Again I felt a fire touch and spread against my nape, but this time I closed my eyes and lingered in the feeling. My trivial situation folded within me. “I am the captain of my ship, I am the master of my fate,” and it is I who floundered myself upon this rock.
It was Monday morning. Another day had begun and I was grateful for that.
*
A few months later. Day 2,810. July 31, 2018. 8.05 a.m. It’s Tuesday morning just after fall-in. All those dates and numbers mean little in hell. Last night was torture, sciatica kept me in pain all night, even when I was asleep. The heat and the humidity were unrelenting, all night entangled in sheets and drenched in sweat, the fan only seemed to blow hot, stale air at me.
Around 4 a.m. I was woken up by something scurrying on my thigh, I turned the light on and almost fell out of bed in my immobilised, pain-riddled form. Thinking it was a mosquito, I began looking for it until a movement in the twisted sheets caught my attention. It was no mosquito.
There, staring back at me was a huge cockroach. I shuddered, it moved. We played some cat and mouse, although with my back I felt more the mouse. Finally, after 20 minutes I bested him. It measured over 2 inches, 5.4cm along its length. It took three buckets of water before it finally flushed away down the toilet. Sleep was hard then, dreams were worse.
Now after fall-in, the Division looks like a set from the Walking Dead. Men turned into zombies with lack of sleep and dilapidating heat and humidity. Most of the other lads had cockroaches visit last night. They must have been driven from their dark dens by the heat too.
The people around me all look so gaunt and drawn, sickly and tired. Coffee and cigarettes are eagerly swallowed. Music begins. Voices raised. Medication is near. A few, me included, drift back into their cells. The pain in my back puts me down flat on the cool floor. I’ve forgotten about the roaches for now. My sciatica has been playing up for the last few days. What can I do, go to the doctor? I laugh inside.
If I write to see him, I’ll waste a day and I’ll just be given a Panadol – their cure for everything. No, I’ll wait, like always a day or two, maybe a week, the humidity and these beds mean it’s something I’m used to dealing with now. Just coping and waiting. I’m surprisingly good at that.
It’s just another day, I only have 45 left. I can’t say that aloud. Most of the boys in this Division will end up with a life sentence. Some have got it already. Some have done 31 years or 17 years or 15 years. My eight years is hardly worth mentioning. Suddenly even the pain in my back seems unmentionable. What do I know of pain, misery, loss? I am a part-timer in this world, I will get out.
This doesn’t make me feel better, thoughts of men rotting behind bars will never leave me. They scar my soul. The noise of the Division awakens. I lay back on the cool, dirty floor to absorb their cacophony. After all it’s just another day.
Amnesty x 2 = Nothing
While I was incarcerated in the CCF, we received two amnesties from the authorities.
The first was given on June 5, 2013. The second on November 30, 2016.
The first was 100 days off the complete sentence to mark the change in the country’s government from Nationalist to Labour. The day they came to tell us, we were all made to congregate in the Division, while the then Minister of Justice, Dr Manuel Mallia (funnily enough one of my old lawyers), came and stood in front of us to announce it. Inmates clapped and celebrated. Even though we were later told that the 100 days would come down to 66 days as the remission time was taken off.
The second was announced by the President of Malta after Pope Francis requested it, at the end of the Jubilee of Mercy. Again the 30 days were cut down to 20 when remission time was taken off.
How was this calculated? Let me first explain how remission works: if a prisoner is given a nine-year sentence, then he would have to definitely serve two-thirds of the actual sentence, that is a total of six years. The other third, i.e. the other three years, could possibly be “excused” by good behaviour. The amnesty worked on the same principle.
In reality, it was political show-ponying and most got caught up in the hype. The only people who were affected were those with short sentences and those near the end of their time.
In fact, the only person who left Division XI with the first amnesty, did not want to leave and he begged and pleaded with the officers to keep him in as he had nowhere else to go. Within a few weeks he had committed another crime, and was back inside and content.
Since the prison conditions were so poor, a fairer amnesty could have been worked out on a percentage basis. For example, five percent off the total sentence.
There are some people serving very large amounts of time behind Maltese walls, and I believe over a dozen serving life, that means they will never leave. What hope has a man in that situation? And while I am aware that the crimes perpetrated were heinous, what is the meaning of incarceration, if not redemption?
If we do not believe in salvation, then bring back the death penalty, that is fairer.
We live in a dead-end society. The whole system of society has to change on a global level. Until then the business of justice is just that, a business, that will be fed even if all the criminals go straight. They will always find dissidents.
Amnesty means a pardon extended by the government to a group or class of people. Not something to be used as part of a political campaign.
These amnesties were an insult. You’re dangled a carrot only for it to be snatched away. My parents paid €23,000 to save me 365 days of life inside. The 365 days I served before being acquitted of any crime, they kept, and they gave me 86 by way of their amnesty.
That was my amnesty.
A note in passing
I wonder about death sometimes. Not wholly in a melancholic way, but physically, practically and, I suppose, theologically.
Sixteen hours a day locked in a prison cell alone, for years on end, watching life as it passes away is a microscope for thinking. And death, being the end of all living is an unavoidable thought.
I wonder if I would ever find the courage, to take the belt from my dressing gown, climb onto and stand upon my desk, thread the cord through the air vent above my window and secure it with a slipknot. It should hold quite fast like that. I believe I would take the time to tie a noose, a hangman’s knot. I am nothing if not fastidious and a little old school. I often find that without knowing, I have twisted the pull cords of trousers and jumpers into nooses. Is that my subconscious goading me, I wonder?
Would I then pause, to think of family’s faces, voices and tears, or to consider God and divine judgment, or would I just go straight ahead with it, and place the belted noose over my head?
I would have to face away from my window, that’s for sure. I couldn’t look out upon that bloody stone wall for my last view in life. So, I would have to face my cell, but what would I look at? Another damned wall. A calendar? A mirror, I’d probably glance at it, but would one not then be engrossed by its reflection? A face red and blue, features swelling and bulging. Yes, I’d probably glance at that.
So, the soft belt would be against my neck. I only washed it three days ago and you can still smell that new fabric softener, it does smell like a spring meadow, or how I’d like to remember one smelling anyway. If I place the knot at the nape of my neck, I could try for a break in one if I jumped off. I’d feel a bloody fool if the rope snapped, and I fell, and broke a wrist, and someone came in. Mind you, it would be well over an hour before they open the door. So, I suppose I’d have to ring the buzzer if I did that. They’d only give me Panadol anyway.
Would I then have to ease myself down? I don’t think that would be possible. I think I’d have to kind of fall off. One would have to sit and almost slide off the side and dangle. The vents are ten feet high, I’m less than six feet, and the belt, with the knots and allowing for stretching is two feet. So, I’d have two feet of breathing room. Yes, I’ve wondered about that plunge. Confidently, yet tentatively, like getting into a hot
bath.
Would I say anything before it? I’d definitely leave a note, a way for others to try and have closure, to explain my actions. I don’t believe I’d say a prayer, aloud anyway. I feel that one would not have to mutter the words for God to hear. But would I like to hear my own voice one last time? I don’t think so. Maybe though I’d need a sort-of courage boost, a sort-of “tally-ho chaps”. Yes, maybe something like that.
Someone’s playing music right now, it’s that bloody song again. I’d have to wait for this to finish. It gets me so angry I could kill someone. That would be a hell of a thing; if you’d set it all up, climbed up, taken the plunge and was dangling and then some bugger presses play on that song. You’d have to go out like that, with her voice scraping across your passing, that’d spoil it for sure. And what would you do? You wouldn’t be able to stop, flailing around on the end of this brown towelling belt, growing redder and redder like an element on a stove by the second. Yes, it’s easy to see how an inconsiderate other could spoil that moment. You’d really have to plan it.
Tuesday would be a good day. Pizza day. Everyone is always sleepy on pizza day. I saw the fat, slobbish paedophile waddle back to his hovel with pizza box in hand and a stack of bread on top and a hungry smile on his face, which in a just world would never show any other expression than brokenness. Paedophiles, scum, rapist scum. I should be killing him, scum. This life is all mixed up.
Pizza-and-slices-of-bread Tuesdays. I don’t know how anyone can eat pizza and slices of bread. I’d be huge. Their size. Bigger. This belt would definitely snap then, and I’d have to think of something else. That’d be a chore.
Tuesday is a good day. Pizza and bread = sleep; sleep = quiet; quiet = peaceful passing. I didn’t eat my pizza today, I swapped it for two cigarettes. Well, I don’t find sleep helps much anyway, and I thought it’d be nice to have a last smoke. Although now it’s plastered everywhere that smoking kills. There’re graphic pictures on the packets, of tumours and death. Death, what a thing to be reminded of daily. It’s no wonder I think about death. We see it all around every day. I wonder what it’s like?
It’s getting quiet here now. I can only hear two TVs. That bloody woman singer is gone. Thank God for pizza and bread, guaranteed to tranquillise any animal. Loathsome, inconsiderate wretches.
Yes, I’d have to leave a note. I wouldn’t want anyone to think ungraciously of me. I’ve heard it said that in hanging or strangulation the sphincter muscles relax. I shouldn’t really like to think of myself hanging here for an hour, dangling, leaking on the floor. I can’t imagine that’s a nice sight to see of someone in final pose. Who would clean it up? I suppose I could try and go to the toilet first, maybe put a few pairs of pants on to absorb anything, that might work.
As a final measure I could put some plastic sheeting on the floor, I suppose that would at least show consideration. Yes, that’s what I think I’d do. At least whoever opens the door will know that I’m not just some loathsome inconsiderate wretch, like these other souls.
I wonder if they’d lock everyone back up till they take out my remains? They’d probably all be pissed off with me. Mind you last time, we were all just standing around groping at the screws fumbling and dropping the body. It shouldn’t have been funny, but it was.
They stuck Steve on the rubbish trolley, covered him with his own bedsheet and while they were wheeling him out his arms kept on flapping out, like he was doing it to piss them off, as every time they’d have to stop, tuck his arms back in, then continue. We were roaring. It kept on happening and the screws were getting frustrated and angrier and angrier with everyone laughing. They kept thrusting arms back under the sheet with more force, but after a few feet, good old Steve would flap them back out again.
Yeah, we had a laugh that day. It’d be nice to leave in a halo of laughter. Yeah, that was a good send-off. I think I’d like people to be open, to see me leave, as long as the extra pants absorb everything. I think if they took me out when everyone was closed, I’d just be a Chinese whisper, for a while anyway.
No one would know what happened and God knows what story everyone would invent. Gone crazy probably or caught with drugs or a mobile. No, I think I’d like a send-off. I’d like to give them all a few giggles like Steve and piss the screws off as well. Although after all that pizza and bread, everyone would be pretty groggy when they open at 2 p.m.
It’s getting quieter now. Another TV just lowered its volume. There’s only one left on. A Maltese station. I couldn’t do it with the Maltese language as soundtrack, I’ve been hearing those words for far too long. I’m tired of hearing that damned language. I bet in death there’s no words or communication barriers. I wonder what it’s like? Come on mate, turn that TV off and sleep, I’ve less than an hour left. That’s life isn’t it, no matter how you plan things, there’s always the interference of someone else. There’s far too many people on this planet. It’s so hard to really be alone, even in here.
I may as well have a smoke while I wait. I thought I’d need both cigarettes, but maybe one’s enough. I should cut down anyway, those pictures of death are so off-putting.
Yes, I wonder what it’s like? I mean dreams are lovely and who couldn’t stay asleep for a while longer to spend more times in dreams? Like in the morning, just as you’re half waking, but still dreams are vivid in your thoughts and you try to close your eyes and go back to that land in the distance, that’s a lovely feeling.
But then the day’s passing weighs heavier and heavier as you wake up and that land of dreams seems impossible to remember and get back to. Yes, eternal dreaming would be nice. But then again nightmares are dreams, and they can be vivid too and you never seem to be able to ease out of them, it’s always a jolt awake. But what if we stayed in our nightmares? What if we’d be forced to stay and face our fears? Would we get used to them, even welcome them?
I don’t know, I’d prefer an eternity of dreaming over an eternity of being a bystander to indifference. I think it’d make a difference with the ambience at the time of passing. Almost like this – well, without that TV and its noise.
The tap’s dripping. I’ve been telling them for over two years. It’s getting faster as well. It was every six seconds, now it’s every four. I bet the next one in this cell will get it fixed straight away, that’s my luck. Oh well, good luck to him.
I know that one of the Latin guys from another Division wanted to transfer here. I could have given him a heads-up, but some secrets are not for sharing. I wonder if he’ll want it still? Some people are superstitious like that.
With Steve’s old cell, the very next day there was a new guy in there, he didn’t know for a day or two either. No one felt like telling him. When he found out, he said he didn’t care much for that nonsense. He moved as soon as a cell became empty on the 3s. That was a long time ago now, I heard he died anyway, fell down the stairs drunk, that’s a bloody stupid way to go. I wonder who had to clean that up?
A drink would be nice though, just one for courage, a whisky, 18 years … no, a 25-year-old Glenmorangie. Yes, a nice swift drink for courage would be nice.
I suppose I may as well have this last smoke, it’s not a drink, but it’ll have to do.
There’s silence now. That TV’s gone dead, another satisfied customer of pizza and bread. He’ll almost manage the hour before the doors open. Plenty of time. I like it when it’s quiet like this. The silence seems to ring in my ears louder than anything could possibly be. I wonder if it’s quiet after death?
Everyone always says rest in peace, but I suppose no one really knows. It could be constantly “that song” playing. Oh God no, it couldn’t be that, that’d be worse than living.
Spiritual and life reflection
What a strange and bizarre world we all live in, where evil and depravity seem to flourish, while good deeds and happiness often seem to go unnoticed.
Newspapers and TV stations are so quick to almost promote murder, famine, war and terrorism. They seem to feed on ou
r misery and fear. It’s not that all these things are new to our race, they’ve always been there, but now with modern technology making the world appear a smaller place and watching our every move, it’s so hard to avoid the propaganda and gossip.
We are bombarded by advertisements and programmes telling us what to think, what to feel, what to buy, who to be. It’s so hard sometimes to step back from all the noise and see the beauty and goodness that surrounds us and see the positive, amazing things that happen every single day.
It’s always the smallest things, like the smile of a child innocently playing, waves lapping on the shore, the stars above us at night, trees growing through the seasons oblivious to the manic world around them, that inspire and humble us.
The earth itself, the human race and all the vast range of life surrounding us is truly astonishing, a marvel, and I’ve found the best way to appreciate it all is by not succumbing to the assault of evil. If we look for good, we will find it, but if we look for the bad, we will find this only too easily.
That’s not to say I live a blinkered life and pretend that both bad and evil are not all around us. I just choose, or try to choose, not to see it in my foreground.
I think most of us strive for some time alone, some peace, time when we can sit quietly and reflect on life. I suppose I am privileged that my time in incarceration has given me what most people don’t have: time to contemplate life. I could delve into my own mind away from the distractions of the “real” world. Because of that I choose to love, not hate.
All religions are adamant about one thing: that there is something greater than we, ourselves. A creator. A divine force in the universe. A God.
Since the dawn of mankind, we have looked up and, while some have felt alone by the vastness of all that surrounds them, most feel comforted by the feeling of belonging to something greater than the here and now.
Myself, I find it hard to believe in a God, as a name or label belonging to any particular religion. While I was raised a Roman Catholic, attended a Catholic school, went to mass and was even a member of the church choir, I struggled to have enough faith to believe blindly in any one doctrine.
Daniel Holmes: A Memoir From Malta's Prison: From a cage, on a rock, in a puddle... Page 19
