cake

"Black tea," he says. "No milk, no sugar. And yes I will have a piece of cake."

He hands me the photos in silence. Purple, bruised buttocks, a red gash from a whip just below his shoulder. There were four people holding him down and two lashing him.

"They're very precise," he says. "There are people monitoring. They say, no you mustn't hit there, lower down." After 20 lashes you don't feel the pain anymore.

I have seen photos like this so many times this year. But they still have the power to make me feel sick. I should be at the christening of my university friend's first baby. Instead I am in this room with the curtains tight shut against the daylight. "I just want justice," he says.