Journey From the Summit

by Lorraine Ereira

  I literally worked six days a week in my day job as a store supervisor, and five nights in the pub, behind the bar. I went home only a couple of times in four months, wanting to work as much as possible. Christmas came and went and I barely noticed; I didn’t even go home, instead choosing to work over the festive season to boost my savings with the extra money.

  Saul and Adam had left on their travels in mid-October, and by the end of December we had saved enough to book our flights, and just needed to pay the balance and save spending money. March could not come fast enough.

  His letters were all I lived for. He didn’t write often, as writing did not come easily to him, so when he did I would find myself re-reading them over and over again. I would imagine him struggling to put down on paper how he was feeling, or what he was seeing. We didn’t have mobile phones, Skype, or email. We only had letters that could take weeks to arrive, and as a rare treat the odd fax.

  However, when he did write, I knew how much he loved and missed me, and it was so good to hear his experiences. One cold morning a letter arrived from him, and I stuffed it into my pocket while I made a cup of tea, savouring the knowledge that it was there, waiting to be read. Taking my tea and my treasured letter into my room, I carefully opened the fragile paper.

  Dear Flossie,

  I got your letter today and it’s always a good day when I get a letter from you. Please keep writing although I’m not so fast to write back. I read it four times just to hear your voice in my head.

  Yesterday we visited the monkey temple, which is on top of a hill in the Kathmandu valley. It is a ‘stupa’ or mound, which is a place of meditation. At the top of the mound are two giant painted-on eyes – the eyes of Buddha, looking over the peaceful valley. There are monkeys living in parts of the temple that are meant to be holy – I don’t think they know that though!

  Some of the people we have met while travelling are typical hippies – I think Adam managed to upset them the other night. Flossie, it was so funny you would have cried laughing. There were mozzies buzzing about and driving us crazy as we sat around politely listening to a bunch of hippy wannabe musicians playing crap on an old guitar – really so clichéd! Anyway, Adam, who has had enough both of the hippies and the mozzies decided to do something about it. So he disappears into our room and comes out with his underpants on over his jeans, and a sarong tied round his neck, like a cape. He is brandishing a cigarette lighter and some deodorant and he goes into full attack mode as ‘mosquito man’, blasting the mozzies with deodorant flames! It was the funniest thing ever as he jumped off furniture igniting the mozzies! The hippies, however, didn’t find it funny, as he was killing and that’s ‘bad karma’ – this only made it funnier!! I swear I didn’t stop laughing all night!!

  I wish you were here with me. It’s really beautiful and I would love nothing more than to share it with you. Right now it’s early evening and I’m watching the golden eagles lazily circle the city as the sun sets over Kathmandu. It’s amazing Flossie. I am counting the days until we are together again and I can share these things with you. I love you and I miss you more than ever.

  In a few days we will leave here for India, and I will write again and give you the address of the post office through which you can write to me. I love hearing from you so much.

  All my love always,

  Saul.

  xxxxx

  I read it through fast, then I read it through slowly, then I re-read the bits which said how much he loved and missed me – and during the time I took reading his letter I felt a deep connection to him that I savoured.

  I put it under my pillow, knowing that when I got home from work I would want to read it again, and make his words the last things my eyes saw before I closed them to sleep.

  Saul’s letters were fairly infrequent, and not very long in content, but I didn’t care, as long as I heard from him – it could be a kiss in the middle of the page, but it was still a link. By contrast Adam was a literary romantic, and sent Cathy endless letters with colourful poems, and lengthy demonstrations of how he missed her. She loved nothing more than to mock and gloat that she received one when I had not, or that hers were pages long when mine was a few paragraphs. Although her cruel jibes hurt, I knew that Saul’s lack of scholarly flair was not testament to the strength of his love for me.

  The time seemed to pass quickly as we threw ourselves into working and saving. When we were together we talked of nothing else but our impending trip. It wouldn’t be long now until we could be with them. Our excitement mounted with each day that we could tick off on the calendar until we could leave for our own adventure, to meet our boys.

  One evening at the end of January, Adam called. Cathy was so excited, jumping for joy that he had called her and revelling in the fact that Saul had not called me. Still, I was pleased for her, and excited to hear their up-to-the-minute news. I stood watching her face as she listened to her boyfriend’s long distant voice. They had travelled from Nepal and were now in India. But then Cathy’s expression changed and I watched the colour drain from her face as she listened. She glanced at me, with knitted brows. What was he telling her? Had he met someone else? Or worse had Saul? Was that why he wasn’t calling me?? I thought back to his last letter, so full of rambling disorganized love declarations. Surely he still loved me. What was Adam saying that had literally drained her smile and tipped it onto the floor?

  She put down the phone and sat down next to me. For the first time in the short time we had known each other, she looked at me with softness and compassion. She touched my forearm, and let her eyes meet my imploring gaze.

  “Floss, I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just gonna come right out and say it. Saul’s been arrested. He’s in prison for drugs.”

  I felt her words move past me, a shoal of fish swimming by with no meaning. Her voice sounded far away, as though she was underwater, echoing, in my head. My Saul, my sweetheart was in prison in a foreign country for drugs. I tried to comprehend what she had said. This was crazy! It couldn’t be true!

  “Is this one of your sick jokes?” I asked, “This isn’t funny Cathy!”

  She was shaking her head, and looking at me with utmost sincerity.

  “Then it must be a mistake, right?” I asked her, thinking that, as the messenger, she must know more than she was telling me. She shook her head, she didn’t know.

  She made me tea. She told me it was all going to be okay, and that Adam was going to get him out. He was going to call again in a week and tell us more news. It was nothing; just a bit of dope – everyone was smoking it out there! It didn’t mean anything, just a slap on the wrist.

  Cathy’s brother, Matt hovered in the doorway, eavesdropping on our conversation. “Piss off would you Matt!” Cathy shouted. “Just leave us alone for a bit!”

  The whole family had a very tactless sense of humour, but his was by far the worst. Cathy’s reproach sparked a retort from him.

  “Ever seen Midnight Express, Floss? Didn’t they hang him for drugs in that movie? That was in Thailand or Turkey or somewhere like that wasn’t it? The laws are all the same in that neck of the woods.” he snickered.

  I ran from the room and shut myself in my bedroom. If I thought parting with Saul at the airport had been hard, then now I surely did not know what had hit me. I was in shock. I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t think. I was numb. I sat staring at

  the anaglypta wallpaper wishing the ugly pattern would suck me in and lose me in its grotesque cavernous flowers.

  Cathy knocked softly. I couldn’t answer her. She opened the door and came and sat on the bed next to me.

  “Don’t listen to Matt,” she said. “You know what he’s like. It’s just his way of trying to help you deal with it.”

  I didn’t care about her stupid ignorant brother, or her, or anything in the world. I turned away from her, closing her out, retreating into myself where it was safe, and I wasn’t being forced to confront something I didn’t know how to deal with.


  I laid down fully dressed on the bed, with my back to her. After some time she must have left the room, and I focused so hard on the wallpaper, willing my mind to be numbed by its vulgar pattern, that eventually I fell into a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Six

  In the days that followed I continued to work all the hours I could. I spoke to no-one and kept my thoughts focused on saving my money. I was now even more determined to get out to him. It’s amazing how you can surprise yourself at your own reactions to stressful circumstances when you are faced with them. I learnt something new about myself in those weeks of distress. I realized that I am someone who deals with tough situations by trying to find a practical way to contribute to the restoration of them, and as I couldn’t help him by being here, I was more determined than ever to get myself to him.

  I longed to hear from him, needing to know that he was okay. Adam called once or twice to tell us that they were trying to get bail, but so far it hadn’t happened. My imagination conjured up the very worst things. Were the guards cruel? Were they or fellow inmates bullying him? How could he share such a cramped space with so many frustrated, wearied prisoners and not have some confrontations? Maybe there were murderers with him, or gangsters, hardened criminals who knew only cruelty and oppression. I prayed that he would be safe, and that no harm would come to him.

  At last, one evening when I arrived home from work, Elsie, Cathy’s mum, told me that a letter had arrived for me. She made me a cup of tea, and told me to go and sit quietly and read it, knowing I would want to be alone.

  Dear Flossie,

  I know that Adam has called you to tell you what’s happened to me, and I hope you are not upset with me for getting into this mess.

  I hadn’t written to you sooner because I expected to be out and able to call you myself and explain, but it’s dragging on a bit longer than I thought it would, because I think they are trying to extract more money from us.

  I love you so much. It won’t be long until I get out of here and we can be together. Adam is working hard to sort things, and it’s just a matter of time before I am out, at least on bail if not fully. It sucks that this has happened, but Adam says it happens a lot, and we just need some money to pay off the police, and the authorities, as that’s the way things seem to work here – he’s spoken to people whom it’s happened to, and they got out fine, so it shouldn’t be for long.

  It is shit in here, though, and if I didn’t know I was getting out soon, I might go mad! It’s two o’clock in the morning now, and the prison cell is at last quiet enough that I can find some peace to write to you. All around me on the floor are sweaty sleeping bodies; we are like sardines all lined up in one cell. The only noises I can hear are snoring and scratching, and the odd fart, from my cellmates. Apart from that it’s just the clunky whirring of the ceiling fan as it pushes the stale air round and round slowly, and of course the ever present cicadas as they keep time with the fan outside. The light stays on all night so the guards can keep an eye on us, and check we are not killing each other or ourselves. Cockroaches willingly share the little space we have, crawling over the sleeping bodies.

  In one corner of the room there is a hole in the floor for us to use as a toilet. As you can imagine there is not much privacy for this, just a wall around one side, and hygiene is non-existent here. The flies and mosquitos love it – it’s the perfect breeding ground for disease. I get to leave this space once a day for half an hour, when I can walk around the courtyard outside and stretch my stiffened legs. I try to do a little exercise in here, maybe a few push-ups and sit-ups, to keep from getting too weak, but the stifling heat and overcrowded space doesn’t fill me with much motivation.

  We get three meals a day. Breakfast, at 6 am, is a roll and cup of sickly sweet chai – a black tea with so much sugar in it it’s more like treacle. For lunch at midday we get a bowl of rice, a chapatti and a runny curry sauce, usually garnished with two tiny salty fish. Dinner , is served at 6pm and is usually the same as lunch. At 9pm it’s time to sleep whether you want to or not, and they shout at you to be quiet. Having sat in the stuffy cell all day and done little else it’s hard to feel tired enough to sleep, so your mind keeps you awake, although the exhaustion from boredom and the suffocating heat leaves you physically drained.

  I have made friends with one or two cellmates who can speak English. I’m even learning a few words in Hindi, which they all laugh at. There is an Italian and a German in here with me so we kind of hang out together, playing cards, or an Indian game I’ve learnt called Carom, a board game similar to billiards.

  I think about you every day and dream of you every night. Your photo is the only thing I was allowed to keep, and that’s here with me now. I know I’ve let you down, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I know it’s hard for you too, knowing that I’m in here, but I’m sure by the time you get to Thailand this will all be over and we will be together.

  I love you with all my heart. Please write to me soon.

  Saul. xxxx

  Envisaging him in that stifling, overcrowded prison cell was unbearable. Selfishly, part of me wished he hadn’t told me how horrible it was for him, so that I didn’t see it every time I pictured him. I wanted to imagine he was comfortable, at the very least. At least I had heard from him though, and knew that although he was having an inconceivably tough time, that no real harm had come to him.

  I sat down straight away to write back, wishing its delivery could be instant. I wanted to tell him I loved him, and thought of him every minute; I wanted him to know that I was suffering too, not physically, but emotionally I was in my own personal hell.

  I picked up my pen and flimsy airmail paper and began to write to him:

  I wonder can you feel my fear

  Shaking my world to its core,

  As I sit at home and wait

  For the outcome of foreign law?

  Do you know how sad I am

  That you are not at peace?

  Nothing my friends do or say

  Can make me feel at ease.

  I had a dream the other night

  You stood calling out to me.

  But the tunnel was long,

  The door was locked;

  I could not find a key.

  How could I know

  That very night

  While bad dreams

  Filled my head,

  Was the first night

  That you lay

  On a cold, hard prison bed?

  Now what can I do

  But sit and wait

  Forever by the phone,

  And wonder if you’ll ever know

  How much I feel alone.

  I got up from the bed and looked into the evening sky. Could he see the sky from his prison cell? If he could then maybe he was looking at the sky too, from between bars. Could he feel my love from the stars he could see? I hoped so. More than anything I really hoped that somehow he could.

  When Adam called again, it was to tell us that they had granted bail! He was coming out and they would reconvene in the courts again in a fortnight. At least he was getting out; he wouldn’t have to endure any more the terrible living conditions he had been exposed to, and he could be with his friends while he waited. It was still a very worrying time, but it gave me great relief to know he did not have to suffer anymore. Adam told us he would get Saul to call me when he came out, but we might have to wait, as they had a plan. I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, but had to trust Adam – he was there, and had got Saul bail, so he must know what he was doing.

  The days passed slowly while we waited for more news. But at least now we felt much more optimistic, and began planning our trip again, excitedly discussing our reunion with the boys.

  A whole week went by and still Saul had not called. I felt sure he would have been in touch by now, and began to think that something wasn’t right. Every night we waited for the phone to ring, with news from the boys.

  Finally we got a call, but it
was not what we were expecting.

  It was Adam. “Floss, I’m sorry. I don’t want to tell you this. Saul’s been rearrested.”

  I laughed. Adam was such a joker – always the comedian, even in this situation! It was an admirable quality. “Ha, ha – yes, nice try Adam! So where’s Saul, can I speak to him now?”

  “Floss! This isn’t a joke. I haven’t got much money, please listen. He was released on bail four days ago. We had a driver booked who took us straight to Bombay, where we laid low for a couple of days in a cheap guesthouse. We couldn’t call as there was no phone and we didn’t want to attract attention by going out looking for one. We tried to leave the country; we were booked on a flight to Bangkok, but they called his name on the flight and hauled him off. Flossie, he’s on his way back to Goa. He’s going back to jail. I’m already back here.”

  I could hear the desperation in Adam’s voice. This wasn’t one of his pranks. He sounded exhausted and emotional.

  “Oh my God Adam! How did this happen, what shall we do?” I cried.

  “Flossie, my money is running out, I have to go. Go to Thailand as we planned, I will sort this out. I will get him out.” he said boldly, his voice was tinged with doubt.

  The line went dead. Cathy was looking at me. Having heard only half the conversation, I had to try and tell her what little I knew.

  “This is a bloody joke. Why the hell were they trying to leave the country if he was on bail? Oh my God!! I don’t believe this is happening! We are supposed to be leaving in just over two weeks to go to Thailand. Now they are never going to meet us!” she said exasperated.

  I understood her frustration, but at least her boyfriend wasn’t banged up! I know he was doing all he could, and Saul’s plight was as much his, but he was free! If push came to shove, he could meet Cathy.

  “Look Cathy, Adam said he would sort it. He managed to get bail for Saul, so he must have some idea what’s going on – we will just have to go ahead with our plans and hope they show up in Thailand – even if we have to wait there for a while!”