Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  Because I had started jogging already back at Klong Prem and had played some takraw, I was reasonably fit. Sports activities were generally left to the prisoners to organise. First thing in the morning, the basketball enthusiasts would have the concrete court for an hour. After that, the footballers would take over the pitch. I was soon playing football. Teams were made up of either four or five players. Two teams would square off, while the other teams sat on the sidelines and watched, waiting for their turn. If you were a good player, whenever you arrived at the pitch, players would quickly invite you onto their team. The winner was determined by who scored the first goal. Every time the ball was kicked behind the goal line, the next team to play would count. If by the count of ten there was no goal, both teams would be out and two new teams would come on to play. On Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, all the footballers would come to play. The Thais love their football, and there were some very talented sportsmen among us in Bangkwang. They were also very competitive, especially when it came to playing against the foreigners.

  Despite being physically active, my first days in Bangkwang dragged and the nights were long. I started expressing my inner emotions by composing poetry. I would lie on my bundle of folded blankets and juggle with words. The first poem I wrote I called ‘Walls’:

  My life revolves around walls

  walls that seem so high that you cannot see the sky,

  yet the sky is not so high as the walls seem to touch the sky,

  how I wish I could fly.

  Understandably, my spirits were really down, but the deeper I went into my mind, the easier the words began to flow. All the same I felt myself slipping into a state of depression.

  I wrote another poem and called it ‘Feel the Breeze’:

  This is not about the beginning of the end,

  nor is it about the end of the beginning,

  this is not about one ways,

  nor is it about dead ends,

  it’s about release,

  do you feel the breeze,

  I finally feel at ease.

  Suicide wasn’t something I’d ever contemplated – Judaism prohibits taking your own life – but now it was a very real option in comparison to what I was facing. I believed I could do it, too. And so I set in motion a plan to take my life.

  Believing that the most effective method was death by hanging, I managed to acquire a durable rope, one I estimated would accommodate my weight, and successfully smuggled it into my cell. I recited my prayers, and, just before midnight, said my private goodbyes and begged the forgiveness of my family and friends. I understood that the act of suicide was a selfish one and that ultimately only they would suffer, but I was in a very depressed and hopeless state.

  All my cellmates were fast asleep. I took the rope into the toilet and made a hangman’s noose. I tied the other end to the bars above the toilet. Then I fitted the rope around my neck and was about to lunge my body out of the toilet, which was at least a metre above ground level, when suddenly I saw a bright light and distorted images, similar to those I had sometimes seen in my nightmares as a child, came flooding into my mind. It was a crazy moment, and the realisation of what I was doing hit me hard. I discovered that my will to live was greater than my desire to die. What the fuck was I thinking? I quickly removed the rope from my neck, untied it, went back to my space and lay down. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t believe I had almost taken my life.

  I will get through this, I told myself. They will never break me.

  The weeks and months that followed my futile attempt at suicide were spent mainly with my head in the clouds. I wrote more poems and became more withdrawn and irritable. And there was no news from home. Letter-writing was the only form of communication that prisoners enjoyed. Building 2’s mail arrived every Wednesday and Sunday. When they called the mail over the intercom system and your name was one of those called out, you were overcome with excitement. By November I had written at least four letters to my family and still there was no news from them. I was sick with worry. I could feel it in my gut that something was wrong. In addition, I had not heard a word from my so-called Israeli liberators. Naive as I was then, I trusted people and expected them to come through.

  Electrical appliances were illegal in the prison, but they managed to find their way in all the same. Those who could afford them had things like rice boilers, electric frying pans, portable fans and blenders. You could even hire a TV and a video machine so you could watch movies. I managed to acquire a Walkman for 1 200 Thai baht. There were one or two English channels that played my type of music, and whenever I got to the cell, the first thing I did was switch on my Walkman and plug in my earphones. Music has always played an integral part in my life. It does something profound to my soul. But in prison it also made me homesick, especially when I heard one of my favourite songs. These triggered memories of those sentimental moments we all have at some stage of our lives.

  In the meantime, the South African consul, Jan Putter, whom I liked a lot, had informed me that our government was in the process of negotiating a prisoner transfer treaty with Thailand, so I put some of my hope in that. The fact that there were a few possible avenues still open to me gave me strength to endure the monotony of prison life. I still strongly maintained my innocence, even more so after it had become obvious, to me at least, that I had been set up. There were many such instances where the very people who supplied you with the heroin were working with the police, giving them your identity, what quantity of drugs you were carrying and which hotel you were staying at. In my case, the cops had been onto me already at the hotel or probably, for that matter, from the very moment I’d set foot in Bangkok. It’s when you are apprehended at the airport that the charge for exporting carries the death penalty.

  In December, while sitting around in the Nigerian house one morning, reminiscing about years gone by, my name was called for a parcel. Finally, some news from home!

  I wrote back to share my appreciation with my family:

  Dearest Joan, Malcolm, Darren and Keri

  Firstly, thank you very much for the two parcels. I truly appreciate it more than you can imagine. The parcel was opened in front of me, two items on your list weren’t in them – two boxes of coffee, though there were a few small boxes of coffee and a blow-up pillow, maybe you forgot to put them in. Firstly, I pigged out on the salami, I fried it and mixed egg with it, then I attacked the cheese with Provita and after that, I had the coffee. It was just like a Southern Sun breakfast. Then I relaxed in a chair and smoked a Camel. I swear, for those moments, it felt like I was sitting in your back garden, you really made my day and it was worth waiting for. Thank you so much.

  Lots of love, Shani

  December, being the festive season, was a difficult time, not only for me, but also for most prisoners. It was the holidays. That longing to be with one’s family or somewhere on the beach was more intense somehow during this time. I could understand why so many inmates turned to drugs. For me, the temptation was always there, but my inner voice kept telling me to stay strong. I had to resist at all costs. My very life depended on it. In Thailand, five days of holidays are given over to New Year, which meant that the prison was closed. There were no visits, no parcels and no letters during those days, and that was fucking depressing, I can tell you.

  Several sports events happened over these holidays, all organised by the inmates, the highlight being the football competition, which was based on the same principles of elimination as the FIFA World Cup. Each team collected money, and a guard would buy uniforms and balls – for a fee, of course. Matches started as early as 7am. The tournament was a lot of fun and a break from our normal routine. The guys even placed bets on the games. I made the fatal mistake of being the referee in one of the quarter-final games – the Thais vs the Nigerians. I disallowed a goal the Nigerians scored. Actually, it was quite funny: not only did the players turn on me but so did some of the overenthusiastic Nigerian spectators. I stood my ground, tho
ugh, and used my yellow card to quell their tempers.

  Sport plays a huge role in developing friendships wherever you are, but in prison perhaps more so than anywhere else. There was an unbelievably strong bond among the footballers in Bangkwang. Mostly it was the Thai ‘Bad Boys’, the samurai, who played. I was one of a few Westerner foreigners who were skilled at the game, so I played for a Thai team. My team made the semifinals, but the tension was too much for our star striker. A goal down at half-time broke his spirit and we went on to lose.

  The end of 1994 came and went.

  I was still writing poems, and at one stage even considered studying structures and styles of poetry, thinking that somewhere inside me was a Shakespeare struggling to emerge. My poems were private, and when I read them over they usually brought me to tears. I never allowed anybody to read them. As time went on, I struggled to express my thoughts in this way and I began to write less frequently.

  Among the many prisoners who spent time in the dining hall was a Burmese guy, whose name was Tin Sei O. He was a talented musician, an artist and also a heroin addict. He drew pencil portraits for a fee to support his habit. We became acquainted and I took an immediate liking to him. Fortunately, his English was pretty good. As a Burmese national with a life sentence and no support whatsoever from outside his future was bleak. He would have to serve at least 22 years, and he didn’t care what happened to him. Some of the guys in his situation, especially the Asian prisoners, almost had a death wish. I could relate to how Tin Sei O felt, as in a bizarre way death was liberation, the ultimate freedom. This attitude could make for a dangerous environment. There were inmates there with two life sentences, so committing an additional murder wouldn’t make a difference to them. They were never going to see the light of day beyond those walls anyway.

  For a carton of cigarettes, Tin drew a portrait for me of my sister and my niece Keri. It was a close enough resemblance, with one small mistake that only somebody with an eye for detail would have picked up. Audaciously, and on the spur of the moment, I signed my own name on the drawing, which I then posted home. A month later I received a letter from Joan. They were blown away by ‘my’ drawing, she said – it was fantastic! Jesus, I thought, what had I done? What if the Israeli thing worked out and I went home in a few months and they asked me to draw more portraits of other members of the family? I had not painted nor drawn anything since some postcards I’d made for the guys back in Bombat prison (and before that not very much since school). For these postcards I had cut the bristles off a toothbrush, attached them to a piece of bamboo and made some sketches using diluted coffee. Now I had a serious problem. The only solution, as far as I could see, was that I would have to learn to draw portraits and that Tin would have to be my teacher.

  Tin used the scale system to draw his portraits. He had a piece of hard transparent plastic with horizontal and vertical lines scratched into the surface with a needle. This he would place over the photograph. Then, duplicating the squares on a piece of paper, and using a pencil, he would proceed to draw the portrait.

  To get started, Tin gave me a couple of pencils and some other supplies. Within a matter of weeks, I was creating fairly accurate portraits. My models were mainly my family or friends and taken from the photos I had of them. Pencil is not a very versatile medium and, because I was limited to a 2HB pencil, I soon got bored. I then began experimenting with pen, my preference being a Bic ballpoint. In the ensuing months, through the many people I began to correspond with, I asked to be sent stationery and art supplies.

  There were some highly skilled craftsmen among the Thai prisoners – tailors, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, you name it, we had them all. Because of the close proximity we all slept in and the discomfort of our so-called beds, a lot of the guys had small fold-up wooden tables, only slightly bigger than an A4 clipboard. I managed to purchase a second-hand one for 150 Thai baht. For the next five years, I used this little table to create many drawings.

  In the towel factory there were two very talented tailors. Mondays to Fridays they did their regular jobs, and on weekends they were allowed to do private work. In between making uniforms for the guards, they did many other things – from altering standard-size bedsheets to fit your makeshift bed to fixing a tear in your jean shorts and sewing on buttons. To better handle the extreme heat, I had employed one of them as my personal tailor and he restyled all my T-shirts for me, first cutting the sleeves off at the shoulders and then, if the collar sat too tight around my neck, cutting it into a V-shape. I also had a denim shoulder bag made, which was perfect for carrying my fold-up table and my art materials.

  Every afternoon at 2.30 shower time was announced over the intercom, and then around 3:30pm we would be called to go to our cells. There were 50 cells in our building. We weren’t allowed to keep anything in our cells, so whatever we took upstairs with us at lockdown we would have to bring down in the morning. Because we spent almost 15 hours of every day in our cells, prisoners took food with them in pintos or plastic containers. The guys also had water coolers in which there was ice to keep their food fresh or their water cold. Two guards and two Blue Shirts would man the door, searching every prisoner as he went into his cell, while the rest of us waited our turn in the stifling heat. It was quite a sight to see, hundreds of prisoners carrying all their stuff in plastic bags. The searches were required by the Department of Corrections, but the guards by and large couldn’t be bothered, so the Blue Shirts did most of it. Unless they had information about somebody carrying drugs or weapons, though, these daily afternoon searches weren’t very thorough.

  Something that surprised me about Thai prisons was that everybody had knives. If you ordered beef from the prison grocery store, the meat you got was buffalo, and because buffalo is so tough the Thais used to chop the meat on a wooden board. And what did they use to do this? Nothing less than a meat cleaver, exactly like the one a butcher uses. Weapons were in abundance.

  One afternoon while I was strolling past the shower area, opposite the towel factory, I witnessed an execution-style attack. The victim was a dark-skinned Thai prisoner who was taking a shower. He was from the south of Thailand. The northern Thais are very different from the southern Thais. They speak different dialects and their skin colour is different, too. One of the samurai, armed with a short metal bar, came up behind this guy and he hit him square on the side of the head. He never even saw it coming. His head burst open like a watermelon, and he just slumped to the ground, blood oozing out of his cracked skull. By the time they got him to the hospital, he was dead. Not even a couple days after that, there was another incident. A Thai had taken a broken ketchup bottle and proceeded to cut his own head open in an attempt to stop the guard from taking the bottle away from him. He also threatened to slit his own throat. After some intense negotiating, he eventually surrendered his weapon and he, too, was rushed to hospital. A couple of days later, he returned to the building, his head all bandaged up, but after that there was something really strange about him. He walked very slowly, taking short steps without bending his knees or moving his arms; he seemed to be in a trance.

  There was another Thai prisoner who was our very own hobo. He used to lie around on the ground, and never really washed himself either. He was forever eating out of the garbage cans. The poor guy had definitely lost it. The thing was that both these guys had a similar stride. It was obvious that the guy who’d cut his head open had had something done to him at the hospital. I asked one of the other foreigners about this, a guy who had been in Bangkwang for some time, and he told me that when prisoners lost control and became violent they were taken to the hospital, where they were injected with some drug that was so powerful the person would become zombie-like and remain in that state for weeks. We called it the ‘Turbo Shot’.

  When you are sentenced in first court, the Thai legal system allows an automatic appeal for second court, which can take up to three months. After second court you have exactly one month to submit an ap
peal. In the event that you are defending your case and the court finds you innocent, the public prosecutor will appeal your sentence. Unless you pay a minimum of US$10 000, the chances are you’ll get resentenced in third court to either the death penalty or life, depending on your crime.

  My family had hired a lawyer to work on my appeal and we paid her an initial retainer of US$1 000. She neglected to explain the procedure to us, however, and visited me at the prison one and a half months after my second court appearance, which meant that it was too late to appeal and so my case was automatically closed. She still had the audacity to ask us for a further US$1 000 to process my appeal. By then I had already been informed by the court that my case was closed – I couldn’t believe she was still trying to cheat me. I lost my cool and threatened to inform the embassy and report her to the Bar Association of Thailand. I also demanded that my initial retainer be refunded. It crossed my mind to wonder what might have happened if she had actually done her job. It was very possible that I might have got a reduced sentence. I didn’t dwell on this too much, however. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that prison was my destiny.

  One day, out of the blue, a friend from Johannesburg popped in for a surprise visit. I can’t describe how exciting it was to have somebody visit whom I had seen not too long before. She had brought me some foodstuffs from South Africa and we joked and laughed together. It was just too wonderful to see her. She was a daring kind of girl, so we also discussed her trying to smuggle some alcohol in for me. I told her to buy a pack of six bottles of water, and to remove one of the bottles from the centre of the pack, instructing her how to do this without damaging the plastic cover, and also how to remove the lid without breaking the seal. Then she was to empty out the water and fill the bottle with vodka. I suggested she also bring some other foodstuffs along that would distract the guards from noticing anything unusual. She did as I instructed, and on her next visit the water came through, no problem. I rushed back to the building, really excited. It had been quite a few months since I’d last had a drink. I shared the vodka with two of my cellmates. As the intoxicating liquid made its way to my stomach, I felt a hot flush come over me, prompting an instant craving to get high. My friends laced a cigarette with some heroin and offered it to me. The temptation was almost overwhelming. It took some wrestling with my desire, but, in the end, instead of accepting a quick fix, I settled for some nicotine.