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MARCHING POWDER

investigation. None whatsoever. In fact, we were all really enjoying solitary confinement.

He must have noticed that something was going on. We were far too happy for prisoners who had spent several weeks locked in solitary confinement. He didn't say anything, but I wondered what he was going to write in his report. Whatever he wrote wouldn't have made any difference to us anyway; the president of the Bolivian Human Rights Assembly was later taken off a minibus by police in full view of the public, arrested and beaten. The front page of the newspaper showed him sitting in his hospital bed recovering. He knew the names of the police who had beaten him, but the high-ranking officers who had ordered the beating were never charged. If he couldn't protect his own human rights, what chance was there of him protecting ours?

After the human rights delegation left, the guards locked us back in our cells and left for the night. Each of us still had a private stash of alcohol, so we kept drinking. I still had the cocaine in my underwear. After a while, the others started coming down.

'Thomas, can I have some more?' Samir called out.

His cell was next to mine, so I split the remaining stuff into two bags and then made what the Bolivians called a pista, by tying a shoe to the end of a bed sheet and swinging it back and forth out my observation hatch, like a pendulum. Samir couldn't catch the end. We tried several times, and I even stood on a pile of clothes to get my arm further out, but it still didn't reach. Or maybe Samir was too drunk. Then he mumbled something I didn't understand properly.

'What did you say?' I asked, but he seemed to say the same thing again: 'Just a moment. I'll come out and get it.'

I leaned my head against the top of the hatch, trying to see what he was doing. Suddenly, there were two eyes in front of me, less than two inches from my face. I got the shock of my life and jumped back, thinking it was the guards. My stomach sank — I was busted. I was holding a beer in one hand and a bag of cocaine in the other, with no time to hide either. However, it wasn't the guards; it was Samir. He had somehow broken out of his cell.

'Quick, Thomas,' he whispered urgently. 'Give me the coke.' I handed him the bag without thinking. I didn't even have time to ask him how he had escaped before he had sniffed some and was off, banging on doors and offering everyone cocaine.