The Easy Day Was Yesterday

by Paul Jordan

  ‘Hi there, how did it go?’ she said in a very upbeat way, clearly expecting to say, ‘I told you so.’

  ‘They don’t believe me and I have to go to gaol,’ I said.

  ‘That’s fucking ridiculous, did you tell them it was a mistake?’

  ‘They don’t believe me so I have to go to gaol,’ I repeated. ‘I’ll call the High Commission and tell them, but the Magistrate said that the High Commissioner should contact the Home Office Secretary to ask that I be released.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll push for that from here as well. Keep your chin up and we’ll fix this.’

  I hated the idea that others had to fix my mess.

  ‘I will. Don’t tell the kids, okay?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’

  ‘Bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  I called the High Commission and told them what I needed them to do. The representative said they were sending someone to assist in securing my release. He also told me — once again — that the Australian government could only ensure that I was treated fairly and no different to others in custody. They could not interfere or try to persuade a foreign government and had to let justice take its course. Damn, I thought, but fair enough. I handed the phone over to Ujwal and told him to keep it on and pass on any messages when he could. The phone was my link to the world of help and losing it meant I no longer had any control over my destiny. I was now in the hands of others and that made me uncomfortable and miserable.

  We all got back into the police car for the drive to the gaol, but it was only next door. Bugger. Having a police station full of cops right next to the prison was going to make any escape attempt a little interesting. The prison was a shock to all my senses. I’d visited plenty of gaols before, including some pretty rough gaols in Iraq; but visiting was interesting, being sent to live in one was a nightmare in the making.

  We pulled up outside the prison and a guard opened the gates to let the old police jeep in. The prison wasn’t what you’d imagine; it wasn’t surrounded by double chain link walls topped with razor wire. The guards weren’t standing in towers with assault rifles. The guard was standing in a roughly made corrugated iron shelter and carried an old .303 blot action rifle. Through the gates of the prison there were people everywhere crowding a small concrete building with a wire mesh around the front. There were people at the barred windows yelling at people inside and the people inside doing the same back. I don’t know how they could’ve heard anything as they all competed to be heard over the people around them. The Inspector and the other police with us pushed and shoved people out of the way so we could access an old gate to enter a single-storey building that looked more like a hut.

  Once through the crowds of visitors, the inside of the administration building was dark, filthy, smelly and crowded. The Inspector cleared a path through the people who momentarily stopped their loud chattering and stared at me as I was ushered through a series of very small rooms into the Warden’s office. The administration building was shaped like a long, narrow rectangle and consisted of four rooms next to one another, each measuring about three metres square. The first room was the entry room into the prison, the next was the clerk’s room; next to that was the Warden’s assistant’s office and then the Warden’s office. The walls were once white, but were now filthy with tobacco spit stains and dust. The place was dark and depressing. I followed the Inspector into the Warden’s office and, assuming an introduction would take place, I thrust out my hand to shake hands with the Warden. He looked at my hand and clearly wasn’t in the habit of shaking hands with prisoners. Reluctantly, he took my hand and gently shook it, while directing me to a chair next to the Inspector.

  The Warden’s office consisted of two desks: one large and one small. The Warden sat behind the large desk on a plastic chair; behind him was a bookshelf stacked with some old dusty folders. I would have expected to see a computer, even an old one, but there wasn’t one in sight. The Warden was Mr Sing. He was probably in his late fifties, balding, wore glasses and smiled constantly despite this intrusion. As I sat in front of him, he chatted to the Inspector, occasionally looking over at me. While this was going on, other people dressed very plainly kept walking in and asking the Warden to sign a document or review some figures. It was difficult to tell the prisoners from the prison employees. Mr Sing seemed sympathetic to my situation, but I was confused and thought this building was the remand prison and all these people were locked in this building. I asked the Warden if I could sleep in his office just like I did last night in the Inspector’s office.

  ‘I’m sorry, that is very impossible, but don’t worry, you will be well treated,’ said the Warden.

  The Inspector then spoke in English and said to the Warden, ‘This man is not a criminal and should not be here. You cannot put him in with the murderers and rapists. Is there a place for him to be protected from the other prisoners?’

  The Warden cradled his chin in his hand and considered this for a few minutes then called in a man wearing only a sarong and white singlet. They spoke briefly in Hindi and Mr Sing appeared to be giving orders and asking a question or two. The man in the singlet left the room on a mission. The Inspector then gave Mr Sing 1000 rupees in case I needed anything and Mr Sing gave it to another man to record under my name.

  The Inspector told me he had to go back to Jogbani and that I’d be well looked after. I didn’t want this bloke to leave me in this damned toilet. I knew he had done me some favours and was only doing what he was told, but I felt as if I was being abandoned to the wolves to be forgotten. Another person directed me to wait in the clerk’s area to be processed and two prison clerks began my administration after telling me to sit on a stool.

  ‘Name?’ one of them barked. I looked at him and sensed he was trying to act commanding. Both these guys were in their very early twenties, just boys really; they both chewed some sort of packet tobacco and tried talking with a continuously full mouthful of spit. Eventually one leaned behind me and spat into a bucket while the other spat juice through the window, causing visiting prisoners to scramble.

  ‘Paul Jordan.’

  ‘Father’s name?’

  ‘Why do you want to know that?’

  ‘Just give it.’

  I wanted to say, ‘Mister, go fuck yourself,’ but thought better of it.

  ‘William Jordan,’ I said.

  They then grabbed my arms and started looking at my freckles and moles.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  They pointed to a freckle and asked, ‘This is a needle mark, is it?’

  ‘No, it fucking isn’t, mate.’

  ‘We need to see a scar or mark on your body to identify you.’

  ‘Right. Do you have any other white people in here?’ I said in a smart arse tone.

  ‘No, just you,’ he said with a red-toothed smile, putting me right back in my place. I showed them some scars on my arms. They searched the plastic bag that contained my worldly possessions and declared that I could keep them all.

  ‘Okay, you just sit and wait.’

  I tried to get up and move out of their way, but they insisted that I stay where I was.

  Prisoners began to parade through the small room and just stop and look at me until someone told them to leave, but they were only replaced by others. The staring was unbelievable. The room was only about three metres square and these people would just stop about a metre away and stare. Initially, I locked eyes with them and stared back, hoping they’d be embarrassed and look away; but they didn’t, it didn’t seem to worry them and they just kept on staring. So eventually I just looked away and decided to ignore it as best I could and remain on my plastic chair in the corner. These guys would be really good in a staring competition.

  I sat in that chair for about an hour and began to get very tired — in fact I really hit the wall. After last night’s effort and the stress of this morning I was now really bloody knackered and started to micro nap, but I really needed to piss a
nd wondered how disgusting this experience was going to be.

  ‘Excuse me mate, I need to use the bathroom.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I need to go to the toilet.’

  ‘What is this?’

  Bloody hell, am I talking Swedish? ‘I need to piss,’ I said and motioned with my index finger the action of pissing. He got the idea and asked me to follow him. We walked through a large wooden door on the back wall of the entry room to a yard behind the administration building.

  ‘Holy shit,’ I whispered as I went into sensory overload and now realised where the prison really was. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: a sea of people, 580 people jam-packed into a space built for 120 people, people strewn all over the place. The best way to describe it was an overcrowded third-world toilet that smelt a lot worse. I was directed through the crowd of prisoners who all stared at the new guy. The ground was dirt and covered in chewing tobacco residue and green phlegm spat everywhere. I told myself I’d have to sterilise my shoes when I got out of here tomorrow, or throw them out, and I made a mental note not to touch the soles any time in the near future. The clerk pointed to a drain. The drain was about 15 centimetres wide and seemed to run along the entire length of the wall and had a constant trickle of water running through it. How the hell am I supposed to use this? I thought.

  I saw another prisoner crouching about three metres away and I tried to follow his example. However, trying to crouch down and balance was difficult and I didn’t want to touch the wall or ground or anything, and peeing in jeans was bloody difficult and I nearly sprayed my face with urine. Eventually I just thought ‘bugger it’ and stood up to pee properly. So what if I didn’t do it the same as others, what are they going to do, arrest me? As I pissed, I looked at the wall in front of me and to my left and right. It was about five metres high and clearly a rendered brick as I could see that bits of the concrete had fallen off in sections. One thing was clear, free climbing the walls wasn’t going to be easy. I turned to wash my hands and a prisoner who was already there pumped the water for me. I thanked him and moved on.

  On the way back to the administration office, a prison guard motioned that I should come to him. He sat on a big round pipe turned on its side and used as a planter box. He had his flip-flops off, his feet were up on a chair and he held a length of cane in his hand that I imagined had probably been across a few backs before and would hopefully not be used on mine! He looked quite relaxed as if he owned the place. All he needed was someone to stand next to him dropping grapes into his mouth, because he already had a man on the other side fanning him.

  ‘ARE YOU OKAY?’ he yelled at me. I actually reeled back a little as this guy spoke with the volume on high.

  ‘Yes, I’m okay, thank you, Sir,’ I said quietly as a huge crowd gathered around us.

  ‘MY NAME IS PANDI BUTTON AND I AM THE SENIOR GUARD. YOU MUSTN’T WORRY. YOU WILL BE IN THIS CELL,’ he said and pointed to a large building close to the entrance to the administration building. This guy was a classic. He was about 6 feet 2 inches (188 centimetres) tall, spoke good English, had a head of thick black hair, a well-trimmed moustache and a huge set of teeth that I struggled not to look at. But the yelling was hysterical.

  ‘IF YOU NEED ANYTHING, YOU MUST ASK ME, OKAY?’

  I shook his hand and said, ‘It was nice to meet you, Mr Button.’

  The clerk took me back to the administration building and I waited and waited while watching as the guards processed new prisoners. I looked at these new prisoners and wondered if I looked like they did. They seemed lost, frightened and resigned to misery. Then a truck arrived and the clerk told me that the truck had come from the courthouse. I got up to watch through the window as the guards and police secured the area before unlocking the back of the truck. About 30 prisoners fell out of the truck and all filed into the now very crowded administration building to be processed before going back to the prison.

  After what seemed like another hour of sitting in the chair, I was led back into the prison. I expected to be taken to the cell indicated by the loud-talking guard, but instead was directed to a smaller block in the south-eastern corner of the yard. Thankfully, I seemed to be on my own. My cell was 13 of my feet long and eight of my feet wide. It consisted of a front area and a back section. The front section was like a courtyard and had no roof, but 15-feet-high concrete walls, and my cell was at the rear. Someone had been kind enough to make what seemed to be my bed which consisted of a hessian bag spread on the wet concrete — excellent. The guard remained at the front of my cell to control the hundreds of prisoners who had gathered to stare at me. There were others in my cell. One man was hooking up a power lead with a light bulb and was assisted by another. The clerk brought a small steel fan into the cell and the same two men hooked that up to the power as well. Then they hammered a series of nails into the concrete wall and I wondered what they were for until the man who seemed to be taking the lead picked up my plastic bag and hung it on one nail. I took my wet towel from the plastic bag and hung it on another. I suppose I had to be grateful for being on my own and the fact that the Sub-Inspector had organised for this fan was a blessing.

  Everyone left the cell, I thanked them and the loud talker walked in. ‘I WILL LEAVE MY GUARD AT THE DOOR TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE NOT HARMED, OKAY?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, thank you.’

  Then I was on my own except for the entire prison population trying to get a glimpse of me in my cell. The ugly guard positioned at the door didn’t let them into my cell, but he allowed them to gather and look. I truly felt like a caged animal in a really small enclosure at the zoo with all the people looking at me. I paced the cell and wondered how the hell this had happened to me. I got people out of situations like this; I didn’t get into them myself. Yesterday at this time I had just finished the course and was having lunch with a fun bunch of students and now I was in gaol. The prisoners continued to jockey for a good vantage point to look at me. Two prisoners then walked to the ugly guard, slipped him some dirty notes and he allowed them to pass and walk right up to my cage for a closer look. These two skinny little pricks just stood there gawking at me at a distance of about a metre. One of them held the palm of his right hand out and started to shake it as though asking what I was doing. I replied by saying, ‘What the fuck does this mean?’ as I imitated the move. The loud-talking guard returned and went off. He started swinging that cane of his at everyone in sight and seemed to go into shock when he saw the two prisoners right up at my cage. The prisoners nearly collapsed with fear because they knew what was coming and the only way out was past the readied cane. If Loud Talker was yelling before, he really opened up the volume as he abused the two prisoners while simultaneously flogging the shit out of them. Whatever got in the way was hit as they ran out of the cell. Within seconds there wasn’t a prisoner in sight and it was just Ugly, Loud Talker and me. Loud Talker turned on Ugly and gave him a mouthful of abuse then open palm slapped him across the face and walked away. Fuck me; where the hell am I? This was the last thing I needed because now the prisoners would want revenge and old Ugly was giving me a filthy look.

  I decided to lie on the hessian bag and try to think — and sleep if possible. I just wanted to disappear, or wake up and have this nightmare over. I expected someone to call me at any minute to say the problem had been worked out and the Magistrate now accepted that this was an accident and I could go. An hour later, as I drifted close to the edge of sleep, I was summoned to the clerk’s office. The Nepali Superintendent of Police had arrived and expressed his deep disappointment. He gave me a blanket, sheet, towel, sarong and some water. He told me he would continue to apply pressure to have this resolved as quickly as possible and then, as quickly as he had arrived, he rushed off. This time I made my own way back to my cell and noted that I now walked very slowly. I accepted that there was no rush, I didn’t need to be anywhere at a particular time and there was nothing to do when I got there.

 
; No sooner had I settled into my cell when I was again summoned to the office and Ujjwal was there with more bottles of water, biscuits and a set of massive underpants. I stared at the underpants with a questioning look on my face and he told me I’d work it out. Some former students had come too and Ujwal said to me, ‘Don’t worry Paul, we will talk to the Magistrate and lawyer before we go back today and push to have this sorted out. Do you need anything?’

  ‘Freedom!’

  ‘I know, don’t worry, everyone is working on this. All the journalists in the district on both sides of the border are going to blockade the border tomorrow and protest your arrest. Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of this.’

  ‘Thanks, Ujwal.’

  ‘We must go now. Is it bad back there?’

  ‘I can handle it, but I don’t want to spend too long here.’

  ‘You won’t. Bye.’

  I was only back in my cell for 20 minutes when again I was told to go to the administration building. Each time this happened I fantasised that I’d be told to grab my kit as I was out of here, but it didn’t happen. When I arrived, a guard pointed out a strange-looking guy as if I knew him. The Indian guy stepped forward and told me he was from the Indian International Federation of Journalism (IFJ) and handed me a loaf of bread. He told me that the IFJ in India was aware of my problem and was working hard to resolve it quickly. I thanked him very much, he left and I returned to my cage.