First day

All I have this pen and paper.

The room is small, and almost completely empty. There’s a table and a chair, but I don’t feel like they belong to me. I tested them out, but they’re too hard and institutional. The chair is them same small, charcoal-grey plastic model that they used for our chairs in school. They were uncomfortable then and they’re much worse now.

The table is bare (I removed the paper and pen from it) and it shines dimly under the fluorescent strip lamp. The walls are bare (I didn’t need to remove anything from them). The floor is, except for me and this pen and paper, bare. The bed – attached to the wall - has not yet been made. In the corner, there is a toilet. No brush, but a single roll of toilet paper. There is no window, not even a barred-up square of light.

The door is open. Outside, an armed police officer is watching me.

Now, if I were reading this, I’d think that the person writing it was trying to complain about this situation, trying to depict it as a violation of human rights, working himself up into some storm of righteous indignation, or perhaps preparing to tell his readers about far worse abuses.

I’m not going to do that. Apart from the actual arrest – by my reckoning, three hours ago or so, but it’s hard to tell – I haven’t been manhandled; I haven’t been punched, kicked, spat on, called names, or anything else. And the room is horribly bare, but clean. I’ve always been of the opinion that people live surrounded by too much clutter and distractions, and so there is a certain peaceful calm to be had from being surrounded by nothing but walls and cheap, functional furniture. And an armed police officer.

That may sound odd, but the truth is that it does make you calm. It makes you meek and obedient. If I do anything that I’ve been told not to, or not been told to, anything unexpected or misinterpretable, I could get shot. So I’m not restless, or panicky, or violent, because there is no point. I didn’t complain when they stripped me of my outer clothing, emptied my pockets of my wallet, phone, keys, watch, and various tickets and scraps of notepaper. And I won’t complain now.

I don’t want them to think that I ought to be here. They haven’t told me why I’m here, but I know that I haven’t done anything to warrant arrest. At least, I don’t think I have. I certainly haven’t been planning any terrorist activity; this would, to my knowledge, be the main grounds for holding me without charge.

No, I’ll just wait until they talk to me. It might take a while, but I’ll wait. And until then, I’ll write. I don’t know what I’ll write, or whether it will be read: but it will stop me talking.