**Calabar Prison - 1898**
The red-faced overseer's whip cracked through the humid air. "Move it, you black monkey! You think this is your village playtime?" Umendu didn't flinch anymore - just let the insult roll off his scarred back like the sweat pooling between his shoulder blades. The heat was a living thing here, 90 degrees of wet misery, but the bricks never cooled.
"Newton's third law, Ume!" Edet called out from the shade, fanning himself with a tattered ledger. The old cook had appointed himself prison scholar, his self-taught English (complete with mangled aristocratic accent) worn like armor against degradation. "Every action has equal reaction! So unless you want that whip's reaction, move faster!"
Ume gritted his teeth. "Your white man's physics won't move these bricks."
"Ah, but knowledge is the true liberation!" Edet adjusted his faux-gentleman's cravat (a strip of burlap). He'd been here twenty years - long enough to learn that survival required playing the fool who loved his chains.
When the overseer turned away, Edet slipped Ume a palmful of garri. "Eat. Starvation is bad for... what's that Greek word? Pedagogy!"
Ume muttered thanks in his native Igbo, the words slipping out before he could stop himself.
"Odeh!" Edet hissed, glancing nervously at the guards. "Tell me something for language I fit understand! Abi I've told you to stop speaking Igbo to me bah?"
"Ooo I hear you Solly boss," Ume replied quickly.
"No it's sorry not Solly!" Edet corrected loudly, then lowered his voice. "I don't understand why you Igbo people cannot differentiate between R and L." He shook his head with mock exasperation, though his eyes darted constantly to watch for approaching guards.
Ume swallowed the cassava grits, remembering better meals from freer times. That night, as Edet snored, he lay staring at the ceiling.
Edet's whisper cut the silence: "Ume, why do the whites hate you so? Even for an Igbo, you're their favorite whipping boy."
Ume grinned, teeth glinting in the moonlight. "Because I cursed a soldier's boots to squeak forever. And maybe... his rifle once misfired during inspection."
Edet stiffened. "You're not just some thief. You're the one they called—"
"A troublemaker," Ume interrupted, rolling over. "Go to sleep, old man."
Outside, a guard coughed. The prison walls stood silent, holding their secrets as they had for years.
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