Two things. “Wash” meant him summoning two servants to the room. Two doors to the side opened without a hand, and the servant pulled out a wood-and-tar tub full of water and spices. That was the first I knew there were doors there. They scrubbed me with stones, my back, my face, even scrubbed my balls with the same roughness that they scrubbed the bottoms of my feet. “Eat” meant a flat plank of wood pushing itself out of the wall, where no slot was before, and the man pointing me to the stool already there, then feeding me with those things beloved of flighty men from Wakadishu, knives and
...more
