by Shani Krebs
Dragons & Butterflies
Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live
Shani Krebs
JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS
JOHANNESBURG & CAPE TOWN
He didn’t fall in with a bad crowd; he was the bad crowd…
Shani Krebs endured a tough childhood. Born to a family of Hungarian refugees, he grew up in a succession of dreary mining towns and spent his teenage years in an orphanage. As a rebellious young conscript, he started dabbling in drugs, and it wasn’t long before he was supplying the Joburg party scene with marijuana, LSD, Mandrax and cocaine. It was a wild life, filled with girlfriends, narrow escapes and drug binges. His closest friend was his pistol.
Then, in 1994, Shani flew to Thailand, where he was busted for heroin trafficking. He was sentenced to death (commuted to 100 years) and locked in Bangkwang Central Prison – the notorious Bangkok Hilton. Thus began the greatest challenge of his life. Amid the random violence, the appalling diet and the filth and diseases, Shani not only survived, but also eventually earned significant respect within the prison system. After years of addiction, he put drugs behind him, and began a life-transforming engagement with art and his long-neglected Jewish faith.
Aided by his devoted sister Joan and by a network of supporters around the world, Shani tried for years to find a way to be transferred to a South African prison. Although his quest was ultimately a failure, his sentence was eventually reduced. After serving 18 years – the longest-serving Westerner in a Thai prison – he stepped off a plane at OR Tambo Airport in April 2012, a free man at last.
Dragons & Butterflies is the riveting story of a man who endured unimaginable hardship but never gave up.
Author’s Note
During my time in prison in Thailand, although I never formally mastered the Thai language, I learnt to speak it fairly fluently. The Thai used among inmates and guards was colloquial, regional and mixed with street and prison slang. I did not read the language, nor did I learn to write it. The mixture I have used in the book comes from my experience and an ear that is attuned to phonetics.
Everything I have described in these pages is true. However, for reasons that will be clear to the reader, some people’s names have been changed in order to protect their identities.
Prologue
Although it was furnished, and nobody had made me feel in any way unwelcome, the room I had been shown into seemed desolate to the point of being menacing. The double window frames were barred. There was a security gate across the door. Already I felt anxious and confined, restricted, and yet there was also a sense of security and comfort. On the way, all that had registered in my mind were the high walls, the electrified fences, everything gated and closed off. Where was I? What was this place?
They had left me alone, to have some time to myself, probably to come to terms with everything that had happened over the past week. I looked around, but I felt weak and disoriented, and slightly dizzy. I realised that I must be mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted. The past days had taken their toll. I needed to give myself time to get to grips with my strange new circumstances. I went to the washbasin to brush and floss my teeth, looking for the ordinary routines that were familiar to me and felt safe. Then I forced myself to climb onto the bed. Although I couldn’t shake a clammy feeling of uneasiness, it wasn’t long before I slipped into a deep sleep.
It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes later when I woke up with a lurch of fear. My chest was tight. I couldn’t breathe. I felt the walls and ceiling closing in on me like a vice. I jumped up, startled, immediately on the defensive, blood pounding in my ears. For a moment I didn’t know where I was. Everything was strange. I felt panic rising.
Later, when I felt calmer, I allowed myself to drift off again, only to go through the same ordeal. I had barely fallen asleep when I woke up, drenched in cold sweat and gasping for air.
Once again I lay down, taking deep breaths, trying to slow my pounding heart. I told myself that I would come through this as I had come through so many difficult times in my life. I whispered the Master of the Universe prayer, the prayer that had given me strength to overcome so much adversity, and the very same prayer that I believed had saved my life: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our G-d, the Lord is One.’ I said the comforting words over and over.
The window in the small bathroom was slightly ajar. Although the bars across it were thick and sturdy, for some reason I became uncomfortable knowing it was open. Outside, in the shadows, I felt as if something or someone was lurking, an unknown force waiting and watching, biding its time. I don’t know what made me imagine this. All I knew was that I had to shut the window, and so I got up and went and pulled it firmly closed. I secured the catch and stood back. It wasn’t enough. I stood looking at it, barefoot, in the new clothes that didn’t feel right on me. I remembered that I had a few lengths of string in the side compartment of my travel bag. String had come in useful where I had just been.
I took a piece and tied it around the handle of the window, then looped it through and around the bars until I was satisfied that it was really tight and that the window wouldn’t budge. Then I took a towel and, using the pegs I also carried with me, attached it to the bars. Somehow, just doing this made me feel more at ease, and I could feel my breathing slowing down and becoming more regular. I did the same in the other room, attaching string to fasten the window closed and snug against the bars that kept me in and everyone else out.
A wave of exhaustion swept over me. I lay down on the mattress, but no matter what I did I couldn’t get comfortable. I stretched out my arms, straightened my legs, stared at the ceiling. Carefully I looked around, to familiarise myself with everything in the room, hoping that I would fall asleep while doing it. Would I ever get used to this kind of bed? Maybe that was the problem.
There was a bright light on the small bedside table. I switched it off and the room fell into an eerie darkness. I closed my eyes, but all I could see was a series of disturbing lights flashing against my eyelids. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in darkness, but the darkness scared me more. I switched the light on again, then switched it off. Then I got off the bed and went into the passage and turned the light on there instead. That felt a bit better. I tossed and turned, still wrestling with the bedding.
At 2am I was still awake, but so tired I wanted to cry. Finally, out of sheer exhaustion my eyes closed and stayed closed until 5am, when nature called. When I lifted my head I found that I was sprawled on my back, with a pillow, nothing else, between my body and the hard floor.
What I had been dreading most since coming here was using the toilet, and up till now I had successfully avoided having to face it. I couldn’t delay any longer. I approached the unfamiliar style of toilet nervously, uncertain how to use it or how I would keep my balance. I took a deep breath. Fortunately I managed and didn’t slip off. I felt quite pleased with myself, as if I had won a little victory. Perhaps I could learn to cope with it in time. Another foreign thing to master. There was so much I was going to have to learn in this alien world.
I looked out into the yard outside, with the early morning light filtering through the windows, and felt myself relaxing for the first time. I teased loose the tangle of string securing the bedroom window, pushed gently on the pane until it opened, and felt the cool breeze against my skin. I would have to come to terms with this place, no matter how hard it was, I told myself firmly. Nothing had changed; only the playing field was different.
In the street outside I caught a glimpse of the yellow ribbons that friends and family had tied around the trees that lined the route through the neighbourhood that was so strange and yet so familiar to me.
I felt a surge of emotion I couldn�
�t identify. But I knew one thing for sure: after 18 years in Thailand’s high-security prison, the notorious Bangkwang, I was home.
Adjusting was not going to be easy.
Chapter 1
The Beginning
During the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, a young couple, Fritz and Katalin Krebs, with Katalin’s ten-year-old daughter Marika from a previous marriage and a group of 15 others, made their way by train to the Austrian border in the hope of escaping the Soviet invasion. For three hours they plodded through the heavy snow that blanketed the countryside until eventually they were picked up by a truck. They were taken to a nearby town where they were given shelter in a large warehouse together with hundreds of other refugees, all waiting to be relocated to other countries.
A few weeks later, Fritz, Katalin and Marika boarded a flight for South Africa. This was to be their land of milk and honey, a land of sunshine with an endless coastline waiting to be explored. Katalin was full of hopes and dreams for their sweet new life, the start, as she saw it, of their future as a family.
After a stop in the Belgian Congo, where they changed planes, they touched down at Jan Smuts airport in Johannesburg. From there they caught a bus to Vanderbijlpark, an industrial city south of Johannesburg.
It was Christmas Eve.
To begin with, Katalin and Fritz stayed with fellow Hungarian immigrants. Then they made their way to the prosperous gold-mining town of Slurry, 260km west of Johannesburg, in what is now North West, where the young Fritz got a job in a cement factory. But they did not stay there long. Within a year the family moved to nearby Mafeking (now Mahikeng). In the years that followed, the family was to relocate several times from one dull town to the next, but they adjusted relatively easily in a country of diverse ethnicity.
In 1957 Katalin and Fritz were blessed with a beautiful baby girl, Joan Barbara, my sister, a first-generation South African.
My own story begins early in 1959, when my parents were still living in Mafeking. Katalin, now a young housewife, loved to sing and dance. Oblivious to the tiny heart that was already beating in her womb, one morning, as she went about her chores, bobbing her head and moving her hips to ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ crackling out of the speakers of an old record player, she found herself facing a dilemma.
Fritz had begun to drink excessively, and the rages and physical violence that went with his drinking, and of which she bore the brunt, were taking their toll on her. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take. When she looked in the mirror on the wall at the entrance to their living room, she still saw a woman of unassuming beauty. She was aware of how men gazed at her wherever she went and that other women were envious of her looks. Today, as she paused in her housework and caught sight of her reflection, she gently touched her cheekbone where a slight discoloration of the skin had begun to appear. Her eyes welled with tears. How much more humiliation could she endure? How much more physical abuse could she cope with when Fritz was drunk and became violent?
Although Katalin had threatened to leave Fritz many times, until that day she hadn’t had it in her heart to actually pack up and go. When he broke down, as he routinely did afterwards, and begged for her forgiveness, promising never to raise his hand to her again, she always forgave him, but always against her better judgement. No more, she vowed, as she looked into her eyes reflected in the mirror. This time would be the last.
For a while, the situation at home seemed to improve, and, when they did fight, the make-up sex with Fritz was more passionate than before. She believed that her husband was genuinely making an effort, and it helped that he was trying to limit his drinking to weekends only.
And then Katalin discovered she was pregnant – with me.
The last thing she needed in her life was another child, especially in such a rocky home environment, but she was firmly opposed to abortion. In her culture it was considered the greatest of blessings to have as many children as possible, and so she began to come round to the prospect of a third child, and hopefully a boy this time – a son for Fritz.
On 14 October 1959, as the sun began to set, Katalin lay resting in the hospital ward where she was soon to give birth. She placed her hands softly on her swollen belly. Startled by the sudden rustling of tree branches scratching against the windows, she looked outside. The leaves moved about in a gusty wind and the sky on the distant horizon was a deep sullen grey. Perhaps there would be a storm that night.
Csodalatos latvany, she thought wistfully, what an awesome sight, as the waning rays of the sun filtered through her window, casting a pattern of shadows on the walls and accentuating shades of glowing vermilion. Suddenly there was a blinding lightning flash, followed by a series of deafening rolls of thunder.
She watched, mesmerised by the kaleidoscopic display outside and the crashing and rumbling of thunder echoing over the low hills. Nature was putting on a dramatic display for her new arrival. It must be a boy, she thought. At the precise moment that the heavens parted and torrents of rain sheeted down, my mother’s own waters broke and she went into labour. Eight hours later, I gulped my first breath of life. With the snipping of the umbilical cord, the moment when we are no longer an extension of our mothers but a separate entity, Alexander Shani Krebs gave a high-pitched cry. Perhaps if I had had an idea of the wretched childhood that awaited me, I might very well have wormed my way back into my mother’s womb. But there was no going back for me!
The most intimate of human relationships is that between a child and a parent, and the most impressionable time is the years between birth and cognitive emotional response, although we do not consciously remember this period. We know that these early stages of a child’s development begin to form and mould the fundamental aspects of those intrinsic behaviour patterns that we will carry through to adulthood. In fact, this goes even further back – to when we are still in the womb. This could very well have been the time when my later problems originated, but they were all still ahead of me on that wild and stormy night.
During my mother’s pregnancy, Fritz had unfortunately returned to his old antics. He seemed to be forever drunk, and on many occasions would stay out all night, returning the next morning with the fragrance of another woman’s perfume lingering on his skin. My parents were constantly at each other’s throats, screaming and shouting. I am surprised I wasn’t born with a hearing impediment because of the brutal, unthinking way my father treated Katalin during her pregnancy. So much for my mother’s wishful thinking; instead of her pregnancy being a portent of better things to come, there must have been times when she thought I was more of a curse than a blessing.
One night, when I was a mere infant, my father, intoxicated of course, attacked my mother with a milk bottle. While she was attempting to wrestle it from his hand, the bottle slipped and crashed to the floor, shattering into razor-sharp pieces. In her frenzy to escape, Katalin accidentally stood on a jagged shard, which deeply lacerated the sole of her bare foot. Instinctively she pulled the glass from the soft tissue in which it had lodged and, limping painfully, with blood spurting from the wound, she scooped up my sister in one arm, plucked me out of my cot with the other, darted out of the house, and ran to our neighbours.
Our neighbours were typical, middle-class, church-going Afrikaners. Shocked by the state of my injured, frightened mother, they rushed her to the hospital. When she returned home, Katalin arrived with a police escort because she believed that her life and those of her children were in danger.
My father was arrested and charged, and divorce proceedings soon commenced. By the time I was a year old, Katalin and Fritz were officially divorced.
Marika, my half-sister, had eloped at the age of 16, at around the time I was born, and married a Hungarian guy, Bela Gurics. By the time of the divorce, she was already long gone.
Being an immigrant and now a single parent with two kids in a foreign country wasn’t exactly the life my mother had envisaged for herself when she escaped from Hungary. Even after the divorce my father wasn’t a v
ery responsible person; he was always either late with his maintenance payments or else he couldn’t pay the amount agreed upon for one reason or another. Providing for her children was beginning to prove an almost impossible task for Katalin, but she was still young and beautiful, and, as fate would have it, it wasn’t too long or very surprising before she surrendered to the beguiling charms of another ultra-egotistical Hungarian man. Janos Horvath was ten years Katalin’s junior and a contemptible charmer who turned out to be nothing more than an ill-mannered peasant.
Perhaps it was love at first sight, but they married before they really got to know each other properly. We all moved into Janos’s house in Orkney, a mining town run by the Vaal Reefs gold-mining group.
Because I was so young when my mother remarried, I actually thought that Janos was my real father, and so I grew up calling him ‘Dad’. As the years went by, though, it became apparent that my stepfather was even more psychotic than my biological father.
In those early years, life at home was pretty much ‘normal’, probably not very different to the modest stereotypical families we were friendly with. Normal, that is, except that Joan and I had an abusive stepfather along with a mother who, coming from a family of Hungarian bureaucrats, was an obstinate disciplinarian and who firmly believed that the opinions of children counted for nothing. Joan and I were severely chastised for the slightest transgression. My parents were sticklers for discipline and never hesitated to inflict as much physical pain as they thought was appropriate for whatever they perceived as a wrongdoing. We were only too aware of the repercussions if we neglected to meet the standards set by our parents. But, besides the authoritarian conditions we had to endure, we were nevertheless content and healthy, and we never went hungry. My mom was an excellent cook and she prepared lavish traditional Hungarian dishes for the family.
