Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (15 page)

The women who worked there dragged massive metal pots along the ground, doling out boiled cucumbers onto each plate. After a five-minute prayer, where each woman held her hands together and chanted, they started their meal. Everyone wore brown clothes, they all ate with short metal, Chinese spoons; the women looked as sick as hospital patients.

‘Are you hungry?’ Karyn asked. I wasn’t.

We continued walking. ‘You’re not well, are you?’

I didn’t answer. Karyn headed off towards a group of people milling around outside the prison shop. Minutes later she emerged brandishing a piece of bread and a fried egg in a plastic bag. I really wasn’t hungry, so Karyn said she would save it for later. I don’t think she really knew what to do with me that morning, and I had no idea myself.This was all so strange.When would the embassy sort out this mess?

I kept asking questions.‘Who’s that?’‘What’s that?’‘What’s she in for?’‘Where does she come from?’‘How does this work?’‘Why do people act like that?’Anything. Everything.

There were women everywhere: old women, young women, fat women and thin women, women from all nationalities.There

were so many women that it didn’t seem possible that they had all committed a crime. Some sat on plastic mats, eating or looking at themselves in tiny little mirrors. Others walked about, while some hung around in the toilets. Many more were scrubbing clothes on the ground. We fell silent for a while and I watched the activity around me.The sun scorched the ground. I had no idea what time it was.

And cats.There were almost as many cats as women.The pris- oners carried them around on their shoulders and in their pockets. One old woman with scraggly grey hair and no teeth had a mat full of cats.They sat with her, eating rice from plastic bags as she coo-cooed them all.Why was she here? She barely looked sin- ister enough to sneeze.

Every now and again the guards would come in at night and bag up as many cats as they could manage into rice sacks and take them out of the prison. Many found their way back in, but women went through agonies worrying over the fate of their own little beast.There were cats that had never seen a dog or a man. It didn’t take very long for me to get a cat too. First it was Jow-Son in the bakery and later my lovely Upstairs.

During the daytime, prisoners kept all their possessions with them, which were never very much: a few prison clothes, toi- letries, a hairbrush, the ice buckets we used to make and some food.All kept in plastic bags from the factories, or bought from the black market.

When prison officers carried out raids – usually done with regular monotony – they would take away any possessions that were not well enough hidden. Often they would sell whatever had been confiscated back to the offending prisoner.

If you had a book in the room, or had one too many pairs of pyjamas, it would cost a box of washing powder to get it back.The bags and ice buckets we made out of old plastic rice sacks and tubs.These would always be taken; if you wanted the contents of the bag returned you had to pay for that also.The guards usually

kept the bags.The factory girls – prisoners who worked in one of the five factories within the prison – always looked forward to the searches.A search meant that they would do a bit of business after- wards and earn some money making replacement bags. The guards in charge of the factories, who got the work contracts, were usually given some kind of payment from their girls. It was a free market, but nothing was ever free.

We passed a very dark woman who was green and black with bruises, chained by her arms and legs to a pillar. Shrieking like a drowning child, tears running down her face, she lurched at us as we passed.

‘What the hell is wrong with her?’ I asked Karyn.

‘Oh, she’s just come from the police station. She’s one of the nutters.’

Perhaps I had been treated a lot better by the police than I had imagined…

Further on in our stroll we passed a floor full of babies, scrab- bling around in the dirt.A women’s prison was the last place I had expected to see them but I counted roughly
20
young babies lying on their backs.Where were their mothers? I asked Karyn. She told

me they were getting ready for work.

It was impossible to walk past a floor full of unattended infants so we sat down next to them. Most of them were naked except for the occasional torn garment. None wore nappies. One little mite screamed until his mother arrived back from washing; she dumped a load of washing down and tried to feed the baby a bowl of very wet, mashed white rice. He refused and continued to scream.

‘The poor baby wants milk, not rice,’ I told Karyn, who trans- lated to the mother. She smiled a toothless grin at me and tried to breastfeed her baby. She was thinner than straw and I doubt she had any milk to give to the baby.There was nothing we could do, so we left.

Another time, sitting alone early one morning, a little black

child ran past behind me.
Surely not
, I thought,
not a child in here
. Then another girl roughly three years old, with braided hair and bare feet, stole through the crowd. They were two little African children, Mama and Toyin, who lived in Lard Yao with their mothers.They had been born in the prison and all they had ever known were walls.

New prisoners arrived daily and I could barely distinguish one person from the next. However, a young girl who arrived on a pickpocketing charge sticks out in my memory. She was thrown into the room housing all the heroin addicts.Around
4
o’clock in

the morning everyone woke up to constant, hysterical, high- pitched screams that sounded as if someone was being murdered.

A guard in her pyjamas came by, took one look through the bars and left. She returned with Boosecan, a prisoner working as a nurse in the hospital.The guard opened the door to the girl and pushed Boosecan, who had a syringeful of sedative with her, inside.Things went quiet.

By all accounts the guard who had come by had been so scared that she hardly dared open the door to take the girl out; the other prisoners in the room were petrified the girl was going to kill them all. It sounded very odd so the following morning I went to find the girl and see what all the fuss was about.

Four heavy-looking tomboys were escorting her towards the hospital. She looked roughly
18
years old and weighed around eight stone. Judging by the effort it took to take her I guessed she was much stronger than she looked.

Another injection of Valium followed and she was walked back to the building where women sat making umbrellas. Curious, I followed behind. Suddenly the girl flew into another furious rage; considering that she had just been pumped full of sedative I was astounded.

The four tomboys called for help and several more ran to hold the girl down. Her eyes darkened, while her head rocked furiously from side to side, so fast it appeared to rotate. She was foaming and

spitting and growling deep groans. I had never seen anything like it. It was as if the devil himself was screaming. She sounded possessed.

Eight prisoners held her down until Boosecan was summoned. She thought the girl was putting on an act and wouldn’t inject her. The girl started howling. Over and over Boosecan stabbed the needle deep into the muscle of the girl’s leg and when she didn’t react she thrust it into her arm.The girl collapsed unconscious.

Karyn and I decided to visit her. She had been taken to Mare Mooway, an officer who claimed she could exorcise spirits. Karyn and I stood watching over the girl as Mare Mooway sat cross- legged beside her, holding her right hand up over the girl’s body and mumbling something incomprehensible.

‘Don’t stand there,’ someone shouted. ‘When the spirit comes out it will go straight into you. Stand at the side and the spirit will flow away.’

For
10
minutes Mare Mooway sat mumbling. Then, all of a

sudden, something seemed to move from inside the girl. Her eyes closed, her head relaxed and her body lay still.

‘Stay lying down!’ Mare Mooway shouted. ‘I’m thirsty,’ said the girl.

Whether the girl was possessed or not and whether or not it was a spirit I saw leave her body I will never know for sure. In Lard Yao you never knew anything for sure.

There were more nutcases in LardYao than cats. Many of them had a condition the Thais called ‘jump’ that caused them to say or do anything when they were poked. Some women spent hours torturing these souls, making them jump up and down, or making them do the most ridiculous things.

One woman spent her days hugging a coconut tree, singing at the top of her voice, or calling out to anyone who passed. In the mornings she shouted at her tree because it had not grown very much, telling it what a useless tree it was. Then she started her hugging once more.

Another was a completely mad kleptomaniac. Jee-up’s nerves twitched constantly and she stole whatever she could whenever possible, even when someone was watching her. She received constant beatings but she never stopped stealing. Another sat around most of the day, her sarong around her waist, masturbating.

Karyn told me to get a shower and Patricia would come to find me.Why? What was happening? Karyn went to work.

I dried myself and changed into a second set of the heavy, brown clothes I had been issued with the day before. Patricia Cahill arrived later in the morning, fully made-up and wearing a blue sarong and shirt. She looked almost dazzling against the wrinkled old ladies I had passed earlier, and totally out of place. For some reason she didn’t appear too happy to see me.

‘Your parents are here,’ she said, almost coldly, ‘they’re waiting for you.’

My parents? No, that wasn’t possible, someone was mistaken.

eight

The Bodysnatchers

Dearest Mum and Dad,

It seems years ago, but you left only eight days ago. As I said when I saw you both it really did mean the absolute world to me that you came and although we parted in such strained, negative circumstances, you gave me strength.That is probably the only thing that will see me through the next X number of years… If I get life though you really will have to forget me. I can’t do a life sentence in here. I love you both.

Sandra

Letter home, February
1993

I could feel Patricia’s breath on my ear. I looked at her as if she had just told me that my parents had died and not that they were here, visiting me.Their death would have made more sense; but visiting me here? That seemed impossible.The morning sun multiplied as Patricia talked.

Did they not receive my letter? Had they not listened to me? I told them explicitly to forget all about me, forget they had a daughter.
Patricia, you must be mistaken
, I thought to myself. It was impossible to speak so I just stood there, open-mouthed. My mum and dad wouldn’t be here, how could they be? Unless that bloody woman from the embassy hadn’t posted my letter.That was it; the selfish cow had binned it. I was sure at the time that she hadn’t bothered to post my letter.

Patricia took me to an office, saying very little.Thump, thump, thump, my heart was pounding again. Patricia spoke in Thai to an officer, then told me to go stand at the main gate.

‘What will I do if it is my parents?’ I asked her.

‘It’s them all right,’ she said. ‘I saw the passports. Run in, grab your mother and quickly give her a hug, then they will put you behind the bars.’

‘Behind bars? No, no! I can’t see my mum and dad from behind a set of bars!’

‘Well, it’s either that or nothing.You decide.’

The embassy had arranged a visit in the embassy room, instead of the public visiting room.A visit in the latter usually lasted for
15
to
20
minutes in a dark crowded room, explained Patricia, and people shouted across a four-foot gap to each other. No contact, no hugs, and no time for real conversation.

How do I look? Is my hair OK? Oh, God, they shouldn’t have to see me like this!
Every step I took was heavy and painful. I fingered the hem of my brown sarong.

There they were. It
was
my parents, but they did not look like my parents. I thought my grandparents had come. Both seemed to have lost weight, as if their bodies had regressed somehow, as if the strain of my actions had caused their move- ments to become frail, even childlike. Their temples were lower than I had remembered, and they walked slower.They looked as if they might break.

They stood there, tears streaming down their faces. The news had aged my mum by
20
years. I could see them wondering, as I was, where had it had all gone wrong? How did their beautiful, blonde baby daughter, who rode on ponies and took French

lessons, end up here?

They sat on a black, PVC-covered couch. Before I could run and hug them, I was put in a small cage in the corner of the room. We were separated by a heavy set of bars; strung over the bars was mesh chicken wire. My mum put her brittle

fingers through the wire and our fingers touched. The feeling of relief that surged through me was insane. She stroked my hand and then tried to kiss me. My father put his large, warm hand up to the bars and we touched fingers through them. I think we were all crying. I had not seen my parents for more than two years.

I do not remember what we said to each other that day but the feeling of closeness remains with me as if it happened yesterday. I can feel it. I can almost touch it. For a short while, our touching lit up the room like fireworks on a dark sky. Most of the dialogue is gone but the scene remains.

‘You must go!’ shouted an officer.‘Go!’ ‘What?’

‘You go. Now!’

‘But they’ve just got here… ’

The officer hurried over to a window and pulled on a shuttered blind. Jean Sharpe from the embassy had arrived, informing us that the press were outside taking pictures.

‘The prison is sensitive towards media coverage and they want the cause of all this attention to leave.’ She meant my parents.Two more minutes together and they were taken away.

‘Please, Jean,’ I begged her,‘please keep them out of the papers.’