The lawyer's office

A second-floor office on Wetheral Road, up a staircase that smelled of kerosene, a fan that did not turn, a desk with a Bible and a law report on it. The lawyer was recommended by someone the woman under the umbrella knows, which is how everything in Owerri is recommended. He is not a bad man. I want that written down. He listened to all of it, and he did not ask the officer's question.

Then he told me the truth, which is what I paid him for. That there was a case, on paper. That the evidence I had, the notebook, the clinic paper, the date, the place, was real. And that in this state, in this year, a gay man bringing that evidence into a courtroom would be handing the court a confession with a complaint attached, and that the first thing the other side would do is ask the officer's question, and that the judge would let them.

He said, I can file it. I said, what would happen. He said, to them, probably nothing. To you, possibly everything.

I walked down the kerosene stairs with the notebook in my bag, which is where it had been for a year, and I understood something I had known since the junction and had not let myself say: in Nigeria, for people like me, evidence is not a weapon. It is a liability you carry. I am still carrying it. One day I will put it in a book where they cannot ask the question.