Forget You Had a Daughter - Doing Time in the Bangkok Hilton (18 page)

and bellicose individual who found it hard to prostrate myself before the authorities. Usually I just went through the motions.

If an officer was sitting, in order to speak to one of them, we had to kneel on the floor; we had to be lower than them.We had to show every one of them that we were a lower form of life than they were. But it was painful to bend. I had developed terrible skin infections on my feet that made it difficult. There were so many boils that I took a perverse delight in counting them almost daily to see if the numbers were going up or down.

Over time I kept a diary, of sorts. Not every day, but just enough for me to remind myself of certain events. It became a way to help me understand what I was going through, what my family were going through and what the rest of the thousands of women in here were going through. Although I was never completely certain of dates and time I tried, as best I could, to be accurate.

Diary extract

14
May
1993

Three people came to see me, three old friends, from Bangkok. It’s embarrassing for people to see what I’ve been reduced to. Hearing about my childish existence and how I have to wash clothes on the concrete and sit around watching the frogs and birds slip about on the wet concrete floors.They ask me if I need anything. I hate being so useless, so dependent… The restrictions here are endless, just like being at primary school. I hated Susan seeing me in this awful situation, but it was so good to see her… life before the arrest is still a terrible blur. I don’t know if it’s the shock, but I’m finding it difficult to remember people and names…

Being in LardYao was like being shipwrecked on an island. It was our island and the metaphor suggested we were all in this together. Most prisoners wanted to make this temporary commu- nity work but, because of all the pressures brought to bear upon us

by the prison system, it proved impossible. In many ways, as I have said, we prisoners ran the whole place, but the feeling of unity was not very strong. We always tried to keep some sort of harmony, though, in the hope that we might one day be rescued.

Some months after I was brought to the prison, I had a split with most of the other foreigners; basically, we never got on as well as I – and no doubt they – had hoped. I enjoyed mixing with the Thais and was happy enough with my superficial friendship with them; I could relate to them more than I could with the others. There were a few Americans in prison at the same time as me but few of them had ever travelled before and I found them overly contemptuous of Thailand and Thai people. I didn’t hate Thai people, but defending them all the time earned me a bad reputa- tion.

One evening, when we had all been locked in, a fight broke out between some Americans and all the Thais. It was vicious and bloody. One Thai woman grabbed me and threw me in the toilet.

‘We don’t want you,’ she said, spitting,‘we want them.’

The following day I was labelled a traitor by the Americans and, after this incident, I spoke to very few of them ever again. I accepted this without much difficulty; I had come into prison alone, and was going to leave it alone, so I figured I’d do my time alone too. I didn’t need anyone.

When you fight a Thai you don’t just take on an individual, you take them all on. It’s not possible to fight just one of them, because they stick together, hunt in packs and make sure their friends are looked after. Perhaps my split with the Americans wasn’t such a bad outcome really.

Karyn Smith and I did remain good friends, but we lived differ- ent lives. She worked in the
gonglean
and I worked on the other side of the prison in the laundry.The age difference between us – she was still a teenager and I was approaching
30
– meant that we had different interests. To be honest, I didn’t want to become

dependent on Karyn nor did I want her to become dependent on

me. For a while, at least, I was always sure I would be released. It would be terrible for her if we had become too close and I had to leave her there…

Sunday afternoons were the only time not allocated to working and this was the time that the black market would set up ‘short- time hotels’.All over the factories, under washing lines and tables and in toilets they would build what looked like a child’s den. Here a couple could pay for an hour in the den together, while the black market woman stood watch, alerting them if an officer came by.

Sunday afternoons were also when the guards got massages from the inmates, had their nails done or their grey hairs plucked. An all-round LardYao pampering. Effectively, what this meant was that they had no time to be busting the short-time hotels. It was shocking at first to see women publicly engaged in sexual rela- tionships, but over time it became acceptable and, in many cases, completely understandable.

Diary extract,

17
May
1993

My Thai is improving but I still don’t really know what they are talking about. I somehow prefer to remain alone. I don’t want to be drawn into the silly, giggly conversation and idle gossip…

I don’t know whether people come in here with limited intelligence or whether the routine and mundane existence causes them to be petty. I still pray that I can think individually if I ever get out of here. I’m worried about the court trial.What should I say? I do wish that I was sentenced and all this was over…

I had no idea when my trial was going to take place.Trying to get information from anyone remotely official was virtually impossi- ble and I was growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of activity surrounding my trial.

Every day I could hear trains passing the prison, and when I did my heart would beat faster. Every time I saw a plane flying over- head I cried. My head exploded at the thought of other people – holidaymakers and tourists – ordering their first drinks as they dis- appeared into the clouds above me, leaving me in this dungeon. All I seemed to think about was returning home.When would it be my turn to step onto a plane and see my family?

Lard Yao became a horrendous slow-motion dream where there were people everywhere and, in that dream, I could always see where I wanted to go – it was always through the heavy prison gates. It took forever to get there because of all the people around me pulling me back. Every night for six months I dreamed that I was running away; I was on buses, planes, trains, bicycles, bob- sleighs and boats. I ran, walked, ducked and dived through forests and towns but always, always got caught.

After a while I began dreaming about the prison I was in, as though my mind had accepted where I was and had got used to it all.These dreams were the scariest.

At the end of May
1993
, around the time of my first birthday in

prison, I was sitting in the
gonglean
waiting for Karyn to finish cleaning up after lunch. It was a Saturday. One of the guards, bored by the lack of activity, had found a tape of music and was playing it over the tannoy system.

Slowly, the tunes filtered into my head. It was beautiful music and, gradually, I realised what it was. It was the Beatles,‘The White Album’. How amazing! The voices of Lennon and McCartney lifted the whole place and I could see the faces of so many prison- ers – Thai and foreign alike – lifting, as they started to hum or sing the songs.

For the last few months I had lived in a strange state of denial, convinced that I would be leaving Lard Yao. Sitting there in that filthy hall I suddenly realised
this is not a dream, Sandra.This is real. You are here, you are a prisoner and you will probably be here for years and years to come. So you had better get used to it
. This time I couldn’t

suppress the tears. Karyn looked at me, saw the horror in my face and knew immediately what I was feeling.

‘You’ll be OK,’ she said as she walked away, leaving me alone with my sorrow.

I would be staying in LardYao for a long time; there would be no bail; the judge would not throw the case out of court; the police would definitely charge me and I would not be escaping. Lennon kept singing. I began sweating, and my ears pounded and throbbed. I had heard ‘The White Album’ first as a child, before listening to it properly as a teenager. I had it on vinyl at home inWestYorkshire.

How could I have been so arrogant as to think that I would be different from all the other women? I was no different.We were all the same. I was a prisoner, a convict and a criminal.They knew it. Now I knew it too.

Karyn saw how upset I had become, but didn’t need to ask what was wrong. Like everyone else in here, she had been there too. Quietly, slowly, she left me.

By June of my first year I was at the stage where I no longer looked forward to anything. Half the time I didn’t even know if I was alive, nor did I care. Sometimes I would wake up, look around at the half-naked torsos lying around me thinking that I was dead. Not just dreaming I was dead, but actually thinking it.
You are dead, Sandra, for sure, because no one alive could possibly live like this.
It was subhuman.

Occasionally, I would look at myself in a mirror or in the reflec- tion of a window. I was gaunt, thin, wasted, weak, tired, a wreck of my former self. My back was painful, my kidneys were sore, my eyesight occasionally stalled. I no longer felt like Sandra Gregory. I was simply using her name.

I had never been in prison before and I had no previous convic- tions.The amount I had been carrying actually became a standing joke among the other prisoners.Why had I gambled with my life attempting to smuggle so little?

*

I know when I was born, and when I had my first fall-out with my dad, and the moment I first kissed a boy, and the instant I said goodbye to my parents. I also know when I was so sad that it almost finished me. On
21
July
1993
I was sitting on a mass of con- crete, scrubbing the officers’ dirty clothes when, at around eight in the morning, Karyn came bounding over to me.

‘You know Dana’s got an illegal radio and listens to the news every day? Well, she said she just heard that two British girls in Thailand on drug charges are going to be released today on a pardon.’

My heart stopped.‘What?’ She repeated herself.

‘No, Karyn,’ I said, ‘don’t be so stupid. She must be mistaken. The media wouldn’t know you are going home before you knew yourself. Go to work and just forget about it. It can’t be true. Dana’s winding you up, you’d know if you were going home.’ I could barely stand the thought of my only friend in that place leaving.

Karyn went to work and I tried to carry on scrubbing clothes but my mind was elsewhere. I was imagining Karyn leaving me in this hellhole, never turning round, and just walking through the gates to go home.
Don’t leave me.

A loud yell erupted from the middle of the prison shortly after Karyn headed to work. It must be true. The place had erupted and I then knew it was true. Karyn and Patricia were going home.

Suddenly, I was so happy for them. I jumped out to look for Karyn, trying my best to pretend that I wasn’t that concerned with my own fate. But part of me was weeping inside.

Everything happened so fast that we barely had time to speak. That evening Karyn undressed, threw her uniform to the floor and put on casual clothes that marked her down as someone from the outside. She was no longer a prisoner and neither was Patricia. Although Patricia was never a favourite of mine, I wished her well.

They walked out through the green gate; the gate shut and she was gone. It was as simple as that. Tomorrow she would be a memory. I knew I would never see her again.

That evening I thought my heart would break in two at the pain of seeing them leave without me. My only friend in that place had gone and now I was alone. From that moment I never watched another woman walk out of those gates; it was simply too painful.

I have never felt as lonely in my life as I did in the month that followed Karyn’s departure, and I cried constantly. Every time I saw anything that reminded me of my friend or any time anybody looked at me and asked,‘Ah, are you missing Karyn?’ I crumbled under the weight of my loneliness.Yet Karyn had taught me well and I would survive, I decided, without her. She deserved to be home and I deserved to be here.

Karyn wrote to me many times when she was back in the UK but after a while I decided not to write back. Not because I didn’t want to or had nothing to say but because she was a young women who needed to get on with her life.The last letter I received from her was, as usual, warm and understanding, chirpy and fun. I read it, and then tucked it away.And Karyn Smith was out of my life.

Shortly after Karyn and Patricia left, a woman died of an asthma attack in the room I was sleeping in, and I was amazed by how unaffected I was by that young girl’s death. She had forgotten her asthma pump before being locked in the cell. When the attack happened and someone had called out to the guards, two officers came strolling by in their pyjamas and stood at the bars of the room, asking the poor girl why she had forgotten her pump.

‘What do you want us to do about it?’ was all they said to her. They thought she was pretending and that she was wasting their precious sleeping time.They stood there talking about what kind of punishment they would hand out to her the following day.

Within ten minutes the girl had fallen to the floor from the kneeling position she had been in, holding her throat. Right there

in front of us all, in a matter of minutes, she died.The body count was rising. After this incident I no longer cared for the fate of others.

I grew weary of
everything
. The noise, pollution, filth and the constant heat became unbearable. But there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, and nowhere to cry or shout or lash out in private. The sewers overflowed in the rainy season and it was putrid.The smell became unbearable as the rats, cockroaches and centipedes came out from their hiding places to invade our space, like aliens planning on taking over the world.

Lawyers showed up at the prison constantly.Thai prisoners would tell their lawyers that there was a foreigner in Lard Yao and if the lawyer got their case the prisoner would get
10
per cent of the lawyer’s fees.They all seemed to think that being European I was some sort of money tree and I lost count of how many lawyers came to the prison to see me.They all said the same, of course, that they could get me out, but after the third or fourth offer of release I figured that if it was so easy then nobody would be there.