That night I dreamed of Alem Bekagn for the first time in a long, long while. It was narrow and terribly hot, and filled with the sound of others screaming and weeping. However I answered his questions, the lean fellow with that relentless obsequiousness of manner, he still had his men break one finger bone each day in a vise. They came for me with great punctuality at five in the afternoon, so that the pain kept me awake all night and it grew harder and harder to feed myself or drink. My tongue swelled and my breath stank. Much of this is true, but in this version, in the end, I did not escape my cell. Instead I died in a corner between sunrise and sunset, choking on the awful lizard dryness that had at last become so large that I could not breathe. They put out my corpse, but no one came to take it away. Michael was never born and nor was Annie. My whole world never was, and that was the worst of it, that my extinction at that wrong moment kills not only my future but my hope.