No More Tomorrows

by Corby, Schapelle

  Many of the girls were in for minor drugs offences, such as possession of one or two Ecstasy pills, or for other small crimes such as playing cards or petty theft. One woman had stolen 2,000 rupiah (about thirty cents) to buy some rice. She’d been starving. Another was busted for playing an illegal lottery game at home, a monthly event in her village. It was the eve of her daughter’s wedding, and she had had a few friends over to play. The police were tipped off by a jealous niece not invited to the wedding, and the house was raided. All the naughty players were arrested. She got three and a half years.

  I also got to know some of the male prisoners, who often came up and said hello during the visits. Within the first week, one guy, Agus, came to sit with Merc and me for a chat. His crime was murder. He’d come home to find his girlfriend in bed with another guy. He went to a cabinet, pulled out a gun, walked back to the bedroom and shot the guy in the head. (He admitted to having a bad temper!) He got nine years. His advice to me was to resist the temptation of drugs, no matter how low I got. He’d started taking heroin in jail to help numb the pain of this life. Now he was an addict and he bitterly regretted it.

  Another guy was doing five years for murder. He’d broken someone’s neck during a fight.

  Then there was a dentist and his assistant. They did about 2,000 illegal abortions at the back of his dental surgery, after hours. Two women actually died. The female assistant started coming into our cell to tell us horrific, disgusting stories of how the dentist aborted babies that were eight months old. The butchering dentist would go in with scissors and cut the baby out piece by piece by piece. He got two years. She was out in eight months. I refused to let her anywhere near me.

  All prisoners, regardless of their crimes, were thrown together. There was no special pen for the killers. No more civilised lot for the card sharks and petty thieves. The only segregation was the isolation tower. It had four cells with tiny windows and was reserved for all death-row prisoners, including terrorists, and extra punishment. When I arrived, the Bali bombers Imam Samudra, Amrozi and his brother Mukhlas were in the tower.

  I happened to see Amrozi on my second day, as I walked to a visit. A guard pointed to the tower and said, ‘Amrozi.’ My heart jumped up to my throat. There he was, right in front of me, squatting in the grass behind a steel fence. He stared at me as we walked past, the smile no longer on his evil face. I noted that his hair was a lot longer. After just spending weeks in his old Polda cell, it was especially creepy to be seeing him here so soon.

  What is it with me and these monsters? Some people I’ve spoken to have been here seven years and have never seen him. This is my first full day and I have already seen him. Has some higher power turned my life into a nightmare for me to solve or find, unravel some information? What’s going on?

  Diary entry, 13 November 2004

  I took Merc to have a quick look at the tower on her way out from the visit that day, and we saw a guard walk one of the terrorists into isolation – Mukhlas or Samudra, we weren’t sure which one. When the guard came back out two minutes later, he looked really shaken up.

  ‘Fuck, I hate it in there,’ he said to a back-up guard waiting outside. Merc translated for me.

  He was so disturbed by something that the other guard patted his back. Wow, those monsters could even freak out the guards! It was something for a guard to be rattled; they could usually smash someone’s face to a pulp without batting an eyelid.

  Apart from the monster bombers and the butcher dentist, I tried not to judge people. I refused to think of their crimes; I couldn’t allow myself to. As much as I hated it, I had to live within this world, create a life behind these walls, adapt, until I went home – which would hopefully be soon.

  10

  Five’s a Crowd

  Sitting outside my cell at 8 a.m., I smelt an awfully strong, pungent stench of sewage lingering in the air, so strong that I had to run to the toilet dry retching. How long will I have to stay here?

  Diary entry, 20 November 2004

  LIFE DIDN’T EVER JUST CRUISE ALONG IN HOTEL Kerobokan. Nothing was easy. Nothing was safe. Nothing was comfortable. Nothing was clean. Nothing could have prepared me for it.

  We were living in a disgusting slum, in the most vile and unhygienic conditions imaginable. It was not fit for human beings. It was not fit for a dog. It was gross. It made me sick. I threw up often, had non-stop diarrhoea and persistent ear infections. I regularly got tine a, skin rashes and a type of Balinese conjunctivitis called red eye, so painful that my eyeballs felt like they were being scratched by razor blades. Often I felt weak and dizzy. Sickness was just a symptom of my new life.

  The filth, the tropical heat and too many bodies made our cell the perfect breeding ground for germs and diseases. Rats and skinny runt cats wandered in and out freely through the bars. I often woke up with a rat sitting at the end of my bed. It wouldn’t move without lots of yelling, screaming and frantic shooing. But it really was the perfect home for rats.

  Often, the toilet in the corner of the cell blocked up, spewing faeces out onto the cement floor. It was disgusting. Some of the women kept using the blocked toilet, so their shit would float onto the floor. For days it would be awash with dirty water and chunks of floating shit. It stank like a pile of dead rats. When I showered, I held my breath, but I usually still threw up. My skin crawled to see some girls just walk on the squelchy mess in their bare feet. I never went without flip-flops. When the floor wasn’t covered in this mess, it was still always overflowing with puddles of stinking piss and lots of spit.

  Now I understand the real reason our room has a disturbingly strong urine stench. This morning I saw with my own eyes one of the girls squatting on the ground.

  Diary entry, 19 February 2005

  It was shocking to find out that it was as much the vile habits of some of the women that fouled up our cell as the primitive third-world conditions. I’m sure it wasn’t a cultural clash of hygiene standards but just a lack of self-respect and respect for others. Not in twenty years or even a million years could I get used to some of the sick habits. They never failed to slam home where I was and who I was living with.

  Some women bled out onto the floor wherever they sat when they got their periods, wiping it up later. I’d offer them pads, but they weren’t interested.

  A putrid dark-green cesspool festered close to our cell. It had a sickening stench, bred all sorts of diseases and abnormal animals and was brimming with filthy rubbish thrown in by prisoners too lazy to walk to the bin. I hated even passing it to hang out my washing. So it was a disgusting shock to see women washing their clothes in it and washing their hands in it after going to the toilet, just too lazy to go to the tap. It was especially sick given the local custom of using the left hand instead of toilet paper to wipe. No doubt it worked OK in the real world, where people washed their hands well afterwards, but not in here.

  Many of the women also scrubbed their clothes with old toilet brushes pulled out of the bin. At least they were trying, I guess. Others refused to shower, wash or even change their clothes.

  The whole women’s section stank. Day and night, a foul stench smacked you hard in the face. It was the raw septic tank, the stinky bathroom, the menstrual blood; but perhaps worst of all was the body odour. It was a big problem, especially at night when we were sleeping shoulder to shoulder in the small sauna-like cell.

  I usually woke up soaking wet with sweat. We all did. I woreloads of deodorant, but it didn’t do much. I also gave cans of it to the poorer girls, though most chose to keep it to give to their families. The stink was always bad, but sometimes it got worse when a new girl would arrive to blow us all away. One girl, Sitti, came about a month after me, refusing to shower, change her clothes or wear underpants. I had never smelt anything like her.

  The new cellmate sleeps at the end of my bed and her pale-blue dress was tucked tightly under her knees, and her bottom was in my full view as she slept, foetus-style. I had such a disgusting shock. Th
ere was a pale yellow-brown wet patch. Gross. No wonder she stinks so much; and unbelievably she has not yet showered or changed her clothes. We gave her clothes and washing powder, and have over and over told her to shower, change and wash her clothes. Merc’s buying her a bucket tomorrow and a couple of clothes. But we girls have already given her some and she will not shower. Come on! Her smell is unbearable, she makes me feel so sick in the stomach and I don’t want to touch anything that she’s touched. I almost vomited when she sat on the end of my mattress this morning. I’m not being nasty; I’m merely explaining my cellmate.

  Diary entry, 16 December 2004

  This vile life often made me shudder, but for now this was my home. I had to live here. I had no choice. I just had to make the best of it, be the best person I could be and try to live in this squalor like a dignified human being.

  If you can’t do it for yourself, you have to do it for your family and friends. You can’t go home to people who love you looking like the walking dead.

  Diary entry, 2 November 2004

  I did whatever I could to try to make life nicer. I tried keeping everything clean, regularly hand-washing my clothes, showering daily, sweeping the cell floor daily and scrubbing the toilet daily. I put bunches of pretty flowers on the barred windowsill, my favourite photos on the wall, and my clothes and books in neat piles. I gave the poorer girls soaps, detergents, deodorants, buckets for water, clothes and even underpants. Merc always raced out to buy the stuff for me.

  I also took care of my face and body by eating well, doing twice-daily exercises, twice-daily cleansing and moisturising, plucking my eyebrows, dying my hair and wearing make-up. Like I said earlier, just because I felt like crap it didn’t mean I had to look like it!

  I threw myself into a bit of a routine to help pull me through the days until I went home. Usually I got up around 5.30 a.m. to use the bathroom first, while the girls were still asleep and before the heat of the day stewed up the mess on the floor. It was back to basics: no basin, no shower. I had to spit into a hole in the floor when I brushed my teeth and I took a shower by ladling dirty cold water over myself from a bucket. God only knows exactly what was in the putrid water but it stank and gave me enormous red itchy rashes. Often it was black, full of sooty dirt, or dark-brown with mud. Centipede-type creatures also swam from the tap. Even the Indonesian girls who’d grown up using the local water got skin rashes from this foul jail stuff.

  After showering, I’d rub cream into my rashes and then sit on my bed to do my little exercise routine for about forty-five minutes: sit-ups, stretches and weights using two water bottles that I’d filled with pebbles. Then I’d eat a couple of slices of bread spread with jam or peanut butter before the cage was unlocked at 7.30 a.m.

  The focus of my morning was to collect a bucket of the filthy water to use during the day to flush the toilet. It was a pretty simple task but it took up to an hour, as we all shared one slow dripping tap. Even if we had two buckets, we were only allowed to fill up one at a time – it was the law of the jungle. I’d queue again in the afternoon to get water for the next morning’s shower.

  My afternoon exercise routine was pretty similar to my morning one. I’d work out in the cell after lock-up with Sofie, a 26-year-old local girl. We did weights and she’d sit on my feet while I did sit-ups, and vice versa.

  It was survival of the fittest. You had to stand up for yourself or you got trampled. Girls would just brazenly steal your clothes or your food right in front of you and rip a water bucket out of your hand or kick it over for the sheer hell of it. In the first few weeks, I was a soft target. I got hit often. I was too scared to react. What would they do to me? Who were these people? I’d seen plenty of girls suddenly turn very nasty. If prisoners or guards asked me for something, I’d give it to them. But often they’d just take it. My bucket of water frequently got snatched as I filled it up. A girl would tip the water into her own bucket and hurl mine back empty. I’d timidly start filling again, thinking, Grrrr . . . I hate this place. It only stopped when I finally had the guts to scream, ‘No!’ But I couldn’t stop girls in my cell from sneaking water during the night. Those too lazy to collect their own just stole. I regularly woke up to find no water left to shower. Very annoying.

  The most important part of my routine were my visits. They were vital. They were my lifeline. They brightened my soul. They helped me to keep a grip on my sanity by giving me a line to the people I loved and to the life I loved. Without those visits, I would have crumpled in a sad lost heap.

  Merc, big Wayan, little Wayan and Nyeleigh surprised me with a visit. I had such a great day, Wayan and Nyeleigh both drew picture collages for me. They are so cute. I said to Wayan, ‘Do you know where you are?’ His reply: ‘The police station.’ Afterwards when we were saying goodbye he asked me, ‘Do you sleep in the cages like the tigers do at the zoo, Auntie Pelle?’ And that’s exactly how I feel!

  Diary entry, 5 December 2004

  Merc visited me every day, bringing food, toilet paper, cleaning productsand anything else I needed, including updates on my case. Poor Merc had lost her old life, too. She’d planned to return to Australia at Christmas so little Wayan could start school in Queensland, wherehe was enrolled. I’d assumed they’d still go, but Merc refused to leave without me. She’d stay to look after me, like she’d always done, until I could go home, too. My beautiful devoted sister was going to do this sentence with me, negotiating the essentials of her own life – her kids and Wayan – around her daily jail visits, dealing with the lawyers and fending off lots of harassing journalists.

  I tried not to burden Merc unnecessarily with my pain and fears. She was stressing and hurting enough; she’d already spent a week bedridden from stress. But my pain was her pain. If I hurt, she hurt. If tears uncontrollably poured down my face, it shattered Merc. I saw it in her eyes. It tore her apart to see me upset. But she’d always fight to stay perky and positive. ‘It’s OK, Schapelle, we’ll get you home. It’s OK.’ She held a vice-like grip on her own tears and fears in front of me, but I knew she often went home and threw up.

  I couldn’t ask for a more perfect sister.

  My mum also came every day when she was in Bali, usually bringing half the local supermarket with her. She felt helpless, so feeding me was at least something she could do. Often we didn’t say a lot; she’d just hold me or clasp my hand. She didn’t ask if I was OK – we both knew I had to be – and she could always tell just by looking at me. She was my mum; she knew me. When I came out shaking or crying, she never asked what was wrong. It hurt us both too much. She knew I didn’t like to burden her with everything I had to put up with in here. It was breaking her heart that she couldn’t fix this for her baby girl. She couldn’t put a plaster on it and kiss it better like she used to do. I love my mum so much. It broke my heart to see her hurting so badly.

  Other family and close friends regularly flew in to see me, too. As the weeks passed, I even started to get visits from supportive strangers. It helped to heal my aching heart.

  In the jail, we all had little ways of trying to make life a bit more bearable.

  One of the girls is really funny. She’s twenty-four years old and each night she gets all dressed up, complete with the full face of make-up, and says, ‘See you, I’m going to a bar in Kuta. I’ll be back at 5 a.m.’ Then she takes her make-up off and that’s about as much English as she knows.

  Diary entry, 16 December 2004

  I wasn’t the only one dying to get out of this hellhole; we all were. But while we couldn’t escape in reality, we could in fantasy. I sometimes did. I’d throw on my bikini and sarong and sing out to the girls in my cell, ‘Bye! I’m going to Turtle Island today. I’ll keep an eye out for cute boys. See you tonight!’ Then I’d walk down the muddy pebbled path to my little blow-up kiddies’ pool at the end. It had been an inspired gift from Mum’s brother, Uncle Shun, who knew I was a water baby.

  Went down near Salma’s room to fill my bucket this morning, and the
pool was already out on her grass. She’d blown it up last night. How exciting. We’re trying to fill it up with the hose bit by bit in between people’s buckets being filled.

  Diary entry, 22 November 2004

  I shared my pool with Salma, the Mexican girl, who was the only other foreign female prisoner and someone I’d become friends with. We started to spend some afternoons together, hanging out by the pool, drinking cans of soft drink and snacking on her homemade popcorn.

  In her three and a half years in Hotel K, Salma had made life as comfortable for herself as possible. She kept to herself, obeyed all the rules and had slung the guards some cash to get the best-located cell at the very end of the path. No one walked past, so she had the luxury of privacy. She’d also transformed her cell, painting it white with blue trim, putting tiles down and shelves up. She’d furnished it nicely and planted her own little garden out the front. But most enviably she had some say in who shared with her. Usually, it was no more than two others, but sadly I had to stay in the pre-sentencing cells. I didn’t ask how much she’d paid for her upgrade.

  Trying to create a bit of light-hearted fun whenever I could was vital to me. I knew I needed it to stay sane. I didn’t want to be sad or angry all the time. Most days I tried to spend a bit of time in my little pool, lying back, soaking up the rays, reading a book and listening to my iPod. I also spent time playing badminton, chatting to the girls, plucking their eyebrows and my own, cutting their hair and enjoying pampering sessions with the girls in my cell – doing face masks, hair treatments and massages.

  The other girls had their own tricks to lift their spirits. Every Saturday night, Puspa went to another cell for ‘party night’, some girls had regular sleepovers in other cells or spent afternoons drinking arak, the local brew, and playing cards. Quite a few of the girls just got out of it smoking drugs. Naturally, I steered clear of them.