Nsawam prison was not made for men like Abdul Ghaffar—men who spoke in parliament, who moved crowds, who once wore hope like a second skin. The walls here didn't echo with politics. They swallowed sound. They swallowed time.
The first night was bearable.
The second was not.
Abdul's cell was small—seven steps across, five wide. One iron bedframe. A bucket for a toilet. A cracked window that let in nothing but mosquitoes and the far-off sound of other men being broken. The silence wasn't empty—it was alive. Breathing. Mocking.
At first, he stood with dignity. Sat upright. Prayed. Recounted his speeches in his head. Recited verses from the Qur'an to himself. But dignity withers when no one sees it. When the world forgets.
By the end of the first week, he had stopped speaking.
They let him out one hour a day for sun. He didn't go.
They brought food—hard rice, watery porridge, fish with more bone than meat. He picked at it like a stranger in his own body.
His beard grew. His face hollowed. His skin began to take the grey of the concrete.
He received letters—but never read them. They remained stacked in the corner, unopened, untouched. As if the hope they carried might burn him.
And when the warden, a cruel man named Mensah, called him "Honourable" each morning with a sneer, Abdul said nothing. He just sat on the edge of his bed and stared at his hands. Hands that once signed bills. Hands that once held microphones. Hands that now trembled.
At night, the memories came.
He remembered Ama—her last words, her dry eyes, her silence.
He remembered his daughter's laugh.
He remembered the streets of Tamale when he first won as Assemblyman, riding on a motorbike while boys chanted his name.
And now?
Now even the rats didn't acknowledge him.
One night, during a particularly harsh rainstorm, the ceiling above his bed leaked. He moved to the corner. Slept sitting. The next day, his back ached so bad he could barely stand.
He asked the guards for help. They laughed.
Mensah whispered through the bars, "Still think you're better than the rest of us?"
Abdul didn't answer. He had stopped answering.
Three weeks in, a preacher came.
A loud man with a Bible and exaggerated hope. He talked about Joseph in prison. About Paul and Silas. About endurance.
Abdul stared through him.
"Brother," the preacher said, "God uses broken men."
"I am not broken," Abdul whispered.
"You are."
"No. I am dust."
The preacher nodded sadly. Left him a Bible. Abdul never opened it.
By the second month, the other prisoners knew better than to talk to him.
He had become a ghost.
When one tried to speak—"You were that man, right? The one on TV?"—Abdul just turned his face to the wall.
Soon, even the guards stopped teasing him. His silence unsettled them.
"He's gone mad," one whispered.
"He's waiting for something," said another.
But he wasn't.
He was waiting for nothing.
He began to dream strange things. Dreams where he walked through the streets of Accra barefoot, invisible. Where Parliament had no walls and the MPs wore masks of animals. Where his wife married another man, and his daughter called someone else 'Papa.'
In one dream, he stood at a podium to give a speech, but his tongue had been cut out. The crowd jeered. Someone threw a shoe.
He woke up screaming.
No one came.
He screamed again, just to be sure.
Still, no one came.
Then, on the 48th day, he received a mirror.
A small, cracked one. A gift, the guard said, from someone outside. No name.
He stared into it for a long time.
His reflection frightened him.
His eyes were sunk so deep it looked like someone had dug graves in his face. His skin was the color of grief. His lips were dry, cracked. His teeth, yellowed. And worst of all—his expression. There was no fire. No light. Just the look of a man whose insides had turned to ash.
He smashed the mirror against the wall.
The guard came running.
Abdul curled up in the corner.
"I'm done," he whispered.
The guard paused. "Say that again?"
"I'm done."
The guard snorted. "Took you long enough."
That night, it rained again.
Abdul didn't move from the wet spot on the floor.
He lay there until his clothes clung to him like burial shrouds.
He thought of death.
Not dramatically.
Just… death. As a quieter option.
An eraser.
He didn't want to write letters anymore.
Didn't want to return.
Didn't want to fix anything.
They brought him to the infirmary two days later. Dehydrated. Mild fever. Psychologically unstable, the report read.
The nurse was kind. She gave him warm soup and didn't talk much. She wrote in her file:
> "Subject has entered a state of severe detachment. Needs observation."
Kojo tried to visit. Was turned away.
Isaac sent money for extra food. The warden confiscated it.
Serwaa sent a letter.
Abdul burned it.
On Day 75, Abdul was returned to his cell.
He didn't walk. He shuffled.
Didn't speak.
Didn't eat for two days.
They assigned another inmate to monitor him.
A young man named Mensimah. Jailed for theft.
"You're a legend," Mensimah whispered. "I watched you on TV. You made me believe we could change this country."
Abdul turned his face to the wall.
"Guess I was wrong," Mensimah muttered. "Guess we all were."
Something inside Abdul flinched. But only slightly.
Then came the nightmare.
It wasn't like the others.
He was back in Parliament.
The chamber was full.
Everyone clapped as he entered.
But as he approached the podium, he saw his daughter—grown, beautiful—sitting in the front row.
Next to her was his wife.
And beside her… the man who'd replaced him. The president who called him "impure."
They smiled at him. Applauded.
Then everyone rose and began to chant:
> "Thank you for falling. Thank you for falling. Thank you for—"
He woke up with a scream so sharp the night guard dropped his baton.
Abdul grabbed the bars.
"Let me out!" he cried.
The guard approached. "You alright?"
"Let me out! Please! I need to leave!"
"You're not done yet."
"I can't—I can't breathe—I can't—"
The guard opened the door. Not out of kindness. But fear.
Abdul collapsed onto the corridor floor.
They took him back to the infirmary.
This time, they sedated him.
He slept for two days straight.
When he woke up, he whispered:
> "I don't want to be remembered."
The nurse tilted her head. "Then what do you want?"
Abdul stared at the ceiling.
"I want to disappear."