by Lee, M
I am with you always. I love you and will never leave you
Forever together. I love you Julie xxxxoooo
I read this over and over again, along with the message I had found in the front of the puzzle book. They gave me a little more strength but I felt I was losing the fight.
JULIE
When I told Gail at the consulate that Ali Shamsi had taken on Marcus as a client, she said, ‘That’s good, now make sure you keep him engaged with the case.’ I didn’t understand what she meant — surely once a lawyer agreed to work on your behalf it was their job to stay interested?
She said, ‘It’s different here. You need to be right there all the time, making sure it’s on his mind.’ So without fail I made a weekly appointment to go and see him.
I’d talk it over ahead of time with Marcus and I’d take in a list of things to discuss with Mr Ali, even if it was just three or four questions. It became my job: keeping him believing in Marcus. He was our only hope. The consular officials were nice, but in a very business-like, noncommittal manner. I suppose they’ve seen all sorts of people do all sorts of stupid things and then protest their innocence; I never felt like they were really with me when I tried to talk about the detail of the business case and to explain that Marcus was only doing his job. They certainly weren’t about to swoop in and use all their resources to get Marcus out as I’d naively thought they would do for an Australian citizen.
I kept saying to my sister, Min, ‘Where are the helicopter gunships?’
So Mr Ali was it for us. When I went in to see him I’d wait in the outer office. It was like a doctor’s waiting room — you never quite knew when you’d get called in. You could go in on time or you might sit there and wait for an hour or two; if he’d been called to a police station the meeting would suddenly be cancelled. When I did get in to see him I might only get ten minutes with him, twenty if I was lucky.
He was very polite and generally very patient with me. In one of our early meetings I broke down sobbing. Not only did he not try to comfort me, he wouldn’t even look at me, just kept looking down at the papers on his desk. I learned afterwards that it’s a cultural thing — in Arabic terms he felt acknowledging my emotional display would embarrass me.
Because of the time I was spending receiving calls from Marcus; visiting Marcus and Mr Ali; calling the consulate and anyone else I thought could help; and trying to track down documents and legal information, I thought I’d have to quit work. To live in the UAE a foreigner must be sponsored by an employer or spouse. Luckily Marcus was my sponsor and I could live in the country until October 2009. So, with Jane’s help, I explained to my French CEO, Olivier, and the head of HR what has happening and said I had to resign to focus on this case.
In his wonderful accent Olivier said, ‘Nooooo, you must work.’ He told me the story of his grandfather who had managed to survive World War II and at the end of it had walked all the way from Eastern Europe back to Paris, where he found that his wife hadn’t been able to keep the business together while he was away — everything was gone.
Olivier said to me, ‘You need to keep things going so there is something here for Marcus when he gets out.’
He told me the company would arrange things so I could keep working, and they did. They were amazing. Before long they changed my contract so that I was a full-time employee but on an hourly rate, able to come and go as I needed. That also meant that I was a legitimate employee and could transfer to the company sponsorship if the worst happened and Marcus was convicted of a crime. By this time I was starting to think of worst-case scenarios.
Rosemary also felt working was the best thing for me. She said, ‘You need to get your mind off Marcus, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Then you will be able to deal with things better.’
Olivier and Rosemary were right, work really saved my sanity. I gradually told more people in there what was happening and everyone was understanding.
If I looked a bit wobbly, Jane would take me upstairs to the kitchen and make me a cup of tea and sit with me while I had a cry. If I had to go to an appointment or a meeting to do with the case I might only go into the office for four hours, but otherwise I got in early, stayed late, never took lunch and threw myself into the work. When Marcus made one of his scheduled calls to me I would walk away from my desk and stand in a quiet lobby or meeting room.
It was also a safe place for me to keep important information. Showtime was owned by the Kuwaiti royal family and I doubted that State Security would risk an incident by raiding the company’s offices. When I went in there I would take with me the printouts of all the important documents I was amassing on the case, as well as my laptop from home, onto which I’d scanned them all for safety.
I was just living on adrenaline at this stage. If I was lucky I’d get five hours of broken sleep a night. I couldn’t eat. Indrani would get upset with me because there wasn’t a lot of me to start with but even the smallest-size trousers I had were now falling down around my hips, I’d lost so much weight. She’d try to tempt me with food, but I just couldn’t get it down.
Rosemary, who I spoke to in Australia every day, helped me keep it together. Dudley was really important, too. He was a distraction and I could take care of him and take comfort from him. I often thought afterwards that it was a really good thing Marcus and I didn’t have children. Nannies or not, I don’t know how Ange coped in that respect. To have had children caught up in the middle of all this trauma would have just been awful.
Paranoia was rife. Rumours swept around the expat community that Chris O’Donnell was under house arrest — they even reached the consulate. I spoke to Chris and he assured me it wasn’t true, but that didn’t stop people gossiping. I could only imagine what they were saying about Marcus.
I was so anxious on Marcus’s behalf. The deterioration in his health from one visit to the next was shocking. His skin was grey and the weight was just falling off him. The jeans I’d taken him in from his wardrobe at home were size 34 waist.
On one visit he said, ‘These are too big, can you bring me a smaller size?’ So the next week I brought him a size 33 and the week after he said they were now too big as well. I couldn’t let him see how worried I was.
‘Positives,’ he would say to me whenever we spoke. ‘What positives can you tell me?’ I had to keep boosting his spirits, telling him he was strong, he was an ironman, he could survive this. But afterwards I would just collapse.
MARCUS
The smallest thing going my way helped me. For instance, I knew that whenever prisoners were allowed to go to the bathroom it was logged by the guards. If I asked to get the broom and sweep my cell though, it wouldn’t be logged. It was just a few steps down the corridor to where the broom was kept, but I could string it out to maybe a minute to get the broom and a minute to return it. It was a reprieve from those walls closing in on me. In time I realised that I could do this at pretty much every shift change.
Food was the real problem. Being so stressed made it hard to eat, but when I did, the food frequently made me sick. It was often rancid and it would just go right through me. This would have been bad enough if I’d had free access to a toilet, but instead I had to buzz the guards when I wanted to go. Rosemary had given Julie a strategy to pass on to me, where I made a game of seeing how many times I would have to buzz before they came to let me out. It was a way of giving me back some control. In the game, every time they let me out it was a win for me.
That was OK if I just needed to urinate, but having the guards ignore me when I was desperate with diarrhoea was torture. The nastiest guard barked ‘Wait’ every time I buzzed. I was sweating and fighting the cramps. When he finally angrily banged open the door I was completely desperate. He stood in the bathroom doorway shouting ‘Yalla, yalla!’ — hurry, hurry.
I couldn’t control the guards, but I could control my body and avoid food. I picked at what was in the meal boxes, but more and more I just didn’t eat. Most of the really bad
guards were on the morning shift, so I changed my habits. I started to sleep during the day to avoid them. I would stay awake until the first prayer call and ask to be allowed to use the bathroom before being led back to my cold cell, where I would curl into a ball and try pretend this would be over soon. I’d try sleeping through the banging and crashing of doors, aiming to wake at about 2 p.m., in time for my call to Julie if it was a phone day. I’d gone from living to just surviving.
I was so ill at one point that a guard gave me a packet of Imodium, which Julie had brought in. I kept it hidden and began taking the pills rather than suffer the torment of asking to go to the bathroom. This way I could avoid going for days on end. I cut down on water for the same reason. I knew this wasn’t good for me but at that stage the alternative was worse.
My other constant fear was that the pen, consulate pamphlet and puzzle book would be discovered and taken away from me, so halfway through my fifth week I asked one of the better guards if I was allowed to have a pen. To my surprise, he not only said yes, he gave me one. Amazingly, he also said I could have some paper and gave me five sheets of blank A4. Now I could make proper notes about the case to remind me of things I wanted to discuss with Julie, and start a journal too.
My first entry, made that night, 3 March, reads in part:
The 5 weeks to now have been confusing, scary, lonely, sad and just about every other adjective I can think of having not done anything other than my job. I’m trying to not get angry and focus on dealing with the issues at hand . . .
JULIE
Marcus was going downhill so fast I truly thought he would die if we didn’t get him out of solitary. On the Monday of that fifth week I went in and it was awful just to look at him. He has beautiful blue eyes, but I looked into his face and his irises were a horrible dark colour, almost black. I knew that he’d lost a lot of weight just by looking at him, but when I put my hands on his hips I could feel the bones sticking out. I kept it together until the meeting was over, but when I got home I lost it. I screamed and sat on the floor and sobbed. Then I called the consulate and told Gail how bad things were and said they had to arrange for him to have medical tests.
MARCUS
The day after the guard gave me the paper, 4 March, was Julie’s birthday. I was so looking forward to talking to her that afternoon. The morning started with an unexpected visit to a doctor, in the prison’s central room. He took my blood pressure, saying it was high at 140/90, but he expected that. Then he asked me to step on a set of scales. Seeing the reading, I rubbed my eyes and took another look. No, it was still 72 kilograms. When the doctor heard I had been 84 kilograms when I arrived, meaning I’d lost almost 15 per cent of my body weight in less than six weeks, he looked slightly panicked.
He ordered the guards to take me for tests to the police hospital ward that was within the large compound. It was a dirty mess; the kind of place where if you didn’t have something already you’d probably catch it. They took blood from me with what I could only hope were sterilised needles. After so long locked away from any form of society it was almost stunning to see so many people moving around, but soon the guards were bad-temperedly leading me back to my cell. Clearly this unplanned outing had been a major inconvenience for them. They took it out on me by refusing me my call to Julie on her birthday, of all days.
JULIE
Even though I’d been told we would get a copy of the medical test, neither the consulate nor I were permitted to have them. In his next call Marcus told me the results and they were even worse than I feared. Apart from the blood pressure and the weight loss, Marcus was dehydrated. His systems were starting to shut down. I managed to get permission to get some fruit bars and dates through to him, and he told me he was trying to eat, but I knew we had to get him out of there.
I kept the worst of it from Marcus’s mum, Carol, but it was clear to Rosemary and my mum and sister that I wasn’t coping and needed help. They talked to Marcus’s brother Wayne about him coming over, and he readily agreed. He was not only male, which was an advantage in Dubai, he was part of Marcus’s immediate family, and that had its own status. I’ll let Wayne describe things from his perspective . . .
WAYNE McKINLEY
I was with Julie back in Sydney when she first found out about what had happened to Marcus, but she gave no clue. I took her to the airport, sat there with her and helped fix her phone. Everything seemed ordinary. I had no idea.
I didn’t for a moment think Marcus was anything other than innocent. When Mum and Dad went over there for a visit I remember Marcus had the chance to take them out in a private ride in one of the helicopters belonging to the Sheikh, but he wouldn’t do it. He always did everything by the book.
I was happy to go and help. I had to speak to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to organise a fast-tracked emergency passport so I could fly out on 11 March. At that point it still seemed like everything would soon be sorted and then life could get back to normal. After talking with Julie I booked flights for a two-week stay. The idea was I would do what I could to help, we’d get Marcus out, I’d hang out for a little bit with him and Julie, and then come home. It didn’t work out like that.
Chapter 13
INTO THE FIRE
JULIE
Two days after Wayne arrived it was Sunday, 15 March. Marcus’s phone days had been changed to include Sundays, so I was expecting his call. By 1.30 p.m. I was all ready. At 2.30 p.m., I reminded myself that nothing runs to schedule in Dubai. By 3.30 p.m. I was repeating the word ‘patience’ to myself. By 4.30 p.m. I was really worried. Marcus had been in such a bad way when I last saw him. What could have happened? Why hadn’t he called? I was so anxious I thought about calling the State Security centre, although Marcus had said never to do this because the guards would see it as me trying to get them into trouble and would take it out on him. I waited, growing increasingly fearful.
MARCUS
That Sunday marked the beginning of week eight in solitary. I was in real trouble now. I’d reached a point where making it through the next minute was a struggle. The day began with an unexpected distraction. I was taken out of my cell and led to a meeting room, where Marwan Al Qamzi, who had taken over as Managing Director after Matt Joyce’s departure, was waiting. He seemed genuinely caring, saying, ‘Don’t speak about the case, just speak about you.’ His manner was one of helpless concern, something so rare in that environment. At Nakheel I had heard that his brother was high up in the police force, maybe in CID or possibly even in State Security. Perhaps those were the strings he had pulled to get in to see me.
But we barely had time to speak. I was taken back to my cell and then the guard appeared, saying, ‘Pack everything, you’re going.’
‘To where?’ I asked, but he walked away without answering. Could I dare to hope this was it, the mistake had been realised, and I was going home?
Over the last couple of weeks the guards had let me keep two of the bags in which Julie had brought my things. I had a change of clothes, a pair of joggers, the books and a notebook she had been allowed to bring, and my precious hoard of paper, pens, the booklet with her poem and my puzzle book. I left the puzzle book there, hoping that its message ‘no one stays in here forever’ would keep someone else going the way it had me. I quickly gathered up my other possessions and went out to the reception area where Matt was waiting. Scattered on a chair were the wallets, watches and phones that had been taken off us when we arrived back in January. It was clear Matt had no more idea what was happening than I did.
We got into the waiting four-wheel drive and set off in the direction of Dubai’s border with Abu Dhabi. As much as I had wanted to leave solitary confinement, I now found myself very afraid of what might be planned for us. Asked where we were going, one of the State Security officers in the front seat said only, ‘Jebel Ali’. So, we were being relocated within Dubai. It wasn’t freedom, but we weren’t going to be dumped in the desert either. I wondered if Julie knew what was happen
ing. I longed to hear her voice and her reassurance that I could deal with whatever happened next.
We pulled up outside Jebel Ali police station, which was basically an outpost in the desert composed of portable cabins. Matt asked the officer several times if we could be roomed together wherever we were being taken. Whether they didn’t understand or didn’t care, they ignored him. Inside, the State Security officers appeared to hand us over to the Jebel Ali police, who handcuffed us together, sat us in the waiting room and locked the cuffs to the cold metal seats. I’d never been in handcuffs. They were physically uncomfortable — tight and digging into my skin — but worse was the sense of shame. We were in the waiting room of the general police station for the whole Jebel Ali area. People were going about their normal business, paying parking fines, enquiring about permits or just reporting on someone against whom they had a grudge. Matt and I were visible enough as the only westerners; being chained to the seats made us look like criminals so dangerous we needed to be restrained. So much for the presumption of innocence.
After so long with almost no human contact I was awash in sensations: the sounds, smells and sight of all these people milling around was too much to take. It was almost a relief when we were loaded into a police transport van and driven off towards the city.
As we drove I realised we would be passing close to our villa where, for all I knew, Julie was sitting right now waiting for me to call. We actually stopped at the nearby petrol station that Julie and I frequently used. My heart ached at this everyday sight; what I would give for this whole nightmare to be over.
After an hour or so we arrived at what appeared to be another police station. I would be later told that this was Port Rashid. The holding cells behind the police station, commonly known as Port Rashid Jail, would become my new home for the next seven weeks. We were taken into a reception area to be processed, along with another half dozen men. Once again, we were the only westerners and we attracted a lot of unwanted attention. Through the small barred window in a large steel door leading off this area we could see prisoners taking turns to look at us. My skin crawled as I heard one yell out, ‘New white meat.’