Mubarak wrote to the prison governor to protest that he had still not been brought before a court. This resulted in a search and the confiscation of his writing materials.
Rumours began flying around the prison. The new kid Bala had a pen and had written something! So now I had prestige – especially among those who could neither read nor write. No one knew what I had written, and no one knew my story. It seemed to them that I was super powerful, possibly a VIP who was spying on prison conditions for some international organisation.
In fact, the wardens started to behave professionally when I was passing and the floggings and abuses were halted. People complained to me if they were not taken to court or if the inmate leaders – who were second only to the wardens in their power – did not allow them food and water. It was a dog-eat-dog world with the wardens keeping control by delegating authority to the worst of the inmates. It was Darwinism at full play.
But then the inmates began to fear that helping me would get them into trouble. So I couldn’t pass any messages to the outside world and I was simply let alone. There were rumours that I must have committed a truly vile and evil crime since I had been put in prison during the Covid-19 epidemic – a time when there were amnesties and inmates were being released early, and no was being jailed. “How come this Alhaji Bala is the only one to be put here?”, they murmured.
Then, as the sanctions bit harder, I was hungry for weeks and lost 20kg in weight – down from 86kg to just 62kg. (I was able to check my weight on the kitchen scales they used to weigh the corn before cooking it). So I was summoned to the office and asked to explain why I was dressed in rags, unkempt and unclean. Had I decided to go on hunger strike? No, I said, there is nothing edible here and I have nothing with which to clean myself because everyone fears they will be punished if they help me – they know that I am not allowed to make phone calls even though they are.
Immediately after this supplies of food were resumed. It seems they had simply forgotten about the sanctions – or maybe they just assumed people had ways of securing contraband supplies. They overlooked the fact that I had no contacts to help me. As for me, I assumed it would only be a matter of time before it became known that I had left their religion, not to mention the fact that I had criticised Islam – which meant that I had sinned against their imaginary god or their revered prophet. I was sure it would be the end of me, one way or another.
I started to recover, but then I began to experience palpitations and a feeling that my chest was full, as if something was lodged there. I went to the clinic but the clinic head merely observed that I should have known not to betray my faith. After a while, and thanks to a sympathetic warder, I was able to get a blood pressure reading. It was 190mmHg and later it was 170mmHg even though I was feeling calm. It ought to have been 120mmHg, 140mmHg max. I later discovered that I was suffering from cardiomegaly and high blood pressure.
Fortunately whenever I had symptoms of malaria, dysentery, typhoid or other infections I was helped by friendly wardens, especially the ladies who snuck me pills and tablets under their hijabs. But I was never taken out of the prison for urgent examination, not even when my condition deteriorated. Even the senior medical officer jeered at my palpitations, saying they were the result of my blasphemy and betrayal of god.
Then I discovered a couple of lifelines. One was a warden who had known me way back when I was at home in Kano but he was locked up for weeks when they discovered he had told my mom that he had seen me. Later he discovered why I was in prison and he then avoided me – both for spiritual reasons and because he feared the consequences of helping me.
But then I realised that he had leaked information about my offences to a few inmates he was close to and – as I discovered – other wardens had done the same. I had been desperate before but now I faced an emergency. I immediately sought help and at around this time the intelligence officer came to sneak me to the office where I found my mother and my siblings in tears to greet me. This was towards the end of 2020.
To be continued …
By Mubarak Bala
Writing from Europe.