Daniel Holmes: A Memoir From Malta's Prison: From a cage, on a rock, in a puddle...

by Daniel Holmes

  I wrote hundreds of poems; over a thousand Instagram posts, which I dictated to my parents over the phone and they then uploaded; short stories; flash fiction; and four full-length manuscripts.

  Towards the end of my stay, I realised the momentous task ahead of me. I had diaries, notebooks, reams of A4 paper – full of notes on what life is like inside Malta’s prison. Millions upon millions of words. And I had to condense all this in a few thousand words to do justice to myself, the people who died, other prisoners, guards and the whole system. I am fully aware that I cannot let down the people who stay locked inside while I am free. I have a duty. An honour of speaking for so many.

  I never had the intention to write a book, or to use my pen to take revenge against the Maltese authorities that wronged me, no. What I wanted was to share my experience with readers to give them a deep insight into the life of people held captive, for crimes that should have never branded them a criminal.

  I want readers, after they’ve read this, to question modern day imprisonment. Does it work? I do not know but when I see no fall in crime statistics, but rather an increase, I certainly think that incarceration is not a solution. The world has changed, people have changed, crime has changed, so why have our prisons not?

  I am flooded by numbers, haunted by their figures. The time that’s passed, the lives scratched out. I began processing my notes from the first day I was freed. The years of paperwork, my life, the sadness. The 2,854 days I have lost, away from my loved ones. At the same time rediscovering myself, knowing my children and making my wife smile. I processed everything while re-integrating into a world that had rejected me.

  I was daunted by the task ahead, but I see a day in the future when I will be able to close the book on this chapter of my life.

  It will only happen when others open it.

  A day in the life of an inmate

  A typical prison day begins at 6.30 a.m. when the cell door is opened and a morning death check is done. Prisoners must immediatetly respond to a bonġu (good morning) from the guards – they need to make sure you’re alive, that’s why it’s called a “death check”.

  The door is then locked again until 7.45 a.m. when cells are opened to the shrill blast of the first whistle of the day, and the first fall-in of the day.

  Fall-in, essentially requires inmates to stand in front of their cells and respond with a loud “Sir!” when their names are called out. A double whistle blast signals the end of fall-in. Prisoners then collect their one-per-day 500ml carton of milk and a cheese or ham sandwich. You have to be quick if you want breakfast, because sometimes those sandwiches and milk run out fast.

  Breakfast is the time when you can place orders for telephone cards, and food for the next day. An officer will stand in the Division shouting out the menu. “Spaghetti Bolognese for lunch!”; “Burger and chips for dinner!” over and over. So, in truth, you’re already sick at the sound of next day’s food before you’ve even seen it. Everyone tries to shout their orders back at him but each inmate has to jostle and push his way to get to the officer, as he takes the order in writing. As you can imagine, there’s no queue system. I found that it’s always better to wait until last.

  In addition to the daily menu, inmates can choose from a few other different options such as tuna salad or omelette or fried eggs with chips and ham or cheese, or corned beef. I spent one year, eating tuna salad for both lunch and dinner. Now even the very thought of tuna is torment.

  There’s also the so-called “special diet”. The options here would be either a nameless baked white fish with marrow and carrot, rice and potatoes for lunch; or a baked half a chicken (which looks like a pigeon) with marrow and carrot, rice and potatoes for dinner. Both choices taste terribly bland and are always undercooked but both make a nice change if you add them to a packet of noodles (€0.80), ordered from the tuck shop. To get the special diet option you have to get a doctor’s note. It’s usually enough if you tell him that you’re bored with the usual options or that you’re feeling slightly overweight.

  The menu hardly ever changes and unfortunately, fresh vegetables are rarely used. Everything is either frozen, overcooked or served raw, never al dente.

  Admittedly, for special occasions like Christmas and some public holidays they do try to come up with different menus and even try to create a party vibe. But as a former chef, I feel that each choice may well be worse than the last. A favourite dish here is “cube roll”, which is a cut of rib-eye or of very thin, tough steak depending on who your butcher is. Presumably from a cow, but I’ve never heard of a cut of beef called cube roll (surely a contradiction in itself), but I’m assured that’s what the cut is called. I may be biased, as most people do seem to enjoy this meat.

  At around 8.30 a.m. there is the first call for methadone and pills, and you hear the officer’s loud, raucous shouts of “Pirmli! Pirmli! Come for treatment, medication!” This is followed by the hurried rush of people to collect mouthfuls of multicoloured medicines. A lot of inmates are on some sort of medication or another. Prisoners find it very easy to obtain Valium and other medication, as anything goes to keep the inside population quiet.

  By now most of the Division is up. Inmates are free to work or mingle.

  Lunch is served at 11 a.m. and inmates can eat at tables in the Division or in their cells. Food is served in cardboard containers with plastic cutlery. No finesse.

  At noon, cells are locked. Inmates have the choice to be locked in, or out, for 20 minutes. Whistles would then blast at 12.20 p.m. when another fall-in is made, then inmates are locked in the cells until 2 p.m. Many inmates use this time to nap or watch a film after their lunch and the morning’s medication. I loved this quiet time with no interruptions and I mostly used it to read or write.

  The officers also take the opportunity for some shut-eye in the guard room while the Division is at semi-peace; although it’s never really quiet, as you can always hear banging, shouting, or blaring music and television. Inmates on cleaning duty used to come in with their mops at this time, but after a heated argument one day, it was decided that everyone, including the cleaners, would be locked up at this time, which obviously means that less cleaning gets done.

  Of course, there’s always a few exceptions to the rules, so there’s always a few people with special permission for their cells to stay open. In the main these would be Maltese nationals.

  At 2 p.m. cells are unlocked and yet another fall-in is made, and inmates are again allowed to mingle freely.

  At about 2.30 p.m., the call of “Pirmli! Pirmli! Come for treatment, medication!” echoes around the Division once again, quelling more moods and voices.

  At 3.45 p.m. cells are locked again. This time, inmates can choose either to stay in or go out of their cells, but once you decide you have to stick to it because the cell doors are locked until 5 p.m., when there’s another fall-in.

  Between 5.30 p.m. and 6 p.m. food boxes are brought in from the kitchen in plastic boxes on trolleys, by two inmates. The prison has heated food trolleys with “St Luke’s” stamped on them, presumably because they came from the old hospital, but they were never used and lay under layers of dust. This means that as the food makes its journey from the kitchen, which is in the old part of the prison, to the new Divisions, it is usually cold.

  A loud bang on Plexiglass signals the arrival of the food. There is a mad rush as inmates collect a box each and take handfuls of bread.

  Usually, once a week, an orange or apple (apparently cut from trees in the President’s Palace) is also given out. On rare occasions we have seen a banana or some watermelon, but this is very rare and if you’re not first in the queue, you won’t even get a whiff of the fruit.

  At around 7 p.m. the last medication of the day arrives to another volley of shouts at high decibels. Inmates run off to collect jars of liquids and pills, most not even knowing what they’re taking.

  The doors are locked at 8 p.m. but again inmates can stay out if they wish, until the l
ast fall-in of the day at 8.20 p.m. The final check is done by the night officer walking around each cell shouting “Bonswa!” (goodnight). If an inmate gives no response, his door is opened and he is checked to make sure he’s OK. Mostly a lack of response means that the inmate is too lazy, medicated or dispirited to shout “Goodnight”.

  That is a typical day inside prison. It never changes. This is the beating heart of a day in prison: routine, routine, routine. If it seems a little boring and repetitive on paper, try to imagine it day after day. I spent 2,854 days just like this. Many other prisoners have done countless more. This is a country where sentences of up to 25 years are regularly handed out for crimes such as drug trafficking and importation, often to first-time offenders.

  I think what got to us most were the whistles and the fall-ins. The whistles always seem to pierce the soul and rattle the head; the fall-ins which, depending on the officer’s reading level, can be painfully slow. Sometimes, when a particularly slow officer reads the names, and gets to the end of the list, it’s celebrated with claps, wolf whistles and cheers from all the inmates, leading to an angry and embarrassed officer and more barrages of whistles from the other officers. This is one of our few joys, when it happens. When equilibrium in the system tilts.

  Similarly, the calls for medication and methadone can really be relentless. One officer had such a booming voice that his calls vibrated inside your head and made the teeth chatter. His voice would echo in each cell through the intercom system creating a stereophonic sound, chasing you wherever you are, shortly followed by a deafening stampede of excited inmates as they’d rush to collect their bounty.

  Of course, most things annoy you in prison, but over time you tend to take it all in your stride and become numb to the damning ordeal. It’s a way of keeping sane.

  The prison Division is a collective of minds, and those minds often work like bees in a hive. If someone feels low, depressed or stressed, this will spread throughout the Division. The same happens on the very rare happy occasions: the mood can be uplifted for a while. The atmosphere in prison is almost an organism in itself and people are always on edge waiting for the mood and spirit to change, which can happen at a moment’s notice.

  That place and the people there became my life. On a few occasions, when I’d finish from a full day at court, I’d find myself saying, “Take me home.” Even though I knew that my heart was outside with my wife, children and family in my true home, in Wales. But in a strange way the cell brought me comfort and a chance to escape the madness of the rest of the prison.

  I spent almost eight years within those walls and inside a cell. That’s more or less 16 hours each day locked inside, alone, which amounts to 47,000 hours inside that 6m2 area. It’s no wonder that I felt that I was becoming institutionalised. Even now, solitude suits me. Which is hard for a family man, but does go hand-in-hand with writing. Life in there felt like real life and the life outside felt fake, like watching a film on TV.

  It was so daunting rejoining society and family. Now people, even my family, are strangers to me, in every way. They have evolved with the world; I have been abandoned by it.

  When I talk to them, they hear someone confused, with simplistic, childish notions of the world, of right and wrong. They hear someone who’s angry and hurting; a victim of injustice. They say I’m not a people’s person, when in reality I envy their normality, a normality I cannot find.

  Every day in prison you’d hear inmates saying, “I can’t wait to get out,” but in truth, deep down, most are apprehensive and even scared of not knowing how to cope once they’re outside. The separation severs us.

  In there, as much as society is protected from us, we’re protected from it. Money worries, food, accommodation, daily needs and expectations from family, jobs … all these just don’t exist, and after living without any responsibility for so long it’s really hard to cope afterwards.

  The whole system of locking people away is designed to keep them away from society, but the Maltese prison does nothing to help with the correction or the reintegration of offenders back into society. Just lock people up, throw away the key, forget all about them and leave them to rot; if they die, that’s good because it saves the state some money.

  I fail to see that this is justice for society. I felt so much resentment and anger by the experience the courts, police and prison had made me and my loved ones go through, that I still have to fight harmful feelings off daily. I struggle with dependency and coping issues.

  If I did not have love around me, to help me each day and assist in my healing, those negative feelings would consume me and my life.

  Welcome to prison

  One of the first things I remember about prison, is coming back from court in a beaten-up van, hurtling along broken roads to flashing lights and wailing sirens, with the judge’s sentence still echoing in my ears. The journey from the courthouse to jail is a short ten-minuter. We soon arrived with an abrupt stop outside the Corradino Correctional Facility (CCF).

  A vast, ominous green gate slowly and mechanically opened to reveal a vast enclosure at the bottom of which there was another heavy gate. The prison van pulled in slowly and the outer gate behind us started closing, slowly and mechanically. The first feelings of confinement. There is a moment, when the outer gate slams shut, just before the inner one opens, and you’re locked in a van, inside a small space, within a prison, on an island, and you can feel the whole world being locked away behind you, with a metallic clank and a sense of finality.

  Then just in front of you, the inside gate starts rolling open, revealing what will be your new home. As the van pulls into this new world, the voices blur and a stark ugliness hits you like a ton of bricks. It feels like being suddenly pushed into freezing water, and you can’t breathe.

  You’re led from the van to Search Rooms, and on to Registration offices, still in a daze. There, blinding photos are taken and repetitive questions are asked, and as you’re dragged along from one room to the next, you feel you’re losing bits of your old self and picking up bits of your new life along the way.

  Then you’re marched along to your allocated Division, clutching your bed-pack of one pillow, one sheet, one pillowcase, one blanket, one towel (about the size of a door mat and as absorbent as one), one bar of soap and one toilet roll. All the while your brain is struggling to take in all these new bleak surroundings, different voices, different languages, and … different smells. Oh boy, the smells.

  A prison has its own unique stench. You can smell cigarette smoke, hundreds of unwashed bodies, dirty feet and rubbish. But you can also smell depression and fear, loss and sorrow, and each and every odour is inescapable at all times.

  By the time you finally get to your Division and you’re pushed in your cell, your head is spinning. You’re locked inside and told to wait for the doctor. As soon as the door locks, the weight of the world drifts away, leaving you alone and then a sinking feeling hits your stomach, as you realise you’ve lost control of your life. You look around you and you see a filthy mattress, stained and ripped; a dirty sink with black rings; and the previous inmate’s remains of soap.

  The last occupant knew he was leaving. He didn’t bother cleaning the cell. There is all sorts of rubbish, dirt and grime: empty water bottles, lighters, coffee stains. You tentatively lift the cracked toilet seat to reveal a stench of ammonia and defecation. You press your hands on your head and wonder how life could ever have got this bad.

  You snap out of your trance when you hear the peephole in the door slide open and you see pairs of eyes staring at you.

  “Where are you from?”, “Who are you?”, “What did you do?”, “Have you got any tobacco or drugs?”, “Do you know this guy or that guy?” Thoughts race through your head trying to recall every snippet you ever heard of things that happen in prisons. Fear and distress overwhelm you.

  Welcome to prison.

  After a while, when you’ve cleaned your cell the best you can, put up some pictures (if
you were lucky enough to retrieve one from your possessions to remind you painfully of outside) using toothpaste which incidentally makes for very good Blu-tack. Once you’ve made your bed, you’re taken to see the doctor. He only wants to test you for illegal drugs and prescribe you with legal ones – an irony I’ve never understood – and then you’re escorted back to the Division. The cell door is left open, for you to meet the locals.

  You seem to meet everyone on that first day: they tell you all their stories, all their problems, sentences, lives and philosophies. It’s impossible to take it all in, and most of it goes right over your head. Your mind has no moment to think. You get pulled into prison politics. “Don’t talk to that one”; “That one’s a grass”; “That one’s a bum”; “Do you have a cigarette?”

  People are too eager to help you: “I’ll get you water”; “I’ll get you food”; “Do you need milk?”; “Shall I make you a coffee?”; “Do you have anyone outside?”; “Do you take drugs?”; “Do you have a cigarette?” Everyone has an ulterior motive for everything, as they see the new one as a source of either income or amusement.

  You battle through the first day, and by the time you’re locked up for the night, you’re dizzy and tired. You feel a sense of relief that comes over you when you’re finally locked away from madness. It’s only when the door closes and the clank of the lock and key snaps you back to reality, that you realise that you are totally alone.

  Every day after the first gets a little easier, you gain more confidence in the people around you and your surroundings: how to treat some, how to treat others, and to expect nothing from the guards, the system or the authority.