Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (89 page)

One morning in July, while immersed in my art, as if from a distance I heard my name being called over the loudspeaker. There was nothing unusual in this; in prison, whenever you had mail, parcels or visits, or if the prison authorities needed to see you for some reason, you were always called on the intercom system. Often I would be so focused on my painting that I could be called several times and still it wouldn’t register. Eventually one of my mates would tell me. Whenever I was so engrossed in my art, and I had to stop painting, it would take me anything up to an hour to come back to earth. This was one of those mornings. On my way to the office, as I passed the gym, I walked into what was obviously the conclusion of a violent altercation between three prisoners. Nothing seemed to register in my brain. I felt as if I was an outsider, visiting from another dimension. The dispersing crowd was slowly moving away, and as they did, I saw one of the guys who’d obviously been in the fight lying out on the concrete floor in front of me. Blood was spurting out of a wound on the side of his head. As I passed by him, the sun’s rays caught his face, transforming the colour of his blood into shades of radiant vermilion. This triggered an unusual and vivid image in my mind: I saw bright red roses, rows and rows of rose bushes that seemed to stretch to infinity. In the foreground was a sensuous girl with long black hair, dressed in a silky white dress that hung loosely to her knees as she glided effortlessly through the air. What a sight it was, and what a great painting I thought it would make.

I walked on to the office to see what it was that I’d been summoned for this time.

One of my closest friends, and an ally for many years, was Ahmed Ratib, a Muslim from Afghanistan who had been in and out of almost every building in Bangkwang. Ahmed was a true warrior and was one of the inmates who had no outside support. Despite this, he, like me, had survived 15 years in prison. Although he was ten years younger than me, his suffering was evident by his hair having turned grey. Actually, I couldn’t talk because by now I was balding. Recently Ahmed had survived a knife attack by two Thais and he had been transferred back to Building 2. I had not seen him for a while, as he hardly ever got visitors, and I was very pleased to see him again. Ahmed helped out with the cooking, and on weekends he made
roti
with barbecued chicken breasts.

For some reason, the prison authorities had not detected that the cables of the signal blocking system had been tampered with. When the system was installed, they monitored the screen around the clock, which resulted in many dog handlers being caught, but, as with everything, the novelty soon wore off. The cables were eventually repaired, but we had some time in between.

I decided to purchase a new dog. It was a lot safer to buy one through a foreigner than from a Thai. Ahmed, who was involved in all sorts of underhand dealings, found a new dog for me. I bought it for two reasons. Firstly, an upgrade was long overdue, but that wasn’t my only reason. There were two Israelis, Itzik and Avi, who had recently been arrested on drug-related charges and placed in Building 4. A third Israeli, an old man, was in Building 3. The first two Israelis had heard about me while they were in the other prison – I was known as the Jewish South African who had been there for 16 years – and eventually I got to meet them. On first impression, the two of them seemed like really nice guys. They wore their yarmulkes and claimed to be very religious. Prison had this effect on people, and inmates would often turn to G-d. Faith had its way of working miracles. In their case, the change was rather sudden, it seemed to me; they went from one extreme to the other. It was too much, too soon. My own spiritual journey had started with certain acknowledgements. First I had to change from within, take responsibility for my actions, and accept wholeheartedly that whatever transpired in my life was for the greater good. Remorse without sincerity never warrants forgiveness. I began to suspect that the two Israeli guys had a hidden agenda.

Shlomo came up with the bright idea of having all the Israelis housed under one roof, and, on the request of the Israeli embassy, the prison authorities agreed to this proposal. The three new Israelis would all come to Building 2. The two guys in Building 4 apparently shared a dog with somebody else, so, when they moved, they would need a dog of their own. As my fellow brothers of faith, I felt it would be my duty to accommodate them, and my plan was to give them my old dog. When you changed buildings you were always thoroughly searched, so trying to smuggle a dog across would be suicidal.

Being united with your own tribesmen strengthened your position as an individual and I was looking forward to enlarging our Jewish brotherhood. Security in Building 4, where Itzik and his co-accused Avi were housed, was far more lax than ours and dogs were cheaper there. Itzik had a better command of the English language than Avi and I really liked him, even though when talking to him you couldn’t get a word in edgeways. I didn’t know if this was an Israeli thing or whether he just had a certain energy about him.

They were expecting to get moved any day, so I asked Itzik if he could buy and smuggle in a jack for my dog when they got transferred. I needed a spare.

Shlomo was in his element when they finally arrived in Building 2. He welcomed them into his house, and I welcomed them into our cell. Itzik would sleep directly opposite me with the old man, while Avi would sleep next to me. With the addition of the two of them, now we would be 14. Until then, Shlomo had been the only smoker in our cell. Now I discovered that all three of them smoked. This was going to make life unpleasant for the other members of the cell, who were all anti-smoking. A while back, I had tried to convert our cell into a non-smoking room, but Shlomo had refused, claiming that we were being selfish and not considering him. I had to give him credit, though, because he did compromise and only smoked three or four cigarettes while we were locked up. On the Israelis’ arrival I explained the problem to the three of them and asked them politely, for the 15 hours that we were all cooped up in the cell together, to please cut down on their smoking. Smoking had been banned in public places in many countries, and everyone knew that second-hand smoke was known to cause cancer. All I was asking them for was a little consideration.

Itzik had managed to smuggle the jack I’d asked for into our building, and I paid him for it straight away. The guard at our gate was the infamous Mr Somporm. He was only about 1.5m tall, but, since his appointment to the gate, he had bust many prisoners carrying drugs and dogs – even biscuits. How Itzik got past him, I don’t know – we drug dealers had our ways of eluding the guards – but anyway I was impressed.

Within minutes of arriving in our building, Itzik was already making enquiries about the availability of a dog. I was quick to enlighten him. As newcomers, the three Israelis would be closely watched by Veesarnou and his spies, the Blue Shirts, who informed indiscriminately on their fellow inmates in order to find favour with the guards. The risks were great. The key-boy informer now slept where the General used to stay, but he would walk around in the corridor to see who was doing what. In addition to all this, the closed-circuit cameras in our cell monitored our every move. I told them they needed to sit tight for at least two to three weeks. I didn’t mention yet the spare dog that I planned to give them. Instead, I offered to send text messages for them if there was something important they needed to communicate to someone outside.

Itzik’s wife and two little boys were living in Bangkok with the rabbi, and through the Israeli embassy he had organised permission for his wife and kids to visit every day and bring him food, as he claimed to be kosher. He was entitled to have his visits in the embassy section, which was at the entrance to the foreign visit room.

For my entire life, I had always been wary of people who are too friendly. Itzik was one of these people; he was over-familiar from the beginning. On his second day he already was pressing my buttons. He asked me to organise him a locker, preferably close to where Shlomo had his house. By that stage, as a rule, I had stopped assisting newcomers. Besides the fact that nobody ever appreciated a helping hand, the next thing you knew you’d find you’d adopted a next of kin. Anyway, I made an exception for the Israelis; after all, these guys were now my new friends. One of the Thai guys owned a locker right near Shlomo’s place, and, as a favour and because it was me, he gave me the best price possible. Itzik, in his broken Thai and disrespectful manner, then tried to bargain the guy down to a cheaper price. The Thai’s irritation was more than obvious, but Itzik just couldn’t see it. So I winked at my Thai friend and, with my hand behind Itzik’s back, gestured that I would pay the balance.

That Friday, the very first afternoon of their arrival, soon after lockdown I was davening
Mincha
when Itzik was on my bed with his wife’s phone number in his hand, asking me to message her to wish her good Shabbos and to tell her that he loved her. There were other instructions about things he wanted her to bring on her following visit. I really didn’t mind helping, as I knew from experience how important it was for us prisoners to have contact with our families, but it was a bit intrusive all the same. Avi, who slept next to me, also woke up early to daven
Shacharis
. Because we slept so close to one another, and although we are required to recite certain prayers in an audible tone, I always prayed in silence so as not to disturb the person next to me. When I was finished praying, I would go back to sleep for an hour before the cell was opened. Avi, I soon discovered, prayed pretty loudly and he also made other noises with his throat and was forever blowing his nose. I had no doubt that it wouldn’t be long before the guy would drive me crazy. I was already getting irritated.

Because it was Shabbos, Itzik didn’t ask me to bark the dog, but first thing Sunday morning, he was at my house asking to bark. Inside my house and against the wall I had two sets of lockers, on top of which were another two. Behind the lockers and in between the walls of our houses was enough space for you to sit and bark the dog without being seen by people walking past. Because I’d bark the dog at night in the cell, and because of the danger of using it during the day, I never risked using it then myself, but I was happy to help Itzik, Avi and the old man out, so I offered to facilitate them every Sunday until such time as things were more relaxed. Itzik did not care much for protocol. In the days that followed, every day he asked me to bark the dog. In the cell, he harassed me with ridiculous messages like ‘Tell my wife I love her and miss her.’ He was constantly coming to sit on my bed.

I then made it very clear to him that I didn’t socialise inside the cell. My time there was the only quality time I had away from the noise and goings-on of the prison. It was the time when I got lost in my head, and now Itzik was invading my space.

To avoid disturbing everybody in the room, all four of the Israelis would congregate on Shlomo’s bed, talk for hours and smoke. At first they limited their smoking; then, as the days passed and they became more comfortable in their surroundings, their conversation became louder, their smoking increased and they adopted an ‘I couldn’t give a fuck’ attitude. By the fourth day Avi was driving me mad, so I moved him to the other side of the room.

With the signal detector system fully operational, whenever I wanted to bark the dog I had to do so during the day on the other side of the building. Now that I had two dogs, I wanted to check the accuracy of the machines that supposedly picked up the signal and pinpointed your location. In a worst-case scenario, if there was a check I would flush my dog down the toilet – which reminded me of the time when Philip, the Australian, had flushed Joseph’s dog down the toilet. This was during a raid on the downstairs section. As always, we’d heard the security gates being unlocked. The guards rushed past our cell to the Chinese room, which they searched thoroughly. Philip, who was by now squatting in the toilet, completely panicked and flushed the dog. Meanwhile the guards didn’t even come into our cell. Philip was the laughing stock of the room. For somebody who acted like he was some notorious gangster, for him to have disposed of his dog, and not even his
own
dog at that, was such a laugh.

So I barked my dog in the cell, but all the time I was very nervous and fully expected to be raided in the morning when the guards had picked up my signal. Nothing happened. Perhaps the machine was not as accurate as we had been led to believe, or perhaps it was just that the guards on duty weren’t paying attention. That very afternoon, soon after lockdown, the cell next door to ours, which was part of death row, was raided. The guards had entered from the other side and bust one of the guys with a dog. There was every possibility that when I had been barking the dog the night before, the machine may have pinpointed the cell next door. I felt bad, but maybe it had just confirmed my suspicion that the system wasn’t as accurate as we’d been led to believe.