Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  I made my way to the departure lounge. It was deserted and I found this strange. Why were there no people around, I wondered. Where were the passengers? For the departure lounge of an international airport to be this quiet I thought was pretty weird. My bags passed uneventfully through the X-ray machine – so that was good. All that was left now was for me to get through customs and the passport check without the heroin being detected. Then that was it; I would be home free. My heart was pounding, but everything was okay so far, so I told myself to stop worrying.

  From then on, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I felt detached from my own body. When the woman at customs asked me for my passport, she didn’t make eye contact with me, and this made me more nervous. Perhaps, in retrospect, she was playing for time. Her words were inaudible to me. I knew I must have looked pale, and by now I had the shakes. I kept telling myself to calm down, and to be rational. It was all good, my luggage was through. There was no earthly reason why I shouldn’t get through this checkpoint as well.

  As I handed over my passport, I suddenly heard a shuffling of feet behind me but I didn’t look round. For a single moment, as the woman took the document from me, her eyes and mine locked. I could have sworn there was a look of pity in hers, but I tried to reassure myself. It was okay. It was all okay. I would be on the plane in no time, heading home, to my family, my friends and a life without drugs – just like I’d promised Hashem. I hoped He would stick to his end of the bargain.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught some movement and I saw a guy with a walkie-talkie in his hand. Before I could process anything, I was surrounded by heavily armed police dressed in black commando-type uniforms, their weapons drawn.

  G-d, what now? My mouth went dry. I could hardly swallow. I felt myself gasping for air, my knees were shaking, and I seemed to have no control over my upper lip. No doubt I had guilt written all over my face. I felt like I was about to die. I could feel my skin changing colour. It felt like the veins in my head were going to burst. I needed a cigarette, but like RIGHT NOW. I needed a cigarette to calm down.

  One of the men, who seemed to be in charge, pointed to my luggage, and in broken English demanded to know if it belonged to me.

  I remember wondering if this was some kind of a trick question, as I was the only person at the check-in point and obviously the luggage was mine. Before I could even answer, though, one of the cops reached for the leather bag and repeated the words: ‘Bag this belong to you?’

  For a split second I wondered what would happen if I said no. Juggling with the notion that there was no way they would find the drugs hidden snugly in their secret compartment, I tried to look normal.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that bag is mine.’

  My heart was pounding, and now my throat was even drier. Why had I ever agreed to do this? What had I been thinking? How had I ever thought I would get away with it?

  I was instructed to follow the men in the black uniforms and was led to what I assumed was the airport’s security office. I was ushered into a small bare room that had a table and two chairs in it, a typical interrogation room, the one we’ve all seen in the movies. Except that this was not a movie. It was real and it was happening, and it was happening to me. How could this be? Maybe I was dreaming …

  The walls of the room were a dull yellowish colour, and it struck me that the lights were very bright. There were no windows. Suddenly I felt so small. It was as if I didn’t even exist.

  First they emptied my personal stuff from the leather case – the gifts for my family were scattered all over the table. Foolishly, I still thought there might be a small chance they wouldn’t discover the secret compartments, but this thought was dispelled in the very next second. Without even the slightest hesitation, one of the policemen took a Stanley knife and methodically proceeded to slash the mid-section open. I felt like my heart was outside my body, my throat was still parched, and now I also had a queasy feeling in my bowels. Blood pounding in my temples was making me dizzy. Oh G-d. The man started to pull out the plastic bag filled with heroin. Surely this was a bad dream? It was happening on the big screen and I had fallen asleep at the cinema. I wished that was true but I knew it wasn’t. This was happening to me, now, and it was my worst nightmare come true. I felt claustrophobic. The room was closing in on me.

  When I suddenly received a blow to the head, I realised that it was indeed a nightmare, but a waking one.

  There was a lot of activity now, people talking over each other, adding to my confusion. A kit to test the heroin was produced, and I watched as the solution turned purple. There was a triumphant murmur among the cops. The test had proved beyond a shadow of doubt that it was pure heroin, and I had been caught red-handed.

  I felt sick. I needed a cigarette. I knew I had to come up with a story fast. I’ve always been good at talking myself out of sticky situations, only this time it was different. I knew I was in big shit. Minutes later, cameras started flashing in my face. Reporters from the Thai TV stations had appeared as if from nowhere. Perhaps they had been there even before I arrived in the departure lounge. Journalists were shoving and pushing each other out of the way, so eager were they to get a picture of me, and they were relentless. I felt as if I was already facing an execution squad.

  Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I kept on telling myself it was all a bad dream. It had to be. This just couldn’t be happening – not to me, Shani Krebs! Oh G-d, what about my mother, my sister Joan and my brother-in-law Malcolm? And their kids? What if they were watching this on TV? Could that happen? I covered my face with my hands to block out the invasive cameras. My head sank to my chest. I felt humiliated and ashamed.

  Once the parading in front of the cameras was over, I was taken to another room further down the passage, which was secured by several undercover narcotics agents. That greaseball slimy taxi driver, now with a victorious grin on his face, was standing beside the entrance. I noticed he had a police badge clipped to his belt. I wanted to punch him in the face.

  In the room was a young American guy, about ten years younger than me. I later learnt that he had been apprehended a few hours earlier with 4kg of heroin hidden in a suitcase. I was questioned by an agent from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Bizarre as it may sound, it was almost comforting to me that he spoke to me in English and also treated me in a civilised manner. He explained what the procedure would be from here on in. I asked him about my luggage. He told me not to worry; they would bring it to the police station they were taking me to. Then I was cross-examined by the Thai Drug Suppression Unit. It went on for what felt like hours. It seemed like every bit of life was being drained out of me. The bottom line was that I was BUSTED! I knew it, they knew it. I felt numb, sick to my stomach. I wanted to die.

  At around 10pm, the American and I were taken in a police vehicle under armed escort to Rachada police station, in central Bangkok. It was a dirty old building, three storeys high, built of reddish-brown brick, with lots of windows. All the lights were on. We were taken upstairs to the second floor and into a large room. It had a lot of tables in it and was a hive of activity.

  Then the American and I were split up. I sat around for almost an hour before being subjected to another round of questioning by several different policemen, who asked various questions – which country I was from, my home address, city, age, who I had got the drugs from and how. They examined my passport. They wanted to know who my connection was in South Africa.

  I seemed to be more of an object of interest than a criminal, and generally everybody was quite cordial. I didn’t know that part of their strategy was to break me down mentally by keeping me awake into the early hours of the morning. Afterwards I was left alone for a long time, and then, at about 2am, I was once again interrogated by somebody in a position of higher authority. This guy spoke relatively good English and he knew his business. He wasn’t shy about roughing me up physically either. He was well built, stocky, around 34 – my own age – and had
a sinister stare in his eyes. He was not somebody you’d care to bump into in a dark alley, and if you did, you would surely run as fast as you could. When I avoided his direct questions and failed to give him information about my accomplices, I got slapped around. I was hit several times on the head with a telephone directory.

  He kept pressing me for the name of my contact in South Africa. I wouldn’t give it. I couldn’t. I had grown up on the streets of Johannesburg and learnt from a very young age that tittle-tattling was tantamount to informing and was wrong. In adult terms, it carried bad karma, and invariably resulted in death. There was no way that I was going to sell anybody out. This really angered the police. Frustrated, and cursing under his breath, the man began shouting at me in Thai, spitting as he spoke. He had obviously had a long day and no doubt wanted to go home. When he finally slumped back in his chair, I could see by the expression on his face that he knew he wouldn’t get any information out of me. Angrily, he had me taken to the cells.

  I was badly dehydrated and had a splitter of a headache. I was thrown into a large, dimly lit cell in a musty basement. There were about 14 other people already detained there, mostly Thai and Burmese nationals. The smell of sewage and body odour was nauseating – there was only one overhead ceiling fan. The toilet, which was an area of about two square metres enclosed by a wall just under a metre high, was one of those that was level with the floor – you had to squat over it to relieve yourself. Alongside it was a walled-in tank filled with water. There was a plastic bowl that was for communal use to scoop water to wipe yourself, and you had to flush the toilet manually. There was dried faeces, muck and dirt all over the place, and I could see cockroaches crawling out of every crack. I was sickened and disgusted by the toilet, and wondered how anybody could use it.

  The floor of the cell was hard concrete, but in one corner there was a wooden platform that was allocated for sleeping on. I looked around me. The paint on the dirty walls was old and peeling and I could dimly make out traces of graffiti. Directly beneath the ceiling fan, whose slowly rotating blades were doing little against the extreme heat, was a concentration of bodies, everyone trying to be as close as possible to the cooler air.

  My new American friend was already in the cell when I arrived. I saw him sitting hunched in the corner alone, wide-eyed and very frightened. When he saw me, he acknowledged me with a blink of his eye. Sleep was the furthest thing from my mind – a million and one thoughts were racing around in my head. Overcome by fear of the unknown, I experienced a flashback to the horrors of my childhood – Janos beating me and afterwards tying me up and locking me in a cupboard. Now here I was, a grown man, back in that small cupboard, choking and struggling to breathe, the old nightmares resurfacing. I wanted to scream, but instead I succumbed to a flow of slow, steady tears. I was weeping, weeping for myself and for my family. What had I done now?

  Bars ran the entire length of the cell, and went from floor to ceiling. I found that I could not stay sitting down. Instinctively, no doubt because of the confined space, I started to pace up and down beside the bars, taking in deep breaths and exhaling slowly. After a while I managed to compose myself to a degree, and then I began to prepare myself mentally for whatever lay ahead.

  To my surprise, I noticed about half a dozen women prisoners huddled together on the concrete floor a few metres away from the cell I was in. They were trying to sleep, but I could see they were uncomfortable and restless. One of them was moaning in her sleep; another was staring into emptiness. I felt for them, and I wondered what terrible deeds they had done to wind up here. Jail was no place for a woman – it didn’t matter who they were. To me, a woman just never fitted the profile of a criminal.

  For hours I paced up and down, trying to think. What bothered me most was thinking about my family’s reaction. I wondered hopefully whether it was possible that news of my arrest had not reached them. My plane was only due to land in South Africa the next day. I kept imagining their faces when all the passengers had disembarked and I was nowhere to be seen. I knew my sister would be frantic. I could almost see her face, the shocked expression when she realised that something was wrong.

  I continued to pace, thinking, thinking. Mostly my thoughts were confusing and they rebounded at me off the walls. Nothing made sense. I felt as if my head was going to explode, as if I was losing my grip on reality. I was also getting hot and then cold, but I wasn’t sure if this was my craving for a fix to numb my mind, which was the route I had always gone whenever I was faced with a dilemma or an emotional problem, or if I was going into a state of shock. All I knew right then was that I could have killed for a hit on a cocaine pipe, some alcohol, or something, anything, to block out what was happening around me. My body started trembling, slowly at first, until I was shaking so much I had to sit down. I was also sweating heavily. I had a cigarette in my hand. My fingers were yellow from nicotine. If I had dragged any harder on that cigarette, I would have swallowed it.

  I lost track of time. Night merged into day, and suddenly it was morning. Had I slept, or hadn’t I? I didn’t know. I wasn’t tired, but I felt totally disoriented. I kept wondering if my family was aware that I’d been arrested. Knowing Joan as I did, I knew she would have called the South African embassy to enquire.

  As it happened, Joan had indeed contacted the embassy.

  I was supposed to have called to tell her I was leaving, and she immediately became concerned when I didn’t call. The embassy asked for my name, and, when Joan told them, they said, ‘Oh, that guy on the front page of the newspapers? He’s been arrested.’ Nothing I did really surprised Joan by then, and she hoped that whatever trouble I’d got myself into, it wasn’t too serious. If it came to that, she would organise a lawyer.

  In the cell they brought us a tiny portion of sloppy white rice porridge. It wasn’t that bad, but I had no appetite. One of the Burmese guys came over and told me that if I wanted something else, a policeman would come by later and take orders; if I had the money I could get something from the shops. My stomach was queasy, but I couldn’t face going to that toilet. I couldn’t even think of food. It was the last thing on my mind. I was more concerned about how I could clean the toilet, how I could organise some detergent and cleaning rags or scrubbing brushes. I had never seen anything so disgusting in my life.

  I got talking to the other Burmese guy. He told me he had been in police custody for longer than the law stipulated. He looked in a bad way, his body battered and bruised, his feet in bandages. He said the police had made him stand on ice, attached electrical cables to his groin and sent high-voltage currents through his body until he agreed to sign a confession. The thought of having something like that done to me sent shivers up my spine. There was a limit to the pain one could endure. I would have to spin the authorities a story.

  The following morning, the two Burmese nationals were removed from the cell, and as soon as they’d gone I grabbed their spot under the ceiling fan. I told the other prisoners that, as of that moment, I would be occupying that space. I gestured for my American friend to join me, but he declined, and I assumed that he needed to be alone. So I took over the prime place beneath the fan. I thought I had to show that I was taking control, whether I believed it in my heart or not. Nobody argued. Nobody tried to get me to move. I closed my eyes, feeling the cool air on my face.

  In an open cell across the way from ours, I saw two Thai girls sitting on the concrete floor. They were shooting heroin, right there in the police cells. I was shocked. There were other girls lying around; they looked like prostitutes on their last legs, thin and ailing. The police were supplying them with drugs. I learnt later that more than likely these girls were paid informers.

  I went up to the bars and called out to them. I asked them where they were from and said I was from South Africa. To my surprise, it turned out that three of the girls were South Africans, and we immediately struck up a conversation. I asked them whether they had had any contact with our embassy or if the embassy had any id
ea they were there. They looked bewildered and told me there was no South African embassy in Thailand. I said I knew for a fact that there was and that I’d already asked the Thai police to contact them for me.

  One of the policemen came by just then and went to speak to the prostitutes. As he passed by our cell I called out to him and he stopped. With the aid of graphic gesturing and face-pulling and much pointing at the toilet, and speaking very slowly and deliberately, I did my best to describe what I needed. He looked completely confused. One of the Thai prisoners, who had been observing this, came over and explained to the officer what I was asking for. Then he turned to me and said in broken English: ‘You give money, he buy for you now.’

  Tucked in my jeans I still had a few dollars. I gave the policeman US$20 and off he went.

  I was then summoned upstairs. I told the police officer that I wanted to phone the South African embassy so that they could inform my family back home that I had been arrested. Although his English was poor he seemed to understand. Every Thai knows the word ‘embassy’. A translator was sent for and I repeated my request. While he was gone I was instructed to sit down at the table and sign some papers concerning my luggage, which by then had been delivered to the station. The translator came back and told me that the police had already phoned the embassy early that morning and a representative would be coming over at lunchtime.

  As I passed the two Thai prostitutes’ cell on the way back to mine, I noticed that the girls were shooting up again. I told the South African girls that the translator had told me that a representative from the embassy was coming, and they were very excited.

  Back in my cell, I discovered that the policeman had brought everything I’d asked him to buy for me, although there was no change from my US$20, of course. I have never been so pleased to see domestic cleaning products in my life! There was disinfectant, a scrubbing brush and toilet cleaner. I kept my shoes on but set to work cleaning the filthy toilet. There was dried shit everywhere. How could people leave a toilet this way? I scrubbed at the bowl, even scraped it with a spoon. Two Thai guys came to help me. We cleaned everything we could in that toilet section, including the walls and the shower area, until our arms ached. While I was scrubbing I felt a bit weak; I realised I hadn’t eaten for about 24 hours and was very hungry. I took a shower and washed my underwear at the same time. The policeman came back again with the rest of my shopping: I had given him another US$30 to buy me some Kentucky Fried Chicken. I was quite amazed that here was a cop acting like he was my butler, but I was beginning to realise that, if you had money, perhaps you could procure almost anything in Thailand.