I was disgusted. After seeing the evidence against me, the Daily Mail had released an article about my case, stating, ‘should the same evidence be put forward in Britain, the chances of it going to trial are so slim as to be laughable’ – clearly the Greek authorities had a very different sense of humour. It scared the hell out of me – and I was given no chance to defend myself against the lies. The evidence was crap, the investigation’s identification process was disgraceful, and I hadn’t even been questioned in the police investigation.
Fair Trials International put my family in touch with The AIRE Centre, a charity that specialises in litigation before the European Court of Human Rights. Instantly, they lodged an appeal for my release on the grounds that my incarceration was illegal. Subsequently, Fair Trials International and Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP launched a campaign to the European Parliament in Brussels, fighting for mutual cooperation between European countries in criminal justice matters.
The days passed very slowly after being given this news. I was in a constant daze, fighting off negative thoughts. I spent my days either lying on my bunk and thinking or walking up and down the courtyard, spinning my pegleri between each of my fingers and thinking some more. My emotions would fluctuate; some days I would feel accepting, but on others the black cloud that loomed above my head would cause my chest to tighten like the skin of a snare drum. Nights started to become polluted with more nightmares than dreams. One night, my heart began to palpitate. I started to panic and felt chest pains. I sat up. The cell door was locked, of course – there was no one there to help me. I was sweating, and took fast, deep breaths. Everyone else in the cell was asleep. I was trapped! I had to calm myself down. I jumped down from my bunk and splashed my face with water and told myself that I wasn’t having a heart attack. I looked up to the wall – there was no mirror. I hadn’t seen my reflection in almost three months. I could feel that my facial hair was the longest it had ever been. I climbed back onto my bunk and lay there. The water cooled me off and I started to breathe slowly. I stared at the ceiling until I embraced the deep sleep that I craved. It had come to the point where the short bouts of sleep that I did manage to get became infested with images of Korydallos Prison and murder trials. My mind was no longer a place where I could escape just by closing my eyes. There was no escaping now.
24
* * *
A MIXTURE OF MADNESS
* * *
I’d turned twenty-one – too old to be in Avlona. The more that Korydallos Prison was spoken of, the worse it began to sound. I started to recall prison films like The Shawshank Redemption and American History X, praying to God that I wouldn’t have to experience anything remotely similar. There were arguments and fights in Avlona, almost on a daily basis – but they were no different from any that we used to see in school. It was a drug-free, youth offenders’ prison and I didn’t feel psychologically strong enough to be transferred to Korydallos. More and more inmates had told me that joining the prison school would prevent my transfer, so I went to see Zoe the social worker to fill out an application form. My cellmates instructed me to take two empty ballpoint pens from Zoe’s office, which wasn’t difficult to find considering her pens never worked.
When I got back to cell five, I couldn’t believe my eyes as Christos handcrafted a tattoo machine using everyday household items. I remember exactly how he did it and could probably make one now. He broke a disposable cigarette lighter and took out the metallic, spiralled wire that acted as a flint. Then he stretched the coil out to its full length so that it formed the shape of a rigid needle. Holding a flame underneath it, he moved it up and down in an attempt to sterilise it. He pulled out the plastic cap that covered the bottom of Zoe’s pen and took out the tiny ballpoint at the very tip on the other end. It left him with a hard, hollow, outer casing and a flimsy, hollow, inner tube. Feeding the needle through the empty inner tubing of the pen, half a centimetre of the needle then peeked out of the tip of the pen instead of the ballpoint, and an inch poked out of the back. With a lighter, he melted the back end of the plastic inner tubing, squeezing it so that it fused with the needle.
Christos took apart our electric fan and extracted the small motor that propelled the blades. He used a long, plastic-coated wire and his plastic straw ‘soldering’ technique to connect the small motor to the base unit of the fan, which now stood alone. The back of the makeshift needle now poked out the rear of the pen, so he bent the very end to make a hook. The hooked wire was fed into a hole on the circular plastic output shaft of the motor – the bit that spins.
He used the cylindrical, outer casing of another empty pen, melting it in the middle and bending it to make a right angle. It hardened when cooled down and he attached one end to the side of the motor and the other end to the main shaft of the tattoo machine itself. He did this by wrapping both ends with plastic strands from plastic bags. He melted the plastic with a flame, and continuously wrapped it with more plastic, repeating the action until it hardened to form a motorised handle.
The tattoo machine was connected to the base unit of the fan via a long wire. The base unit had three buttons, which would normally control the speed of the fan, but now controlled the speed of the needle and how fast it would penetrate.
For ink, Fivos and Christos set fire to plastic telephone cards that no longer had credit to make calls. The ink that formed the pictures on the cards burnt, creating a thick black smoke. They held a hard sheet of acrylic plastic above the smoke, which was part of the tabletop in our cell. The thick, black smoke set on the acrylic sheet and formed a black powder when scraped off. When mixing the powder with a few drops of water, ink was formed. It was engineering genius and, as I say, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Christos then turned the newly handcrafted tattoo machine on full blast, and started to tattoo something on a part of Makis’s leg that he’d shaved with a Bic razor. He continuously dipped the tip of the machine into the pot of ink and then softly pressed it into Makis’s skin. I looked at the design of the tattoo, which resembled a small elf sitting on a mushroom. I asked Fivos why anyone would want to have an elf on their leg for the rest of their life – he told me that it is something to do with the ‘psychedelic trance’ music that they listened to. Before being in prison, many inmates had a habit of taking hallucinogenic drugs like LSD or magic mushrooms and going to psychedelic trance raves where they would ‘trip’ and believe that they were dancing with elves. In my opinion, the music was shit – Christos played some for me. They’d listen out for the little tweaking high-pitched sounds, which was apparently an ‘amazing’ experience when on drugs. But it didn’t sound very appealing to me.
It took Christos a few hours to complete the tattoo and it looked fantastic. Christos had even added shading to create a three-dimensional effect, rather than looking like it was drawn on with an eyeliner pencil like those on Paiteris – the ‘shit tattoo guy’. Christos asked me if I wanted one and without really thinking, I’d agreed to it. I actually trusted him for some reason, which was probably a stupid risk thinking about it now with hindsight.
I made him take out the needle from the tattoo machine and replace it with a new one from a different cigarette lighter that we had lying around. He asked me what tattoo I wanted and I told him that I wanted the five-dot tattoo that most inmates had. The five dots that you find on dice represent four walls and the prisoner inside of them. Several inmates had it on their hands, their ankles or even their necks. But, jokingly, I told him that I wanted it on my arse. ‘Tora oli i zoi mou tha einai piso mou! – Now all my life it will be behind me!’ I said. I shocked myself as the Greek words so casually exited my lips.
‘Entaxi, ade – OK, come on then,’ Christos said smiling, pressing button number three on the base of the fan, which switched the tattoo machine on to full blast.
‘Plaka sou kano reh! – I’m joking with you, man!’ I responded.
‘Don’t be a kota – chicken, you said it now you have to do it!’ Fivos claimed
. ‘Left or right?’
I didn’t actually want a tattoo because I’m not much of a tattoo kind of guy. In the heat of the moment, I thought it would be pretty funny to go along with. In hindsight – again – I’m unsure as to whether it is funny or actually moronic to have a tangible memory of Avlona stuck just above my left bum cheek for the rest of my life. Probably the latter.
There’s one last story I have about Christos, which I feel obliged to share – just because you don’t see things like this every day. He’d decided to make a steering wheel with pedals for the PlayStation video games console. There were a few PlayStation consoles that were circulating the Parartima wing. Inmates would buy one – which would cost a few telephone cards – then they’d use it for a while before selling it on in an attempt to make a profit. Christos owned one and it was rarely played. The only game that he had was a car racing game called Gran Turismo.
Every now and then the guards would give us a banana with our meals, and the bunches came in large, rectangular cardboard boxes. When the bananas were finished, the guards would leave the boxes in the hallway for the prison workers to dispose of. Christos took one of the boxes with the intention of using it as the base of the steering wheel. It didn’t have a lid and had many holes in it. He sat on a chair and placed the cardboard box on the floor in front of him with his legs inside of it, as though he was sitting at a small cardboard desk. The top of the box ended a few inches above his knees. He used a long, wooden broom handle as an axle for the steering wheel. He fed the stick through a hole at the top of the box, exiting a hole at the back of the box so that it sat at a diagonal angle. On the tip of the front end of the stick, he attached the circular caging of the fan that he had previously destroyed to make the tattoo machine. The girth of the wooden broom handle happened to fit perfectly into the hole in the centre of the circular fan cage, which now acted as the steering wheel.
For pedals, he used the centimetre-thick acrylic plastic that he’d used earlier in the process of making the tattoo ink. It was probably just under a metre squared. I sat on Fivos’s bottom bunk and held it tightly between my knees while Christos used a long, thick strip of material that he’d ripped from his bed sheet to cut through the plastic. He’d twisted the strip of material, so it was thin and cylindrical. He pushed and pulled the strip in a fast, sawing motion. The friction caused a heat that allowed the material to melt and cut through the plastic. He cut out a big rectangle, which fitted perfectly at the bottom of the box. Within the rectangular plastic, he used the same ‘twisted strip of bed sheet’ technique to cut out three additional rectangles, leaving three pedals. He’d ordered a set of washing-up sponges from the pakali – grocery, which he cut into halves and wedged underneath the pedals where it met the cardboard flooring and stuck everything to the box with melted plastic. Just above the sponge, he’d stuck metallic foil on the back of each of the pedals and the cardboard beneath it. When the pedal was pushed down, the two strips of foil would meet.
Next, he opened up an existing PlayStation control pad. In the same way that he’d made the electrocuting hi-fi, he used plastic straws like a soldering iron – by burning the ends and dripping the melted plastic to keep the connections stuck together. He connected two wires to the metal underneath three of the main buttons on the PlayStation control pad, which were used for driving. Each button now had two wires connected to them. Christos connected one for each of the buttons to the foil on the back of the pedal. He attached the other three to the foil on the cardboard floor. When the pedals were pushed and the two strands of foil met, it would cause a connection in the same way as if the buttons were pushed on the control pad. I was extremely impressed, but was yet to discover if it would work.
He’d mounted the control pad at the rear of the box, just above the back end of the wooden broom handle. The analogue joystick controlled the direction of the car on the video game. He stole a chess piece from Jamal’s chess set, melted the bottom and welded it to the tip of the joystick to make it longer. Jamal never found out that it was Christos who stole from him, but I’m sure he had his suspicions.
Christos then used a strip of material to create a mechanism between the extended joystick and the back of the wooden broom handle. When the steering wheel turned right, the joystick would turn left – when the steering wheel turned left, the joystick would turn right. The control pad had been mounted upside down, so that the PlayStation registered the directions as the same.
I’d watched him make the entire thing and was adamant that it wouldn’t work, but I was wrong. It didn’t just work, it worked flawlessly! He’d only started to make it the previous evening, and suddenly we had full control over the virtual car, being able to skid, drift around corners and win races on the most difficult setting. We sat for hours, taking it in turns to race.
If Christos had been given more opportunities in life, I’m confident in saying that he could have been the next Steve Jobs. I don’t think he realised it, but he had a talent that many people don’t have – an initiative and ability to create incredible things out of almost nothing. I believe that the greatest and most innovative inventions in this world are envisioned by people with minds that work in the same way as Christos’s. He was resourceful and imaginative – feeling pride in everything that he’d ever made. Regardless of the fact that he may possibly have been insane and sometimes felt the need to pierce his own body parts with dirty wires, it was a tragedy that he’d been wasting such indisputable talent.
It has been argued whether an IQ test is a valid measure of intelligence, or whether intelligence is the ability to adapt to environmental changes and use resources successfully. I think we’d all have to agree that being able to make alcohol, a CD/MP3 player, a tattoo machine, an electrical muscle stimulator and full driving simulator hardware with nothing but everyday household items – using only a cigarette lighter, plastic straws and plastic bags – is pretty goddamn genius. As Aristotle said, ‘There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.’ Christos was a genius, even though he once asked me whether London was in New York. I doubt I’ll ever meet another person like him again.
25
* * *
TIME FOR SCHOOL
* * *
It seemed as though the summer season jumped straight into winter and skipped autumn altogether – the vital crossover season that would have prepared us for the cold months ahead. The change in weather gave Parartima a completely different atmosphere. It was no longer unbearably hot and sticky, but had become cold, slippery and wet. Sometimes it rained all day – the smell of hot body odour and cigarette smoke in our cell had become overpowered by the stench of sewage, urine and faeces because our toilets would sometimes overflow. We had to hand-wash our clothes in a bucket and hang them on one of the many washing lines in the hallway, but it had become so cold that our clothes wouldn’t dry. They were wet for days, leaving the entire wing with a musty and damp smell. We’d sit on chairs in the hallway of Parartima and look out into the courtyard. Pegleri in hand, we’d stare at the same green mountain above the barbed-wired wall and listen to the ambient sound of pattering rain against the stone benches and concrete outside.
I saw Costas, the male nurse, again – the one who looked like Tim Curry. Every inmate had to be tested for hepatitis and HIV, which was a very good thing. Thousands of mosquitoes had circled the wing throughout the summer and had bitten whatever piece of flesh they’d come into contact with. It seemed like Costas had never taken anyone’s blood before. I opened and closed my fist and he slapped my inner elbow for ages, but still couldn’t find the vein. After twenty minutes of slaps on both of my arms, I decided that we should stop trying – I was quite optimistic that I didn’t have either virus anyway.
‘Maybe we should stop,’ I said.
‘You want to stop?’
‘Yeah, if that’s OK.’
‘Why, do you not trust me?’
I felt bad, but said ‘no’. The truth was that I didn’t really trust him
at all. If he’d known what he was doing then my blood sample would have been taken within a few minutes. I’d never had any trouble having blood tests in the past, so I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for him.
An ex-heroin addict called Costakis was sitting on a chair waiting to be the next victim of stinging arm slaps. He’d witnessed Costas’s inability to take my blood, so when it was his turn he said ‘Dose mou to – Give me it,’ referring to the syringe. Costas handed it to the inmate, who managed to take his own blood in the first attempt. ‘Koita reh, prepei na to kaneis etsi! – Look, man, you have to do it like this!’ he said.
‘School’ began in October. I would wake up at 8 a.m. and head to the building, which was connected to the prison. On the first day I was overcome with frustration because it was a stark reminder that I should have been in a lecture at university. Instead, I was in Avlona’s very own ‘proti gymnasiou’, which was the lowest class because my Greek was so poor. It was supposedly equivalent to Year Seven in a British secondary school, but I thought that Year One primary school level seemed a more appropriate description.
The classroom was a large, rectangular hall with a faint blue floor and off-white walls. There were two lessons that would go on in the hall at the same time – my lesson would be to the right end of the hall and another lesson would be to the left. Some of the inmates in my class had very little or no education, so they seemed to appreciate the opportunity to learn something. The guys in the other lesson (which was in the same room) didn’t seem to care a lot of the time and would sometimes shout, scream and fight.
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