Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (96 page)

While I was at the hospital, a group of women prisoners was marched in. Among them was a Western woman wearing a surgical mask. For some reason I thought she might be the South African-Russian girl named Nina Chetchkov. Male prisoners and women prisoners are forbidden to talk to each other, and anyway she didn’t notice me. I doubted that she would recognise me. While we were waiting for the doctors to return from lunch, I saw the girls sitting a short distance from me. I walked part of the way across to them and called out to the woman, asking if her name was Nina. She didn’t respond, only gave me a glance as if she thought I might be crazy. I walked away, not wanting to attract the attention of the woman guard. A little later, a few of the women prisoners, ‘Nina’ included, walked past where I was sitting on their way to the toilet. When they came back, she couldn’t have been more than a couple of metres away from me.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I’m South African. It’s me, Alexander.’

‘I’m Nina,’ she smiled, her eyes lighting up as she removed her mask.

It was quite an emotional moment. Nina and I had corresponded maybe some 15 years back and here we both were – still a long way from home.

All the doctors took lunch from 12 to 2pm. While I was waiting, I asked one of the medical orderlies to fit me in early, as I had not eaten. He rudely replied that if I could not wait, I should return to the building. The rest of the group that had come with me from Building 2 had long since gone back, but one of the White Shirts had been instructed to remain behind with me. Out of spite, he left my name for last, so I saw the doctor only around 5pm. I’d been there since 9 in the morning.

We normally got locked up at 3pm, so while I was still patiently waiting to see the doctor, two guards came rushing into the hospital reception area, searching for me, thinking that I might have escaped. They were not impressed with the hospital when they saw me still sitting waiting to be attended to, and in fact asked me to report the incident to the embassy.

I still didn’t have proper bedding and so I arranged with Elisabeth, on her Wednesday visit, to buy me five new towels which I would use to make a bed. She could buy these at the prison shop, and they would be delivered to the building at about 1pm. That night, tossing and turning on the concrete, I actually dreamt about the towels. Even my dreams were becoming boring.

On Friday 27 May I finally had a visit from the Israeli embassy. The rabbi came along too, with his sidekick Chai. It was a good visit, but a sobering one. The rabbi informed me that I might not be able to go back to Bangkwang. I had been moved, he said, because I had been categorised as dangerous, and the suspicion that I had been dealing drugs in prison was sticking to me. I was also suspected of having a mobile phone. That I had a dog was true, but the rest was all hogwash and I told the rabbi.

When I first arrived at Klong Prem, there were five of us in my section of solitary confinement, two of whom were on death row and had shackles permanently welded onto their legs. We were locked up for 23 hours a day. I had arrived there fairly late in the afternoon, when all the other prisoners were already locked up. Although it was a punishment section, the rooms also had guys in them from the general population, which meant that we would be let out around 6.30am and then they would get locked up at the same time as us in the afternoon, around 3pm.

My first morning when I had a cell to myself, when we were woken, after the other guys had been let out, we were required to take our personal possessions – beds, plates, cutlery, books, whatever you wanted – into the corridor. Our cells were locked and the electricity was switched off. One of the cells would be left open so that we could use the toilets during the day. Just outside the solitary section, in the passage, were two or three tables where the guards would lounge around.

It was a Saturday morning, so there was only one commodore on duty. Between the five of us, three of the guys had dogs. They would use them quite freely, and the guards paid no attention. Jib also had a dog, but, because he had ordered several executions from within the prison, some of the outside guards would pay him regular visits hoping to catch him with his dog and extort money from him.

In that first week, I built a hiding place in my cell and I agreed to keep Jib’s dog for him in the early hours of the evening, when it was customary for the guards to raid our cells. Naturally, I was taking a huge risk, but my hiding place was an excellent one and I felt reasonably confident. That evening, while watching
Thailand’s Got Talent
on TV, Jib, who slept diagonally across the corridor from me, gave a whistle, signalling that he wanted his dog. Using a mirror, we would watch to see what the guards were doing. They were approximately 40m away but couldn’t access our section without opening the security gate. This became our routine: Jib would signal to me that he was ready, then I would take the dog out of its hiding place and put it in a plastic bag with the charger. Then I would lie flat on my stomach close up to my steel-cage door, at the bottom of which were bars, so I could actually reach out into the corridor. Jib would then shoot a long length of string across to me, with a little metal ring attached to an elastic, a distance of about 7m. I would stretch my arm out and, still lying on my stomach, retrieve the metal ring with the string, and quickly tie it around the plastic bag with the dog inside it. Using my mirror, I would look again to make sure the coast was clear. (The first time I went through this rigmarole, I can tell you it was quite a nerve-racking operation.) Then I’d release the plastic bag and Jib would haul it in as quickly as possible. I would peek in the mirror one more time to see if the coast was still clear, but, even if it wasn’t, it would have been too late because Jib by then was already hauling it in. Jib would bark the dog till morning, and I would go back to do whatever it was I was doing – either reading or watching TV. In exchange for keeping the dog for Jib, he would allow me an hour on Saturdays and Sundays to call my family. The risk was definitely worth it. Because of the time difference between Thailand and North America, and Jessica’s own personal circumstances at home, this wasn’t always easy for us, but we set a time on a Saturday when I would call her. These conversations were intense and passionate.

One night, when Jib was busy hauling in the phone, one of the cats that lived in solitary started grabbing the plastic bag and trying to pull it just as a guard walked past in the corridor. I don’t know if we were more scared of the cat snapping the string or of the guard catching Jib in a highly illegal act. We were both shitting ourselves. What if the cat broke the string and ran off with the phone? I was hysterical; I couldn’t help laughing, but more from nerves than anything else. Luckily for us, the cat ran off and the commodore was none the wiser.

Some of the guys would just wrap the charger in a cloth and throw it across the corridor. Sometimes it would fall short, and the guy who wanted to use it couldn’t reach it; it was also difficult to throw because you couldn’t swing your arm properly. You had to sort of flick it. There were instances where a guard would quietly be watching the whole operation; after a while, he would open the security door, sneak up to the cell and listen. When he was satisfied that someone was using a mobile, as he’d suspected, his face would suddenly appear at the bars and he would demand that the phone be handed over, or else he would just open the cell door, march in, do a thorough search and confiscate both mobile and charger. When the guards confiscated a phone, some of them would hang on to it and sell it to a guard in another building; those who were less corrupt would actually take a baton and smash the dog in front of you. This was always such a sad moment, because a dog cost in the vicinity of 40 000 to 200 000 Thai baht.

Despite the ongoing national crackdown on mobiles and drugs, both continued to circulate among inmates and it was largely business as usual. Ironically, the dealers were probably doing more business selling drugs inside prison than they ever did outside. But there were consequences, of course. Numerous dealers who were caught outside the prison would give information about their contacts behind bars, and then these inmates would be rounded up and a new civilian case would be opened; in addition, they would be either thrown into solitary confinement or moved to another building.

It was well over a month now that I had been in solitary. Although a comfortable bed was not yet a reality and I wasn’t getting much sleep, I was surprisingly content. I began to understand that
Hashem
was preparing me for my freedom. I had been reduced from being in a position of power in Building 2 in Bangkwang, where I had stayed for over 16 years, and then to being a guest in Building 6, and now to here, where I had nothing. Not even a bed. It was humbling. My relationship with G-d had strengthened. Every morning I would put on my
tefillin
and daven. I was back to davening three times a day. I found sometimes that I didn’t really care any more whether I went back to Bangkwang or stayed where I was.

I had also acquired a pencil, an eraser and a ruler, and I had started thinking about designing my own pack of cards. I was quite excited at the prospect of expressing myself through drawing again. I decided I would use prison as my theme and depict on the cards some of the depressing faces among Klong Prem’s inmates. It was really such a stressful prison. Nobody ever seemed to smile there. Everybody looked depressed.

My sentence was down to 21 years and seven months. This meant that there was a chance I was going to be released in 2012, but I didn’t know where I was going or when. And a lot depended on the amnesty that would be granted on 5 December, on the occasion of the King’s birthday.

On 9 May our Building Chief came around, accompanied by his usual entourage. At first I thought they were mounting another full-scale search, but this time I was wrong. The chief had come to tell us he was being replaced by the chief from Building 3. He looked very upset to be moving on from Building 2. No doubt this had something to do with the fact that Building 2 housed some of the richest Big Legs in Klong Prem, from whom he was extorting a lot of money. I told him I was really sorry to see him go, and in fact he was a nice guy and more understanding of prisoners than a lot of the others. He said his goodbyes and left; not even 30 minutes later, our new Building Chief arrived, pitching up with the same entourage as his predecessor.

As it turned out, I knew the new guy from Bombat prison, from when I was arrested way back in 1994. He had been one of the guards who had welcomed a truckload of prisoners to Bombat. He was bald, and back then I had nicknamed him ‘Kojak’ (his real name was Mr Shavolit Pubping, and his peers called him Bobby). He was quite a boorish man, but conscientious when it came to his duties and strict with those who didn’t find favour with his pocket. When he walked into our section and saw me there, he came straight up to me. He turned to the other guards and in Thai told them he knew me and that I was very dangerous, and, according to the drug enforcement agencies, that I was involved in selling drugs in the prison.

In return, I greeted him respectfully and then, also in Thai, said, ‘
Sawadi Kap wanna Kojak, Khun yung mai prokarsiel
’ (Hello, Chief Kojak, I see you haven’t retired yet). He wasn’t impressed, and pretended not to hear what I’d said. Anyway, he didn’t respond. I guess he didn’t like his nickname. What I’d done was bordering on being over-familiar and may even have belittled him in front of the guards and the prisoners. He had his sidekick with him, a man named Santi. He was a sadist, who enjoyed inflicting physical pain on prisoners. Santi’s favourite way of spreading fear was to make prisoners lie on their backs and then, using a bamboo cane, to strike them on the soles of their bare feet. He also used to kick, punch and beat prisoners. What sickened me the most was that Santi was extremely corrupt. My friend Somsak had once actually given him a piece of land to get him to close his eyes to us using a mobile phone.

Later that afternoon, when he was in the corridor, I walked up to Kojak and asked why he had said what he did. I told him that it wasn’t true. And although I was in solitary, I still hadn’t been told why I was being punished or what I had done wrong. I had not violated any of the prison regulations. Kojak smiled and said in English, ‘Joking.’ At the same time, he stretched out his hand and I shook it. Then he asked me why I was in Klong Prem. I told him I didn’t know.

The next morning there was a major reshuffle in our section. All the normal prisoners who occupied cells in the punishment section had to pack their things and were moved to normal cells. There were others who were also on permanent lockdown, and these people were all moved to our section, bringing us to a total of 16 in solitary confinement. During the move we were pounced on by the prison search party known as ‘
Moodang’
(Red Caps). Through my own stupidity I was still holding the Bluetooth earpiece of Jib’s cellphone. Being a foreigner, I didn’t expect a thorough search of my person, so I hid the piece between my thigh and my right testicle. We were all lined up in the centre of the corridor while two of the 30 Red Caps searched each prisoner from head to toe. At the same time, a guard ran a metal detector between our legs, in our pockets etc. I was wearing cut-off denims and, thinking quickly, I placed a tube of lip-ice in my right pocket as a deliberate distraction. It worked. It caught their attention, as it was meant to do. After they were done feeling my balls and ass, I then pretended to assume they were finished with me and tried to push past them, but I was roughly pulled back.