The police station

I went to the station on Wednesday. It took me three weeks to go and I am not going to apologise for the three weeks; anyone who has lived here knows what a police counter is. I went with the notebook in my bag and a plan to say only the facts.

I said the facts. The officer wrote nothing. When I had finished he asked me one question, which was not about the men, or the place, or the date. It was about me. Why was I there, at that hour, with those people. What kind of man. And when I did not answer the way he wanted, he told me, not shouting, almost kindly, that he could arrest me on my own statement, that I knew the law, that I should think very carefully about whether I wanted this on paper.

I want the exact words in this notebook because one day a lawyer or a journalist or a court somewhere that is not here will ask what the Nigerian police did with a report of a crime against a gay man in 2021, and the answer is: they threatened the victim with fourteen years and sent him home.

I walked from the station to the stadium road. It is a long walk. At the end of it the umbrella was there and the woman was there, and she looked at my face and gave me a Fanta and did not say God is not a man. She said, my son, sit down. And I sat down.