Well, so what? The place itself is a ghost now, bricked over for the African Union’s new headquarters, and good riddance—but to me it still will exist, for ever, and for all that I know it is gone I will never stop thinking of it as a thing that exists in the world. Somewhere there is always Alem Bekagn, be it in Syria or Poland or somewhere with no name or notoriety, and it will always be waiting for me. I would rather die picking a fight than go there again—but in September 1974, I was a half-mad prisoner in a hot, square box, listening to the screams of the Sixty and wondering how I of all people could possibly be the sixty-first.