looking bruised and starved. They refused to say anything about their arrest. Muda sold his business and left with his family for the village a week after his release. Brother was also taken away, but he did not return with the others. Mao disappeared and nobody knew where he went to; some whispered that he had been taken away by the secret police, but nobody knew for certain. We heard that Lomba, the journalist, had been arrested on the day of the demonstration, right after Joshua and I had left him on our way to the hospital.

For the one week that the curfew lasted, Poverty Street became a ghost town – the shops remained closed, even the schools and the Women Centre did not open. But a lot of people had reasons for remaining indoors: almost every house had one or more persons nursing a wound or a fracture sustained at the demonstration. Two people, apart from Hagar, died: Michael, my friend, who was also knocked down by a car, and Eniola, a pregnant asthmatic who was asphyxiated by tear gas.