You'll Never See Daylight Again by Michaella McCollum

Author:Michaella McCollum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Blake
Published: 2019-12-29T16:00:00+00:00

*

By the end of September, I’d come a long way with my Spanish lessons. There was just one thing: I have a very strong northern Irish accent. Sadly, so did my Spanish. I remember asking one woman a very simple phrase – ‘que hora es?’ – and she just stared at me. I repeated it, twice in fact, and she got angrier every time. She was wearing a watch, so I pointed to it and I think she thought I wanted to borrow it because she spat in my face and stormed off.

There was an added urgency to learning the language because our unofficial translator, Rosa, was due for release. I don’t know how we would have done as well as we did without her. At least when the day arrived, I could thank her in Spanish.

By coincidence, when she left I got friendly with one of Rosa’s friends, a woman called Goudie. Her English was worse than my Spanish, but we managed to get by with the international language of make-up. I would sit on her bed and do her nails and she’d do mine. She was in her late thirties, Peruvian, and had four children. She’d had an affair and the guy’s wife found out and framed her for something. Anyway, her brother brought her kids in to visit every few weeks and I’d accompany her. Not only did they always bring fruit for me, but he was extremely easy on the eye, which is useful when you can’t understand what’s being said.

Melissa had found a friend of sorts as well, a woman called Carmen. They were more like partners in crime, always plotting mischief. I never warmed to her because I suspected she kept getting the guards to search our room. Melissa wouldn’t have it. Either way, it had to be healthier for us not to have to rely on each other so much any more.

It wasn’t all good news. The bugs under my skin were getting worse and worse. Eventually, after weeks of begging, I was handcuffed and led out via the rotunda to see a doctor. He couldn’t find anything. He sent me to see someone called the sociologist, who spoke decent English. She was basically a counsellor for the whole prison.

‘You should have come to see me earlier,’ she said.

‘I would have done if I’d known you existed!’

She had my medical notes and did her own tests as well – not all of them easy with your hands cuffed. At least my legs were free. The upshot was she agreed with the doctor that the bugs under my skin were signs of stress. Which, she said, was understandable. She recommended yoga – ‘already doing that’ – meditation – ‘doing that’ – and plenty of sleep – ‘you tell that to the bugs. That’s why I’m here.’ The fact she was a friendly face and I didn’t need a book to communicate with her did me more good than her diagnosis. That night, for the first time in Fatima, I slept like a log.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.