The four walls were a pale, grubby colour, the kind of colour that the bottom of a mug turns when a small layer of coffee is left undrunk. Each wall was made up of large, ragged bricks that were unevenly arranged and rough to the touch, and the floor was made of a similar uncomfortable stone. The only welcome break from the awful place was a tiny window that gave a view to the outside, and even that was limited by the four determined steel bars that went deep down into the bricks. At least the window provided a breath of fresh air now and again to waft through the otherwise stifling room.
It was late afternoon. At least, it felt like late afternoon, but it was always so hot that it had become difficult to differentiate between the sections of the day. At around this time, when the sun slid through the tiny window and lit up the ugliness of the room, he would pull himself to his feet and clasp the bars, peering outside. The view was hardly pleasant – it only looked out onto a little courtyard where shrubs desperately tried to grow amongst the cracks in the paving stones and a tiny, chipped fountain ran. That very fountain was a source of torment, as he could not remember the last time a cool glass of water had reached his lips. Every day he rubbed the sweat from his face, clambered to his knees, looked out of the window at the water flowing freely in the fountain and felt a horrible shudder course through him. It was so hot. The water looked so cool. The sound was agonising.
Then again, it was a distraction from the pain. He looked down at his arms and legs, marred with scars and burns and bruises. The little that was left of his shirt clung to his skin with blood. His hair was longer now and caked with grime. A sharp, jagged line from one shoulder down to the top of his thigh stopped him from sleeping on his back anymore.
A few weeks or a month ago, it was hard to tell - time seemed to blur into one endless, horrible smudge – he had found a small, metal nail pushed into the brickwork next to one of the window bars. It had taken him two days to scrape away at the stone around it with his thumbnail and prise it out. The small metal nail allowed him to scrape carvings into the brick. It was a distraction. His thumbnail was bloodied, the nail mostly worn away, but it didn't matter.
The first thing he thought to engrave upon the walls of this cell were his initials. A tiny Z and Y in the left hand corner of the wall with the window, the space in which he chose to sleep. Each time that he woke he would carve into the initials again, pushing them further into the brickwork.
There was one other thing that Zafar Younis carved into the stone with the tiny nail. His memory of what had been happening since capture was hazy, but a string of numbers at the back of his mind seemed necessary to take note of. If he had remembered them, they must be of some value. He also scratched the string of numbers into his skin, just in case he was moved from here. His instincts were good, and for some reason he couldn't quite remember, he knew that those numbers might be of use to him in the future.
If he even had a future. Just a while ago he had watched as another prisoner was dragged out into the courtyard and got a bullet in the back of their head. There had been no rain since, and so he could just make out the sticky trail of crimson that smudged the paving stone on which that prisoner had taken his last breath.
Zaf wondered if he too had been a spy. He hoped he hadn't been. That would mean that, eventually, these people would realise that Zaf was no longer useful to them. Spies don't give information lightly, and even the most brutal torture wouldn't guarantee that an agent would talk.
His eyes wandered over to the wall he tried not to look at, for that wall held the door. The frame was thin and looked easy enough to overcome, but the jangle of keys and click of locks told Zaf that he was closely guarded. Whenever someone came into the room he often thought of making a dash for it, but merely standing up was becoming an exertion, let alone making a break for freedom.
Every so often he'd be given a bowl of water. The bowl made him feel like a scrawny animal that deserved no better, and the water itself was so warm that he'd rather not bother drinking it. But it was likely to be the only source of water he would have, unless one day he got to the fountain, just metres away from his cell window.
Occasionally he would get food. Usually just after they held matches to his arms or ripped chunks from his hair, they would throw him a lump of bread or a sour piece of fruit. He regarded it as a reward for holding up.
Zaf carved along the cracks in the bricks with the nail, trying to find just one brick that was looser than the rest. Finally, he had been able to remove a small chunk, just large enough for him to stretch his hand outside. Of course, he slotted it back into place whenever anyone came into the room. But it was another extra source of coolness. Sometimes at night, if he was lucky, he could feel the breeze on his face as he fell asleep.
Zaf carved the string of numbers again, like a ritual, a rhythm. He hoped it would somehow keep him sane, even when, increasingly, everything seemed more and more pointless.
