The prosecutor made a very short speech and asked for two years’ imprisonment. I made a long harangue. While I was speaking the judge kept nodding, and this gave me confidence. My arguments seemed to me cogent and unanswerably persuasive.

When I finished I was convinced that in a matter of minutes my client would be acquitted.

The judge was out for about twenty minutes, and when he returned he pronounced exactly the sentence the prosecution had asked for. Two years’ imprisonment without remission, because my client was a habitual criminal.

I didn’t sleep that night, and for days afterwards I asked myself where I had gone wrong. I felt humiliated, and persuaded myself that the judge for some unknown reason had it in for me. I lost faith in justice.

It never occurred to me for one moment that there was an obvious explanation for the matter: that my client was guilty and the judge had been right to convict him. This was a brilliant intuition that only came to me long afterwards.

However, that experience taught me to treat my trials with due detachment. Without getting emotional and above all without nursing any expectations.

Getting emotional and nursing expectations are both dangerous things. They can do harm, even great harm. And not only in trials.

I thought about this now while the courtroom was emptying. I thought I had done my job well. I had done everything possible. Now I had to feel unconcerned about the result.

I ought to go out, go to the office or take a stroll, even go home. When the court was ready the clerk of the court would call me on my mobile – he had asked for my number before he left the courtroom himself – and I would return to hear the reading of the verdict.

This is the usual practice in trials of this kind, when the court is expected to remain in camera for many hours, or even for days. When they are ready, they call the clerk and tell him what time they will re-enter the courtroom to pronounce the verdict. The clerk in turn calls the public prosecutor and the counsels and at the established hour there they all are, ready for the final scene.

In short, according to practice I should have left.

But instead I stayed put, and after gazing around the empty courtroom for a while I approached the cage. Abdou rose from his bench and came towards me.

I took hold of the bars and he gave me a nod of greeting and the ghost of a smile. I nodded and smiled back before I spoke.

“Did you manage to follow my speech?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think?”

He didn’t answer at once. As on other occasions, I had the feeling that he was concentrating on finding the right words.

“I have one question, Avvocato.”

“Tell me.”

“Why have you done all this?”

If he hadn’t done so, sooner or later I would have had to ask myself that question.

I was searching for an answer, but I realized I didn’t want to talk through the bars. There was no question of them letting Abdou out for a chat in the courtroom. Against all regulations.

So I asked the head of his escort if I could go into the cage.

He stared at me in disbelief, then turned to his men, shrugged as if abandoning all hope of understanding, and ordered the warder with the keys to let me in.

I sat on the bench near Abdou, and felt an absurd sense of relief as I heard the bolt slide home in the door of the cage.

I was about to offer him a cigarette when he pulled out a packet and insisted on my taking one of his. Diana Red. The prisoners’ Marlboro.

I took one, and after smoking half I told him I had no answer to his question.

I told him that I thought it was for a good motive, but I didn’t know exactly what that motive was.

Abdou gave a nod, as if satisfied with my answer.

Then he said, “I’m frightened.”

“So am I.”

And so it was we began to talk. We talked of many things and went on smoking his cigarettes. At a certain point we both felt thirsty and I called up the bar on my mobile to place an order. Ten minutes later in came the boy with the tray, and passed two glasses of iced tea through the bars. Abdou paid.

We drank beneath the bewildered gaze of the warders.

At about eight o’clock I told him I was going for a walk to stretch my legs.

I had no wish to go home or to the office. Or into the centre of town among the shops and the crowds. So I ventured into the district round the law courts, towards the cemetery. Among working-class tenements which emitted the smell of rather unsavoury food, rundown shops, streets I’d never been along in all my thirty-nine years of living in Bari.

I walked for a long time, without an aim or a thought in my head. It seemed to me I was somewhere else entirely, and the whole place was so ugly that it had a strange, seedy allure to it.

Darkness had fallen and my mind was completely distracted when I became aware of the vibration in my back trouser pocket.

I pulled out the mobile and on the other end heard the voice of the clerk of the court. He was pretty agitated.

Had he already called once and got no answer? So sorry, I hadn’t registered. They’d been ready for ten minutes? I’d be there at once. At once. Just a minute or two.

I glanced around and it took me a while to realize where I was. Not at all close. I would have to run, and I did.

I entered the courtroom about ten minutes later, forcing myself to breathe through my nose and not my mouth, feeling my shirt stuck to my back with sweat, and trying to look dignified.

They were all there, ready in their places. Counsel for the civil party, public prosecutor, clerk of the court, journalists and, despite the late hour, even some members of the public. I noticed that there were a number of Africans, never seen at the other hearings.

As soon as he saw me, the clerk of the court went through to inform the court that I had arrived at last.

I threw on my robe and glanced at my watch. Nine fifty-five.

The clerk returned to his seat and then, in rapid succession, the bell rang and the court entered.

The judge hurried to his place, with the air of a man who wants to get some disagreeable duty quickly over and done with. He looked first right, then left. He assured himself that the members of the court were all in position. He put on his glasses to read the verdict.

Eyes lowered, half closed, I listened to my thudding heart.

“In the name of the Italian people, the Court of Assizes at Bari, in accordance with Article 530, Paragraph One, of the code of criminal procedure ...”

I felt a charge throughout my body and my legs turned to jelly.

Acquitted.

Article 530 of the code of criminal procedure is entitled “Verdict of acquittal”.

“... finds Abdou Thiam not guilty on the grounds that the accused has not committed the offences with which he is charged. In accordance with Article 300 of the code of criminal procedure it decrees the cessation of the precautionary measure of detention in prison at present in force against the defendant and orders the immediate discharge of the aforesaid unless detained on other counts. The court is dismissed.”

It is hard to explain what one feels at such a moment. Because it’s really hard to understand it.

I stayed where I was, gazing towards the empty bench where the court had sat. All around were excited voices, while people patted me on the back and others grasped my hand and wrung it. I wondered what so many people were doing in a courtroom of the Bari Assizes on 3 July at ten o’clock at night.

I don’t know how long it was until I moved.

Until among the babble of voices I distinguished that of Abdou. I took off my robe and went to the cage. In theory, he should have been released at once. In practice, though, they had to take him back to the prison to go through the formalities. In any case, he was still inside there.

We found ourselves face to face, very close, the bars between us. His eyes were moist, his jaw set, the corners of his mouth trembling.

My own face was not very different, I think.

It was a long handshake, through the bars. Not in the usual way, like businessmen or when you are introduced, but gripping thumbs with elbows crooked.

He said only a few words, in his own language. I didn’t need an interpreter to tell me what they meant.