Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  The events of the past days kept replaying over and over in my mind. Something was wrong; the pieces of the puzzle didn’t fit. I was not supposed to get caught. Also, my faith had been severely shaken. Where had G-d been? Hashem had let me down – why? Why now, when He had protected me all these years? In my despair and frustration, I couldn’t help but doubt His very existence. All this bullshit about a higher power! The only power was man himself, who relied on his own resilience. Decisions were based on choices, whether right or wrong. Divine intervention wouldn’t change anything. I resigned myself to the fact that there was no G-d, and even if there was a G-d, He was certainly no friend of mine.

  I had always been a spiritual person and I had done my fair share of praying. In the past, always in times of trouble G-d would come to me. I had never had any doubts before, but now I was angry. Angry at myself and angry at Him for letting me down. Prayer was the furthest thing from my mind. I was on my own. I had to keep my wits about me.

  At the time of my arrest I weighed almost 88kg. My fitness level was very low. I decided that getting into good physical shape would be key to my survival in this place, so, right away, in between pacing up and down the cell, I started doing push-ups and sit-ups combined with warming-up and stretching exercises. When I rested, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my life and how I had come to be in this situation. I could point fingers at my parents, my teachers, my friends, but at the end of the day, I had only myself to blame. When I really thought about it, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that the law had finally caught up with me. This was my karma. It was payback time.

  Being the free spirit that I was, it’s hard to describe what it felt like to be locked up in a prison cell, but I thought I knew what a caged animal must feel like. Having no idea what was in store for me only compounded my fears. Every time I thought of my family my eyes would fill with tears. How was I going to explain my latest escapade to them when I got home? There was no way I could tell them the truth. They would surely disown me.

  Despite the ceiling fan, the air in the cell was stifling. The heat was fast becoming my number one enemy. Every hour I took a shower. Walking back and forth concentrated my mind somewhat and allowed me to draw strength from within. I convinced myself that there would be a way out. I would get bail and flee Thailand to one of the neighbouring countries. Alternatively, there was always the possibility of escape.

  My second day in the police cells felt like a week. While I was absorbed in my thoughts, it suddenly struck me that today, 27 April 1994, South Africa was having its first democratic election. Here I was, on the opposite side of the world, locked up in a prison cell, while my country was being set free. Even though my vote would have been unlikely to have made a difference to the outcome, it was a poignant moment for me, mixed with a strong sense of patriotism. That day was a triumph for democracy long in the making.

  The monotony of the morning was broken by the relief and excitement of the embassy visit. My hopes were up. Perhaps there was a possibility of bail. A consular officer came to visit me, a very friendly Indian guy who made me feel at ease. He confirmed what I’d imagined, that when I hadn’t arrived home as scheduled, my sister had called the embassy in Thailand. She was told that I was on the front page of the Bangkok Post, having been caught smuggling drugs. I felt a shooting pain in my heart. I knew how devastated Joan would have been. I felt really ashamed at that moment. What I had put my sister through over the years was unforgivable.

  The consular officer didn’t bring the best of news. He told me that drug offenders weren’t allowed bail and that the embassy had limited power when it came to drug offences committed on Thai soil. Visits to prisoners were conducted purely on diplomatic grounds. There was nothing the embassy could do and neither were they prepared to interfere in the judicial system. He did agree to deliver to my family in South Africa the gifts I had bought for them. Although a lot of my personal things had gone missing from my luggage (clothes, my watch), the gifts were all still there. He also gave me his word that once I had been transferred to a prison, representatives from the embassy would visit regularly.

  I was comforted by the visit to a degree. At least the South African government was aware of my arrest. I also knew that my family would be rallying together back home and trying to organise legal representation for me.

  The prospect of going to prison scared the shit out of me. I had heard all the stories about male prisoners. I vowed to myself that I would rather die than allow myself to be sodomised. There was no way that I would take shit from anybody. As importantly, I would always stand up for what I believed was right. Like most people, I had a preconceived idea about prison life, gleaned largely from movies, but all I really knew was that prison was a place you don’t want to go and that it was definitely not for the faint-hearted.

  That night I was overcome with sheer exhaustion. I craved some drugs. I needed to forget. Most of all, I needed to escape from my own thoughts. My thoughts wouldn’t leave me alone. They haunted me. I found it impossible to sleep on the concrete and my body ached all over. Over the next few days most of my cellmates were moved, and all the girls were taken to a women’s prison. I continued my pacing up and down and exercising. I also began to have conversations with myself in my head, which I found kind of therapeutic.

  On the seventh day the American and I were handcuffed and taken to Rachada court under armed escort. This was where all the drug cases went. I stared out of the car window, seeing people walking around freely, and I wondered if I would ever get to taste freedom again. We were met by armed guards with shotguns at the back of court building, escorted through some big steel gates, and then led down a corridor that opened up into a huge hall. Inside it were three cages, like monkey cages, probably 5 or 6m wide and 8m in length, each crammed with 80 to 100 prisoners, all waiting for their cases to be heard. The prisoners were all shackled, and they wore the prison uniform of brown cotton shorts and a slip-on short-sleeved shirt, which hung over the shorts and had pockets on the side. For a horrible moment I thought of the movie Planet of the Apes. The screaming, shouting and screeching noises sounded just like monkeys. I felt like I really was on another planet, so far removed was I from what I understood as civilisation.

  Guards in light beige uniforms, some with stars on their shoulders to denote their rank, patrolled the cages with batons. The American and I were briskly escorted to the third cage. It was approximately 9am. We were the only foreigners I could see. Again, the toilets were filthy and the only access to clean drinking water was by way of a press water fountain.

  After several hours, my name was finally called. The courtroom did not look like a normal court. In the centre, at the back of the room, against the opposite wall to where we came in, there was a long table and a wooden railing in front of it. Sitting at the table was the magistrate, whose attention was on the papers in front of him. I was called by name to the table, told to sit down, and then asked to sign some papers. No one spoke English, but it all seemed like a formality, so I sat and signed. Even at the police station we had filled out hundreds of forms. What was it about the Thais, I wondered, with all the paperwork!

  Then I was taken back to the cage, where I managed to find enough space to lie down on a bench. I was tired and scared. This was all so alien. My mind drifted once again to how I had ended up here, and I couldn’t help thinking how badly organised the whole trip had been. Somewhere there was a rat. I kept replaying in my mind the moment in the departure hall when I was surrounded by the SWAT team and how they had only had eyes for the leather briefcase. They hadn’t bothered to even look at my other luggage. Was it possible they had been tipped off?

  Time dragged. I was bored. By 3pm prisoners who had gone through the process were being transported back to their prison. The American and I, handcuffed together, found ourselves with a group of 80 other prisoners loaded like cattle into an armoured prison vehicle. There was not much space and we stood shoulder to shoulder, all of us cr
ammed in the back. Our driver was reckless, speeding around corners so that prisoners were stumbling and falling from side to side. If the truck rolled I reckoned we would all be crushed to death. I calculated that my chances of survival would be better if I found a place in the middle so that if the truck did roll, it wouldn’t matter to which side – I would only have half a load of bodies on top of me. So I pushed and shoved, dragging my American friend with me to the back of the truck where we stood in the centre.

  We didn’t crash. Fate had other plans for me.

  Chapter 8

  A Tiger Among Tigers

  After our harrowing ride, a grinding of gears brought the truck almost to a halt as the driver negotiated a turn from the main road into a side street. Dusk was falling. We entered a huge quadrangle with lush green lawns and an array of colourful flowers and tall palm trees. To the left was a car park roofed with corrugated iron with a few cars in it. In the centre, at the end of the winding road, in all its menacing glory, stood a colossus of a building. Running off its sides were towering concrete walls. They stood there, solid and implacable, as if waiting to consume us.

  This was Bombat prison.

  The crush of men in the prison truck fell silent. Perhaps a collective realisation had suddenly taken hold. What horrors lay behind those walls? We could only imagine, but the fear and apprehension of men doomed to a life of imprisonment now became tangible. As we got closer to the building, the driver took a left turn and the vehicle suddenly gathered momentum. Our bodies swayed over and pressed up against each other. Further on, we took a right turn onto what was now a worn gravel lane. The next thing I knew, the truck came to a sliding halt, filling our nostrils and eyes with dust. I breathed a sigh of relief. We had made it. It seemed like a small miracle. In fact, for me, it was the first miracle of many.

  The clanging of keys, opening of locks and banging of heavy-framed steel doors were unfamiliar sounds to me, but soon these sounds would be a constant reminder that I was a prisoner. Pulling my Slazenger sports bag from between my legs, I clutched it tightly to me as the doors of the vehicle swung open. A flow of sweating, broken-spirited bodies shuffled like battle-worn soldiers from the truck in single file. Two guards counted us: ‘Ning, song, sam, ci, har, hok, jet, pat, cow, siep’ (one, two, three …).

  We were ushered through a double steel door. On the left-hand side within the frame was a standard-size entrance that opened inwards. Once inside, about 10m ahead, within a spacious corridor, was a similar steel gate structure on the left, forming part of an inner wall that led into the prison itself. Another two guards, dressed in khaki uniforms, stood there next to each other. Each had two gold stars on the collar of his shirt and they had medals pinned to their pockets. Their manner was unfriendly, bordering on aggressive. As they counted us one by one, they pulled our arms and shoved us inside. A few of the guys actually stumbled and fell over and this was the only thing that seemed to lighten the mood of the two guards. In fact, they grinned at each other and laughed like it was really funny. It was getting pretty dark by now. The courtyard where we assembled was lit up by a couple of spotlights. There were offices on either side of what looked like a checkpoint, where a boom was mounted to allow vehicles to pass in and out of the actual prison.

  From where I stood, I could see a concrete road stretching about 100m inside the prison compound. On either side there were four decaying double-storey buildings, identical in structure and parallel to each other. This was where the prisoners were housed. We were forced to squat, a position that came naturally to the Thais but not to me. I had to keep standing up to ease the pressure on my calves and thighs. When a high-ranking officer arrived on the scene he immediately walked up to me and in Thai ordered me to sit: ‘Nung nung.’ I smiled and with my hand motioned that I couldn’t and that my legs were hurting. The officer took a boxing stance and, in a joking fashion, pretended to throw a few punches at me. I took a step back, raised my fists, and in a mocking retaliatory manner, challenged him. He seemed rather impressed by my bravery and, in a friendly tone, asked first in Thai and then in halting English, ‘Khun mah jahk ny? You come from where?’

  ‘South Africa,’ I replied.

  He looked puzzled. I quickly added ‘Johannesburg’, but that seemed to confuse him even more.

  Smiling, he pointed to my hair. ‘Khun dtut pom’ (You cut hair). I had a very long ponytail, so I understood what he meant. Then he asked, ‘Khun chawp football?’ (Do you like football?) I nodded. He continued to stare at me thoughtfully for a few minutes, as if he was giving me the ‘I’m going to watch you’ look, and then, as he left, all the other guards bowed respectfully.

  Once again we were each called to a table where they took our names and thumbprints. After that, all 80 of us were lined up into platoon formation of four rows. We were ordered to strip naked and place all our possessions on the floor in front of us. The guards, some of whom were holding batons, sat on plastic chairs waiting for us to file up to them, one by one. Each had a latex rubber glove on one hand. We had to face away from the guard and bend over while he prodded his finger up our rectums and twirled it around to see if there were drugs hidden up our arses. I could have sworn my guard was enjoying himself – whether it was by humiliating us or because he was a pervert, I couldn’t tell.

  I was shocked. I had only glimpsed scenes like this in books or movies. I saw him casually wipe his hands on a dirty, stained cloth only after every two or three bodies. He prodded away one victim after the next. The Thais bent without resistance. As my turn came closer, I knew there was no way I was going to allow myself to be subjected to such abuse. I had never had anything stuck up my arse, and definitely not another man’s finger. Having to stand around naked was undignified in itself. When it came to my turn, I stood facing the guard and I refused to bend over. I said, ‘No, no, no,’ and just stood there, with both my hands covering my private parts. The guard muttered something angrily and pointed at my waist, gesturing for me to bend over. Shaking my head from side to side, I repeated the words. ‘No, no!’

  It was obvious he was not impressed, but it didn’t look like he planned to relent. Lifting a bamboo stick in a threatening manner, he urged me to bend over. Suddenly, the high-ranking officer who earlier had joked with me arrived on the scene, wanting to know what the commotion was about. The two of them exchanged words and then the guard, still muttering angrily under his breath, gesticulated for me to move on. What a relief! The young American guy followed straight after me, without even acknowledging the guard. It was then that I understood that we Westerners had an advantage over the Thai prisoners.

  Besides a couple of items of clothing and basic toiletries, all our belongings were tagged, bagged and taken away to be stored. I managed to hide the last of my US dollars under the cardboard lining of my sports bag. Trousers were not allowed in the prison, so I was forced to cut my Levi’s at the knees, and all long-sleeved jersey shirts had to have their sleeves cut off. I didn’t have much clothing anyway, as most of it had disappeared from my luggage between the airport and the holding cells. The police were apparently notorious for stealing the belongings of people they arrested, but there was nothing to be done about that. I also kept in my possession a blue beach towel Joan had lent me, and which she’d got as a tenth wedding anniversary gift, and thank goodness I did. That towel would become part of my bedding for the next six months. I had three pairs of underpants, a pair of swimming shorts, three T-shirts and some toiletries – shaving stuff, a toothbrush, dental floss.

  Still naked, we stood around for hours before we were allowed to get dressed. Then we were marched round the side of the hospital building, where we were greeted by a well-built Thai prisoner (a trustee) who was responsible for fitting and attaching leg irons to the prisoners. These were thick steel rings with a chain attached to them. First we were put into a steel contraption rather like a vice, and then this lever was pulled down, tightening the steel ring over the bottom of your leg. Once it was in place, the tr
ustee took a 10lb steel hammer and pounded the rings until they closed so tightly it was impossible to slip them off your feet. With every blow of the hammer, I visualised him missing and smashing the bones of my legs.

  I was thousands of miles from home and every new stage of what had happened to me so far had seemed more bizarre than the next. But what impacted me most was having to wear shackles. Surely this was a violation of one’s rights? It was inhuman. I felt completely demoralised by this indignity, reduced to nothing.

  After that, we were taken to Building 1, which was also the check-in point for all new prisoners. By now it was completely dark. We were taken to a cell upstairs, which already held about 50 Thai prisoners. None of us had bedding – there wasn’t enough space for everybody – and we all sat around, almost on top of one other. Those of us who wanted to sleep would have to do so in shifts, so, while some of us stood or sat around, others slept. I felt sorry for the American kid. I told him that he could sleep because there was no way I was going to be able to, and that I would keep an eye out in case something went down. We were the only two foreigners there and everybody seemed to be staring at us. In Western culture staring is rude; the Thais don’t have a problem with it. In the early part of the evening the American and I got chatting and he told me where he came from, about his family and how he got involved in being a drug mule.