K
By Daniel
de Souza
Cockroaches in Turkish prisons come in all shapes and sizes but by far the biggest is karafatma. It’s a hardy fat black insect known for its speed and the crack to be heard when stamped on. They say the first karafatma race occurred as early as 1981 in Marmak, the military prison near Ankara. The story I heard was Kafka. The jail was full of politicals and the soldiers guarding them so paranoid, they banned cleaning chemicals for fear they would be turned into bombs. Thus the prison was overrun with cockroaches. Some say it was a TKP prisoner, Enver Hoca, who suggested staging races with the insects. It was a joke, a way to poke a snoot at the soldiers. Whatever, it caught on. The men held heats in the different blocks and then had a grand finale down the gutter in the middle of the main courtyard. The story I heard was that the commander became so outraged by the enthusiasm and fun whipped up by the event that he arranged for an outside cleaning company to exterminate all the cockroaches in the jail; exactly what the prisoners had wanted in the first place.
But the karafatma races of Buca were something entirely different. I found out about them the night Austrian Paul and I decorated the school. The job was virtually finished but there was still some final touches required to get the place ready for the next day’s lessons. It was about seven in the evening when Head Guard Jasim Baba unlocked a double set of steel doors for us to descend an iron spiral stairway to the basement. The corridor down there was dank and dark even during the day but at least then a reassuring light shone through the slit windows, positioned high up the raw cement walls. By night, with weak bulbs stretched few and far between, the half a mile long echoing corridor was forbidding to put it mildly. Silhouettes of rats scampering fearlessly along the overhead pipes grew to grotesque proportions as the creatures slunk under the lights while below them, out of the shadows, green eyes squinted up as hungry cats prowled. At the very end of the corridor a solitary neon strip lit up an open door. Intermittently figures appeared and the clang of pots and raucous bellows rolled down the corridor.
Once the basement corridor was used to access a carpet weaving workshop, a foundry, a gym and a concert salon but, with all the facilities welded shut for years, now it only led to the prison school, bakery and kitchens. Normal prisoners rarely went there. Even the greenest con knew about the kitchen block men. They were the scum of the jail. Their cocky aggressive solidarity and legally possessed knives were bad enough but they were also frequently drunk on hooch distilled using the prison’s own kitchen equipment. The men were indispensable and knew it. Even under the military, for them discipline meant anything they could get away with. The only guard they respected was Jasim Baba because he mostly gave them whatever they wanted. Fortunately the kitchen workers lived by night and rarely ventured up to the main corridor of the jail.
The school door was only about twenty five meters short of the kitchen block. Paul and I had no desire to make the acquaintance of the men milling under the neon strip and let ourselves into the school as quickly and silently as possible. At the top of the prison hierarchy, normally I would never have befriended a short termer like Paul but there was something about him. Fresh off a plane from India, if nothing else, he was a real traveler. With all the commotion of finding the heroin, his suitcase had been left at the airport so all he had was the black shiny nylon suit he’d worn in the hope of fooling the authorities that he was straight. Skinny, outrageously tall, the Viennese looked younger than his forty years until he opened his mouth. He only had three teeth and, coupled with the suit and middle parting of jet black hair, when he laughed, he looked just like a vampire. His weak spot was pills, downers, uppers, anything to help him wind down from a heroin addiction stretching back more than eighteen years. By then, as one of the longest serving cons in the jail, I had the connections to get any kind or number of pills I wanted so Paul became my fawning shadow.
At first we made good progress, painting the fine lines of the woodwork and scraping dried paint drops off the windows and glass doors. Paul talked on and on. He was a master at wheedling and actually convinced me that sedatives gave him energy and strength. I relented and gave him a five pill advance, he chewed them down without water as if they were candy. And, for half an hour, the pills really woke him up. He whizzed around like a dervish. Then suddenly he went into slow motion.
“Take it easy,” he gripped my shoulders. “We’ll get it finished.”
It must have been about three in the morning before the job was over. Leaving the school, the noise coming from the kitchen workers was tremendous. The men were grouped around a steel topped table directly underneath the neon light. Hollering, banging pots, whistling and stamping; they clearly had no interest in us but we were curious about them. What the hell were they doing? Paul walked straight up, nothing happened so I joined him.
Up close the kitchen workers seemed generally younger than I’d thought but they still looked dangerous. Covered in filthy grease from head to toe, sipping hooch from beakers, all of them reeked of alcohol and staggered around drunk. Barefoot, dressed in ragged blue uniforms, they were predominantly in their late teens or early twenties. But there was a blond, blue eyed man, standing alone at one end of the steel table who was at least fifty. Bare chested, with a long bread knife tucked in plain view underneath the string holding up his cut off pants, he stood guarding a large jar half full of 1 lire coins. At the other end of the table was a pushing and shoving scrum of kitchen workers clutching matchboxes held high above their heads until the blond older man named ten contestants. With style and panache ten coins were slid down the table, matchboxes were opened and ten large insects were shaken out onto the steel sheet. As spectators made side bets, the competitors did everything thinkable to make their roaches run up the table but when all the screaming, prodding and flicking failed, the creatures were mashed, stamped, de-limbed and roasted with cigarette lighters. A scrawny kid with spots called Psycho used his teeth to decapitate his failed entrant, eyes shining with a devil’s grin he showed me the creature still wriggling between his teeth. I retched. Each race was the same. Not a single roach survived. It seemed the idea was just to watch insects being tortured and killed. But then the blond man thumped the table and declared the money pot full. The whole atmosphere suddenly changed. Names were shouted out, summoning men from the depths of the blocks and kitchens. The ten contestants appeared one by one and carefully placed their matchboxes on the table.
In comparison to the previous races, it was quite a thriller. One roach darted straight for the finishing line but stopped barely a centimeter short, turned and went just as quick back the way it had come. As it crossed the start line, its owner squashed it into oblivion with a heavy fist. It was the only roach to die even though only three actually crossed the finishing line. Pandemonium broke out. In the midst of the uproar as the pot of money was handed over, all the other entrants were safely scooped up and returned to their matchboxes. The winner, beaming from ear to ear, held up the pot in triumph. The cheers were deafening. Paul and I exchanged glances, that was quite a sum of money the kid was holding.
Winners had to buy drinks for the spectators so there was mad scramble to get beakers refilled. The kid pouring the drinks from a big plastic jug looked no older than ten. Wearing a track suit top that came down to his knees, he kept track of the number of drinks served by clicking them off on his worry beads. The older man leant across the table to offer me a beaker of hooch. Being a teacher at the school, of course I declined but Paul eagerly snatched it, using the potent brew to wash down the pills I’d just paid him. Awed by his size, intrigued by his slurred German Turkish English speech, the workers took to him immediately. Even though I didn’t feel physically threatened, the whole scene was making me nervous. The sadistic bestiality and unashamed enjoyment of the slaughter, the stark neon light reflected by the steel of the table, there was something almost primeval in the air. Paul, on the other hand, seemed to be in his element. As I was leaving, he was negotiating to buy a cockroach from a man hawking them out of a giant Nescafe tin, full to the brim with the wriggling insects. Later, way down the corridor, I heard Paul’s voice ring out, “Roast the mother fucker,”
The very next night Paul and his cell mate, Muto from Indonesia, bribed the guard to open up. They didn’t get back till half an hour before the morning count. Returning from the school that afternoon, I found Paul in the entrance of the tourist block cursing a gendarme half his size in broad Viennese slang.
“Look what he’s done,” Paul gestured to a pile of clothes covering the floor. “He just threw them into the dirt.”
The nervous gendarme quickly explained everything. Paul’s suitcase had turned up and Paul’s signature was required on a statement confirming everything was in order. Still angry, without bothering to check his belongings, Paul signed a receipt. The gendarme left and Paul squatted down to stuff his possessions back into the suitcase. We saw the creature at the same moment; an insect, black, about three centimeters long. It emerged from a roll of dirty socks and scuttled at amazing speed through the door into the blackness of the toilet area.
“A scorpion,” I suggested.
“No,” Paul answered. “The wrong color.”
It was about a week later that the insect resurfaced. Oscar, the German sex offender, found it doing his cleaning chores and carried it still wriggling out into the courtyard to feed to his beloved birds. It was just chance that I was watching from an upstairs window. The plump bald German was about to dismember it when somehow it wriggled free and scuttled off along the base of the courtyard wall. The German took off his slipper and repeatedly tried to crush the insect but each time it managed to escape. Suddenly Paul appeared in the courtyard and gave Oscar a kick in the rear that sent him sprawling. Oscar sat in the dirt glaring hatred as Paul carefully scooped up the insect and placed it in a matchbox. There was nothing Oscar could say or do. Paul may have been just a short term junky but Oscar was a sex offender, the lowest of the low. He had no rights at all in the block.
“Did you see her go?” Paul later showed me the insect securely trapped in a jam jar. “She’s the fastest roach I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s bigger than normal bugs,” I examined the ugly black insect carefully. “How do you know it’s a she?”
Paul gave me a look of disdain and went off in search of Muto. From then on the diminutive Indonesian and the lanky Austrian could often be seen in the courtyard, training their protégé. At night it was returned to its jar and tucked away in Paul’s locker.
Right from the beginning, it was obvious what was in the mind of both men; the cockroach races. They were obsessed. Muto even went as far as weaving a tiny harness out of cotton so that stones could be attached to the insect’s back. He claimed the added weight would strengthen the roach’s legs.
And amazingly, it all seemed to pay off. With my own eyes I saw the bug zip at least six meters from Muto at one end of the courtyard straight to Paul at the other end. It didn’t pause or deviate once.
“It only runs straight to me,” Paul held the creature in the palm of his open hand and gazed at it lovingly
The guy was obviously crazy but I too began to wonder. Could it really win at the cockroach races?
It was close to midnight when the door was opened and we set out for the creature’s debut race. Two Egyptians, Zeki and Fwad, also came; just out of curiosity. Walking up the corridor, Muto held the matchbox close to his lips and whispered an ancient Indonesian incantation; well, that’s what he claimed.
Outside the kitchen block nothing had changed. the same stark neon light, shiny steel table and pervasive atmosphere of wild, drunken savagery. The kitchen men eyed the two Egyptian strangers, sniffing for trouble. Zeki, my fellow memesil straightened his back and jaw, Fwad, more sensibly, smiled broadly and waved a “Hi” with empty hands. Tension eased and the races continued. Paul unobtrusively eased his way to the end of table, right by the finishing line. Muto joined the queue at the other end and, having paid the entry fee, was allowed to place his matchbox at the start line. The moment he opened the box and shook out the roach, all hell broke loose.
“That’s no roach,” an enraged competitor bellowed. “It’s twice the size of mine.”
“It looks like a genuine karafatma, just a bit bigger,” the older blond man pronounced after a close look.
“It’s on steroids,” shouted someone. “Doped to the eyeballs.”
“Wish it was me,” answered another voice.
“She’s from India,” Paul explained in perfect Turkish.
There was a moment of total silence. Everybody stared first at Paul and then at the cockroach. It froze as if aware of the scrutiny.
“This is Turkey,” a competitor broke the silence. “The race should be only with Turkish karafatma.”
“Why?” Paul leant forward over the table, “Are you a racist?”
Everyone stiffened. It was so quiet, Paul’s question seemed to hang in the air. The two men stared hatefully at each other; the antagonism was so intense something had snap.
“Let the Indian race,” a voice shouted. “It’ll never beat a Turkish bug.”
“Yeah,” shouted a large number of voices. “Race. Race. Race.”
The tension turned to excitement and anticipation. Everyone there just wanted to see how the big fat Indian cockroach would do against the smaller, nimble Turkish roaches.
“Any karafatma from anywhere is welcome here,” decreed the blond man. “Let the race begin.”
Our Indian roach didn’t disappoint us. It was over in seconds. The moment Muto released her at start line, she made straight for Paul. All the other cockroaches failed to finish. As they met their gruesome deaths, Paul delicately scooped up the Indian, slid her into a matchbox which he placed gently in the inside pocket of his jacket. His expression of pride as he looked up made me smile. The pot was moderate but it meant the Indian cockroach had qualified. We had to wait an hour before enough money had been accumulated to stage a final. Once again, it was no contest. The Indian bug shot across the table straight into Paul’s hands. He held her aloft and bellowed in triumph.
Paul blew all his winnings in one night. Not only did he buy everyone drinks, he also treated them to pills. Walking back to the tourist block, glowing with triumph, we linked arms and whistled the Colonel Bogey theme.
Although Paul continued to attend the karafatma races, the Indian bug was never entered again. It wouldn’t have been fair. Instead she spent her days in her jam jar feasting on tomato slices. Once she went missing. Paul was convinced she’d been stolen until she was found in Pakistani Sayed’s cell behind his tape set. Worried that she was getting homesick, Paul made a point of playing Indian music to her each night His release date was fast approaching. Knowing he faced more prison time in Austria, Paul wanted to take the Indian bug with him for luck.
On the eve of release, we held an extravagant party in Paul’s honor. Leaving parties were usually only held to celebrate the release of lifers but an exception was made. The next morning, almost all the foreigners stood in a line to say their farewells. Still drunk and stoned, Paul shook our hands as he made his way to the door. Last in the line stood Muto. There were tears in Paul’s eyes as he leaned down to hug the small Indonesian.
A gendarme pulled the two men apart and began to close the steel door. Paul suddenly plunged his hand into the jacket’s pocket, took out the match box and handed it to Muto.
“You take it,” was all he said.
“No,” Muto tried hand it back.
“Get going,” ordered the gendarme pushing Paul away with one hand as he slid the door shut with the other. Muto just managed to draw his hand back in time but the matchbox fell from his fingers into the door well.
And the door slammed shut, crushing the matchbox flat.
.
CHAPTER ONE
I caught the early bus to Beirut hoping to dodge the rush hour but, entering the city's outskirts, an army check point waved us down. Together with the other passengers, I was herded off to be searched and have my identity papers checked. A flash of my passport got me through but upon reaching the city centre it was clear something extraordinary had happened. Everywhere there were soldiers and the road down to the harbor was littered with burnt out cars. I found the Olympic Airways office in Hamra Street but the clerk behind the counter broke down in tears as she told me that the airport was closed. A man rushed to comfort her. From him I learned that Palestinian militias had taken over the airport and all flights had been cancelled. I left the office in a daze and began to walk back towards the bus station. A large man barged me to one side; there was a sequence of dull explosions and a man who’d been walking barely three paces before me fell face forward to the ground. The large man paused a moment, looking down at the body dispassionately, then melted into the swirling crowd. The body was twitching. I saw no wounds but I knew he was dead or dying. As if on auto-pilot, I swung round and began to walk swiftly in the opposite direction. I must have walked for at least ten minutes, up one street and down another, my mind frozen. I was aware that I was totally lost but I couldn’t stop walking. It was only by chance that I found my way back to the bus station.
On the bus back to the camp site, I considered my options. The obvious solution was to take the daily ferry from Beirut to the Cypriot port of Famagusta and travel from there back to Athens. A Greek friend had told me about the route and assured me that the risk was minimal as a hundred dollars was enough to pay off the Lebanese customs and foot passengers arriving in Famagusta were never checked. The next question was where to hide the hashish. First I considered simply carrying it in my backpack but then it came to me - of course - the sound box of the guitar. It seemed the ideal method as, if anything went wrong, I could always dump the guitar and pretend I'd never seen it before.
There was no sign of Pascalle at the camp. Once in my tent , I collapsed in a state of total exhaustion yet couldn’t actually sleep. I tried smoking a joint but it hyped more than soothed. I tried to calm myself by focusing on the future. At last something positive was happening. By helping Andreaus load the yacht, I'd passed the test. Now I was a member of his hash smuggling team, albeit on the very fringes. All that was required was the patience to await his return from America. Everything would work out fine. I just had to follow the plan. So why was there a sense of crumbling destruction, thoughts fragmenting even as they were conceived? The memory of the man falling shot dead returned over and over again.
The next morning the tent was swelteringly hot and I woke with a headache. Immediately, things began to go wrong. Although I stuffed the guitar's sound box solid, two bricks remained. There was no choice. I wrapped them in plastic and buried them in a hole dug beneath the tent. With the job complete, the guitar was a dead weight with just a dull thump instead of a ring but that was a minor problem.
I looked for Pascalle as I checked out but the serious faced Arab at the till simply said that the whole family had driven into Jbail. The check points entering Beirut had been strengthened. Again all the passengers on the bus were made to open their baggage but no one checked the guitar. I took it as an omen. Outside the ferry terminal office, a large crowd had gathered before a sign on the gate proclaiming in Arabic, French and English that all sailings had been cancelled. Bad luck or fate, that was the day the Lebanese war became official with the indefinite closure of Beirut's harbor and airport.
It left the bus through Syria and Turkey as the only route back to Greece. I'd heard stories about the Turkish border and knew it was dangerous yet it still didn't occur to me to back out. The bus station was chaotic, stuffed with people desperate to leave the city. Daunted by the crowds, I found a cemetery to have a quick joint. Squatting in the shade of a tree, smoking, the signs were all positive. A war had to be good news. Wars meant chaos so who was going to care about someone like me.
When I returned to the bus station, it felt like stepping onto a conveyor belt to an undetermined destination. Shoved from behind and squeezed from the sides, I was propelled aboard the bus to Istanbul. Even seated with the guitar safely stowed in the luggage rack above my head, the feeling of being outside the situation persisted. Looking out above the heads of the milling, shrieking people, despite a hyper-awareness of my surroundings, I remained calm and detached.
That man sitting behind - why did he give me such a hateful glare? Thin, in his early thirties, there was something odd about him. It had to be paranoia; no one knew who I was.
The bus drove north, passing the camping site and curling round the coast. The relentlessness of the bus, slowly but surely climbing the steep hill away from the brilliant blue of the sea ever nearer the dirty brown of the Syrian plains seemed to heighten the sensation of being manipulated. It didn't really bother me, on the contrary, it felt as if I'd been set free from responsibility. On the Syrian border a large sign in English, French and German, warned that drug smuggling was a serious offence but only passports were checked. At each refreshment stop I smoked a joint and by the time the bus reached the Turkish border I was icy calm; whatever was about to happen, be it luck or destiny, would happen so why worry. Besides, I rationalized, it would never occur to the Turkish customs to search the guitar and, even if they did, they'd hardly arrest me for such a small amount.
As the bus pulled into the Turkish customs border compound, the man behind jumped out even before the bus stopped and ran into the customs shed. It struck me as peculiar yet still I joined the other passengers as they lined up with their possessions outside the shed. One by one they entered through one door and then left from another. Finally it was my turn. Stepping into the customs shed I immediately locked eyes with the man who'd been sitting behind me. He was standing behind a low table, next to one of the customs officers. He nudged the officer and gestured at me with a slight nod. It was enough; clearly they were on to me. I stepped out of the queue and pretended to readjust the weight of my back-pack, leaving the guitar leaning against the wall of the shed when I rejoined the queue. Almost immediately, a soldier stepped forward and, smiling, handed me back the guitar.
At that moment I knew I was going to be arrested yet there was no sense of fear or foreboding. It all felt perfectly natural, as if it were supposed to happen. Anyway, with the doorway behind blocked by passengers and armed police and soldiers everywhere, there was no possibility of escape. In a futile effort to dodge the inevitable, I put only my bag on the table, placing the guitar case on the floor. The customs officer raised one eyebrow and gave me a weary smile. I smiled back, picked up the guitar and placed it on the table. The customs officer didn't even bother to examine my bag, he immediately reached for the guitar. Detached, I noted his satisfaction as he weighed it in his hands and asked, "Why is it so heavy?"
My answer was just a shrug. The customs officer shook his head and pursed his lips in a clear gesture of disapproval. But even having realized that I was almost certainly a smuggler, he remained pleasant and casual. With a gracious gesture, he waved me to enter a back room and sit before a table. Two other customs men followed us into the room. There were two men talking sitting on a sofa, one was the man from the bus and the other was in his thirties, blond and bronzed, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. They glanced up as we entered but then continued their conversation. I sat at the table with my back to them. My guitar was placed on the table. So as not break it, I helped the customs officer slide the bricks of hashish out. Tea was brought and the officer apologized that it wasn't hot. In quaintly accented English he began to fill in an arrest sheet.
"Name?" "Nationality?" "Age?" "Occupation?"
''Math teacher.''
The officer looked up and stared curiously, his thoughts plain. What was a British math teacher doing smuggling hashish? With a beard and shoulder-length hair, I certainly didn't look like a teacher but I think he believed me as the entire arrest procedure continued in a cordial atmosphere. Suddenly the man from the bus stepped forward.
"Where's the rest?" he thumped the table. "Your partner bought one and half tons."
"What partner?" I stared into his eyes. "I'm alone."
He didn't probe further; with a snort of disgust he opened the door and stalked out. The customs officer shrugged and gave me a not-to-worry smile as he flipped through my passport. "Do you like travelling?"
I nodded and sticking relatively close to the facts described the wandering life I'd led for the previous five years, the salvage business and my job crewing a charter yacht in Greece, simply omitting my reason for going to Lebanon and the various jail spells. The officer didn't ask anything about my partner or about the missing one and a half tons of hashish, he simply wanted to know where I had obtained the drugs found in my possession. As an answer, I concocted a story about an Arab merchant and even gave a Beirut address. The only moment of tension arose when I was asked to sign a confession. It was written in Turkish, covered two full pages and seemed extraordinarily long. The officer smiled encouragingly, "I promise, it's just your story."
He offered me a pen but I politely asked for a translation. Next moment, the two policemen guarding the door stepped forward, grabbed my shoulders and bent me backwards over a table. As one held my wrists down, the other pulled off my trainers. From the corner of my eye, I saw the customs officer pick up a thick, sturdy cane.
"It would be better if you signed," he sounded sincere. "Hashish isn't a serious crime. You'll be free in two weeks. I promise you on my mothers life."
I nodded my desire to sign, more out of embarrassment than fear or concern for the seriousness of the offence. My arms were released and a pen and the statement were pressed into my hands. The officer smiled wolfishly. I was guilty so why not sign? I signed. The officer picked up the confession and left the room together with the two other officers leaving me alone with the blond man, still sitting behind me.
“I’m glad you signed,” he had an unmistakable American accent. “It shows you’re not stupid.”
He got up and sat opposite me. Unexpectedly he smiled, and held out his hand,
“Sullivan. Charlie Sullivan. I’m from the DEA”
Automatically, I shook his hand. I noticed the chunky gold marine ring on his middle finger.
“Look, I know this is difficult for you but you're only chance is to tell us everything,” he had a look of genuine concern. “What was the name of the yacht?”
“What yacht?” My mind was racing. If they didn’t know the name of the yacht, Jason must have escaped.
“It would be better for you if you talked,” his tone remained both sympathetic and understanding. The game continued for several minutes, me probing to find out what he knew, him wheedling to persuade me to confess all. Finally, he gave up.
“Here's my card,” with a sigh, he placed a business card on the table and rose. At the door, he turned back. “Contact me if you change your mind.”
The first night in captivity was spent in an army camp a few miles from the border. I was put into the care of an army officer who promptly locked me in an unlighted broom cabinet with barely room to squat. It was there that the enormity of what had happened began to strike home. At that time, I sincerely believed I would soon be free; maybe not two weeks later as promised by the customs officer but within six months. I was more worried about Andreaus, Jason and Gary. Obviously Sullivan knew something but what. How had it all come out? Had Pascalle’s father informed? As they knew the exact size of the shipment, the leak more probably came from the source of the hashish. From somewhere close by came the sound of Arabic music, a shrieking, un-melodic screeching voice, wailing away. It was the middle of the night before the door opened and I was led into an office to speak to someone on the phone.
"My name is Hanratty. I'm First Consul at the Ankara Embassy. You realize, you're in serious trouble," the voice was tinny and distant. "Would you like us to contact relatives or friends?"
I had to think a moment before answering. What was the point in telling my parents? As for friends, there was really only Gary and God knows where he was. The thought of contacting my wife didn’t cross my mind. Anyway, if the Turks did only keep me a few weeks, why seek help? The consul gave me no chance to explain; the moment I declined his offer, the phone went dead. Squatting again in the broom cabinet, the door opened a crack and an anonymous arm handed me an enormous lighted joint. From its taste and smell, I knew it contained the hashish I'd been caught with. Sitting there smoking, it was clear that I only had myself to blame. I had betrayed my own beliefs. If I had kept my eye on the big pot and waited for Andreaus, I wouldn’t have been arrested. The realization both fascinated and appalled.
The next day was spent lounging about the camp, eating in the officer's mess and sunbathing as the soldiers played volleyball. The seriousness of the situation didn't sink in until the next evening when after a short drive in an open topped jeep, I was delivered to Antakya Prison. Guards and soldiers crowded around as I was stood against a wall and a camera flashed. I assumed they were mug shots but it turned out to be for the local paper. With smiles and laughter, I was pushed through a gate into the actual prison. It looked like a massive cage with bars even over the courtyard. The prison had originally been a stable built for French cavalry at the turn of the century. The courtyard still had tethering hooks cemented into the walls and a channel to sluice out droppings. Four saddling boxes had been turned into toilets. The smell from them was nauseating as the feces was collected on grating for sale as manure. The only structural change was a mosque that had been added to one corner. Five stalls, complete with split doors and feed trays, opened out onto the courtyard. Once, they'd each housed ten horses; now, with sleeping platforms stacked to the ceiling, they each held fifty men.
Stepping into the stall assigned to me, the stench was so over-powering, I gagged. A crowd of strange faces surrounded me, an old man, dressed in a long flowing jellabi, his eyes just white rheumy circles, reached out a gnarled hand to feel the contours of my face.
"Welcome," rang out a cheerful voice in English. "This is your home until your execution."
The speaker was Zeki, a young Egyptian doctor arrested the previous day for hash smuggling. He had a very obvious black eye and stood awkwardly, his feet swathed in bandages.
"Don't worry. The sentence usually gets commuted to life," Zeki laughed. "And the Turks are always giving amnesties."
Execution! Life! Amnesty! But the customs man had said it would only be a matter of weeks! Zeki and his friends found my protests hilarious. In time I was to learn amnesty was the main topic of conversation in the jail but I was too exhausted to think about anything. As soon as I was shown a spot on the communal mattress, I flopped down. Zeki sat beside me, telling me his story. Grimly he described how he'd been tortured with falaka for refusing to sign a statement at the border. Despite his injuries, he was still hopeful; convinced that the lack of a confession would lead to his release. That mistake cost him an extra four years. Although caught with just a few grams, his failure to co-operate led to a harsher punishment than usual.
Just before sleep, I noticed something odd about the wooden planks of the platform above my head - the surface seemed to ripple like a liquid. Assuming it was a fatigue induced hallucination, I closed my eyes. What seemed moments later, a hand shook me awake and I screamed seeing a face, its features distorted by a strange mask. It was the blind man who had pawed me as I'd entered the stall. For some reason, he was wearing a net bag over his head. Jabbering in Turkish and grinning fiendishly, he offered me a similar bag. Assuming he was mad as well as blind, I cursed and turned over to sleep again.
There was a stale taste in my mouth when I awoke. A glance at my watch told me it was only 4am. Still half asleep, I got up and went to the corner where an urn of drinking water stood beside a hole in the ground toilet. Coughing to dispel the bad taste, the chewed remnants of several insects flew from my mouth. Even as I realized what they were, I sneezed and found a large, still wriggling, cockroach in my handkerchief. I retched with disgust. The sound woke the other men in the 'dormitory' who sat up and laughed. Understanding dawned; they were all wearing net bags over their heads. I didn't sleep a wink more that night. Checking the sleeping platform by the light of day, I saw it was teeming with cockroaches. A guard unlocked the doors at seven and I made a rush for the fresh air. Outside in the courtyard were hundreds of men milling around wearing tribal clothes and looking like extras from a biblical film. Small boys and cripples, men with hooked noses and eyes so dark they looked as if they were wearing make-up, shouting, laughing and arguing, they jostled, poked and examined me as if I was from another planet. Crouching in a corner of the courtyard I eyed them fearfully. A couple of men squatted beside me and thrust a newspaper in my hands. On the front page was my picture. I couldn't understand what was written but one of the caption words was Mafia. Suddenly, a group of men descended on me and hauled me to my feet. I was pushed and shoved first to a barber so my head and beard could be shaved and then to a rudimentary shower shack. Stripped naked, my penis became the focus of intense interest. A gruff bearded man poked it with a pencil and solemnly pronounced his verdict. The prisoners grouped around, laughed and clapped. Next moment, I was dragged out of the shower hut and paraded along the length of the courtyard. All the men rushed to pull and rub my penis. Having knelt to study it, they rose smiling kindly. Later I discovered it was because I'd been circumcised and the prison hoca had declared me a Moslem despite my outward infidel's appearance. At the time, it seemed the ultimate humiliation. It was all too much. I tore myself out of the crowd's clutches, got dressed and made a dash the gate. The guard gaped when I ordered him to set me free. An older guard appeared and, smiling kindly, pressed a tube of 'Optalidon' sleeping pills into my hand. This was my introduction to Head guard Halim. He was a small but tough middle-aged man with dark, impassive eyes. When I continued to tug at the bars of the gate and angrily demand release, Halim's hooked nose arched into a snarl and savagely he rapped my knuckles with his keys. I returned to the stall to lie down on the sleeping shelf, pulling the sheet over my head to block out reality. Sitting in small groups on either side, talking, listening to a radio, the other men ignored me. For that I was grateful but there was no escape from their music, a bleating alien noise nagging constantly at tranquility. Although I was used to travelling alone through third world counties and had always prided myself on being tolerant and understanding, I'd never been in such a total immersion situation. To find myself locked in a cage with such primitive savages, being forced to live according to their customs and eat their food, was a terrifying prospect.
It was Optalidon that got me through. I spent the first days either asleep or in a deep stupor. However much I disdained the other prisoners and guards, without their help I couldn't have survived. They brought me food and Shanks, the massive, ever-cheerful Kurdish prisoner who ran the prison shop, gave me credit to buy anything I needed. I had a slow motion routine, rising to piss and wash my face, nibbling some bread and then sitting in a corner of the courtyard just watching the world around. At noon a guard would appear at the gate and I would hand him money and receive a fresh pack of pills. Instead of washing them down with water, I would chew them throughout the day as if they were candy. Eleven in the evening was lock up time when I would stand in line to be counted. Each man would shout out his number and be ticked off on a list. When my turn came round, out of defiance, I would holler out my number in English. Thanks to the pills, it was never difficult to get to sleep.
But after a week my body had built up a tolerance and the pills became less effective. And always there was that horrible music in my ears. Even with a pillow over my ears, I couldn’t shut it out. Some of the men had noticed how it affected me and even which kind of music was the most distressing. Turning up the volume, catching me unaware, became a game.
“Sanat music,” one man used to laugh. “You like?”
I found the sound so painful, I even wrote a letter to Amnesty International asking them to campaign on my behalf on the grounds that forcing me to constantly listen to such revolting music amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. They replied sympathetically but there was no mention of a campaign.
And with each passing day it became clearer that the customs man had lied and there would be no quick release. In sheer desperation, I sent half a dozen letters pleading for help to everybody from the Archbishop of Canterbury and the British Prime minister to Amnesty International and the London legal rights organization, Release.
Two weeks passed with no word from anybody. Mostly I lay with my head under a sheet, motionless. My behavior must have worried people. Zeki and another Egyptian, Abdul Whab, stopped by each day and sat around my mattress cursing the Turks and plotting to escape. They helped, especially Abdul Whab's dignified outrage when I laughed at the sound of his name.
"Why do you laugh?" the gentle engineer asked in a hurt, bewildered tone. "What is funny about the name Whab?"
The escape plan we hatched, to rush the gate and throw pepper in the eyes of the guards, was doomed from the start. Apart from the eight guards grouped around the gate, the entire prison was situated in the middle of an army camp. And if that wasn't bad enough, always we were watched by other prisoners. When Zeki was seen buying several packets of pepper from the prison shop, it was immediately reported and the pepper confiscated. The final straw was Abdul's Whab heart attack. It wasn't too serious but the prosecutor's response was immediate - the next day Whab appeared in court, was found guilty of smuggling a kilo of hash and sentenced to death. That same night Whab was put on a bus to another jail and early the next morning Zeki and I were summoned to appear before Head guard Halim. There was no need for a translator. Halim shouted and ranted for a good ten minutes and from his gestures and tone the message was clear. Escape was impossible and if we were caught attempting to escape, he personally would shoot us.
I saw less and less of Zeki as he began to spend more time with the other Egyptians and men from assorted middle east countries. Then he received a visit from his consul who brought sheets and pajamas for all the Egyptian prisoners. They were items I badly needed; I was overwhelmed with envy. Coincidentally, it was the day I received a letter from the Ankara Embassy saying they knew of my existence but were unable to help. The tone of the letter was coldly formal, lacking even the mildest expression of sympathy. Days later, a letter from Lena arrived. Enclosed were fifty dollars and a form she wanted me to sign so she could obtain a divorce. Arriving so soon after the Embassy letter I felt totally abandoned.
A blond, burly man with a black eye and bruises was sitting on my bunk when I got back from the washroom one morning.
"Phil Lowes, from Bristol," he held out a massive hand but, just as I shook it, his lip began to quiver and he burst into tears. Between sobs, his story emerged. He was a truck driver driving a trailer out to Kuwait when a man had pushed a child into his path. There'd been no chance to avoid the kid and he'd been beaten and nearly lynched by the locals before the police appeared. I did my best to help, reassuring Phil he wasn't to blame. Next, I went to Halim to persuade him ring the Ankara British Embassy. Evidently, it wasn’t the first time an incident like this had occurred and I think Halim felt sorry for Phil. Certainly, he not only rang the embassy but also arranged for Phil to sleep next to me. Still, that night Phil sobbed for hours before falling asleep. The next morning, he was called to the office to take a phone call and returned looking far more cheerful.
"It was the consul. My boss and wife are flying out from London. They'll be here tomorrow."
Sure enough, the next day Phil was called out for a visit. Assuming I'd also be called, I hurriedly spruced myself up but, several hours later, Phil returned saying the consul had no time to see me. The next day, Phil was summoned again. Once more I waited in vain. When Phil received a third visit, I followed him as far as the gate and called out to the tall, balding man with a ruddy complexion he was talking to, "I'm English. Why don't you see me?"
"English?," the man frowned. "We've got you down as an Indian or Pakistani."
He turned away but then swung back to add, "Anyway, there's nothing we can do. I've seen a translation of your confession."
I lay for hours wondering what was written in that confession.
Phil was with the consul all day but, as soon as he stepped back into the stall, the tears began again. Only when he'd calmed down did he explain.
"He thinks I'll have to stay a fortnight."
The consul remained in Antakya a further two weeks, seeing Phil each day. I wasn't called once. The consul's prediction came true. Phil's boss paid a bribe to the prosecutor and family of the dead child and at the first court hearing, Phil was released. Whilst Phil's release order was being processed, the consul at last summoned me to see him. Phil's wife and boss looked at me strangely when I walked into the visiting room. The consul flicked specks of dust from his suit and smiled smoothly. "My name's Hanratty. I've checked and you're clearly English."
Before I had time to savor the relief, he opened a file and read, "Drug convictions in Sweden, Iran, Pakistan.” He looked up, “Is that all?"
I thought of telling him about the attempted rape charge in Morocco but decided a stony silence was the most appropriate response. He continued with a tired tone, "I don't think the Turks will hang you but you'd better prepare yourself for at least twenty years."
"I'd feel sorry for you lad," Phil's boss, a plump, sweaty Yorkshire man, slapped my back. "But your type deserve everything you get."
I came close to hitting him. Instead, I returned to the stall.
With Phil gone, my spirits really sank and for the first time I seriously began to consider contacting the DEA and trying to make a deal. I even wrote a draft letter sketching out the kind of information I had to offer. For hours I lay staring at Sullivan’s business card. By every tenet I professed to, it would be wrong.
But a new reality had swallowed all. My survival was at stake. I had to do something.
I handed the letter to the gate guard for posting.
CHAPTER TWO
The response from the American Embassy came within a week. It was eleven in the evening and the stall door was just about to be locked.
"Ingiliz. American police"
The words rang out across the hushed, deserted courtyard. I had already taken my nightly dose of Optalidon and my mind was fuzzy yet I froze with fear. Every prisoner in the jail must have heard the cry. I was led to an outside office where two men were sitting. One was the man who'd sat behind me in the bus from Beirut, the other was Sullivan. Wearing tailored jeans, a white buttoned down collared shirt and opened toed sandals, he looked as if he'd strayed from a spy movie.
"Been having a hard time?" he shook my hand.
Perhaps it was the combination of the pills and the genuine tone of sympathy but at that point I cracked. He was from another world; a world I wasn't fit to join. Compared to his neat sophistication, I was just an animal. The worst thing was the embarrassment at being unable to staunch my tears; all I could do was crouch in a corner and bury my head between my knees.
"It'll be all right," his voice was soft and full of compassion. "Just tell me everything."
So I did. There was no quid pro quo deal, there was no mention of how or even if I would be helped. I simply told him all I knew about Gary, Andreaus, the Shenda and what I'd done and seen in Greece and Lebanon. He listened in silence, taking down notes and occasionally gesturing for me to repeat names or addresses. The words poured out and, within an hour, there was nothing more to say.
Even saying goodbye, Sullivan made no promises. He just wished me good luck.
Waking up the next morning I was numb and empty. Staring at my reflection in the cracked mirror hanging over the wash basin, I hated myself. I'd committed the worst sin possible and, to make matters worse, it had all been for nothing. Sullivan had given me some paper-back thrillers and a pack of Marlboros but that was it.
Out in the courtyard prisoners and guards gave me hard stares. Being a small country jail there were few secrets and they all knew of Sullivan's visit and my treachery. I quickly returned to the stall and hid myself under the sheet. All I had was one hope - that even though there'd been no mention of a deal, Sullivan would still somehow help. He had to - it was only fair. People like me could be treacherous and amoral but not a gigantic international police organization like the DEA. The tone of concern in his voice had been genuine; surely he wouldn't just forget.
That hope kept me going for two more weeks. Existing on just water and a morsels of bread, getting up only to urinate, wash and stand in line for the nightly count, somehow the time passed.
But then I had my first trip to court and was formally arraigned. The hearing was over within minutes but it showed clearly that the authorities were proceeding with the case and I could expect no intervention from the Americans. Upon my return to prison, I scribbled out a long letter to Hanratty, the British consul, telling him about the meeting with Sullivan and the information I had provided.
Another month passed. Each day I rushed to the gate as the post was delivered, hoping for news from either the British or American Embassy but the only letters I received were from Release, the London based legal aid organization, and various well-wishers. Everybody was sympathetic and horrified by the harshness of Turkish drug laws but their letters just made matters worse. They were obviously the kind of people who'd be appalled by my treachery. It was towards the end of June when Halim called me to the gate and announced I had visitors. I was shown to a small room in which two men were sitting. The visitors proved to be an elegantly dressed young lawyer and a squat, un-shaven man wearing a stained, crumpled suit. The squat man handed me a letter from the Ankara British Consulate which explained that Release had sent $200 to cover my legal fees.
"This is your lawyer, Nadin," the un-shaven man smiled kindly. "I'm Ahmet, the translator."
Nadin talked very pompously for several minutes. Ahmet waited until he'd finished and then translated.
"He says your case is raw. It must stew for a week." Smiling brightly, he added, "My English is excellent, yes? For three years I am chief cook on Norwegian ship."
Returning from the visit, the prison clerk called me into the governor's office. Short, plump and balding, the governor sat behind an impressive desk and, handing me a letter embossed with a British Embassy stamp, indicated I should sit in a large, comfortable armchair. His friendly manner was puzzling but all my attention was on the letter.
"Are you comfortable?" enquired the clerk.
"Fine," I answered automatically, tearing the letter out of the envelope and beginning to read. It was from Hanratty, reporting that although Sullivan had admitted taking my confession, the DEA had no intention of directly intervening. My last hope was gone.
"Don't trust that lawyer," the clerk translated the governor's advice. "If you have money there are better ways to use it."
Lowering his voice, the clerk added, "For only $I00,000 you can be free on bail. The Syrian border is very close."
I gaped, the clerk and the governor exchanged looks. Smoothly the clerk continued, "You are a good man. We trust that you will not escape. Only $50,000 would be needed."
I smiled and shook my head, tapping my throat to gesture my poverty.
"But you have friends," the clerk whispered. "The Mafia. It was in the paper."
As an answer I waved the Embassy letter, "Nobody."
The clerk and governor's manner instantly changed. Scornfully I was dismissed but that same evening the clerk came and squatted beside me as I was taking in the cool of the night.
“Let me introduce myself,” he gave me his hand. “I am Mr Adim.”
Starting with a reduction in the bail demand, Mr Adim talked and questioned and talked again. Mr Adim made it perfectly clear that, with or without my consent. I would be his English conversation teacher. That was the first of many evenings squatting with Mr Adim. At most twenty, always neatly dressed with a clean shirt and clean slacks, his moustache trimmed and hair combed, every night he would first formally introduce himself and then offer a gift, usually an ice cream. At first I accepted but the experience was so painful, I began to refuse. Mr Adim simply gave the ice cream, coke or cigarettes to the nearest prisoner and commenced the lesson. I tried ignoring him, reading a paper and walking off but nothing worked, he just talked and questioned away. He only paused to consult his pocket English Turkish dictionary. To say anything to him was a bad mistake.
“Fuck off.”
“This is a phrasal verb like ‘get up’,” he would nod knowingly. “In Turkish they say ‘Sik ve git’ but this is not polite. Do you think Turkish people are polite?”
I learned everything about Mr Adim. His first language was Arabic but he stressed over and over, he was not an Arab, he was a Hatay Turk. I was informed that the governor was his uncle and another uncle was in the army and his wife was the sister of a politician’s wife. It was from Mr Adim that I discovered that there was a huge vocabulary of Turkish words or terms to describe the most distant of family relatives. Mr Adim was an English student in the college, a tourist guide and an importer and exporter, apart from being the clerk of the prison but his ambition was to be a spy.
“First I must learn English,” he confided. “Then they will accept me in the officers school. Do you have many spies in your country? I have seen two James Bond films. He was English, wasn’t he?”
Everyday, I had to listen to the same drivel. No wonder I was contemplating suicide.
In mid-July, I had my first full court hearing. Handcuffed to a small child and ringed by soldiers, I was made to walk along the main street of Antakya to the court house. The locals stopped to stare at the procession of prisoners and soldiers; embarrassed, I kept my eyes down. After a three hour wait in a basement cell, I was led into a large and airy court room. From an elevated stage, three grey haired male judges stared bleakly down. Lawyer Nadin spoke energetically for ten minutes, a grim, robed man pounded a table and the middle judge spoke a single word before I was pushed back into the basement cell. Hours later Nadin and Ahmet turned up.
"What happened?" I asked desperately through the bars.
Nadin spoke seriously for several minutes and I looked to Ahmet for a translation.
"Very sour," Ahmet smiled. "A pickle."
Back in the jail, the dreary tones of that damnable Arab music invaded every thought. Unable to shut out reality, suicide seemed the only sensible option. It wasn't the prospect of years of imprisonment or the mess I'd made out of my life - it was my treachery, informing on Gary and Andreaus, that was so intolerable. There was nothing to hope for except that my death would embarrass the British and Turkish authorities.
I prepared the suicide attempt carefully, waiting for the dead of night to avoid being caught. Having first anaesthetized myself with two tubes of pills, I sawed at my wrist with a razor blade. It happened too quickly. With seemingly no effort I severed an artery and a fountain of blood spurted upwards. Suddenly I was terrified of dying but too ashamed to cry for help. There was no pain but I didn't have the strength to staunch the flow. I tried to sit up but was too tired. Closing my eyes, I grew calm. I'd wasted my life but it wasn't that important.
Pure chance saved me. A prisoner got up to use the toilet and slipped in a pool of blood that had dripped down through the boards. Apparently, pandemonium broke out and I was rushed to hospital. My only clear recollection is of a doctor screaming, "You must live."
As if from outside of me, I heard myself asking, puzzled, "Why?"
That same night, after having my wrist stitched and a blood transfusion, I was transported back to the prison. Far from being sympathetic, Halim slapped my face with tremendous force. Mr Adim was summoned to translate for Halim who in the course of a long harangue slapped me several more times.
“It was wrong of you to frighten the other men,” translated Mr Adim. “Now you must be punished.”
A trap door beneath the office floor was opened and Halim kicked me down a ladder into a black pit.