Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  When my name was called for a visit on a day when I was not expecting the embassy, I was overcome with excitement and joy. Who on earth could it be, I wondered – perhaps a surprise visit from my family or a friend. I walked eagerly into the visit room, the area that was allocated for official visits, and standing before me was this young man I’d never seen before. He was tall and had a long red beard and a very pale complexion, and he was well dressed. His aura glowed with a lightness of being. I couldn’t believe my eyes. What was a rabbi doing way out here? He introduced himself to me as Rabbi Kantor. He was from New York and had been posted to Bangkok to head Chabad House there. He was a good few years younger than me, yet spiritually I knew immediately we were generations apart. His display of compassion and concern for my wellbeing moved me deeply. I remember thinking that, even in the darkest corners of the earth, one could find Hashem’s light present. For a moment I wished the walls around me would crumble and the steel bars melt like when Moses parted the Red Sea. For days on end I kept replaying the rabbi’s visit in my mind. I was not alone after all. The tribes of Jerusalem extended to wherever one might be.

  For now, however, I remained spiritually distant from the powers above.

  I met up with an elderly German guy, a tall, grey-haired man in his mid-sixties who was brought in a few days after me. His name was Dieter, and, because we were the only two white foreigners in Building 5, we struck up a friendship. He was very wise and worldly and we got on well. I didn’t have anywhere to keep the few things I possessed, so Dieter, made me a suitcase from a cardboard box. It was so well crafted that he started getting orders from other prisoners. Dieter would wear his clothes for days on end. Out of respect for his age, I offered to do his washing for him. Later I learnt that this was not the first time Dieter had been in a Thai prison. He was connected to one of the most powerful Burmese warlords, Khun Sa, also known as the ‘Opium King’. In the 1960s, Khun Sa had disappeared into the jungles of eastern Burma with an army of 600 men, where he cultivated opium. At the height of his power, he was producing as much as three quarters of the world’s heroin supply. The DEA labelled him the ‘Prince of Death’.

  My new cell was about three and a half times the size of a double garage and housed 44 prisoners. In the cell were three wooden platforms, which must have been at least 20 years old, and the wood was infested with woodlice and fleas. I got a terrible skin infection that lasted for several months before I managed to get medicine from South Africa. By that time I had scratched myself so badly there were scabs all over my arse. The infection was compounded by a heat rash that produced pimples full of pus all over my body.

  Every cell had a room chief whose duty it was to make sure that all new prisoners had a place to sleep. He would allocate you a place at his own discretion. He had to make sure that there was no fighting in the room, that the toilets and the cell were clean, and that there was fresh water available. My room chief’s name was Mohammed. He was a Thai Muslim guy, very well built, and very humble and friendly.

  The cell was already overcrowded and there was no place for me on the wooden platforms. I was given the spot in front of the steel door, which offered a bit of privacy. I organised a cardboard box which, when folded open, was big enough for my body. I used this as a mattress. I also had Joan’s blue beach towel. During the day I would use the towel to dry myself, and at night it was my bedsheet.

  In front of the toilet there was a ceramic bowl in which clean drinking water was stored. Resting on the rim was an aluminium cup, which was used by every single prisoner to scoop water and drink. I took one look at this and decided there was no way I was going to drink from that cup.

  Once the cell was locked, two guards came around to do the second roll call. For this, we had to sit on the edge of the platforms in a straight line and face the passage. Then each person would count in Thai. Once everyone had counted, the room chief would announce to the guard the number of people in the cell and account for how many people were still in court. For example, he would say, 42 prisoners were there, and two had not come back from court. After roll call, little groups would form in the cell, and everyone started taking out their food. The Thais always ate in groups and they would share their food among the group. They got regular visits and their visitors bought them an abundance of fruit and foodstuffs from the prison canteen. When it comes to food with the Thais, it doesn’t matter how much they have, they will invite you and will share their last. It’s part of their culture. If you walk past a group of Thais eating, it’s customary for them to invite you to join them, either by gesturing with a hand or by saying ‘Khun kin cowe’. Literally, this is an invitation to eat but it can also be interpreted as a greeting. If you aren’t going to accept the invitation you would reply, ‘Pom kin leow,’ meaning ‘I’ve already eaten (thank you).’

  Most Thais had no support, whereas we foreigners were more fortunate. The United Nations donated 25 Thai baht a day to all foreign prisoners; in addition, we would get two eggs each. A prison account was opened for you and you could order food from the prison grocery store, provided you had money in your account. Popular with the prisoners was sliced bread smeared with condensed milk. Another affordable meal, which came in a small packet, was Mama Instant Noodles; all this required was a bit of hot water. We would eat this with canned pilchards.

  Several of my Thai cellmates invited me to eat with them, but I had already arranged to eat with Patrick and Frank. They had a spot in the corner of the room and they had an Indian guy they paid to work for them. He helped them cook, washed their dishes, made their beds – which consisted of a couple of blankets sewn together to form a mattress – and did their laundry. His name was Jasbir.

  The thing about Thai prisons is that basically you have to pay for everything. The prison provides you with nothing. You don’t even get toiletries. Life is much harder for those prisoners who don’t have money, and unless you have visitors bringing you stuff, or financial support from your family, you are screwed. Some prisoners are so desperate they go as far as selling their asses. There are many instances of male prisoners, known as lady-boys, who survive by marrying one of the karjais (literally ‘big leg’). They provide sexual services. Others wash dishes and clothes, tidy the room etc. Some of the guys are cleaners.

  After we had eaten, I went to brush my teeth. Ever since I had had root canal treatment in my early twenties, not a meal had gone by when I didn’t floss afterwards. I always had a lot of dental floss with me. Now, here I was, in a Thai prison, in the middle of a room of 40 strangers, flossing my teeth. I was the centre of attention, I can tell you! Everybody was watching me. Some guys even came up to me and asked me what the hell I was doing. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself, how something so small could be so amusing to so many.

  Lying on an unforgiving concrete floor, with a cardboard box and a towel for a bed, amid an ugly cacophony of shouting voices, each one louder than the next, coming from every side of my own cell and from the cells across the corridor – it was like being at a fish market. There was a constant soundtrack of grown men engaging in trivial conversations purely to pass the time (not that I understood what they were saying, but I could imagine), each one no doubt relating his sad story. Arguments erupted frequently and some ended in violent physical altercations. Knives were drawn at the slightest provocation. There were constant eruptions of bodily noises, of men farting, men coughing. The smells were another assault to my senses – of body odour, prisoners taking a shit, stale cigarette smoke and dirty ashtrays.

  I wondered how I was going to survive. It was like a real-life movie script unfolding around me.

  As new prisoners, we were required to wear leg irons for the first two months, and my usual position when I was in the cell was flat on my back, legs shackled, with my flip-flops for a pillow. The Jewish festival of Pesach (Passover) was approaching and I found myself reminiscing and wondering about my family and friends back in South Africa, and about Jewish communities around the world
, from Israel to America to Russia, who would be preparing for the Passover. My entire being ached and longed for home and to spend this festival with Joan, Malcolm, their kids Darren and Keri, my mom and Malcolm’s parents, Benny and Naomi. Just to think that even these celebrations, which were something we took for granted as a family, were denied to me this year made me feel sad. I hadn’t realised before how much they actually meant in my life.

  Despairing thoughts looped endlessly through my head, and with each thought I felt the panic rise.

  How was I going to get through this? What if I got the death penalty, or a life sentence (equivalent to 100 years)? That was usual for drug offences. I was 34 years old. No way was I going to live to 134. Why was I here? It just made no sense. Fuck, I was confused. I was lonely and lost, and I needed to find a way out. OUT. I had to get out, I had to escape, if not from this life, then from this Earth. I was never going to get out of there. If I was going to die in this place eventually anyway, surely death now would be a better option than being reduced to an animal?

  Never before had I actually contemplated the idea of suicide, but now I found myself doing just that. Would I go to heaven or would I go to hell? Who gave a fuck anyway? Anywhere had to be better than where I was. Here I am, I thought, in a position to do something about my situation. My destiny was in my own hands, not in the hands of the Thai monarch or the prison authorities, and not in the hands of G-d either. G-d had let me down. During all the time I was dealing drugs and found myself in precarious situations, G-d had always been there to protect me. Now I hated Him. Now I questioned whether Hashem even existed.

  Was there a part of me that knew that these thoughts were not logical? I don’t know.

  As far as my family was concerned, they believed the lies I had told the embassy. This was that I had been led to believe I was smuggling forged currency and had had no idea I was actually carrying drugs. My sister Joan believed the story and she was doing everything she could from South Africa to get me out of there. She had a friend who told her he knew of some people, Israelis, who had previously helped two Israeli guys get out of a Thai jail not too far into their sentences. Joan was desperate and she believed in my innocence, and so she managed to make contact with these people and allowed herself to be guided by them. They told her that everything depended on what sentence I received and that, in the meantime, she needed to start acquiring some serious funds.

  Around early August, a group of us, about 12 foreigners, were transferred from Bombat to Klong Prem prison, which was just down the road. Late in the afternoon we gathered all our things and were marched down the road from one prison to the other. The entrance was another pair of huge steel gates. We were taken to a security checkpoint known as the White House, where we were searched thoroughly. Then we were taken to Building 6. In comparison to where I’d been before, this building was enormous. There was a dining hall, basketball court and quite a few factories. To the right of the gate as you walked in there was an area about 30 by 20m square with a fishpond and grass you could sit on. Until we were officially registered, we had to hang out by the fishpond and not mingle with other prisoners. Of course, we attracted the attention of the other foreigners already there, who all wanted to know where we were from.

  After registration, each prisoner was allocated to a factory, which was where you were expected to hang out during the day. The factories were dirty and dusty, but one could make oneself relatively comfortable. I was put into a cell with 30 guys. It had wooden floors that were broken in many places and had cockroaches crawling out from all over. My first night there was quite funny: I’d left my cigarette packet near to where I was sleeping, and in the morning a cockroach had made a hole in it and eaten half my cigarettes.

  It was around this time that the people advising Joan, the so-called Israeli liberators, came to visit me. Their plan to begin with, they told me, was to get me a medical pardon. I would see the prison doctors and have some tests done. One of these would be an AIDS test. They had someone inside the lab who would falsify the reports and say that I had AIDS. Of course, there was a hefty fee attached to their services. In the meantime, they arranged to channel some of my own money to me while I was inside.

  Shortly after I arrived at Klong Prem, I had been approached by an Australian guy, Daniel Westlake. He asked if I was interested in buying into a private cell with a group of foreigners. The cell I was in was at full capacity. We were lying crammed shoulder to shoulder at night and I was finding it impossible to sleep; I knew it was going to drive me insane. Buying into a private cell seemed like the logical thing to do, although there was a risk that I wouldn’t have the ‘luxury’ of it for long. If Joan’s people were to be believed, I might actually have a shot at getting out of there. On the other hand, my case was also coming up soon. There was a slight chance that I would get a 25-year sentence, which meant I would probably stay in Klong Prem, but if I was sentenced to life, which seemed more likely, I would be transferred to Bangkwang Central Prison.

  I told the Israeli liberators that I needed more money so that I could buy into the private cell. The money was arranged. I planned to use it to make myself comfortable for as long as I could.

  I paid 6 000 Thai baht for my stake in the private cell, which I shared with six other prisoners – British, Australian, Swiss, Pakistani and two Thais. The room had been recently renovated and painted, with new vinyl to cover the floor. There were no cockroaches. Daniel had been there for about two years and he was quite organised. He had a place behind the dining room where he kept his locker and private things.

  There were quite a number of Africans in Building 6, from Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia and Tanzania, as well as Chinese. Other countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and Indonesia were also well represented. And there were many Burmese prisoners.

  In comparison to Bombat, Klong Prem prison was paradise. The guys had a lot more freedom. On weekends the area around the basketball court and the walls along the factories would be transformed into a market. Deckchairs and lockers were brought out from the factories and groups of guys would be cooking and selling food, cold drinks and ice creams. In Bombat we used to sit on the concrete floor near the gutter.

  Klong Prem was known to have drugs. When we arrived, some of the guys wanted to score some hash or weed, but my priority was to organise a bed. Nothing was free. Some of the Thai junkies would sell their last possessions to get a fix, so organising blankets was relatively easy. By my second day already I had washed the blankets and arranged for one of the Thai guys to make me a bed.

  When we left Bombat our personal belongings that had been in storage were returned to us. The US$100 note that I had hidden beneath the cardboard lining of my sports bag was miraculously still there. When moving from one prison to another it’s important that you have cash on hand because it can take a month for your prison account to be transferred, and borrowing can be quite expensive.

  I was lucky that the Israelis were visiting at that time. They bought me a lot of stuff from the prison canteen and deposited money into my account. Most of the foreigners had support from their families. Getting money into the prison was tricky. The most reliable method was having your own ATM card, which you could give to a guard who, for a fee, would go to the bank and draw cash for you.

  Drugs were generally smuggled in by the guards, but sometimes prisoners tried to beat the system by having drugs concealed in food items sent in parcels. These were invariably detected by the guard who was checking them.

  Coming from Bombat, and seeing the freedom prisoners enjoyed in Klong Prem, it was like we were on a holiday. I felt my spirits beginning to lift. We would stroll around the yard accosting anyone, Asians or Indians, and asking, ‘Hey, man, you got some hash, ganja?’ (many Asians understand that word). It was quite funny, but then one of the other foreigners warned us to be careful about drawing unnecessary attention to ourselves.

  After living on tinned pilchards and instant noodles
for the past few months, the food at Klong Prem was a huge improvement on Bombat. Meals were served in the dining hall and we got two meals a day, not one: breakfast and lunch. Breakfast for foreigners was two boiled eggs each, plus bread you bought yourself from the coffee shop. For lunch we got a lot of sweet potatoes, as well as chicken, but without much meat on the bones. Actually, the chicken was so tough I suspect it wasn’t chicken; it might have been wild turkey or something.

  The design of Klong Prem was different to that of Bombat. It was based more on an American style, in a T-shape. There was an upstairs and a downstairs, with a lot of smaller rooms. Lockdown was at 4pm and prisoners were let out of their cells at 6.30 in the morning to go to their respective factories.

  Just being with foreigners, and not in a cell packed full of Thai inmates, was such a pleasure. Another advantage to having a private cell was that you didn’t have to shower with the general population. Every night there was either a game of Scrabble or cards going on. Alternatively, I would read one of the books that circulated around the prison.

  Even though I was waiting to be sentenced, and the waiting was a difficult time mentally, at least I was much more comfortable. I bought myself a deckchair and got a locker to put my personal stuff in. I continued to walk around every day, explore, see who worked where. I also started exercising. I managed to get hold of a pair of cheap canvas running shoes, which are called nang yang, and I started playing this Thai sport called takraw. It’s a fast game, played with a round ball made out of rattan. You have to be quite agile and fit to play it, and the Thais were very impressed that a foreigner not only participated in one of their sports but also played well. Within a few weeks I became quite good at it, and we used to play for money.

  There was a ping-pong table near the top end of the building, near the transport section, where mechanics repaired the prison buses. You had to pay to play ping-pong – bats and balls had to be bought from the guards – and nobody played just for fun. There was always gambling involved, whatever the activity or sport.