Nadifa Mohamed

They're doing this because they haven't broken me. If I had lost my mind and sat weeping in my own shit, maybe then they'd be happy to send me to a madhouse like they did with Khaireh.

They say we got you by the balls, darkie! We own your land, your trains, your riv­ers, your schools, the coffee grains at the bottom of your cup. You see what they do to the Mau Mau and all the Kikuyu in Kenya? Lock them up, man and child.

They have created a man – no, a Frankenstein’s monster – and branded it with his name before setting it loose.

....I stand and claim my innocence so they have to finish me to protect themselves. Their lies and evil end with me.

You are a perpetual motion machine.

...look around you, this is the jungle, you got bushes and trees everywhere, in my country nothing grows.

This shop is my life, and if I had just sold it in '48 what good would that have done? A widow, a spinster, and a little girl, jumping from home to home and job to job.

Standing there, shoulders sagging, in the Law Courts, in Cardiff, in Bilad al-Welsh, he feels the blows of their lies like a man shot with arrows.