As the heavy iron gate clanged shut behind me, I felt my knees buckle slightly as a chill ran down my spine. I had entered what was then the maximum security prison in Fort Bonifacio, and was visiting the man who had been officially declared my fiancé (the one-page document authorizing me to visit him said so). I expected dark alleyways and bars all around, the way most people who have never been in prison expect prisons to be. Instead at YRC (Youth Rehabilitation Center), the locked gate opened into a vegetable garden that fronted the barracks-like building where the political detainees were housed.