Gods and Soldiers by Rob Spillman Page A

implicating myself. Besides, his lot is far easier than that of the other inmates. I give him things. Cigarettes. Soap. Books. And I let him. Write.”
    â€œHow can you be so unfeeling! Put yourself in his shoes—two years away from friends, from family, without the power to do anything you wish to do. Two years in CHAINS! How can you talk of cigarettes and soap, as if that were substitute enough for all that he has lost?” She was like a teacher confronting an erring student. Her left hand tapped the table for emphasis as she spoke.
    â€œWell.” He looked cowed. His scowl alternated rapidly with a smile. He stared at his portrait on the wall behind her. He spoke in a rush. “Well. I could have done something. Two weeks ago. The Amnesty International. People came. You know, white men. They wanted names of. Political detainees held. Without trial. To pressure the government to release them.”
    â€œWell?”
    â€œWell.” He still avoided her stare. His eyes touched mine and hastily passed. He picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers. The pen slipped out of his fingers and fell to the floor.
    â€œI didn’t. Couldn’t. You know . . . I thought he was comfortable. And, he was writing the poems, for you . . .” His voice was almost pleading. Surprisingly, I felt no anger towards him. He was just Man. Man in his basic, rudimentary state, easily moved by powerful emotions like love, lust, anger, greed and fear, but totally dumb to the finer, acquired emotions like pity, mercy, humour and justice.
    Janice slowly picked up her bag from the table. There was enormous dignity to her movements. She clasped the bag under her left arm. Her words were slow, almost sad. “I see now that I’ve made a mistake. You are not really the man I thought you were . . .”
    â€œJanice.” He stood up and started coming round to her, but a gesture stopped him.
    â€œNo. Let me finish. I want you to contact these people. Give them his name. If you can’t do that, then forget you ever knew me.”
    Her hand brushed my arm as she passed me. He started after her, then stopped halfway across the room. We stared in silence at the curtained doorway, listening to the sound of her heels on the bare floor till it finally died away. He returned slowly to his seat and slumped into it. The wood creaked audibly in the quiet office.
    â€œGo,” he said, not looking at me.
    Â 
    The above is the last entry in Lomba’s diary. There’s no record of how far the superintendent went to help him regain his freedom, but as he told Janice, there was very little to be done for a political detainee—especially since, about a week after that meeting, a coup was attempted against the military leader, General Sani Abacha, by some officers close to him. There was an immediate crackdown on all pro-democracy activists, and the prisons all over the country swelled with political detainees. A lot of those already in detention were transferred randomly to other prisons around the country, for security reasons. Lomba was among them. He was transferred to Agodi Prison in Ibadan. From there he was moved to the far north, to a small desert town called Gashuwa. There is no record of him after that.
    A lot of these political prisoners died in detention, although the prominent ones made the headlines—people like Moshood Abiola and General Yar Adua.
    But somehow it is hard to imagine that Lomba died. A lot seems to point to the contrary. His diary, his economical expressions show a very sedulous character at work. A survivor. The years in prison must have taught him not to hope too much, not to despair too much—that for the prisoner, nothing kills as surely as too much hope or too much despair. He had learned to survive in tiny atoms, piecemeal, a day at a time. It is probable that in 1998, when the military dictator Abacha died, and his successor, General Abdulsalam Abubakar, dared to