The Boy in the Green Suit

by Robert Hillman

  My irritation with the anxious chess player mounted, as he took on the whole burden of my disappointment with life. I hated his stupid unshaven face, and the dog-like vacancy in his black eyes. And then, without warning, he came to life, quickly forfeited this fifth or sixth game, and bustled with a small bundle down the aisle to the front of the bus. Ahead, a light shone, a swaying light. The bus ground to a stop and the man jumped down, followed by shouts of farewell from the other passengers. A woman was waiting for him, a woman with a lantern. In its glow, her face shone with joy. The man threw his arms around her and stroked her hair, which she had left revealed. The passengers crowded to wave to him from the windows, and both he and the woman waved back. The bus fired up and heaved itself on to the road. I felt ashamed. As compensation, I agreed to play chess with the man’s companion. I enjoyed the games more and more, and was still playing when the bus pulled into Zahedan.

  For no reason I could name, I expected to be more appreciated in Pakistan than I had been in Iran, or anywhere else for that matter. My sense of hope, like that of most children, was not flinty; it was more like putty—capable of being flattened without ever quite losing its elasticity. The sound of a country’s name was enough to make me feel that things were about to change for the better. Pakistan. Pak Ee Stan. Surely there was magic in the name of that ancient land. (I did not know that Pakistan had not existed until 1948.) I would see things I had never seen before. These things would act on me in ways that I couldn’t even guess at. Enchanting, perfumed valleys full of nightingales and cinnamon trees awaited me. Places that the rest of the world hardly knew about would welcome me. Amazing qualities of my own would suddenly flourish in this new climate. Pakistan would be exactly, precisely where I was meant to be.

  All this I believed. At the same time, I knew that it was probably nonsense. But I had a high tolerance of nonsense.

  When Ronald Ryan is condemned to death by hanging in 1967, my father tells me that the bastard is only getting what he deserves. I haven’t asked Dad what he thinks about the hanging, but he tells me anyway. With all the hoopla in the newspapers, I have gradually become aware that Ronald Ryan will be hanged on a certain day and at a certain time, and that I and everyone else will know that date and time in advance. This is a terrible piece of knowledge.

  Dad is hectic about the hanging. He’s worried that the public outcry might prevent it going ahead. He doesn’t want Ronald Ryan to spend his life on free bed-and-board in prison. I don’t know why it is so important to him that Ronald Ryan should die, but I know enough not to suggest that the execution upsets me. Nevertheless, my lack of proper enthusiasm irritates Dad. He tells me that Ronald Ryan shot a prison guard in the back of the head, even though the prison guard begged for mercy. It was the act of a cold-blooded, heartless maniac. Unwisely, I ask how he knows that the prison guard had begged for mercy. ‘Because he would of!’ Dad says. ‘Of course he would of! If someone’s going to shoot you in the back of the head, you beg for mercy! Jesus Christ! Do you think he didn’t beg for mercy? Of course he did!’

  Dad keeps up the rant. He doesn’t bother much with evidence to support his assertions. He says that prison is ‘a laugh’ in a country like Australia. There are men in prison who’d raped and murdered tiny children, and what are they doing? Listening to radios, wolfing down three square meals a day, even doing university courses if they want to, some of them. What should happen to them is that they should be chained to the wall twenty-four hours a day.

  It’s his vehemence more than anything else that makes me certain he’s wrong. And it’s the first time I have ever felt that my father is truly wrong about something. I hate to think of this stuff whirling away inside his head. He’s not a violent man. Where does it come from?

  Prison

  The only obvious way to cross over into Pakistan was to walk. I knew the direction and headed off. Before I’d made it to the outskirts of the city—just desert and a few houses that looked as if they had been fashioned by hand from the very earth on which they sat—I was hailed by a policeman. Confident enough about dealing with cops after my sessions with Rasheef in Shiraz, I wandered over for a bit of a chat. The cop wanted to see my passport. I wasn’t sure he was allowed to do that, but I co-operated nonetheless. He glanced at the pages, seemed unable to make much of it and handed it back. But there was clearly something about the look of me that he couldn’t quite enjoy. He called over another cop, who wanted to know, so it seemed, where I thought I was going. ‘Pakistan’, I said. This confirmed their doubts about me; I was heading in the wrong direction. They took me along to a booth in the market where a more senior cop was able to confirm the suspicions of the two junior guys. My visa was way out of date.

  By this time, a dozen cops were on my case, mostly being nosey. It was a break in the monotony of these barren backlots of the nation to catch a visa sneak who was so close to making a clean getaway. The senior cop locked up the booth, clapped handcuffs on me and had the juniors form a guard. I was marched through the market with four rifles aimed at the seat of my green trousers. The citizens were full of curiosity and kept stopping the march to ask the senior cop questions, which he seemed only too happy to answer. I tried to look both menacing and harmless.

  The drama of the occasion thrilled me and I wanted to look like a vile fugitive—but also like a harmless kid who’d slipped up in some forgiveable and forgettable way. It was difficult for me. The cop who was carrying my suitcase was about my own age in a uniform that was too big for him. He kept glancing down at my pointed shoes with undisguised delight. During one of the pauses we made for the big cop to skite to the locals, I whispered to the boy, ‘Beatles!’ He put down the suitcase, and with a huge grin acted out a Ringo-esque trip on air timpani.

  Zahedan was a slow and sleepy old town in every respect, except when it came to the dispensing of justice. I was in front of a magistrate within a half-hour of apprehension. My guess was that I would be fined. And my further guess was that I would be let go, or simply tossed over the border into Pakistan, when it was revealed that I had no money to pay the fine. I was almost certain that barter would not be acceptable, and had no plans to line up my wardrobe for the magistrate.

  The big cop made a long-winded presentation to the magistrate, a portly middle-aged, jovial man with a ludicrous toothbrush moustache. The magistrate cheerfully satirised, with raised eyebrows and exaggerated expressions of dismay, the bombast of the big cop. He fined me a very small sum and offered me a little toy salute of farewell. Alas, the next case had to be interrupted when the big cop learned that I had no money to pay the fine. The magistrate, with more sorrow than conviction I think, sentenced me to five months in the slammer—a month for each ten rials I was unable to provide. He gave me a look that said, ‘Kid, my hands are tied.’ I smiled to show that there were no hard feelings.

  My fingerprints were taken in a small, busy office down the hall, an office indistinguishable, I imagine, from police offices all over the world: paperwork everywhere, a couple of typewriters, portrait of a big shot on the wall (the Shah, in this case), a half-dozen adipose policeman shuffling about. My arrest had dramatic integrity: the right actors, the right props, the right lines. And this integrity was enhanced by the fingerprinting. Two sets of prints were taken; one for the locals, the other for Interpol. The Interpol set was taken on finer quality paper, with a Paris address printed at the top of the sheet. I was thrilled. Me, Bobby, Frank Hillman’s son from Eildon, Victoria, Australia, Nowheresville, a butcher’s apprentice, now being fingerprinted for Interpol!

  The procedural care befitted a sombre induction, a ritual initiation into a braver, broader, more dangerous, much sexier world. The fingerprint cop took each finger and firmly rolled it on the ink pad, then on the alloted squares on each of the sheets. His deftness filled me with admiration. He knew what he was doing. On the Interpol set, he took even greater care, down to spelling my name correctly in the data blanks.
The completed Interpol sheet looked like a certificate, something that commended both the print-taker and myself. I was proud of it, and I’m sure the cop was, too.

  Approaching the prison at Zahedan was like viewing a walled medieval city revealed by careful excavation. Drifts of fine grey sand climbed the stone walls to about half their height. Squat towers along the walls looked over the flat desert plain. Just one barely defined road ran to the prison, straight to the gates. The place seemed lifeless in the shimmering heat haze, but once the prison bus drew closer the black silhouettes of guards in the towers became distinct. The dozen or so other prisoners in the bus, all chained like me with cuffs and ankle irons, did not bother to study the looming city. It was pride, I suppose. They knew the punishment in store for them and didn’t wish to bestow on the place the bleak compliment of an anxious glance ahead.

  As soon as we were inside the walls, my assumption of superior treatment likely to be afforded to a cheerful white boy proved perfectly sound. The other prisoners, all Iranians, were bullied onto a stone square in the blazing sun to await the pleasure of the authorities. My cuffs and leg-irons were removed and I was permitted to sit against a wall in the shade. A naked prisoner, bathing himself at a ancient fountain in the square, called raucously to me and shook his dick. He was immediately slung by his hair to the ground by an incensed guard, then kicked in the backside all the way to a small, sinister-looking hut at the back of the square. While my fellow new arrivals wilted in the sun, rag bundles at their feet, I was served a cup of tea by a guard with a vile-looking length of cane under his arm, its tip frayed into a fringe.

  Nothing at all happened for an hour or more, except that I was served a second cup of tea and a glass of chilled water with a diced lemon floating on top. The prison was silent. A long way off, small domed buildings like igloos of mud clustered around two larger, square buildings, similarly made of mud. The heat of the day was so intense that the guards in the towers had cradled their rifles in the crook of an arm, using the free hand to fan themselves with round, wicker paddles. The new arrivals, out in the sun, stared straight ahead or occasionally lifted their hands as far as the chain would allow, then dipped their heads to brush the sweat from their eyes. One man whose chains allowed a little more latitude had managed to get a rag or handkerchief settled on his head, but it was soon snatched away by a guard.

  My suitcase had been left against the wall, not far from where I sat. Growing bored, but not sure how much liberty I was to be given, I sauntered over to the case, opened it, and exchanged my shoes and socks for my thongs. I wasn’t reprimanded. I took out a Nero Wolfe detective novel I’d been saving for a rainy day, sauntered back to my spot in the shade and began reading. Content at first, I gradually considered the resentment I might excite in the other new arrivals. I carefully slipped the Nero Wolfe into the back pocket of my trousers, got to my feet and stood erect. This gesture of solidarity was spoiled when a guard brought me a chair. It wasn’t just any chair; it was an upholstered armchair. I demurred politely. The guard, smiling beautifully, insisted. I sat down.

  In the middle of the afternoon the guards unlocked the shackles on the new arrivals. Prayer rugs were handed out. The amplified wail of a muezzim echoed about the prison walls. The new arrivals knelt and prayed. In the distance I could see men in their hundreds praying outside the mud igloos. The guards in the towers had disappeared below the parapet. The guards in the square prayed, all clustered together in the shade of the wall. Well aware, after months in Iran, that nothing would be made of my demeanour during prayers so long as I remained respectful, I sat watching silently. At the conclusion of prayers, the guards chained the new arrivals again. The area they occupied had gradually fallen into shade. The guards moved them a few yards so that they were once again in the sun.

  Late in the afternoon, I was served a plate of spinach and eggs, together with a fresh round flap of bread, more tea and another glass of cold water and lemon. The spinach and eggs were spiced with paprika. The tea was spiced with cinnamon. I had never eaten anything so delicious, never so relished the taste of tea, the coolness of water.

  It was only when I’d finished and my tray had been collected that I gave proper thought to the prisoners who’d arrived with me. They had not been fed, and it was pretty obvious that nothing would be offered to them. Even this late in the afternoon, the heat of the sun was fierce. I decided that I would refuse all further food and drink while my comrades were left baking. I tried to show with compassionate glances what was in my heart, but they didn’t look at me at all.

  At evening prayer the unshackling and reshackling procedure was repeated. I noticed that most were taking the opportunity to snatch a bit of rest. The oldest prisoner, a bent and seamed man perhaps in his seventies, took quite a time to get back on his feet. An argument broke out between two of the prisoners and two guards. It looked as if the prisoners were calling for the guards to take it easy on the old guy. No blows were dealt out, and the guards took away his leg-irons and allowed him to wait on his knees. A little later, one of them brought him a glass of water. Later still, all the new arrivals were given a drink from metal ladles held to their lips by the guards. By this time I had given up on my vow of solidarity. I was well into the Nero Wolfe.

  A huge white moon had risen in the fading blue sky over the desert. A fat little fellow in a grey civilian suit toddled along with a clipboard under his arm, and in an infinitely weary manner whispered a word now and again to the guards. One prisoner, then another, was led off to what would be his home for a good many years to come. I was the last prisoner to be dealt with. The fat guy (I later came to know him as the brother-in-law of the deputy governor) became positively jaunty when he considered my case. He spoke a bit of English and was keen to make use of it.

  ‘Mister Eelamuh? Mister Eelamuh, this is sad days for you, I think.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Why you not pay this monies and go away in Pakistan?’

  ‘I haven’t got any money.’

  ‘No monies? No rials? German marks or excetra?’

  ‘Nope. Nothing.’

  ‘Hmm. Sad days for you.’

  He must have thought I was stubbornly concealing rials or marks somewhere, because he launched into a warning about the type of people I would meet in prison.

  ‘These men killing peoples. These men using the drugs. Very very bad, all these men. Maybe killing you! Maybe. Very bad in Zahedan for boys. Very bad. Very bad for English chaps.’

  ‘I’m Australian,’ I said.

  ‘Very bad for Australian. Only nice for Irani people in Zahedan. Maybe one of these men kill you! Big knife!’

  He made a skewering sound as he acted out a stab in the region of the stomach, delighting the guards. I could see that it would be in my best interests to look spooked, even though I found it impossible to imagine anyone stabbing me. I cowered a little, and gulped. Fatty looked pleased, in fact much more than pleased, and the guards seemed to endorse the good sense I’d shown in quailing so convincingly.

  ‘Ha ha!’ Fatty laughed. He tousled my hair. ‘Nobody stabbing you! Ha ha! I put you in nice place.’

  And he did. He sent me to a large, comfortable cell, more like a bungalow, nestled against the eastern wall. The windows were without bars and the door wasn’t locked. It was occupied by five men. None was in prison dress, and one wore Western clothing; all looked healthy and well fed. I was introduced by the senior guard who’d escorted me. The prisoners listened languidly without rising from their beds. The cell was illuminated by two upright lamps draped with gauzy red scarves that tinged the whole interior a restful pink.

  A bed had been made up for me. The sheets looked fresh and clean. I sat on the bed and smiled winningly at my new comrades. They were full of curiosity once the guard had departed, and squatted around me to ask questions. The prisoner in Western clothes soon took over the interview. He introduced himself as Mushtaf,
not an Irani but a Pakistani, and he spoke perfect English. He wanted to know (both for himself and on behalf of my other four cellmates, so it seemed) what I had done to get myself arrested. I had overstayed my visa, I explained. My new comrades guffawed or else smiled politely. The gossamer quality of my infraction seemed to them, I guessed, too ludicrous for words.

  ‘You are very welcome among us,’ Mushtaf said. ‘With your leave, I will introduce my friends.’

  Each prisoner bowed just a little as his name and his infringement was mentioned. Ali, about fifteen, had cut his uncle’s throat, his uncle being a very bad man (‘horrid’ was Mushtaf’s term). Older Ali, in middle age, very shrewd about the eyes and wearing a beard more carefully barbered than was usual amongst Iranians, had been shafted by his wife’s family over something to do with heroin. Then came a bald, chuckling little man who was introduced as Peter, with no explanation of the name given. Whatever Peter’s crime, it was evidently too awful to talk about, because Mushtaf moved on with a grimace and a ‘you don’t want to know’ gesture of his hand. Hossein, the fourth of my cell-mates, was the only one who exhibited the proper fuck yez! manner of a genuine bad guy. In Australia, he would have ridden with the Banditos. His face was battered, his nose was a mess, and half his upper lip had been reduced to a thin, taut scar. He relished the opportunity to mime his crimes when Mushtaf spoke of them, lassooing his own ankle with his scarf, drawing it tight, then sticking out his tongue to demonstrate the rigour of strangulation.