Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  Thais are inquisitive by nature and they are also culturally quite advanced. In prison there was no privacy; people were forever watching me, especially when I was painting or drawing. At intervals, small groups of Thais would form around me and watch me work. Some would pass comments, such as ‘Dee muk’ (very good) or ‘Fee mer’ (excellent). At first, I was so self-conscious that it irritated me, to the extent that I struggled to concentrate on my drawing. I would look up angrily and cover my drawing with my hand. I wished everybody would just fuck off and mind their own business. ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ I would say morosely, and then I would get some dirty stares in return before they dispersed.

  Some of the Thais who ended up in Bangkwang came from the mountains, and many had never seen a foreigner before, so they would often sit and stare blankly at me for what seemed like forever. To overcome my discomfort, I would sometimes imagine that I was the leading actor in a movie and that all the people watching me were part of a film crew. I had a role to play, which I learnt to play exceedingly well, and with time I grew to feel less uncomfortable being watched.

  I wrote to my sister about it:

  It is so hard to draw in this heat as the sweat is running down my face; I have to be so careful not to smudge the picture – that is why my drawings are so unique. Nobody can imagine the conditions I have to work under. Sometimes I have to fight for my place in the dining hall where I sit. People are lying all over the benches and sleeping. There is a crazy psychopath sitting near me talking aloud to himself for hours on end. I feel like bashing his head in. Sitting and facing me is an old man who has TB and does not stop coughing. Man, it is like a lunatic asylum here. You think you have problems, I have people leaning over my shoulder staring at me drawing, on my side and in front of me. You would think that they have never seen a foreigner drawing. It is quite an education and if nothing else I’m certainly learning to be patient.

  With time, I became more comfortable, realising that the Thais who crowded round every day to watch me draw actually appreciated art. In fact, their admiration for my work became inspiring to me. By now I was painting portraits for friends in different parts of the world, who, in return, were sending me art supplies.

  It came to me one night in a vision that, before I would be emancipated, I would go through three levels of evolution: artistically, spiritually and as a person. I knew I had to change. I needed to redeem myself. In my mind there was still too much turmoil, however, that needed to be quieted. The battle raged on inside me.

  Besides electrical appliances, money and things that were illegal, we could receive almost anything in the parcels our friends and relatives sent us. For medicines, though, you had to have a prescription. In the event that your family did send money, the officer in charge would automatically deposit it in your account. For a prisoner to have cash on him was strictly illegal. One of my friends had sent me a siddur, a Jewish prayer book. There were many reasons why I should have been praying. G-d was working miracles all around me, but I was not yet paying close attention. Although I was becoming aware that coming to prison was for my own benefit, I wasn’t yet ready to admit it. Instead I clung stubbornly to the belief that a terrible injustice had befallen me. Having convinced my family about my innocence, I started to believe it was true. In my heart I was grateful and gradually I could feel my anger beginning to subside, but I was yet to open that prayer book and pray. In my heart I remained distant from G-d and it would still be a while before I found my way back to him.

  My sister Joan had a friend, Edna Ralph, who lived in Manchester in England and was affiliated with Chabad House. She had heard of my plight and, feeling compassion for my situation, initiated contact with me. Edna was deeply spiritual and she started sending me books on Judaism. In her letters she encouraged me to study and read as much as I could. I can honestly say that this was the beginning of my spiritual journey and of my renewed faith in G-d. Edna would walk around Manchester and collect money for ‘Eleazer’ (my Hebrew name), her new prisoner friend in Bangkok. She sent me £100 every month, and I have to say that the extra funds were a tremendous help and went a long way towards improving my standard of living. I also managed to purchase a lot more art supplies as a result. I was so grateful to her.

  One year, the Chabad rabbi deposited 3 000 Thai baht into all the Jewish guys’ prison accounts for Purim, the Jewish festival in which it is customary to give ‘shalach manot’ (little parcels of food and fruit) and charity. The money was donated by an affluent Persian Jew who lived in Bangkok. The Israeli prisoners were visited every month by the rabbi, who represented the Israeli embassy. He would bring punnets of kosher food. Although I was not called for these visits, because I was not an Israeli, Rabbi Nechemya always brought an equal portion for me.

  In Jewish tradition, it is forbidden to have your body marked. If you are tattooed, you cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery when you die. I did know this, and part of me was reluctant to defy the tradition, but I did it all the same. For some, a tattoo might symbolise something important; for others, it might be an act of rebellion or merely to be fashionable, part of a trend. I had my first tattoo done when I was in the army, on that infamous New Year’s holiday in Cape Town with Gerry, Sam and Mark, when we went to Adams in Woodstock. Mine was an eagle, representing freedom. My second tattoo I had done in Bangkok a few days before I was arrested. I chose a snake with the head of a cobra and the tail of a rattlesnake, implying double danger.

  Tattoos are very much part of prison culture, and for the most part are not merely decorative. In prison, tattoos indicate gang membership, and particular tattoos serve to align members of particular gangs.

  When I first got to prison, I was surprised to see so many guys with tattoos; some had their entire bodies covered. One very popular symbol was the Thai dragon, which represents supernatural power or some form of magic. Dragons are also associated with wisdom and longevity. The dragon is a central feature of Thai art and literature, and its mythology draws on Indian, Chinese and Japanese legends. Thailand shares a cultural and historical heritage with neighbouring Laos and Cambodia. You will find statues of dragons all over Thailand, particularly outside temples, where they are symbols of protection. In prison, the Thai dragon is associated with the warrior, the way of the samurai. The Thai mafia, or Bad Boys, as we referred to them, had huge dragon tattoos on their backs.

  If I was about to spend the rest of my life in prison, I decided that my body ink would become symbolic of my journey: I would have a tattoo done every year until the day of my release. Good tattoo artists, however, were hard to come by, and invariably these artists were one of the Bad Boys. These guys were forever fighting or stabbing each other, resulting in their being sent to solitary confinement, being moved from one building to another, and even being transferred to other prisons.

  My very first tattoo in prison was a Thai dragon, which I had done on my left arm in the traditional method, whereby the artist uses a piece of bamboo to which five thin needles are attached. The way these guys work is quite incredible – I had to admire their talent.

  Tattooing in prison is strictly forbidden, but on Saturdays and Sundays things were generally more relaxed. Outside guards were on duty over weekends. They were not familiar with the prisoners, so they were either sleeping, watching TV or getting a massage. As long as you were out of sight of the guards, you could usually get away with risking it. In the event that the guards happened to stumble on you while you were being tattooed, they would confiscate the ink and bamboo stick. The tattoo artists normally used ink from a regular pen, which contains lead and can cause skin infections. However, I managed to organise proper tattoo ink and made sure that, when it was my turn, the needles were cleaned with pure alcohol. One couldn’t be too careful, with so many of the prisoners having AIDS.

  Prison regulations required all prisoners to have short hair, army style. Every building at Bangkwang had at least three barber shops where haircuts were given by prisoners, large
ly inexperienced guys and not very skilled. In Thai culture, having a haircut is something of a ritual. After having your hair cropped with electric clippers and a switchblade, your ears would then be cleaned. To do this, the barber takes a long thin feather and inserts it deep into your ear. The session ends with a facial massage. In my first two years in Bangkwang I was fortunate to have a hair stylist who had won some international hairdressing competition. I say ‘fortunate’ because he knew his trade, so that was the upside. On the downside, he was serving time for murder, after apparently running a pair of scissors into a client’s throat while cutting the man’s hair.

  Before I knew about his crime, I would go to him for a trim and a shave. The guy was so popular that guards from other buildings would also come to him. When I learnt what he had done to earn his place in Bangkwang, I never again went near him, or any other barber, for that matter. From then on, I cut my hair myself when I wanted to.

  Those of us foreigners who liked to wear our hair long refused to have haircuts. We would argue and say it was for religious purposes, and eventually the guards gave up and allowed us to grow our hair. Before going to prison I’d never grown a beard. I didn’t like facial hair. In prison, it really didn’t matter what you looked like, and altering your appearance could prove to be interesting. Although a beard never actually suited me, I did get a sense of comfort knowing that if ever I escaped I could simply change my identity by growing facial hair.

  Now and again, but admittedly not very often, a prisoner would become eligible for parole after serving his full sentence. Some of these guys had a better life in prison than they did outside, and by the time they were due for release they had become completely institutionalised. In order to avoid going home, they sometimes resorted to committing murder. I certainly didn’t want to be one of their random victims, and avoiding the barber shops was a start.

  Chapter 11

  ‘King of the Pen’

  By the middle of 1995 my family and I had started working on all the complicated documentation that was needed to apply for a royal pardon. In addition to your application you need letters of support from a high-ranking government official, affidavits from, for example, family, previous employers and friends, as well as a police clearance certificate. You also have to produce all your court papers. Each of these documents has to be translated into Royal Thai. Once everything is in order, three copies have to be made of everything. It is advisable to place each set in a hardbound folder. Then you have to hand them to your embassy, which undertakes to forward the copies to the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs under a diplomatic note. From there the petition will be passed on to the Department of Corrections, who checks the details and case history (prisoner class, health, etc.) with the relevant prison. Once the prison authorities have gathered the necessary information, the petition is sent back to the Department of Corrections for recommendation. Only if the petition is approved will it be passed on to the Minister of the Interior for further consideration. The Minister of the Interior then passes it on either to the Prime Minister’s office or straight to the Privy Council, who will present the pardon before His Majesty the King’s Principal Private Secretary.

  This whole long, tedious procedure can be drawn out over years and years, and I’d heard of cases in which pardons were misplaced or lost between departments. Another problem was that if your sentence was reduced as a result of an amnesty, your pardon application had to be returned to the prison in order for your sentence to be adjusted to the new one, and the whole procedure started all over again. Applying for a royal pardon is a serious business, and you really need to involve your embassy and have their support if you hope to succeed. I was advised by other prisoners to rather wait a few years before submitting one, as the chances of having it rejected were high. I was in no rush, but still I believed we needed to get the ball rolling.

  By the beginning of 1996 our cell was down to 13 occupants, while in the Thai cells occupancy dropped from around 26 to 21. Many Thais had been transferred to prisons in other provinces, closer to their home towns. With the upcoming amnesty in the King’s Jubilee year, it was estimated that 70 000 prisoners were going to be released. This would alleviate the overcrowding to a degree, but it would only be temporary, as new prisoners continued to arrive on a daily basis. We were still not sure if drug cases were going to be included in the amnesty, but there was no shortage of conflicting news and rumours.

  On Saturday, 10 February 1996, at 7pm a Thai radio station reported that Thailand wanted to send all foreigners back to their countries as free people, and that they planned to review sentences on a case-by-case basis, either individually or as groups per country. They added that manufacturers of drugs and major offenders would not be included. I was sure I fell into the latter category. The South African embassy confirmed that the Thai government wanted to send us back to our country to serve our sentences in jails there, and they promised that they would do everything in their power to get us home. Empty promises, I thought. There was no doubt in my mind that this was bullshit.

  The inter-building football tournament had been held the previous month (January). It was my second since I’d been in Bangkwang, but I could not afford to donate any money, so I volunteered to try and organise uniforms from South Africa. Each team consisted of ten players, one goalkeeper and eleven reserves, making a total of 22 players. I didn’t have much time to organise the uniforms, so I quickly drafted a letter to my sister, which one of the guards smuggled out of the prison for me – for a fee, of course – and sent by registered mail. A few weeks later I received a letter from home. One of my friends, Gerald, had stepped forward and bought the uniforms. Joan had already posted them. I couldn’t wait to give the guys the good news. Everybody was so excited. Because of my love of football and my support for Premier League champions Manchester United, some of the foreigners, especially the Nigerians, had given me the nickname ‘Man U’, and my sister was referred to as ‘Manchester’s sister’.

  The B team, which I played for, consisted mainly of Thais. Considering that most of my team-mates were murderers, I felt it appropriate to name our team ‘Manslaughter United’. I immersed myself in the business of organising, training and coaching. Here I was, after so many years of addiction and abusing my body, including two seizures in which I had almost lost my life, playing football again – quite an achievement, I thought, considering that certain doctors had told me I would walk with a limp and never play contact sport again.

  With a day to go before the opening ceremony, the parcel containing our kit arrived and I breathed a sigh of relief. Gerald had chosen the design of the Kaizer Chiefs’ uniform. We were ecstatic.

  In the same month as our football tournament, my mother took a trip to Budapest with the aim of appealing to the Hungarian government to intervene in my case. Even though I was a South African citizen, both my parents were Hungarian. You would think the government might have done something to help, but they weren’t interested. When they heard I had been arrested for drug trafficking, they wanted nothing to do with me.

  Another article about me appeared in You magazine, and once again the letters poured in. South African readers were so kind and compassionate, and many of them offered me whatever assistance they could, whether this was money or parcels containing food items. I never accepted any of these offers; I was not comfortable taking help from strangers. One of my prison mates suggested that I ask each person for a donation of US$10. If you multiplied that amount by the thousands of letters I received, I could have become quite a rich prisoner! I replied to as many correspondents as I could, but after a while this became impractical; I simply could not afford the postage. Instead I used a writing pad with very light, thin paper, and wrote a single page for each person. I would place 20 pages, with the individual’s address written in the top right-hand corner, in one envelope, and post this to my sister. Joan would then put each page into an individual envelope and post the letters for me.

  I asked ea
ch recipient to petition the King of Thailand to include drug cases in the upcoming amnesty. One of the guards started withholding my letters and sending them to the Department of Corrections for censorship. When I got wind of this, I got the South African embassy involved and eventually the letters were returned to me.

  Early in 1996 I had a surprise visit from a childhood friend, Colin, who was one of our crew while we were at Arcadia. Colin now lived in Miami. I was touched that he came to visit, and we reminisced about the antics we got up to as teenagers. Colin was one of the group who had bunked out the night we went exploring the construction site of the Johannesburg General Hospital, and the kid who had succeeded in breaking the lock on the three-wheeler bicycle chain.

  It’s difficult to describe my head space at this time. By constantly striving to convince my sister in my letters that I was okay, it became a form of self-assurance. I mean, how could I be okay? I was depressed, there was no guarantee that we would be included in the amnesty, and we were also thinking about embarking on a hunger strike to draw attention to our cause. Chances were that if we followed through on this threat, we might incur permanent damage to our brains. Not that I had much brain power left – the drugs had probably destroyed most of my brain cells.