by Shani Krebs
Some days I was hopeful and full of energy. On others my future looked bleak. Using drugs again was a real temptation, yet an inner voice tugged at my conscience. I badly needed to prove – not only to my family, but more importantly to myself – that I was a person worthy of more than what drugs had reduced me to. What had happened to my dreams of doing more with my art, perhaps of becoming an art teacher? Where was my dignity? I had only one path to choose, and this was to survive at all costs and become a man people could still respect and maybe even emulate. It was a tall order, but I did have a head start: my morals and principles were still intact, while my faith was in the process of being reawakened. I was street-smart, prison was now my university, and time was on my side. I had plenty of time, but I realised that I couldn’t afford to waste a moment.
So much for having one tattoo done a year. By my second year in prison, I already had six. For me they were the physical scars representing the ones you couldn’t see, the scars of my own internal war, which continued to rage deep inside me. This deep anger could not be quelled just by yearning for my freedom.
On 15 March 1996, the Singaporean government executed five Thai nationals who had been on death row in prison, even after the Thai government had tried to intervene. This only caused more conflicting rumours to spread. By the beginning of May, only a month before the King could claim to be the longest-reigning monarch in modern history, the rumours were still circulating, some claiming that drug cases were definitely going to be excluded from the forthcoming amnesty, and others that all foreigners would be pardoned and sent home. Many foreign prisoners believed we would be going home; some were even foolish enough to pack their bags in anticipation. I hoped with all my heart that it was true, and secretly I prayed. Whether G-d was listening to my prayers or not, I could not tell, but I was knocking on Heaven’s door. Our Father, G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, let Your light shine upon me, forgive my sins, and set me free …
The days leading up to the amnesty dragged. I couldn’t sleep and the general atmosphere was morbid. Our fate was in the hands of a government that violated a man’s right to be a man. The pressure became too much for me and I got really sick. I had diarrhoea for five days. Initially, I thought this had been caused by eating a rotten egg, but I knew it was really my nerves. I lost a lot of weight but there was no point in going to hospital. In the end one of my Chinese friends gave me some herbal medicine, which cured me.
Meanwhile we heard that Burma and Laos were busy negotiating the exchange of prisoners to celebrate the King’s Jubilee, and that Malaysia, on the request of the Thai prime minister, Banharn Silpa-archa, had released 44 Thai prisoners. It was very dispiriting. The South African government seemed not to care about its citizens. Around this time, the deputy director of the Department of Correctional Services in South Africa visited Thailand. Although he only visited the women’s prison, he stated publicly that he was appalled by the conditions he saw there and vowed personally to get involved and to try to get us home. This gave us hope once more. All the signs pointed to the likelihood that foreigners would be repatriated. So we sat tight, held our breath and awaited the announcement.
On 5 June 1996, at 10.55am, our Building Chief read out the terms of the amnesty. To our delight, drug cases were included in the amnesty and my sentence of 100 years was reduced to 40. Those foreigners who were expecting to go home, however, were terribly disappointed. For them this was an anticlimax, and especially so for those prisoners whose governments were already signatories to a prisoner transfer treaty. To me, however, it was a huge victory, nothing short of a miracle. My family and I had fought tirelessly for this, and I had written thousands of petitions. I had served a little over two years and already my sentence was down to 40. Wow – maybe there was hope after all!
After my sentence reduction, my life took on a whole new meaning. I kept my eyes on the flicker of light I saw at the end of the dark tunnel. Perhaps it wasn’t impossible that I might get out after ten years.
Back home, my sister was not so optimistic. To her, 40 years was still a life sentence. She had already had one nervous breakdown. She felt guilty about everything. She was uncomfortable sleeping in her bed while I slept on the floor; she felt terrible eating three meals a day while I had only one. She would break down and cry at the mere mention of my name. Knowing all this broke my heart, but I also needed Joan to be strong. In so many ways, my life was in her hands. If she fell apart, I would be fucked. I depended on her support both emotionally and financially. I believed in a tough approach. Joan had to pull herself together. I bombarded her with mail, hoping that the instructions in my letters would act as a distraction from her sitting around and moping, but I understood that it couldn’t have been an easy balance for her to maintain: she worked, she was the mother of two young children who needed her, and she was a wife. Like our own mother, Joan had never employed domestic workers and this compounded her problems, as she also had to take care of everything in her home, from parenting to cleaning. I had to admire her sheer grit and tenacity; without her love and support, I might very well have resorted to drugs again and got involved in all sorts of shit. I was grateful for Joan every day.
Our next step was to move our petition for a royal pardon along. In addition, we had to keep putting pressure on the South African government to sign a prisoner transfer treaty with Thailand.
South African embassy staff usually serve a four-year term, after which they are reassigned either to another country or sent back to South Africa. One day I received a letter from my sister telling me that our ambassador to Thailand wanted the South African prisoners to remain in prison there. He was of the opinion that we deserved what we got. I was devastated by this news, and when the consular officer next visited to introduce his replacement, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I remember saying, ‘Who the hell does he think he is?’ and ‘Is he voicing his own opinion, or is he speaking on behalf of the South African government?’ The consular officer was shocked by my outburst. Five days later, the ambassador himself came to say farewell. He seemed nervous and anxious, and avoided the topic until I confronted him. I asked him whether it was true what I had heard, that he thought we should stay in prison in Thailand and not come home to serve out our sentences in South Africa. He denied saying anything of the sort, emphasising that in fact it was he who had initiated the talks towards a treaty with Thailand. He promised that he would continue fighting for us once he was back in South Africa, as he would still fall under the East Asian section and would continue to be directly involved in the negotiations. I apologised and pretended to be relieved, but I didn’t believe him. It was becoming more and more apparent to me that our government couldn’t have cared less about us prisoners. I felt ashamed to be a South African. Almost every Western democratic country but mine appeared to be going to great lengths to ensure the wellbeing of their citizens in Thai jails and to arrange for their repatriation. Well, I was definitely not about to give up, and neither was my family. As far as we were concerned, the battle was on.
The new consular officer was not very friendly. She was an Afrikaner woman from Pretoria. On her next visit she didn’t bring the stamps and cigarettes I had requested, and, although she did seem apologetic, I knew she just hadn’t bothered. For 100 Thai baht you got 90 baht worth of stamps. Initially, when I began writing letters, I also tried to purchase fancy and colourful stamps, covering the entire envelope with them and making it look really attractive. But then I encountered a problem. For some reason my letters were not reaching their destinations. I couldn’t understand why they were going missing. All letters, incoming and outgoing, were recorded in a register by the prison authorities. I also kept my own records, which corresponded to theirs, so I knew something was seriously wrong but also that it was not from the prison side. The postal service in Thailand is actually very efficient. It is upsetting for a prisoner, whose only form of communication with the outside world is through letters, to find that the system isn’t working.
It occurred to me that perhaps the problem was at the post office in South Africa and that perhaps someone there was stealing my fancy stamps and throwing away the letters. Not long before, an A4 envelope containing three of my pen drawings had also gone missing. One of the newspapers back home published a description of the drawings, appealing to the public to return them, but nothing came of it. After this I used the small Thai stamps with a picture of the King’s head on them, although the mono colours weren’t as eye-catching as the ones I’d used before.
Another time when letters didn’t seem to be getting through to their intended recipients, in one of my letters home I complained to my sister about the guard who was in charge of our mail, an officer by the name of Arun. I had long suspected him of withholding my letters. He looked down on all prisoners and hated foreigners in particular. We had heard stories of him sleeping with prisoners’ wives, promising to make their husbands’ lives easier in prison if they did. Arun hated me and I was 100 per cent sure he was tossing my letters in the bin. I was extremely upset, especially as one of the letters that had disappeared had contained important information regarding my royal pardon.
We prisoners were tired of being victimised by Arun and it was time to get rid of him. In my letter I asked Joan to write an official complaint about him to every government department in Thailand. Seeing that Arun was the one who was censoring our mail, I knew he would read my letter and I knew he would shit himself! Predictable as I thought he would be, one day I was called to the office and there was Arun, on the verge of tears, with my letter in his hands. He couldn’t have been friendlier, pleading and begging me not to report him and assuring me that he had never withheld any of my mail. Actually, I forgave him. Using a red pen, I crossed out the instructions to my sister to pursue the matter. Then I signed it and he posted it. After that Arun behaved himself and none of my letters went missing again.
Living with so many people in such a confined space, no matter how positive you are, takes its toll on you. In prison there is always somebody getting in your face. Sometimes it was hard to stay positive, and I really struggled with all the negativity around me, not to mention the drug-taking. I couldn’t allow my moods to affect my creativity. For me, art was my escape. I would switch off from my reality and explore worlds unknown. The imagination has no boundaries. My mind became my sanctuary and also my escape. But still the questions kept playing over and over in my head.
Why me? Why am I here?
I was still not getting it. I was getting a second chance at life. And I was also making a difference, even though I might not have realised it. For a start, we had won a victory in the amnesty: drug cases would no longer be discriminated against. But there was still a lot of work to be done. What was it that Jung wrote about the collective unconscious? Something about depression among prisoners being like a generator they are all plugged into at the same time? What was the point of suffering when one had no future? We were all racing against time. Mental breakdowns were common in prison. My biggest fear was of growing old there. I had to dig really deep to keep my head above water. I had to keep telling myself that somewhere along the line, the right door would open. I had to be sure of this or I would crack.
I had had a passion for music since I was ten years old. Cat Stevens, Fleetwood Mac, the Doors, Supertramp, the Bee Gees, the Zombies – these were favourite acts of mine. Some of their songs lived in my head: the Zombies’ ‘She’s Not There’, Led Zeppelin’s legendary ‘Stairway to Heaven’, Tommy James’ ‘Crimson and Clover’, the Animals’ ‘House of the Rising Sun’, the Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, ‘Angie’ by the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ …
At first I struggled to enjoy listening to music in prison. I would trip out and get really down, as certain songs triggered strong memories, propelling me back in time and space. It was soul-destroying, and all it did was intensify my longings. But I loved music, so I continued to listen to it. I struggled to concentrate on the lyrics, and after a while I would hear only the melody. Sometimes I would lose myself in writing my own words to the music. I had to train myself to listen, but eventually music enabled me to tap into the creative side of my brain, and I reached the point when every drawing or painting I did, I did listening to music.
In one of their parcels, my family sent me cassettes of all my favourite music, as well as personal messages they had recorded for me. They thought this would be a more personal way of communicating than writing letters, especially for my niece and nephew, who were so busy being young that writing letters was a chore for them. A few of the other inmates also used this method of staying in touch, paying the guards a fee to smuggle their cassettes out for them. At first I thought this was a good idea, but the second I heard my sister’s voice, I broke down in tears. I just couldn’t listen to the messages. After that I abandoned the idea of recording.
There were 13 South African prisoners in Bangkok, about nine of them in the Bangkok women’s prison. My heart went out to these women. The conditions there were far worse than they were in the men’s prison. They slept in dreadfully overcrowded cells with up to 100 women in them at a time, maybe even more. They weren’t allowed parcels and their letters were limited to one page and maybe one letter a week. I wrote to a few of them, but, because of the restrictions, it took months before they responded. Understanding that their families took priority over anybody else, after a while I stopped writing, and I knew it was selfish of me to expect a letter in reply.
One of my pen pals in South Africa sent me a parcel containing two big pieces of biltong. Unfortunately, they hadn’t been vacuum-sealed and had turned all mouldy, but I couldn’t bring myself just to throw them away, so I washed the fungus off, sliced off some pieces and fried them in oil. They turned out to be really tasty and I shared them with some of my mates. And, in case you’re wondering, I didn’t get sick. One thing you learn in prison is never to waste food!
Before my arrest, I had been building a go-kart for my ten-year-old nephew, Darren, which I never got to finish. I loved Darren like he was my own son, and we shared a close bond. Being separated was as difficult for him as it was for me. I could only imagine what it must have been like for those inmates who were fathers and husbands. In my letters I tried to console Darren, and I wrote him lots of short notes, encouraging him with his studies and with other issues or challenges life presented. In spirit, my family was always with me.
With everything that had happened to me thus far, my outlook on life was gradually changing. My eyes were opening and my faith in G-d was slowly being strengthened. As I began evolving, so I began to discover who I was. For the first time in my life I was setting goals and my head was filled with dreams. I was looking to the future and not just living in the moment. I sometimes wondered where I would have been if I had not ended up in prison in Bangkok – more than likely in a prison in South Africa or six feet under in Westpark Cemetery. The more I thought about it, the more grateful I began to feel. I believed that G-d was about to reveal something to me. Prison was saving me from myself and the path of self-destruction I had chosen. I had stopped using drugs, I was fit and healthy, I had a roof over my head. I had developed new interests and there was no shortage of friends – not that I would have invited any of them to a Shabbos dinner! Looking in from the outside, I actually began to consider myself extremely lucky. Life was dictating the terms. I might have been walking on the edge of a precipice, but it was up to me to keep my balance. When I thought of my situation like this, I would find myself smiling and I would allow the sun’s rays to brighten my days. Crazy as it seems, I was relatively content. I had made a life for myself within the prison walls.
I enjoyed most days because I was doing what I loved most – being creative. Stimulating my mind was crucial for me to maintain my sanity. The nights were still bad, however. Insomnia had always been a problem for me, and in Bangkwang at night my mind became a battleground for my thoughts, the conscious wrestling with the
subconscious and causing havoc. For a while I tried meditation, but I had great difficulty clearing my mind and concentrating on a single thought. I guessed I would have to learn to live with it, but insomnia was a bitch. I also knew that there was no way I could take medication, not because it was not available – guys sold Valium like candy – but because I was fighting my own addiction. Replacing street drugs with prescription drugs would have been equally destructive. There were occasions when I did take a Valium, but it affected my thinking for days and induced a chemical depression that I couldn’t afford. And sleeping pills scared the shit out of me because the effects were long-lasting.
Having only 13 people in our cell was a real pleasure. I looked forward to being locked up and spending quality time with myself. I didn’t socialise much in the cell. After lockdown, first I would take a nap, then listen to my Walkman and draw for hours on end. For entertainment, the guys hired videos every night, but most of the movies I had seen before. Late at night, after watching three or so feature films, they would put on a blue movie, which the Thais referred to as ‘sex movies’. In our toilet area, someone had burnt a small hole in the rice-bag curtain at squatting level, so, while you were hunched above the toilet, you could peek through the hole, watch the sex movie and jerk off. One of the Americans would masturbate at least three times whenever we watched a porn movie.
The river water that was pumped into our cells only came at certain times – one hour after lockdown, around 9pm and then again at 5am. The water at the bottom of the tank was thick with mud, and once every two weeks we’d get the room cleaner to empty and clean it. The tank probably held about 60 litres, but whenever there were sex movies we would run out of water by midnight. Often there would be sperm trails down the toilet bowl. This became a problem for me, as I would answer nature’s call around 5am, so I organised myself a 25-litre plastic container, which I filled with clean water and carried to my cell every day. I would keep it next to the steps to the toilet.