by Lee, M
I was called up to the desk, thumbprinted with a blue ink pad, registered and frisked. The officers let me keep my watch and my wallet, saying, ‘You will need faloos [money] in there’ as they thrust me through the large steel door. Matt was still being processed as the door slammed behind me.
I was led into a storage room, told to take out another shirt and pair of shoes, then to leave the rest of my things. The officers then took me through another secure door and left me. I took a few steps into the open area in which I found myself, which was full of prisoners milling about aimlessly. I tried not to show my fear as the mass of men around me stared, laughed, even prodded at me as I went by. I was well aware that I looked like a deer in the headlights.
A man with an American accent came over and introduced himself as Mike. He was very tall — 195 centimetres at least — with a long grey ponytail. I guessed him to be in his fifties and he appeared to know how it all worked in there. He didn’t just tower over the other prisoners, he exuded a sense of authority over them.
We were standing in a central corridor that ran for about 30 metres, with cells opening off it on either side. These were the kind of cells marked off by floor-to-ceiling bars. Mike pointed to cell number 1 and said I could put my things in there. I was grateful for his help, but cautious about trusting the first person to approach me in a prison. ‘I’m just waiting for someone,’ I said.
Mike’s cell was like all the others I could see, jammed with people. It was about four metres square and had clearly been built to house six — that’s how many bunk beds were built against the walls. There were also two mattresses on the floor. People sat and lay on every surface and I could see mattresses stacked on their ends along the main corridor.
When Matt came through the door we put our small pile of belongings down in cell 1 and made our way to what looked like the main eating area. There we stood against a wall, trying to take it all in.
A couple of other westerners approached and told us there were card-operated payphones we were allowed to use, but beds would be a problem, at least that night. They explained that jail had bunks for about 90 people, but more than 200 were currently being held there. Many people were forced to just sleep on the floors or wherever they could find a spare bit of space, even on the cold stone seats in the meals area — hence the stacked mattresses. The place was thick with a fog of smoke and people of every nationality yelling and jostling for room.
One of those explaining the set-up, an Englishman called Charlie, offered me the use of his prepaid phone card and showed me where to join the lengthy phone queue. I’d never used a phone card before so I watched carefully to see how it was done as I approached the head of the line. I nervously dialled Julie’s number.
‘Hi, I’ve been moved,’ I said, my voice shaking, when she answered. ‘I’m at a place called Port Rashid.’ We talked for a few minutes, said our ‘I love you’s, and then my time was up.
JULIE
I was so incredibly relieved to hear from Marcus and even more so when he said he was out of solitary confinement. There was never any official reason given, but we suspected it was a combination of concern about his rapidly declining health and perhaps representations made by the Australian Ambassador, Jeremy Bruer. This is part of the group update email I sent very late that night:
Marcus rang from a different phone number and he sounded different, he sounded like Marcus. During the day he and Matt had been moved. Yep. They had left that place. But was it ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’? I don’t think so. They are in a place with a lot of other people and it is a huge change. I spoke to Marcus and asked him a few questions:
Can you go to the bathroom when you need to?
Can you talk to Matt?
Can you interact with other people?
He answered yes to all.
It is not easy, he said . . . The place is still a jail and has some scary people in there, but now they can see what they are dealing with and have a chance to deal with it. Matt and Marcus are together . . . I miss him so much and his voice sounds strong. Not like before, not like his voice in that place . . . It took 7 weeks, but we have got him moved. Phase 1 complete. Move to next level: begin Phase 2.
MARCUS
My weight had dropped a little further since the medical exam I’d had while in isolation. It was now down to 70 kilograms. I knew I needed to try to build myself back up and I was hoping that the food here might be more edible.
It was 6.30 p.m., dinner time. This was the main meal of the day and a signal for chaos. There was enough food for 90 people, regardless of the fact that more than 200 were crammed in there. The servers slopped food onto metal trays and people fought for anything they could get their hands on. There were plenty who missed out.
Matt and I didn’t even try to enter the fray, we just stood back, trying to make sense of what was going on. A Brit of Lebanese descent came and introduced himself as Jamal. He said he’d be able to organise something for us at a small cost when things died down a bit. He was as good as his word, and before too long a young Indian boy wearing a sarong motioned for us to come over to where he had two trays ready, telling us they cost AED5 (about AUD2) each. This was my introduction to the jail’s thriving black-market economy. I gratefully paid for both Matt and me and we sat down to eat what turned out to be flatbread with very watery dhal (lentil stew). It was even a little warm, and neither of us had eaten anything all day, so we appreciated every mouthful.
Prisoners were permitted to walk freely around within the jail and after dinner I ventured to take a look at the layout. There were sixteen cells off the central corridor, eight on each side, with one given over to use as a prayer room. Off one end of the corridor were the bathrooms, which were absolutely filthy. There were four showers, although only one or two generally worked at a time, and four toilets (one for every 50 or more men). The one and only western-style toilet had to be flushed by filling a bucket and tipping it into a bowl. Rarely did anyone do this, I learned. The other toilets were just squats. But the use of the bathrooms was unregulated, which meant I could go whenever I needed to . . . as long as I could stomach it.
Off the other end of the corridor was the hall area for eating, with a small TV up by the ceiling. Food was served through a service window from the small kitchen. A door led from the hall into a small caged area open to the outside air. Many prisoners slept out every night. Even at maximum squeeze, it was impossible to get more than nine people in a cell. The floor of the corridor had to be left partially cleared, so its usable area soon filled too.
Right now it was coming into warmer weather — 45°C-plus days and temperate nights, but the prisoners at the bottom of the jail hierarchy would be out here in all weathers, including freezing desert winter nights. Only some of them would be lucky enough to secure one of the thin green mattresses and even then they might be squeezed two, three or even four across it.
Port Rashid Jail was a disaster, no doubt about it. But after nearly two months in solitary confinement, trapped in a tiny cell, even the outdoor caged area where I could feel the night air and spot a couple of stars through the mesh was a step towards the real world.
I tried to figure out basics like where we might sleep. There was a Pakistani called Najmi who was referred to as ‘the Foreman’; he didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Urdu, so we communicated through gesture and he indicated he’d see what was available.
I got talking to Jamal, who I would learn was in on drugs charges. He and his wife and some friends had shared a hash joint in Jamal’s home. One of the guests was pulled over by the police driving home and typically the police offered to let him off the charges in exchange for the names of the others who had been present. More is better. Jamal was facing a four-year sentence as a result while his wife was in a women’s prison.
I worked out some sleeping arrangements, paying for a bunk in a cell for Matt who seemed to be quietly melting down, and taking up Mike’s offer to bunk down in hi
s cell. With some of my remaining cash I was able to buy a phone card, and call Julie about 11.30 p.m. to say goodnight. What an incredible luxury.
Around midnight a roll-call started. I was exhausted when I finally lay down, but the lights were still on — they went off in the corridor and cells around 3 a.m. — and the corridor was full of people walking up and down, talking loudly. The TV in the eating area was playing Arabic music at full volume — it remained on 24 hours a day. None of it, or even the fear of what might happen to our meagre belongings on the floor, could keep me from sleep.
The morning cleaning process provided a rude awakening at 6 a.m. Under Najmi’s direction, a group of prisoners set to work, spraying water everywhere.
‘Quick, everything up from the floor,’ Mike said. I jumped down, grabbed my things — to my surprise my stuff was still where I had left it — and hopped back onto my bunk.
Mike, who was in jail for bouncing a cheque, seemed to be on top of Dubai’s prison system, having moved to Port Rashid from Dubai’s main jail, ‘Central’, at Al Aweer. Behind bars the same hierarchies of race and nationality that governed wider Dubai society were solidly in place, and as a large American with natural authority, Mike was left well alone by both prisoners and guards — by extension so were the people he took under his wing.
Most of the prisoners were foreign labourers — Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis (all three were collectively known as ‘Indians’), Iranians and Arabs from the poorer Middle East countries. In general they didn’t have a penny to their name. They were the people Emiratis sometimes referred to as kully wully. I asked once what this meant and was told it literally translated as ‘doesn’t matter’.
If you had money, you could get food, medicine, toiletries and other things you wanted. If you didn’t have money you went without or you performed a service for those with money. That’s what the ‘Indians’ cleaning under Najmi’s direction were doing. I was among the lucky ones.
After breakfast, the door leading to the three payphones was unlocked for the day. I joined the lengthy queue that immediately formed. I’d also been told by one of my new cellmates that visiting was allowed after 11 a.m. Julie said she hoped to see me then, and Wayne might come too.
JULIE
It was absolutely amazing to find that not only could Marcus phone anytime he liked between early morning and late at night, but there were two visiting times, morning and afternoon, every day. I went down there at the first opportunity, of course, and it was great that Wayne could come too.
Because of the State Security centre visits it was already second nature to me to think about what I would wear for one of these visits. I always covered up, with neat modest clothes and a jacket that came down to my upper thighs. I also wore high heels — being as short as I am, I just felt better with them on.
When Ange and I visited Matt and Marcus in solitary, we had to leave our car at the first guard checkpoint, then someone would come and pick us up in one of the official cars and drive us through the complex — it was usually the same young guy who hooned around the long driveway at 90 km/h so you were already rattled before the visit started. Here, you just parked and walked in the front entrance of what looked like a normal police station.
I learned the routine on that first day. You handed over ID, which they kept for the duration of the visit, they gave you an authorisation paper and most times you wouldn’t even have to wait, they’d just send you through the first set of big doors and around a corner. That’s where the smell from the toilets would hit you, followed by the smell of cigarette smoke. You’d ring a bell for the guard, who was on the other side of a big steel door with a small barred window opening. I’d have to make little jumps to get high enough to catch their attention.
They’d let you through, you’d give them the paper that had on it the name of ‘your’ prisoner and they’d shout it out. All the men were referred to by their first name and their country, so you’d have ‘Abdullah Bahraini’ or ‘Jamal British’ or the one I’d come to see, ‘Marcus Australia’. And there he was!
The visiting area was exactly like you see in prison movies, with four cubicles designed to have the prisoners on one side and the visitor on the other, separated by reinforced glass, with a phone handset on either side through which you talked. And just like people do in the movies, we pressed our hands together on either side of the glass.
All the other cubicles were occupied, with people yelling to be heard through the crackly handsets. In the background police were also yelling at prisoners. I strained to listen to Marcus. He said he was having trouble breathing because the smoke was so thick in there. Fortunately I’d brought him more Ventolin, along with the dirhams and phone cards he had asked me for when we’d spoken earlier. As we talked we realised that for the first time since Marcus had been arrested, no-one was monitoring our conversation. I gave Wayne and Marcus some time together and as I did a nice guard let Marcus come around to my side of the security door to take the things I’d brought him and let us sneak in a hug and a kiss.
WAYNE McKINLEY
When I went to Dubai I was 28. I had a good job and a relationship but I had no real life experience. Nothing detrimental had ever really happened to me, other than Dad having cancer. I was blissfully ignorant, running around with my head in the clouds. I’d had no contact with the justice system. I’d never seen a courtroom. I’d never even been in a police station. Just sitting there in the waiting room at Port Rashid station sent my head spinning.
I was relieved to see that Marcus looked reasonably OK but very thin. He was pleased to see me, and to know that someone was there to help Julie, who was carrying a huge weight on her shoulders. I went back with her that afternoon, but in the end the two of them had about 30 minutes together and then visiting time was over, so I didn’t go in. That was fine. I think they were both on such a high because it seemed like the jail was so much a better place for Marcus than wasting away in solitary confinement.
MARCUS
Port Rashid made me feel hopeful again, for a short while. In the daytime an Omani guy would bring in a trolley with things for sale at wildly inflated prices. There was some food: western-style sliced bread and jam and cheese, two-minute noodles and Coke, and occasionally tomatoes. Once or twice there was, memorably, an avocado.
For dinner you could pre-order food that would be brought in from outside, things like a doner kebab, or rice and curry or a simple burger. I began eating again. A lot of it was just jam sandwiches and cheese, but at least I stopped losing weight.
I could talk to people again, too. I felt a bit shy and uncertain at first but gradually I relaxed with some of my fellow inmates. Most of the other westerners were in for drink-driving. Like the drug arrests, this was a reasonably straightforward procedure — ten days in jail while your case was being processed, a payment of AED20,000 and you were out. Each weekend, a couple of new faces would come in for the same offence.
But there were a lot of really frightening people in there too, hard cases and psychopaths. There was nothing separating the people picked up for an expired visa and the rapists and murderers. One group of thirteen young Indian Sikhs was known as ‘the serial killers’ (technically they were mass killers, but fine distinctions vanished in the circumstances). I was told they had been supplying illegal alcohol to some of the migrant-worker labour camps dotted around Dubai. Mini-cities, where tens of thousands of workers lived in squalid conditions, were lucrative centres for bootlegging. But then some interlopers tried to take over the operation and the bootleggers killed and dismembered them, scattering the body parts far and wide in the desert. So far three bodies had been reassembled, and the entire group was charged with murder, a capital offence.
Every single day in there was marked by violence. But the murderers, including the ‘serial killers’, weren’t the ones most likely to start it. Far scarier were the drug traffickers and dealers, mostly local Emiratis. They were to be avoided at all costs, but sometimes, you ju
st got caught up.
One of these occasions I was on the phone to Julie and heard yelling going on. That was a constant so I didn’t pay attention to it. Suddenly things escalated. A fight had started between an Emirati drug trafficker and an Iranian on immigration charges, then spilled out into the corridor where dozens of others joined in. I was trying to finish my call when I was knocked to the floor by the brawlers. Stumbling to my feet, I saw they were ripping pipes off the walls to use as weapons. This was a bad one.
Abdullah, Jamal’s Bahraini friend, was nearby. We simultaneously raced for the nearest safe place, the kitchen, tried to lock the door behind us, and jumped up on a steel bench in case the door gave in. It held briefly as something — or someone — was slammed against it, but then it smashed open and the Emirati burst through, bashing the Iranian. This was no pub brawl, the Emirati was out to kill. He spotted a heavy steel ladle that had been left out after the last meal service and started smashing it against the screaming man’s skull. There was blood everywhere.
It was a horrifying scene, but there were plenty of them in there. The police guards never broke them up — they were pretty low on the totem pole themselves, poorly paid, usually from Yemen or Oman, largely untrained and, if armed, only with nightsticks. They usually waited until the aggressors wore themselves out, as they did in this case, then came in and dragged the wounded away. The Iranian was hospitalised and would be lucky to survive. The Emirati was sentenced to 24 hours in solitary, then released back in among the general inmate population.