Cry Havoc

by Simon Mann

  Food parcels are again allowed for all. That is good, but expensive. The Croc’s driver brings me a meal twice a week. The Croc brings another, and a small box of supplies, on his weekly visit. If he doesn’t make a visit, then the driver stands in for him. The supplies are cigarettes (as money – I’m still not smoking but keeping Magneto and the other two supplied is no small matter) – and to pay for our water (cold and hot). Matches. Soap (laundry and body). Biros. Loo paper. Powdered milk. Coffee. Tea.

  The Shumba café is still trading. Standards must be kept. The ‘travel agency’ is also trading.

  The Croc brings magazines, letters, news. I have given up on books. I have many in Security. The Croc has many more at his home. I don’t want to read any more.

  I write and rewrite Straw Hat. Other than that – these days – I just walk: in my cell, or in the yard. I walk. But first thing in the morning I run. I try to run.

  By now my hernia is bad. Every ten minutes or so, I have to lie down flat on my back. I push my gut back inside the ruptured stomach wall. I become good at this. The hernia is genetic: an inguinal hernia. The tubes where the balls drop through the stomach wall, when you are in the womb, make a weak spot.

  I run. Not so far now. The hernia is bad. I have to make sure that my stomach and gut are empty at run time: 0830 or thereabouts.

  I’m going a bit crackers. I know it.

  Water from the tap is a memory. Although, with only four of us in the section, it is easier to keep our supply going. We get it brought in by means of my cigarette cash: our precious – vital – plastic containers are carried out, then back in, daily. Water of varying quality, from various sources.

  Hot water – mvura pisa – still comes in twice a day – paid for by my fodya – in a prized and Shumba-branded five-litre plastic container. So tight is the water supply that the same container – but full of cold water – has to go out of the section. They’re running so low.

  Some days it comes from Chikurubi’s own farm borehole (best); other days from the Egypt crocodile farm down the road; other days from the quarry (poor); other days from the Chikurubi cooking boilers (bad).

  I am a water hoarder. I rarely have less than 200 litres stashed in containers in my cell. This has become an obsession. It started at an earlier time, when the section was full.

  Somehow, during that time, I have become in charge of water, as if I was a young Scots Guards subaltern and these my men. My fellows are not good at self-discipline, or at pacing their use between the last supply and the likely next. In the end I treat them like recruits: lining them up twice a day, each with his allowed container in front of him. I walk along the line, issuing the ration, while warning each that he will get no more until the next water parade.

  This ridiculous carry-on is liked by all. The other prisoners like that I deal with the village idiots, rather than they. The idiots like it because it allows them to take even less care with their water. The prison hierarchy look askance, then away – not liking it, but not caring that much. Thankful that the idiots are being cared for somehow.

  Shumba is just about everything Security has been drilled to loathe.

  Then there is the lice business. Being in single cells, it is possible – and desirable – to be lice free. I am lucky. I stay lice free for four years. When a man has lice, the only way to get rid of them is to lay out the blankets in the scorching African sun. One blanket at a time.

  The lice cannot take the heat. They run for cover. There isn’t any. They are easy to pick off the blanket. The trouble is that if the man delousing chucks the picked louse from his blanket onto the concrete, then the critter is still alive. If it is picked up on someone’s shoe, then a new home, in another cell, inside another blanket, is possible.

  The way to make sure that this does not happen is to place the picked louse in a container and flush it away with the next big flush. The best containers for this are small Vaseline jars. Their screw tops make sure there will be no escape. There are plenty of such jars. To my amazement, my fellows see Vaseline as a necessity. If they are rich, they rub their whole body with it once a day. I can see the difference. Their skin becomes shiny and sleek. They look good. Without it they look dull. There are times when I grow jealous of their skin. It seems much better adapted, tougher, as well as better-looking.

  One day I have to tell one of the village idiots: don’t hunt the lice off your blanket without using a container. He says, OK, Shumba, but carries on. I fetch him a Vaseline pot to use. Use it, I say. OK, Shumba, he says, but he carries on.

  I lose it.

  ‘You’re an idiot! We’ll all have lice because you’re idle…’

  ‘SPO, SPO … Shumba cannot tell me what to do like that … just because he is a white man, he cannot say what to do…’

  The SPO in charge of us that day stirs sleepily on his seat, an upturned 25-litre container. Mine.

  Magneto rushes into the fray. ‘SPO, Shumba is right: the idiot must use a container…’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know about lice?’ says the SPO. ‘Magneto, Shumba, leave him alone…’

  ‘Now as for you, Mazo … you know what is right. Shumba is right. Use a container.’

  Food is scarce. There is at least one stretch of more than 24 hours each week when we get no food. We’re only four, so I do my best with my supplies. God knows what is happening out in the big sections.

  I fear that there will be a riot. If that happens, then they’ll come in shooting.

  ‘We’re really suffering now, Shumba,’ Magneto tells me.

  ‘Travel agency’ covers – mugs – served at the Shumba café are down. Each week. Security have made it an offence for officers – even SPOs – to visit FB 1. They lock the outer doors now. They sit on those keys now to the outer doors.

  This sometimes means that breakfast – bota – is delayed. After starving myself because of the hernia – so that I can run – this is not good.

  Café covers are down, but Shumba’s value is going up. The Security screw turns ever tighter on me. Because Mugabe is seeing how much fuel oil and cash he might get for me. Chikurubi, like Zimbabwe, is a sinking ship.

  When I was first in FB 1, the officers could walk around outside our cells, even though they did not have the keys for our cell doors. It could be useful. Like when Lucky – King of the Blankets – would cry out from deep inside his bedding: ‘Shumba, I think I left my packet of Madison in your cell…’

  Then I would know: I must give one to the officer, for Lucky. Which meant one for the officer too. Lucky hadn’t had a packet of his own for weeks. He was always ahead of the ration I gave him.

  But then – because the officers’ pay has become worthless and the officers desperate – the rules change. Now, at the 1800 hrs lock-up, the whole section is locked off, as well as the cells. The officers have the keys to neither. All keys are held by the duty officer, in the armoury safe. This drastic step is taken in order to stop the trafficking.

  Lucky’s dead-letter box goes dead.

  Thereafter, the trafficking has to go on when we are unlocked. A much more dangerous business. Everyone who isn’t a spy wants to be a spy.

  The fear of my going to EG has never once left me. Not since my arrest.

  The fact that by now there are only us four in FB 1 speaks volumes. As my hostage value goes up – how much Mugabe will get Obiang to pay for me – so does my security.

  Only selected officers and sergeants come into FB 1 now. Not even an SPO can come and visit without first going to Security. The screw turns. Many of the officers feel sorry for me, and say so.

  ‘You have done your time, Shumba. You must not be sold now … but you have been sold – there is fuel on the streets of Harare that is there to pay for you…’

  At the same time, the wheels are falling off Chikurubi itself. Officers are not showing up for shifts. Officers disobey sergeants, to their faces. One watch-tower officer climbs down from his post midshift and goes home. Everyone laughs. But
it isn’t funny. My stomach is a deep pit of unease.

  One night, I know that there are a total of five officers actually on duty. For 3,000 prisoners. There should be 35 on duty. If this place goes crazy one night, then the blood will be knee deep. My army guards, 100 men, are right outside. With the itchy trigger fingers of a scared elite.

  The Croc has told me. And the CIO. And the British Consul. And the Army. If you go to EG, Obiang will put you in a pot. Cook you. Eat your balls. To boost his libido. Spread his terror. Now that fear grows. I think of my sister’s promise, that I will never be sent to EG. Then I think of her other promise: that if I need an advocate (a barrister) for my extradition hearings, then I will have one. I do need one. Even the ZPS sergeants tell me that I need one. But I don’t have one. All I have is messages that everything is under control. I know it isn’t.

  All the time, this fear of being extradited to EG is growing. One day, Magneto says to me that he has had a dream. That I am going soon. My hope is his hope because, if I am out, maybe I can get him out.

  ‘Magneto, I may be going. But I fear it will be to EG… I can feel something…’ – I look up and over the wall, looking east, to where the wall faces the outside – ‘…something is closing in on me … out there.’

  I think of my sister’s promise. I will not go to EG.

  I think of ‘London’s’ track record.

  Why should I worry?

  Because I run I have to wash. For this I use water from a two-litre plastic lunch box. I stand in the vile black hole that is the shower. Black because the power is off. Black because light bulbs – these days – are as rare as water. There are no windows in FB 1. I share this hole with an unseen and uncounted number of mosquitoes buzzing around. My flannel – a sewn square from an old towel – I use to wipe on some water. That uses one third of the two litres. Next I soap with my hand, then use the towel again, with the unused two-thirds, to rinse off. It just works. When times are better I use a second two-litre lunch box as well, most of the second going to shaving.

  I have a pair of running shorts – prison uniform shorts, but used only for running. I run shirtless. That cuts down on the dhobi. I am lazy about my dhobi, but Magneto is not.

  Part of the point of running is my two fingers at Mugabe, and his pisspot pyramid of petty tyrants. I can out-tough them – even the army who come and see me every day – when I am their prisoner. That’s what my run says. They know it. Shumba, they say, how can you keep running? You’ve hernia … and no water … how do you wash?

  Sometimes the soldiers bully me. Two bring in a bunch of comrades to show me off. One time, they come when we are locked up.

  ‘If you come to see the monkey in the cage, bring peanuts,’ I tell them. Another time, there are eight of them, from Parachute Regiment. I am running. They lounge against the wall, hands in pockets, eyeing me.

  ‘These aren’t real soldiers. They’re fake,’ I call out to the ZPS sergeant, sitting on an upturned bucket, next to where they prop up the wall. He frowns.

  ‘These aren’t real Paratroopers,’ I call out on my next lap. ‘Because real Paratroopers wouldn’t lounge about with their hands in their pockets – would they?’

  The jibe works. All take their hands out of their pockets. Then, hesitantly, four put theirs back in. All eye one another, for a lead. Taking orders from me must be wrong. Hands in pockets is wrong.

  One of these four changes his mind. Out they come again.

  Another stands with one in, one out. He puts the out back in. Then, the in out.

  I laugh. Magneto looks away. Hides his grin. The ZPS sergeant and his two officers laugh openly. The army retreat. We don’t see them back again that day.

  When it turns out that the army had stopped my overdue hernia operation, I ask why.

  ‘Security.’

  ‘But you’re the army … you’re meant to be securing the whole fucking country’ – Africans hate swearing – ‘so how come you can’t secure one sick white man inside a Harare hospital? …If you want to be a soldier, why don’t you join a proper army?’

  They love that. Coming from me especially.

  Yet again I tell the ZPS sergeant, ‘Remember – the army are here because they don’t trust you – the ZPS.’

  He knows it’s true.

  The funny thing is, so many of them want to join the British Army, as soon as they can. Their applications are in. Others – officers as well as men – want to be mercenaries. To some, I give the details of my friends’ companies. Perhaps, I wonder, an escape can be engineered in this way?

  Later, towards the end, when a bunch of them really piss me off, I let the ZPS OIC know about my recruiting office. I cannot identify the officers, or men, but this has to stop, I tell him.

  Needless to say, the reaction to this is truly spectacular. Fireworks. CIO in and out. The lot.

  Now the army come in and go out as if I have leprosy. They don’t bother us any more.

  Another time, when they again give ‘security’ as the reason for turning down one of my requests, I lose it.

  ‘Security? Why don’t you just shoot us all? Then there will be no security to worry about?’

  Shumba, you see, never makes a complaint, only requests.

  One day, an AK round is fired down into the yard. The jacket is brought to Hassan and me for inspection. The round had hit the helicopter grid, further amplifying the echo and roar in our concrete box.

  ‘How much will that cost?’ I ask the duty yard sergeant.

  ‘Not much,’ he says. ‘How much does one bullet cost?’

  ‘How much will that man be fined? I mean. How much will he have to pay for a negligent discharge?’

  The sergeant stares blankly.

  ‘He’ll pay nothing, Shumba.’

  ‘Two steel balls’ becomes the key password and in-joke between Magneto and me. They (meaning everyone not a prisoner) would lose one and break the other.

  There had been one time – early on, when the section was full – when I didn’t understand very much about Chikurubi. Zeb and I had run. That day there was no water. No lights.

  I stripped, walked outside, then bathed out of my bucket right in front of everyone else. The yard sergeant told me not to do it. I told him to stop me if he wanted to. How could we live without water? Without light?

  Little did I know. By the end, no water and no light would be everyday.

  The guys love my telling the prison to fuck off, but it is bravado. If they did, they would be beaten. Moved to a big section. Die. If I do it, nothing happens. Nobody dares touch me.

  This is because I am the property of Mugabe, of the army, and of the CIO. I am valuable, because EG wants me. So do others. I am worth petrodollars.

  Uncle Bertie, Uncle Keith’s successor, tells me I have been bought and sold. Obiang wants me.

  ‘Shumba, there is diesel fuel for sale on the streets of Harare. It is there as payment for you.’

  Other officers tell me the same thing. They ask, ‘Why on earth don’t you have an advocate to run the case against extradition? Your lawyer is out of his depth with you.’

  ‘Ask my sister!’

  She has said don’t worry. Everything is fine. She repeats: you don’t need an advocate. You aren’t going to EG. I know you’re not.

  I write. I beg.

  Smuggled letters. Through-the-censors letters. It’s no good. Everything is fine, she says. Everything is fine. Again. Again.

  With my white trousers, made for me by Andrew the tailor for two packets of Madison – perfect, long white trousers with pockets – I sometimes wear scrubbed white pumps, a white T-shirt and a white jacket, from the same stuff as the trousers. I have a white sun hat. I must look like Lord Jim. All white. It is a way of giving two fingers to the system, I realise.

  Despite our conditions, and no water, we are still well turned out, in laundered clothes. Fuck you.

  When going to the section sergeant to ask for something, they call him Mambo – king. They
go down in front of him on one knee. Clap their hand once. Respect.

  When someone visits the section, we sit. Respect.

  Magneto is ‘the Sniper’ because he sets up rat traps. He kills them, like a sniper. One night he and I kill 12 between us. Another time, when the water is on, we throw so many buckets down the yard drain, that we flood out the rats’ nest below. We chase six or seven of them round the yard, until we have killed them all. In the big sections they eat rats. We never get to that point. Thanks to my rations.

  At night the rats play football above my head. Along the large air vent that connects all the cells, and holds the long-dry lavatory systems. Or I hear them creeping down into my cell, looking for food, spreading disease, pissing. Leptospirosis from rat piss: a killer.

  As well as being a murderer and an armed robber, Magneto is a tailor. He shows me how to sew, using home-made needles. No eye to them, just a hook at the point, like a cobbler’s.

  Magneto makes beautiful jungle hats for the female prison officers. They work upstairs from FB 1, where there are three women prisoners in their own section. He uses old green denim trousers. The brim of each hat is stitched many times, round and round. To stiffen the brim, he uses three layers of old-fashioned X-ray film, carefully cut out. His work looks like it was done by a machine.

  All the girls want one of Magneto’s hats, but they don’t pay him. Next, we tell them that we are starting a new line – hand-made bras. The thing is, to get one of these, a hand-fitting session is needed. By me.

  They laugh. Then one girl whips off her shirt.

  ‘Go on then, measure me up!’

  I blush. Dive for cover. Bluff called.

  We do not have water any more, not out of the tap. Not for months. We forget what it’s like to have a shower. Water from a tap. A loo that flushes (without a bucket).

  Food is growing worse, and less. I do my best. At least Magneto’s fed.

  The lights are out more and more. Load shedding. Lines down. The prison stand-by generator is U/S. Or there’s no fuel – not even EG fuel.

  In FB 1, no lights is serious because there are no windows. When we’re locked up at midday – as we are, lights or not – I cannot see my hand at arm’s length. We are only out of our cells six hours a day at most.