PAK HUSSEIN
I bolted straight up in bed, heart pounding, gasping for breath. I looked around me in the dark: the wooden walls, the window between the beds, my 12-year-old son sleeping peacefully in the other one. I heard the old man in the next room, no more than three metres away, wheeze and cough. I could not understand how he had just been sitting on the edge of my mattress, leaning over me, squeezing my neck and face with his two powerful hands, imploring me, “They don’t listen to me anymore. They never listen to me.”
He had whispered the words, his face held right up to mine. Confused, I decided it was a nightmare and went back to sleep. I awoke with pressure bruises on my neck and forehead.
