It is lonely at this end of the world. The dust on the floor is quiet. It is submissive. The grains of sand lie postrate. No wind stirs them up. You etch your days on the sand. I have been here for eight months, you say to yourself. Two hundred and thirty-eight lines glare back at you from the dust. A line for each day.

You scratch your thigh, trying hard to reach the unreachable itch. If you had a pair of scissors, you would probe deep into your flesh after the itch. You would chase it along the highways of your blood stream and draw it out but there is no scissors. There is nothing sharp around here. They have taken everything away. Your jailers. You scratch and scratch, parting your thighs, bending them like two Vs facing each other. Your skin flakes onto your hand. Your once-lovely-ebony-smooth-craftman-polished skin. Your glowing skin, so alight it struck a man's eyes and he could not see any other woman but you. And he had to marry you to regain his sight.

Skin rashes fester all over your body. Where the bed bugs and cockroaches left off after the night, the germs continued by day. They gave you no soap for your bath, since the last one your husband bought finished. You asked the doctor to get you a tube of Troysd cream to cure the rashes on you. He said 'I cannot promise. I will look into the stock we have and if there is one, l will make sure you get it.' And if there is none, would your skin perish in the dust? He avoids your eyes and makes no answer. He shuffles out of the room.

The unreachable itch, you keep at it. All your fingernails are broken but at least it helps to while away the silence. This eternity of time you do not want. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day, And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth month. And time flows on, leaving you gasping for breath, desperately etching your days in the dust.

You keep scratching your thighs. Your woman smell pervades your nostrils. Your panties unwashed for three days, redolent with dried piss and all your juices. You are in the middle of your body cycle. Your egg-white juice flows into crystal clear elastic liquid. It stretches and stretches. You could almost lay it from one end of the room to the other. In another time, in another place, it would have been a season to hug your husband, to squeeze him deep in you, holding him tight with all your woman muscles and he would sigh and come and cry a little, flooding you with his seed, gazing at you from behind his love eyes.

This four by four cul de sac with a little-about to-die-light-bulb and a window which threw in a tiny shaft of light. A window way high beyond your highest reach, an armed window, riddled with steel bars that had nail teeth. A piss pot stood in thecorner. And beside your cot, a little stack of books. The books keep your mind alive but they do not answer your hunger. Your thirst for news. This is your greatest pain. The starvation diet of no news. The news is breaking all around the world. Flash bulbs are exploding, CNN is bursting loose but the news spills without you. Students riot in Indonesia. Hundreds are dead. Fuel crisis paralyses Lagos. Leaders betray acolytes, sentencing them to the firing squad. Sycophants import rice for kings who would never leave their thrones even for their sons' sons but you do not know all of this.

Once a month, they allow your husband to speak to you across a steel barricade for thirty minutes. He holds up new photos of your daughter and her scrawled multi-crayoned greeting - "I love you mummy, when are you coming home?" You say to him, "what is news?" He tells you, "The courtiers have said the king must stay on. The royal shoe maker says his equipment was custom-made in Italy for the king. No other successor can wear his shoes. The royal chef says his recipes were crafted solely for the king's pleasure". "Everyday, the praise singers hold concerts in the palace courtyard shouting his praise, saying he is the only lord who can rule the land. His slaves have threatened mass suicide if he leaves the throne. Day by Day, the royal drums announce the visits of hungry delegations who have crossed the deserts and the seas just to beg the king not to leave the throne."