M texted me from the adjacent bedroom at 8 AM : “Wake up.” In the kitchen, he combed out his beard and ate a banana, which his people’s warriors ate to feel full, he told me. I pointed to a stray hair that stuck out of the side of his neck. “I keep meaning to pluck it,” he said. We arrived at 26 Federal Plaza just after 9 AM . M was wearing clean sneakers, khakis, and a brown suede jacket over a blue button-up. In Mauritania, he had opened a men’s clothing store, a career he hoped to return to here. (His poetry, he said, would never make any money.) The security guards working the entrance on the west side of the federal building are aggressive to the point of cruelty. They speak loudly at all times, somewhere between a raised voice and a shout. They are for the most part only willing to speak English, though many of them can speak other languages. When somebody doesn’t understand what they are saying, they repeat the English word louder and more quickly.…