Day 1
The first bag I carried in was the “bed pack” or “welcome pack” issued by the prison: one white sheet, one white pillowcase, one used and stained faded pillow, two brown, coarse, threadbare blankets, one peach-coloured towel the size of a door mat, one roll of toilet paper, one plastic cup, one toothbrush, one disposable razor and one bar of prison soap, the smell of which would permeate everything. I don’t know what fragrance it was supposed to be, I only know it as Eau de Incarceration.
I was lucky, I had a second bag with a few personal possessions I was allowed to bring in. The rest of my possessions went straight into prison storage, locked away in the belly of the beast. So, I also had: two pairs of shorts, two T-shirts, two pairs of boxer shorts, a pair of flip-flops, one A4 writing pad and a pen. Throughout my years in prison, I saw many newly admitted prisoners who had no clothing other than that which they were wearing, and they got little help.
I was locked in, I was alone, I was home.
I opened the cupboards, both still full of leftovers from the previous inmate, including hardened coffee and spilt sugar, old lighters, empty water bottles, used foil stained black with slug trails of burnt heroin, cigarette papers, roaches, dead cockroaches and an old towel starched. Home sweet home.
I tried to put the room, and my life, in some sort of assembled order. I sacrificed half my toilet roll (a prized commodity in prison) and one of my T-shirts to clean as best I could. I made the bed, and covered a ripped, stained mattress that still had all the marks of its last user. It was a futile cleaning process, but once my few possessions were up, I began to feel more settled.
I had spent three days and two nights in the Floriana lock-up, so I was looking like a caveman. I shaved my face and head, scraping off the last hairs as the blade grew blunt. Now, like everything else, I smelt of that vicious prison soap.
I was already aware of the dire taste of Maltese tap water. Its hard chemical and bitter taste furs the mouth and is truly repugnant, but it was late July, the summer season was already baking the rock and trapped within that cage I was scorching inside. So, I braved a few gulps of the rancid water. I sat on the bed, holding the A4 pad and pen in hand. Words evaded me.
I was shell-shocked and dehumanised. I began to list in bullet points all that had happened to me over the last three days, trying to make some sense of it all. On paper it seemed to make less sense. My emotions were flooding my reality and all I could hear were the ringing words of the inspector: “Each charge carries a life sentence.” I was alone, terrified and broken.
The world began to spin faster, my head racing revolutions. Overwhelming feelings of total isolation and distress swallowed me up.
Options, options … my brain searched for options. But there were none; I was at the mercy of ignorance and the outlook was bleak.
I stretched out on the bed and while springs poked at me from underneath, needles jabbed my heart, my brain shut down consciousness and I escaped the only way I could, to my dreams.
That first night I slept. The holding cells at Floriana depot were horrific: infested and vile in every aspect. The game of depriving me of sleep, food, nicotine, and the incessant questioning had worked. I wasn’t aware of anything till the intercom beside me, startled me awake.
“Bonġu … Bonġu … Bonġu! ’Al liba Madonna!”
“Good morning,” I croaked. Slowly my senses came back to me and my stomach sank. I had woken up into a nightmare.
I had no watch, no hands of time to guide me, only the Officer’s “Bonġu” and the dim light straining through the window. I knew it was another day, the first day, the end of my days as I knew them.
At nighttime, the security lights outside the window still shone brightly, so it was never pitch dark. By way of comfort I thought of them as HPS bulbs, like the ones I had used for growing. Now the daylight outside brought me more dread, as it meant that reality was fast approaching.
My own heartbeat ticked time. I could hear the whistles and the unlocking of doors grow nearer and nearer. Finally, my door thundered open. A harsh voice and a mean face appeared. “FALL-IN! NOW!”
I had no idea what that was. Rules are not something you’re told at the CCF. There is no induction, you learn by watching and rules change all the time.
So, with trepidation I pulled the door open and gingerly looked out. All the cells I’d seen closed yesterday were open and people were emerging; yawning, stretching, smoking, coughing, scratching. I saw everyone was standing by their doors, so I followed suit, feeling like an extra in a zombie movie.
A shrill whistle cut through the air, followed by a loud “FALL-IN!” shout. Names were being called and the response of “Sir!” shouted back. I heard my neighbour’s name, then mine. “Holmes”. “Sir,” I replied.
My first fall-in was complete. I was now a prisoner.
Day 7
I’d completed my first week of incarceration. There were a few English lads in the Division, already a couple of years into heavy sentences. I could already see the weight in their faces. They weren’t much better than the police to alleviate my concerns, telling me of the horror of their own cases and the farcical way the courts and prison were run. No one could enlighten me on my case, and the fear of lengthy time behind bars was quickly becoming a reality. Even though at the back of my head, I innocently thought that, surely, common sense would prevail.
It’s funny how humans get used to intolerable situations so easily. All I did those first seven days really was sit on my arse, thinking. I hadn’t phoned anyone. I hadn’t sent any letters. I hadn’t even understood what I was meant to do. I wasn’t defeated but I could not come to terms with the trouble I was in, or how to get myself out of it.
I spent the nights tossing and turning. Thinking and waiting.
Until, one day, I got a call that began to change everything.
“Holmes, Welsh Embassy on the phone!”
Huh? Welsh Embassy? Almost non compos mentis, I stumbled to the phone to speak in that plastic handset.
As soon as I heard the voice, my heart felt instantly swaddled.
“Daniel. Do you know who this is? Don’t say.”
I recognised the voice straight away. I replied eagerly, “Yes.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow. He’s sending me. Tomorrow, you’re getting out. Say no more.”
The rest of the conversation was more encrypted and coded, but mostly consisted of pleasantries, appreciation and shock. I knew one thing for certain though: tomorrow I would once again be free. It was obviously not the Welsh Embassy. The only Welsh ambassador I know is the late Howard Marks.
The voice was of a friend of a friend back in the UK. While I had been there sitting waiting, a very dear friend was on the case. He didn’t have a passport, so he had got another friend to come over, pay the bail, and get me out of prison and back to Gozo, where he would follow as soon as his own passport arrived.
I went back to my cell and continued to wait.
Day 8
My mother’s birthday is on June 29. It is also the feast of St Peter and St Paul, a big day in Malta. In 2006, for me, it seemed a miracle could be possible that day.
I’d already dragged myself up to the phones and quite convincingly, I thought, phoned my mother to wish her a happy birthday. I tried not to let the distress in my voice give away that I was in trouble, let alone in prison and under a cloud of problems. Afterwards, she told me she could sense that there was something wrong, and worried that I had ended up locked up. Mothers always seem to know.
I was already used to feast days in Malta where less than normal happens. This was my first feast day in prison and even here things were different. We’d been woken up with cakes and glasses of Coca-Cola, and we were promised more in the afternoon. The meals of the day were some kind of mushroom pasta for lunch, and lamb shank for dinner. Everyone was in good spirits.
I hadn’t told anyone of my conversation the day before. I did not want to spoil the dream.
Before I had time to settle down to another boring day in prison, I was called to the guard room.
“Your bail has been paid. You can go.”
As the guard’s lips moved, I stood in shock. “Well, you don’t want to leave? What, are you waiting for?”
The next hour was a blur. I ran to the cell, packed the bed pack to return, and shook the hands of other inmates who were all telling me, “See you soon.”
It seemed like forever till I was through with all the admin, signing paperwork, returning the kit and collecting my possessions in storage. By the time I found myself in front of an automatic sliding door which opened onto the streets of Malta, my head was spinning.
And then I saw Mike. He was about 60 years of age, quick-witted and old school. I noticed straight away that on the side of his gold glasses there was a cannabis leaf embossed. Never was there a more welcome sight.
A slap across my head immediately grounded me.
“What nonsense you been up to, kid?”
His Bristol accent was like a mother singing.
The officer beside me shook my hand and released me back into the society.
That officer was one who, throughout my time in the CCF, treated me as a person, a human and sometimes even as an equal. There were a few good officers behind those damned walls, and I have to say it was normally the ones who had family in other countries and weren’t limited to thinking that Malta was the beginning and the end of everything.
As soon as we walked away from the prison doors, I clutched at, and hugged, Mike, my salvation. We walked to his Mercedes, which he’d driven from England. And once inside, I felt safe. He offered me a beer and a joint; I declined the first. And we drove off.
I remember very little of that journey to Gozo, only that it was so exhilarating and liberating to see colour, nature and the sea. I had only spent eight days in prison and already I hungered for the outside. Even then, in my head, I thought, how the hell would I manage to be imprisoned for years. I pushed away the thought for another day.
When we passed a turning to Mistra Bay, a quiet cove I was familiar with, I yelled “Stop!” Mike reacted like a learner driver practising an emergency brake. I didn’t even have to explain.
I dashed from the car, shedding my clothes, each piece dropping the weight of problems with them. I walked straight into the blue cool waters and dived in. It didn’t need long for the stench of the prison to wash away. Not that time, anyway.
Symbolically, I binned all my clothes there. Then we headed to the flat that they had arranged for me.
For a while at least, I forgot about the world and the threat of the looming years to come.
A taste of freedom
I was released on bail. That meant that every day I had to go to the police station in Gozo’s capital, Rabat, before midday, to sign my name and prove that I was still alive and not on the run.
I had a curfew. I had to be back home by 8 p.m. and I couldn’t leave before 8 a.m. the next morning. I had the chance to abscond. I knew that that would mean spending the rest of my life on the run, and I’ve tried to run away from little in life, only myself. Although I failed at that too.
The Maltese police had taken all my documents, I was isolated on the island, stranded, with the words “life sentence” resonating in my ears. I was hopeless and desperate.
A fake passport was provided for me. A car was hired in Sicily. I was close to going. In fact, one of the main reasons I didn’t was that Barry had seen the passport, and I was unsure of his reaction. I had, by that point, heard many rumours of how I got caught.
An off-duty policeman had told me Barry grassed me up, when he was caught buying drugs. Another policeman told me it was a local drug dealer. I don’t know. I don’t care anymore. There is nothing to forgive and think about. I have realised over time that the only way someone can grass you up to the police is if you take that person in your confidence. The responsibility of what we do means that the onus lies solely on us. Of course, a simpler way would have been for me to just not commit the crime. But this was being a smoker of cannabis, and I did not then, and still do not now, see that as a crime. Although paying for it is.
So once again, I tried to be part of a society that didn’t want me. A stable job was something I couldn’t find. With a blot on my police conduct, no one would give me real employment; just a few days here and there, doing the jobs no one else wanted to do, under the radar, working for a fraction of what it cost to stay afloat. I therefore had to rely on the generosity of family and friends. It was a humbling and humiliating time.
My bail conditions stated that I was to have no contact with Barry, so we began meeting clandestinely, to sort out this fiasco. We were still friends, who else had we to turn to? When together, Barry and I fell into destructive spiral: we drank too much and we took real, illegal drugs that only made our depression worse.
I struggled to see a future and went through the days in pain and blindness, bowing down to my addictions. Self-pity feeds that monster.
Mike was a breath of fresh air and physically separated me from Barry for a while. He did not trust or like Barry’s character. He was a bright chap and was quick at summing up the situation, having spent time in India, under Indian justice. He said the only way was a baksheesh, a bribe. Was it possible? Mike investigated and yes, it was possible to buy myself out of the situation somehow. The figure was a joke I don’t remember. Sadly, it turned out to be less than my family and I have been made to pay now, so the joke is on me. Mike passed away a few years later and I never did get to meet him again or thank him for his help.
So, sometimes what we need in life is just the company of others, and that makes problems instantly feel less so. When we sit with others and smoke weed, we talk, we think, we dream, we are free if only for a while. Is it a fake freedom? Yes, but the memories are wonderful still.
My friend Rhys had finally got his passport, put his own life on hold and flew over to Malta. The company of a few good men is enough to forget about the world: start a religion, or a revolution? I temporarily forgot about the problems.
All I had to do was sign every day and attend the very irregular court sittings where nothing ever happened. Or maybe it did, but most of it was in Maltese and I could already see that I was in the way of the proceedings. They had already decided on my guilt. There was just the final amount of years and money to take for them to agree on.
I started meeting some of the British expats on the island, and again charity and kindness were shown to me. There was such an understanding about my situation, even from people who had never walked the path I had. They did not condone it in any way, but they still accepted me.
Sometime early in 2007, Mike returned to the UK – he had his own family and his health was deteriorating. Rhys stayed for as long as he possibly could, pushing himself into debt and finding that the islands were a hard place to live for foreigners. Or maybe it was just us?
Towards the end of the summer in 2007, he finally had to leave. When I went with him to the airport, I was reminded of that day I first met Barry. I watched Rhys walk through check-in, and suddenly the tears came.
The bus journey back to Gozo was long, hot and lonesome. I watched all the tourists having the time of their life, while mine was slipping away. I didn’t wish them my fate but longed for their lives in a way that man is never meant to long. I was quickly seeing that while I had some freedom, I was captured, enslaved on these islands.
By then I was living in Marsalforn, Gozo, paying LM60 (about €130) a month for rent – or rather, my family was. I’d changed my place of signing to the Marsalforn police station and was lucky enough to have an understanding policeman. He’d lived in Australia for years and silently, of course, felt for my situation
. I even gave him my phone number, and when the station was closed, he’d call and drop by at my apartment, for me to be able to sign.
These people who have shown me kindness trump those who have shown me cruelty. It confirms to me that people are not rotten, it is just society which is corrupt and broken. On an individual level, we could all be friends. It’s the capitalist institutions and corporations which have sold all our souls. That is what limits us all. These divisions.
One night I was sitting at The Creek Bar, a quiet, local pub. The owner, Nick, didn’t seem to mind my hugging a warm can of beer for hours, just to be out of my small flat. He felt sorry for me, I could feel it. There were a lot of people who felt sorry for my injustice, as they called it. Sometimes Nick would throw some odd job my way, but money everywhere was tight: when the tourists leave, everything in Marsalforn slowly closes for the winter.
That night, Nick introduced me to a woman who he said had been going through the same sort of problems and maybe the two of us could pool our pity.
I’d seen Julie around. A quiet lady, in her late forties. Always with her little dog. She seemed to have troubles of her own; you can tell by people’s faces that life had not been kind to them.
We began talking. After I’d told her my tale, which most of Malta seemed to know more about than I did, she told me hers.
She had lived in Gozo on and off for years. For some reason, whenever she left, she was always pulled back to the islands as if by some magnetic force.
I have heard so many foreigners say those words, myself included. I hesitate to use the word destiny, but as you get older, a faith in a greater God is more readily accepted, felt and welcomed. As you get older, the voice inside is listened to and believed. As you get older, you tend to accept your lot and submit to a Divine plan – which is wonderful.
She told me about her life. Another sad and disgusting passage through the Maltese criminal justice system. Once, she was queuing to get inside a local nightclub. Spot checks were being carried out by the police. She saw some of the young local lads being stopped and the policeman take out some bags of cocaine; after a few stiff words, the policeman threw the bags on the floor and stamped them into dirt, then they were allowed to enter. When it was her turn, the policeman went through her tobacco tins, and smirked in delight.
Daniel Holmes: A Memoir From Malta's Prison: From a cage, on a rock, in a puddle... Page 6