Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  Jai was 38 years old and she was quite pretty. She was slim and had long black hair. Her English was good. We agreed that she would visit me every fortnight. Every time she visited she would bring me fresh wholewheat bread and a packet of milk powder. She also offered to fax messages to my family and to bring me faxes from them. At first I had difficulty making conversation, so Jai did most of the talking. With the two sets of bars about a metre apart in the visit room, you had to shout to be heard anyway, and when the room was full it was hard to have a conversation. It was also awkward because the people in your immediate vicinity could hear every word you exchanged.

  Jai was nice, though, and I began to look forward to her visits. We also started corresponding with each other, and within a few months our friendship evolved into a relationship. I can’t say I loved her, but I did become emotionally dependent on her. There is something uniquely sensual about Asian women, and I was attracted to her physically, too. She had the most delicate hands and her eyes were mesmerising. She had an inner beauty that shone through.

  Jai proved to be an indispensable contact between my family and me. She opened a bank account for me, and, through one of the guards, I succeeded in smuggling in an ATM card. I arranged for the embassy to deposit my monthly allowance into Jai’s account, and she would then transfer it into the account for which I was now the cardholder.

  Whenever I needed money, I would give my card to a guard and he would go to the bank, make a withdrawal, deduct his five per cent and bring the money to me in the prison. This was the most convenient and also the safest way of bringing in cash. From my allowance I would give Jai a running balance, and on her now weekly visits she would bring me such luxury food items as cheese, jam, fruit and ready-made meals. She would also use some of the money to buy me other things, such as art supplies, toiletries and sports equipment. She would post these to me in parcels.

  You could say Jai was now officially my girlfriend.

  In the middle of the year we were notified, unofficially, that we could request telephone calls to our families. This had to be done through the prison, and then arranged through our embassies, who would first have to get permission from the Department of Corrections. Each embassy also had to supply mobile phones to the relevant prisoners. It was a bit of an involved process, but worth it.

  A British guy in my room was one of the first to use this facility. He made a call to his sister and brother in England. I thought he would be happy after talking to them, but in fact he wasn’t. On the contrary, he seemed to slip into a deep depression afterwards. I planned to submit my own request and try to organise a call for October, to coincide with my birthday.

  For some reason, Jai’s friend Sheila disliked me. Without Jai’s knowledge, she wrote me a letter, telling me that she and Jai were struggling to make ends meet and that some nights all they had to eat was biscuits. She asked whether there was any chance I could give her some money. Sheila was friendly with the guard, Piscet Shavolit, who was in charge of the foreign section where our mail was censored. He spoke good English and knew me well. I began to realise that Sheila was reading my letters and then telling Jai what was in them. From the beginning, I had been honest with Jai about the many women in different parts of the world with whom I was regularly corresponding (about 50 at that time), and that I had formed an emotional connection with some of them. When Sheila would relay some of the contents of my letters, Jai’s response was to say, ‘I know, he has already told me.’ In my reply to the letter Sheila herself wrote to me, I told her that I sympathised with her and Jai’s situation, and that I also admired the work they were doing. At that time, however, I was receiving just under 4 000 Thai baht a month, which was barely enough to survive on, and so I was unable to help them with money.

  Actually, I was flabbergasted. How could Sheila ask a prisoner for money? I was in prison, for heaven’s sake, surviving on the charity of my family and friends. Surely she had other means of support?

  Sheila had arranged for a company to donate blocks of Philadelphia cream cheese, in their regular foil packaging, to the American prisoners every week. When she visited, she brought a dozen or more packets of cheese with her, which she would give to the surfer guy, her boyfriend, who was supposed to share them with the other foreigners. Instead, he sold the cheese in the building and used the money to buy heroin. So, when I thought about it, Sheila asking me to give her money basically amounted to supporting her junkie boyfriend’s addiction. Before I received Sheila’s letter, I had written to the consular officer telling her about the work Jai and Sheila were doing and asking whether it might be possible for her to give them a list of South African companies operating in Thailand, who might be willing to donate money to their organisation to help prisoners. Now I was sorry I had.

  One day, Jai came to our visit in tears. She told me that Sheila had told her that I was using drugs and also selling them in prison. This was such crap. If anything, I was the one who was trying to discourage the other prisoners from using. I didn’t try to convince Jai otherwise. She was a Thai, and I told her she could find out for herself by asking any of the guards. All the guards knew I played football and was totally anti-drugs.

  For some unfathomable reason, Sheila was doing everything in her power to break up my relationship with Jai. After learning that I had contacted the South African embassy to try and secure some sponsorship from South African companies, Sheila took it upon herself to make an appointment to meet with the consular officer and her husband, and she excluded Jai from this meeting. Immediately I smelt a rat. Three of my enemies sitting around the same table spelt real trouble. Jai was also beginning to see an ugly side to her best friend.

  Back home, towards the end of the month, Joan drove to Pretoria, as she did every month, to hand in my allowance at the Department of Foreign Affairs. This time, she was informed that they were no longer able to help her wire my money to Bangkok. We had been using this system for four years. Puzzled, she asked what the problem was. She was told that they had it on good information that I was dealing drugs in prison. Joan was completely shocked. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She knew in her rational mind that it wasn’t possible, but, because of my history of drugs, she did have her doubts. She almost had another nervous breakdown. She would now have to deposit my allowance directly into Jai’s account, incurring bank transfer fees – all thanks to Sheila. I was really concerned that between Sheila and the embassy they would jeopardise my application for a royal pardon. They had fucked me, good and solid.

  In an email that she sent to me via Jai, Joan pleaded with me to stay out of trouble. No more petitions, she said, and no signing any either.

  For some reason, our daily ration of white rice was changed to a plastic bag of red rice. We didn’t get any explanation, but it made no difference to me, as all my meals were prepared by my Chinese chef, Lenny. The change caused discontent among the other foreigners, though, especially among my African brothers. Okky, the Nigerian who had disliked me ever since I had declined to swap stamps with him, came to me with a petition he had drafted about the rice, which he wanted me to sign. Remembering my sister’s plea, I very politely apologised and explained that under normal circumstances my name and signature would have appeared at the top of any petition but since submitting my royal pardon request my family had advised me not to sign anything. Well, Okky freaked out. He threatened me, saying I should watch my back and warning me that there were ‘many of them’ and that I could very easily walk into a knife. This was the second time I’d almost got into a fight with this guy, first over stamps and now over rice. Fuck you, I thought, but instead I just said, ‘Do what you have to do, and I will do what I have to do.’

  In order to the keep prisoners in line, the authorities had a prisoner class system. There were six classes or categories: excellent, very good, good, fair, bad, very bad. New prisoners were immediately classified as ‘fair’, and twice a year prison officials would review and upgrade your class. To giv
e all prisoners an equal chance, when there was an impending amnesty the prison authorities upgraded you so that you would be in a position to benefit fully, although this was usually done for a fee. Your grade determined your sentence reduction, so guards were notorious for extorting money during this process. For example, if you were in the ‘excellent’ class, you would get a 50 per cent reduction of sentence, while ‘very good’ would see you receive a third, and so on.

  Each class got you different types of privileges. Unless you had ‘excellent’ class, you could forget about a royal pardon, sentence remission or parole. Thai nationals were paroled when they had three years of their sentences remaining; foreigners were not eligible for parole at all. There were also what they call ‘good days’: after serving ten years of your sentence, you got two months’ credit for every year served. These months were then cut from your sentence closer to the time of your release. Here again, however, foreigners were excluded.

  But you could also be downgraded, and one of the things that could make this happen was if you got into a fight.

  I turned and walked away from Okky. The last thing I needed was to get into a fight. Apart from a probable downgrade in prisoner class, I could hear my sister saying those famous words ‘I told you so …’, and that was enough of a deterrent.

  I was still drawing in black ballpoint pen, still in my so-called black period, but I could feel that a shift in my artistic development was imminent. Love has a way of changing one’s energy, and now that I had Jai in my life, maybe that also had something to do with it. I looked forward to her visits every Monday. She would also bring news from home; I no longer needed to wait a month for a letter to arrive.

  After four long years in prison, I really missed my family, especially my niece Keri and Darren, my nephew. One day I caught a butterfly. I had one of the Thais who worked in the shell factory cast it in a Perspex block for me, and I sent it home as a gift for Keri, along with my football jersey for Darren.

  Princess Chulabhorn Mahidol of Thailand was planning a visit to South Africa in February 1999. My sister intended to try to get an audience with the princess so that she could plead my case and request a royal pardon. It was important to keep my cause alive, and it was always at the forefront of our minds that we needed constantly to generate as much publicity as possible. My art was also starting to receive wider interest, and not all the articles in which I featured in South African publications focused solely on my prisoner status. Reproductions of some of my pieces had appeared in the Sunday Times and in magazines back home.

  August was the month scheduled for my annual contact visit, on the 12th. This time it was going to be different for me: it would be with Jai. For the first time in a long while, I would physically be in the presence of a woman other than my sister. When you have been deprived of physical contact with the opposite sex for an indefinite period, you become highly vulnerable. Prison romances were not uncommon, although it was difficult for me to understand why a woman in the free world would pursue a relationship with a prisoner. Nevertheless, my relationship with Jai did wonders for my spirit. The compassion she displayed was extraordinary. She made me feel wholesome. She renewed my sense of worth. She was every prisoner’s dream. And, at this time in my life, she was a lifeline to the outside world.

  The night before the contact visit I hardly slept at all. In just over 12 hours I would come face to face with this woman who had come into my life at a time when I was at my lowest, and who had made me feel like a man again. I had not been intimate with a woman for over four years, and there was a strong physical attraction between Jai and me. It’s hard to describe the excitement I felt, and I knew Jai felt the same way.

  On 12 August we were seated at a table for four, but we had eyes only for each other. We held hands and talked like excited teenagers. All around us were prisoners and their families. The guards were mainly posted at the entrance, where all visitors were thoroughly checked, but they didn’t appear to be overly concerned about what was going on in the visit area. Jai had brought a big paper bag filled with foodstuffs, and we positioned it on the table so that it shielded us slightly from view. We kissed and touched each other. My entire body reacted to her touch, but we restrained ourselves. It was awkward being intimate with so many people around, but even so it was still very exciting.

  My visit with Jai was over almost as soon as it began. All the kissing and touching left me as frustrated as when I masturbated, and my groin ached. All I could do was fantasise about what it would have been like if we had gone all the way. A prison visit room was not exactly the place I would have wanted to be intimate with my girlfriend, but right now that was the best I could hope for.

  Over the years, depending on who was in charge, gambling in prison would be either allowed or prohibited. In 1998, every building had opened the upstairs section of the cells and prisoners were allowed to gamble there during the day. We called this area ‘the casino’. Prisoners could also pay money to be allowed to stay in their cells during the day, where they were free to sleep all day or generally do whatever they pleased. Some engaged in sexual activities with the lady-boys. Condoms were readily available from our first-aid room, where prisoners were also treated for minor ailments.

  Ever since my miraculous massage, and as a result of changing the position I sat in to draw, my back had recovered nicely, and I was once again jogging and playing football. In the afternoons on the lawn near the front gate, I played takraw with Arnut, a Thai friend. He had served 12 years for murder and was expecting to be released any day. He spent most of his days exercising and preparing to go home.

  Every building had its Thai Bad Boys – Mafia-style youngsters, who ranged in age from 21 to 35. These guys were fearless. Around October one of the Bad Boys ripped off a Chinese heroin dealer to the tune of about 80 000 Thai baht worth of drugs. He paid half of the money to the guards for protection and smuggled the other half out of the prison to his family. For his own protection, he was locked in a cell upstairs for 24 hours. The guards were completely oblivious to what he was actually doing in his cell – which was slowly sawing through the bars with a loose-blade hacksaw he’d taken from the workshop. Nobody knew this except for those who were planning to escape with him.

  One morning, Arnut was called for a visit. On his return, I could see he was very upset. I said, ‘Mee arrai?’ (What happened?) The police had come, apparently, and he was now being charged with another murder, a murder he had not committed. Worst of all, the police informed him that they had a witness who had implicated him. From the next day, all Arnut did was jog around the building for hours on end. Then, around 27 December, he called me aside and asked if I had a set of new clothing for him. I was excited on his behalf, thinking that maybe he was going home after all. I packed a couple of things for him, and when I handed them over he asked me to take a walk with him. As we walked, he told me about the escape that had been planned.

  The break-out was set for New Year’s Eve. Did I want to go with him, he asked. This was the type of information I didn’t want to know about. Escaping is something that regularly goes through every prisoner’s mind, but planning and executing an escape is another story. I toyed with the idea, but, as a foreigner, without outside help the risks were too high, and getting away with it was also highly unlikely. The watchtowers were manned by armed guards, and the chances of getting shot were very real. If I risked it, I would become a fugitive, have to get a new identity, and be running for the rest of my life. As much as I wanted to go, I knew I couldn’t. The odds against me were too high.

  I tried to talk Arnut out of escaping, but he told me he couldn’t face another life sentence.

  On the morning of 1 January 1999 our cell doors were not opened at the usual time of 6.40am. Something was amiss. As 7.30 approached there was still no sign of the guards to open up. All we could hear was the murmur of conversation echoing from the other cells. Then it was well past 8am. Nobody could understand the delay. Eventually, at 8.45
the guards opened our cells and news of the escape spread like lightning. Five Thais had got out after sawing through the bars of the cell upstairs. It seemed that they had escaped at different intervals. One of them had been caught near the temple, another in the hospital, and a third had barely made it over the wall in Building 2. My friend Arnut and one other had scaled the perimeter wall and successfully escaped into the night. Needless to say, I pretended I knew nothing about it, but, when I was walking around, some of the Thais pointed their fingers at me, saying ‘Puen kun’ (your friend) in a joking manner. I replied ‘Pom mai loo jok’ (I don’t know him).

  On the night of the escape, certain individuals had changed rooms; some had even gone into the corridor to gamble in the casino. These individuals, along with the room chief, were very badly beaten by the guards. Everybody was aware of my friendship with one of the escapees, so I was surprised I wasn’t asked any questions but very glad about it. The gamblers in the prison had made odds about when someone would be caught and who it might be.

  Never before had anybody escaped from Bangkwang Central Prison. The Big Tiger was not so secure after all. In the ensuing days of the investigation, various officials from the Department of Corrections and Ministry of Justice and even TV news crews visited our building. When this happened, all prisoners were locked in the factories and dining room. There was going to be hell to pay, that was for sure, and many heads would roll. Our Building Chief was removed, for a start, and the officer in charge of the building was transferred to another prison. The Director of the prison was also eventually removed.