Dragons & Butterflies

by Shani Krebs

  When we heard about this new policy, I immediately wrote to the embassy, asking them to write in turn to the Department of Corrections to ask them not to move me. Apart from anything else, the distance from Bangkok would make it difficult for anybody to visit the foreign prisoners.

  In April 1999 Nelson Mandela had stepped down as the first democratically elected president of South Africa, and in June of that year Thabo Mbeki took over the reins. I had a brilliant idea. Businessman and philanthropist Bertie Lubner, who was already actively engaged with my case back home, and was being an incredible help to my sister in her efforts, was a personal friend of Mandela’s. Through Bertie I thought I would try to get Mandela to twist Mbeki’s arm to write a letter of support for me. It was a faint hope, and deep down I knew it. I don’t really know what I was thinking. Who was I, anyway? All I had done was send my own long letter to the great statesman and paint his portrait. I had heard that the portrait hung on a wall in President Mandela’s house, and I also knew that my letter had been put into his hands, thanks to Bertie. I realised that a letter of endorsement from the new South African president was a long shot, and that a letter from Mandela himself was an even longer one. I was wrong on the first count, but not on the second.

  In order for me to be creative, I need some sort of a routine, and since my return to Building 2, I had had no desire to draw. Instead, every day I would spend hours walking. I knew I would get back to my art but I wasn’t ready yet. In the meantime, I arranged, for 2 000 Thai baht, for the carpenter to build me a table with one big sliding drawer and a locker on the side. Because he could only do odd jobs on the weekend, it was going to take a month, but this suited me fine. I moved into my new house. The old man welcomed me, but at first he was not very friendly. With time, however, and as we got to know each other, we became like family.

  While I was in solitary I had painted about 50 pictures, all of them on A4-size paper because of the lack of space. Everything had seemed confined and restricted – probably because it was. Even the imagination has its boundaries, I suppose. Now that I was in a different space and felt freer to move around, I ordered A2 paper.

  A woman by the name of Norma, who helped and supported some of the ladies at the women’s prison, came to visit me, and she offered to take my paintings back to South Africa. She was a godsend and a true Christian, and I couldn’t have been more grateful. I was constantly amazed at how helpful people were to me.

  When I got out of solitary, there was a new foreigner in Building 2. He was an F-16 jet fighter mechanic from Norway and we became instant friends. Kjell was well over six foot tall and looked like an American footballer. He had been arrested in November 1987 for purchasing about 55 ‘muscle-growth’ pills, which turned out to be a drug called yaba (basically methamphetamine mixed with caffeine). He was sentenced to 33 years. Around February/March of 1988, the Norwegian foreign and justice ministers came to Thailand to negotiate a prisoner transfer treaty. They even visited my friend in Lard Yao prison, where he was being held. In June 1988 his prime minister came to sign the treaty. All this took place within a period of seven months. Denmark had also entered into a treaty with Thailand, and Sweden had also signed one. When I heard these stories it was hard not to feel bitter.

  On 15 October 1999 I turned 40. It was my sixth birthday in prison.

  My brother-in-law always said life begins at 40, but I don’t know about that. To me it sounded quite old. Nevertheless I felt strong and fit. I weighed 80kg, I didn’t smoke and I had given up drugs. I might have been getting older but my life had also taken a turn for the better.

  During one of the embassy visits, I’d expressed a concern to the consular officer about how, in the impending 1999 amnesty to celebrate the King’s birthday in December, if drug cases were cut by half, my sentence would be reduced from 40 years to 20. But this would mean that I would be transferred back to the Klong Prem prison complex, and put in Lard Yao, the section that held prisoners with short sentences. I did not want to go there, I told her. Lard Yao was like the Wild West, something my Norwegian friend had confirmed in the conversations we’d had. Fights were part of everyday life there and one could easily kill somebody or be killed. If this happened, it would mean another life sentence for me. I told her that I needed the embassy’s assistance to make sure I was not transferred there.

  After what I had thought was a reasonable and logical conversation between us, the consular officer went and reported me to Foreign Affairs, telling them that I had threatened to kill the embassy staff in Bangkok. Talk about a miscommunication! You would think the embassy had more important stuff to deal with, like concentrating their efforts on working towards a treaty with Thailand. I had to defend myself and to clarify what I had actually said and the reasons I’d had for saying it, so I wrote a lengthy letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, which began as follows:

  Dear Sir

  It was with much concern that it has come to my notice that certain allegations have been made against my person by your Bangkwang staff to third parties. It is my strong hope that the underlying cause is based on a misunderstanding, as otherwise the innuendo that I would blackmail the South African Government by threatening to commit a murder unless I was helped by the Government, would be quite shocking. Particularly for argument’s sake, if I did have such violent intentions, what would it really benefit me? It would seem that the person who is the originator of this slander must have read too many detective novels. You can rest assured that I am not a violent person and wish to be taken as such. Hereunder I would like to acquaint you with what was really said and which was subsequently twisted and quoted out of context …

  I took the opportunity to say a whole lot more, repeating many of the pleas I had made so many times before about the conditions for foreigners in Thai prisons and about the treatment we received. I made a number of very clear and reasonable proposals, among other things, regarding the frequency of embassy visits (which had now been cut back from monthly to only three times a year), medical assistance, pastoral care, the daily allowance for prisoners and the seemingly stalled prisoner transfer treaty between South Africa and Thailand. I held up for comparison what other countries were doing for their citizens.

  Needless to say, I didn’t receive any reply. Everything we tried fell on deaf ears. I think the furthest my letters got was probably into the nearest dustbin, but I refused to give up. It was a sad state of affairs that the fate of South African prisoners in Thailand remained an unsolved matter.

  My sister had managed to raise enough money for me to buy Mohammed’s house. Bertie Lubner, along with Dennis Levy from the Chevra Kadisha, had contributed towards this. I was discovering what a shrewd businessman Mohammed was. He had been playing with everybody’s money. One of the missionaries who used to visit the prison, whose name was Cosmos, had lent Mohammed 30 000 Thai baht. After he had been released from Bangkwang, and while he was awaiting deportation, Cosmos went to visit Mohammed, who told him about our deal. He also told Cosmos that I would settle the 30-grand debt. Back in the prison, I sold the foreign currency to one of the Chinese, which enabled me to settle some of his friend’s debts, but not all of them. One of Mohammed’s closest friends was a guy named Chuka, to whom he owed 24 000 Thai baht. Mohammed had not included Chuka’s name on the list of people I had to pay, and there were others. In fact, Mohammed left me with a huge headache. Everything he left me cost me more than if I had bought it from someone else. Cosmos came to visit me to discuss the debt. I told him I was sorry, but I couldn’t pay him. Mohammed just had too many debts inside the prison, and these were guys I had to live with and whose faces I saw every day. It was not right that Mohammed had ripped them off, but paying them first was the decent thing to do. I told Cosmos my hands were tied. Being the gentleman that he was, Cosmos saw my dilemma and he accepted the situation. In the meantime, I tried my best to settle each person’s debt, even if I settled only part of it. Some I couldn’t pay at all, but, as everyone in prison knows
, that’s a risk you take when you lend money.

  I couldn’t wait to move into my new house. Once my table was built, I planned to get into some serious painting and also to devote more time to studying the Torah. Having a house was a rare privilege, but it also cost a lot of money. Now that I was back in the general population again, when I looked at my time in solitary I realised what a terrible ordeal it had actually been. Solitary confinement is not a healthy environment, especially for one’s mind. Being confined in such a small space with a bunch of psychopaths and drug addicts had in fact been really tough on me. In solitary, you were a prisoner within a prison’s prison. I didn’t ever want to go back there. I had to learn to control myself, to stop trying to change people. I knew that my anger stemmed mainly from the people with whom I had been forced to coexist. These were the worst criminals imaginable. It wasn’t that I saw myself as better than anyone else; it was more about having morals and principles. It didn’t matter whether you were in prison or outside – there was still a standard one had to keep. I have to say that it wasn’t the Thais so much as the foreigners who always seemed to be the problem.

  Initially, after his release, Mohammed wrote me three letters from the Immigration Detention Centre (IDC), although I never really expected to hear from him again, nor that he would keep his promise of helping me with my royal pardon. He had spent eight years in this hellhole, and I was sure that the last place he wanted to think about now was prison or anything or anyone associated with it. He was starting a new life as a free man. I bore him no resentment. I was happy for him.

  We were now down to 14 in our cell. Lenny our cook had been moved to another prison, so I was eating with another Chinese guy, who was also from Hong Kong. His name was Lim. Most Hong Kong guys spoke reasonable English and seemed more educated than those from mainland China.

  Since getting out of solitary, and in the month leading to the December amnesty, my class had been upgraded from ‘very good’ to ‘excellent’. Rumour had it that there was a 50-50 chance that drug cases would be included in this amnesty. I felt confident that we would get it. The day approached that all of us prisoners were so eagerly awaiting: 5 December 1999, the King’s birthday.

  Calamity! Drug cases were excluded from the amnesty. We were shattered. I could have kicked myself. Why hadn’t I petitioned the government? One of my reasons, I knew, was that after having been in Building 10, I’d made a private decision to stop fighting the system. It felt like a losing battle anyway. I also had my own house now, and the truth was that I was comfortable and enjoying my privileges and I didn’t want anything to mess that up. I was also waiting for an answer to my royal pardon application. Over and above all this, I had become somewhat complacent in the knowledge that some powerful businessmen in South Africa were among those who were working towards my release. In fact, I was expecting to go home soon. Plans were being made for my arrival at the airport in Johannesburg.

  Dreams are what kept our hopes alive. When they are dashed, as ours were on 5 December, you harden your heart just a little bit more.

  Over the preceding months I had begun to cut ties with many of my female correspondents. Jai was my girlfriend and we were almost two years into our relationship, which was complicated to say the least.

  It was during this time that I connected with another woman. Her name was Robyn. She had so much compassion, not only for me but also for all of the South Africans who were locked away in Thailand. She got her father involved in putting pressure on the government on our behalf. They even visited the women’s prison and provided financial support there.

  After meeting Robyn, my feelings for Jai began to change. I no longer envisaged a future with her. Unfortunately, Robyn was married, but I didn’t really have any expectations anyway and so I never felt bad about my relationship with her. I was behind bars and could not be a threat in any real way. People come into our lives for reasons that are sometimes beyond our understanding. Perhaps developing feelings for Robyn was only to make me realise that Jai, a Thai woman, was not for me. If Jai met somebody in the outside world, I thought that I would encourage her to make a life for herself with that person. I did not want her to wait for me. My sentence was 40 years. Heaven only knew when I would get out. In any event I never made Jai any promises. I was indebted to her, there was no doubt about that, but the love I felt for her began to evolve into a strong friendship instead. For me anyway, Jai began to feel more like a sister than a girlfriend.

  The parents of one of the South African girls in the women’s prison came to visit her and they brought a parcel for me from Robyn. It was given to Jai to pass on to me and she went and opened it. It contained a backgammon set, a sweatshirt and a letter, which Jai read. This became obvious at our next visit, when she told me that she suspected Robyn and I were more than just friends. I felt terribly guilty because it was true. I couldn’t lie, so I confessed that I did have strong feelings for her. Jai was on the verge of tears. I tried to comfort her by saying that nothing had changed, she was still my best friend. I tried to explain that my needs were great and that one woman could not fulfil them all. In the end, Jai promised to protect our secrets and to continue supporting and visiting me, and Robyn and I continued to correspond, sometimes writing as many as two letters a week to each other. Hers were often 30 pages long.

  Not even a month after I had confessed to Jai my feelings for Robyn, I received an aerogram from Robyn in which she very diplomatically told me that she wished to cut ties with me and that she was going to stop writing. From the tone of her letter, I could see that they were not her words, even though it was her handwriting. I was bewildered. I could not understand what had happened, but my sixth sense was telling me that somehow Jai was responsible. After that, my relationship with Jai took strain. She didn’t trust me any more and I didn’t trust her. I knew she was going through my parcels and mail from my family and friends. She became unreliable to the point of lying. In a way, though, I understood. I had hurt her and now she was paying me back. All the same, it was hard to get over Robyn, and I was upset that I had been the cause of her ceasing to support the other prisoners.

  Even in prison my relationships with women were complicated.

  Chapter 13

  The Battle Continues

  By early 2000, I was painting in different media and developing a diversity of styles, both abstract and realistic. My subject matter varied from nudes to portraits. This was more than likely a reflection of my state of mind, which was all over the place. My family had increased my allowance and my good friend Edna in England was still sending me £100 a month, so I was never short of anything. Most importantly, I was blessed with good health. However, I still felt restless. It was the not knowing that ate away at me, the not knowing of when I would be released. It was constantly on my mind. My art was my only salvation. On either side of my new house I had rowdy neighbours. In order to escape the noise and to focus on what I was doing, I would transcend the monotony of a prisoner’s dreary existence and enter the spiritual realm where silence became a symphony of calm and peace. There I was among the angels. From above, I watched myself drawing at the table the carpenter had made for me, oblivious to my surroundings. In my mind, only I existed. I imagined that, when we die, we go to a place just like that, where there is no sound. We listen with our eyes, and our hearts are our voices. No words need to be spoken.

  One morning I was sitting around at the gym, which was situated near the top end of the building next to a small section cordoned off with barbed wire that was known as the soy (punishment cells). There were four of these cells. They had no toilets, electricity or running water. Being locked inside must have been sheer hell. The cells were used to punish prisoners for insubordination or to house those who had committed murder inside the prison or who had attempted to escape. Over the years, it was mainly Thai inmates who were kept there, in what I can only describe as the most inhumane conditions possible.

  There were also four houses close to w
here I was sitting. Everything was open, and you could see from one house into another. One of them, in fact, was the second chief’s office. Only a low wall separated them from one another. There was a new guy who had arrived in our building about three weeks before, and I’d heard he was a brilliant artist. I hadn’t met or even seen him yet. So anyway, there I was, sitting around not doing anything, and I saw this guy walking towards me. In his hand was a rolled-up piece of paper. I greeted him and asked if I could see what he had drawn. He was very polite. He unrolled the paper and showed me his picture. Well, I was totally amazed. It was a portrait of an old Thai man, half-finished. I had seen some of the other Thai artists use the same medium, but I had never seen anything as perfect or as beautiful as this painting. It looked like a photo. I introduced myself as ‘Aleksander’. The new guy’s name was Chai Long. Apparently he was in for murder and had got a life sentence. He mentioned that he had heard of me and said he’d like to see my work. I was excited. The medium that he used was carbon powder – fine granules of crushed charcoal. He used a variety of Chinese brushes prepared for different applications.

  Before prison I had never heard of this medium. I discovered that Chai Long had a degree in Fine Art and that he had taught art as a profession. He had mastered this ancient Chinese technique from the great grand master of Thailand, who was now in his late eighties. Chai Long was a master himself. I wasted no time in inviting him to come and stay in my house. In return, he agreed to teach me to use carbon powder. I arranged with the carpenter to measure out the space next to my work area and I ordered another table, this one for my new friend.

  Chai Long came from a poor family in southern Thailand. He was married and had a son. Through painting for prisoners, he was able to support his family on the outside. I took an instant liking to the guy. We were the same age and were both Librans. He was humble and well-mannered and never said a bad word about anybody. Once the table was ready, he moved in. I watched him work and he tutored me. One advantage I had over Chai Long was that I could draw very well. In my first attempt, I mixed media, using Bic ballpoint pen and charcoal. I was a stickler for detail and quite fancied the picture I had done, but Chai Long was not impressed. To him it was sacrilege. I had violated the sacrosanctity of carbon powder. As a rule, one never mixed carbon powder with another medium – not even pencil, he emphasised. The powder had a life of its own.