Chasing the Dragon (26 page)

“You can’t,” I insisted. “You really can’t. It isn’t the truth. Tell the judge you have done the other things, but tell the truth.”

When the case came up, Bibi pleaded innocent but was found guilty in spite of my evidence, which was the only time that I have ever been a witness. In his summary, the judge said that he believed I had spoken the truth, but he thought that another witness was confused about the time of the incident. And the case was closed.

I had spent days in court praying throughout the proceedings, so inevitably the policemen and the prison officers got to know me. At the end of the trial I was walking out of the courtroom when the police inspector stopped me.

“How come you are involved in all this?” he asked.

“Well, I’m a Christian.”

“Why are you giving evidence for the criminal then?” pressed the officer.

“I know he is a criminal; I know he is a drug addict; I know he has done many robberies, but he did not do this one. I know he didn’t because I’m his alibi.”

“Oh,” said the policeman. “Well, I’m a Christian too. Look at it my way. When these people commit crimes, we know who did it but we can’t always get them for it. So we charge them with
what we can make stick. It’s rough but fair, and society benefits.”

“You may think it’s fair enough to arrest someone on the wrong charge, and he may even think it’s fair enough because of what he has got away with, but in the long term the effect on society is bad. There is no respect for the law or the police or truth. The criminal learns to think the way all criminals think—that getting caught is not connected with guilt or innocence; it is merely bad luck. They certainly never learn to tell the difference between right and wrong.” I felt very strongly about this, and I launched into the attack.

“Well, at least they receive some kind of punishment for their crimes,” reasoned the inspector.

“But they don’t feel they are paying for the wrong that they have done,” I countered. “I know men in prison for crimes they claim they have not committed: They are viciously bitter at being locked up on a false charge. The first thing they want to do when they get out is to do the crime to fit the punishment. Never mind the other ones they did before. They feel that having already served time, they are owed the crime.”

Surprised at my tirade, the officer ended the conversation lamely: “I have never thought of it like that.” He hurried away.

I met Bibi when he came out of prison again. He looked like a rat that never saw the sunlight. His face was a mauve-gray, and he had dark shadows under his eyes. He went straight back to his drug. He had promised to change, but like most addicts he was powerless; he had a celebration meal of heroin on the day of his release, although he did not plan it that way. Addicts have a favorite saying that describes their feeling on arriving in a drug den: “My heart had not decided where to go, but my feet walked themselves.”

To pay for his habit, Bibi found a job as a refuse collector in the Walled City. He had to drag large rattan baskets slopping excrement through the alleys. It was the lowest form of work, but it gave him a little money to begin buying his heroin; to supplement his earnings, he went back to robbing people as well. Whenever he saw me, he would run away. But I kept in
touch by getting things on the grapevine and by walking around the streets, and I usually knew where he was living. When a television film unit came to make a film of our work, we contacted Bibi and filmed him at home. The drug had eaten into his flesh and sharp-etched his bones; he shivered continuously. His family turned it into a soap opera. His mother sobbed. “Make my son good, Poon Siu Jeh, make him good. Take him into your house and make him good.” His elder brother whined in chorus, “Make him good, Miss Poon, make him good.”

It could not work like that, of course. Bibi knew the truth—that he alone had to make the decision to change and that no one else could make it for him. I learned that there is a time for meeting and talking and then ultimately a time for not meeting anymore. For Bibi that time had come, so I told him that we had reached the end.

“This is the last time I am coming to see you. From now on I am not going to visit you anymore, because you know the way to Jesus. It is up to you now. You can choose if you want to follow Him or not. You know about Him and you know I care about you. It’s because I care about you that I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to see you in this state anymore. When you are ready to change, this time you must look for me.”

A week later, Bibi came.

“I’m ready now,” he said. “I’ve had enough. There’s no way I can get off drugs myself. My family despises me. I can’t stay at home because I’ve got to sell drugs to buy my own; I also have to be involved in the gambling dens because I need the money. Please, please help me.”

We prayed together for a long time. Bibi was filled with the Spirit and began to speak in a new language. Then he looked at me and stated, “Now you’ve got to take me into your house.” He meant that he wanted to be admitted to Third House. I took a deep breath and said, “I’m very sorry, but there’s no room.”

Bibi was frantic and very angry; for him the chance to get into one of the houses of Stephen was his only escape left.
He shouted, “But you have to let me go there! Now I’m going to follow Jesus, you can’t expect me to live on the streets. I’ll go on taking heroin there, and you can’t be a Christian and go on taking heroin.”

He was right, of course; so I pleaded for him with the Willanses and the workers in Third House, but they turned me down. “We can’t take him into the house because the house is not in good order,” said Sarah.

“You just have to,” I argued. “That’s the whole reason why we have houses: They are there so that we can take care of the boys who come to Christ so that they can grow up into a new life. Now you won’t let me bring in boys because you want a nice tidy house.”

Sarah replied firmly, “It’s not helpful to anyone at all to bring a boy into a house like this if the relationships are not solid enough to support him. He must wait until the boys we already have settle down. The houses are like a family; it’s important to have the relationships right inside before we take in more people.” She was right, too; while I was desperate to bring people into the houses as soon as they became Christians, her duty was to protect the family members. If I recklessly poured people in, the whole situation would become as chaotic as it had been before we had the Houses of Stephen.

When they refused to take Bibi, I had to go back and tell him that there was no room. We met at Ah Wong’s noodle stall in the Lung Kong Road—you could get marvelous little
wunton
dumplings and noodles there. Bibi raged at me in desperation when he heard the news, and I had to answer, “Just for a moment, Bibi, take your eyes off yourself. Forget that our house is going to save you. Just look up at the sky. It’s not a very beautiful sky down in Kowloon City, but just look up and imagine the One who made all of that sky, the heavens and the earth and the sea and the birds. He’s the One who makes even the things like drops in buckets. And He stretches out the heavens like a tent, and makes the mountains and the animals and the flowers.
¹
That One actually chooses that His Spirit should live in us.
He chooses that His Spirit should live in us, rotten as we are. Why? Because Jesus left all that glory and walked through the miserable Walled City and got beaten up and killed and died and rose again so that we could have His Spirit. Isn’t it amazing that the Spirit of the God who created the whole world should actually come to live in us?
²
Just take your eyes off our house saving you; instead imagine the wonder of our God.”

I left Bibi there at the noodle stall, praying, so that I could talk with another addict who was pressuring me to be admitted. Half an hour later when I came back to Bibi, I found him, eyes shut, with a soft smile on his face. I called to him, but he did not reply. I called more loudly, but still there was no answer. At my third shout Bibi very reluctantly opened his eyes.

“What did you see?” I asked him.

He told me that he had seen Jesus—at least he thought it was Jesus—wearing a long white robe. He had been on a mountain and Jesus had come toward him with his hand held out; He said to Bibi, “Bibi, will you follow Me?”

Bibi replied, “Well, yes, Lord, who else?” Jesus had taken him by the hand and led him along the most beautiful path. “I can hardly describe it.” Bibi searched for words in his meager experience. “It was so beautiful. There were lovely flowers and birds and it was very sweet smelling. It was the most lovely place. We walked along this path and I heard you calling but I didn’t want to come back. I heard you calling again and I still didn’t want to come back.”

From that time onward, instead of believing that our house was going to save him now that he was a Christian, he looked up again at his Creator to do so. His peaked face was illuminated by a glow. There was room for him in our Third House just one day later, and he stayed for two years. He became one of the best boys we had, never difficult even when he was coming off drugs, which he did without so much as a headache. He simply got up and lived normally all through the withdrawal process.

Bibi’s family called Jean and Rick saying that Bibi’s father was ready to die, so Bibi went to see him in the hospital. When he arrived, his father, who had come off opium himself and
become a believer, said simply, “Now that Jesus has made my sons good, I’m ready to go to heaven.” He kissed both his sons a tender farewell; but instead of dying, he was healed as his sons prayed for him, and a week later he was discharged.

Now that I was free of the need to be a homemaker because there were several of us working together at Stephen, I could go back into the streets. So many of the addicts passed on the word that people came from areas all over the colony asking for help. A converted policeman gave me a two-way radio so that I could be reached any time or at any place, and I found myself more and more involved in the courts and prisons where so many of the boys were shocked into facing their problems. One day I attended a trial in Causeway Bay. As I was walking out after the case, I heard a cry behind me.

“Poon Siu Jeh! I’ve been framed! Help me, help me!”

I looked around to see the next defendant being led into the dock. He was a stranger to me. I could see the desperation of his dirt-streaked face. It was a very cool air-conditioned courtroom, and he was standing in the cotton shorts and singlet in which he had been arrested. The boy was still gesticulating wildly to me as the magistrate came into the courtroom to start the case. I had no means of knowing whether he spoke the truth or not, and no right to speak in court even if I had known. However, this unimpressive boy was about to go into battle alone, as there was no legal aid offered in Magistrates’ Courts at that time. I stood up with an inspiration. “Your Honor,” I said, “I am not familiar with the defendant, but I think it possible that he has not had reasonable access to legal representation. Could you remand this case so that enquiries can be made on his behalf?”

The magistrate raised his eyebrows. This was an unusual request coming from a layperson. He turned to the defendant shivering in the dock. “Do you wish to be represented?” he asked him.

“Yes,” replied the boy, “But I have not been allowed to make a telephone call since my arrest, and so none of my family knows that I’m here.”

The magistrate remanded the case for one day, and I went down to the police cells below the court to talk to the boy. In the two minutes allowed me, I learned that his nickname was Sorchuen, or “Crazy-boy Chuen,” and that he knew of me through his Chaiwan brothers.

He was shaking violently, and his stale sweat was sour; his eyes were red and running, and he sniffed constantly. I had one minute left.

“Listen to me,” I said. “I have no time to tell you about Jesus, but if you call on His name He will hear you and save you. He is God.” Under the astonished gaze of the prison guard, his withdrawal symptoms immediately vanished and his face relaxed. When I saw him the next day, he was still dressed in the dirty shorts and singlet, but his face was clear and happy.

“I really did call upon Jesus and now feel quite different,” he said.

Sorchuen was found guilty of the charges laid against him and went to prison briefly. Shortly after coming out he was arrested again, and this time he telephoned me from the police station. I went down to see him with an excellent young solicitor who sometimes helped us. Sorchuen had been arrested on a charge of attempting to break into several cars in the Shaukiwan district. According to him, this story was quite untrue. He claimed that he had actually been watching a pornographic film called
Legends of Lust
several miles away in Wanchai. After the movie finished, he had boarded a 14-man bus for Chaiwan but was stopped on the way by two detectives who asked him to alight from the van and “talk.” They asked him to help them find another Triad nicknamed Morgwai, or Devil, and drove him in a private car to a cinema looking for the Triad. Sorchuen saw a friend there but Devil could not be located, so he was taken to the police station and booked on the attempted robbery charge after signing some kind of incriminatory statement in the policeman’s notebook.

Nearly every time that Sorchuen was arrested, he yelled “Frame!” He, like many other boys, claimed to have been beaten
up to make a confession. I discovered that a good number of them were not beaten, but they were so sure of the inevitability of the beating that they convinced themselves that it had as good as taken place and signed statements incriminating themselves. A high proportion of defended cases contained a
voir dire
, a trial within a trial, to determine whether a confession was admissible as evidence. Many a defendant was convicted solely on the strength of his “confession” in a police notebook without witnesses, exhibits or corroborative evidence.

David, the solicitor, and I decided to do some investigative work. David was willing to defend Sorchuen without fee, provided he was convinced of his innocence; so he wrote to the police for the registration numbers of the cars that Sorchuen allegedly tried to enter. I went looking for Devil but found that he had just been arrested, too. However, I found the friend in Chaiwan who had been outside the cinema when Sorchuen arrived with the detectives looking for Devil. He remembered the time and the date; it was three hours before the official time when Sorchuen was arrested in Shaukiwan. While I made these enquiries, Sorchuen was still in prison on remand and had no opportunity to contact his friend; I was convinced that he was telling the truth, as their testimonies were identical.