Monday
The sit-at-home has begun. Every Monday, the whole south-east, shut. On what it is to lose a day a week and not be able to say why.
Since August, every Monday, Owerri is shut. Not by law. By order, from the movement, and then by fear, which is the more efficient of the two. Shops closed. Roads empty. Schools empty. Banks empty. The woman under the umbrella does not come on Mondays, and she has told me, in the low voice, that a boy on Wetheral Road who opened his shop last week had it burned.
I understand the idea. One day a week, the whole region says with its silence: release him. It is the kind of thing that works in a book. In a city where you eat what you sold yesterday, it is a fifth of the week's food, every week, for nobody knows how long.
And the silence is not one silence. Some people stay home because they believe. Some because they are afraid of the boys with machetes who are enforcing. Some because they are afraid of the soldiers who are enforcing the opposite. From the room by the stadium on a Monday I cannot tell them apart, and I do not think Kanu can from his cell either.
I take my pill at nine. Twenty-four, positive, on treatment, Biafran, gay, in a city that is shut one day a week for a man in a cage in Abuja. I am tired in a way that is not about sleep. But I took the pill. I write that down every day now, at the top. Took it.