Rotting in the Bangkok Hilton: The Gruesome True Story of a Man Who Survived Thailand's Deadliest Prison (25 page)

In the end, everyone involved considered us to be taking a perverse pleasure in a strange falsehood. Of the half-dozen people who had sought us out, none had seen us.

We later agreed that we had found a very curious trick indeed. Invisibility seemed to be a byproduct for those making the Journey to Ixtlan.

The Shaman

T
he Africans came to him quietly; not in secrecy, exactly, but with a reticence wholly unlike their boisterous public personas. They came alone, their greetings formal, ritualistic, sitting with him on his little scrap of badly worn Persian carpet. They sipped tea and shared intense whispered conferences. All but a few of the supplicants were Nigerians, whereas Mohammed was a native of Ghana. They conversed in an African dialect I did not recognize, their common language a mystery I was never able to solve. They came in a steady parade; two or three a week.

Of the four members of our small household—Johann, Mohammed, Sam, and I (not counting our Thai houseboy, Tooey), Mohammed was the one that spent the most time in the house, like a doctor keeping office hours.

Johann’s house was a ten by fifteen foot rectangle, furnished with a desk, and various other refugee odds and ends. It was split in two by a low coffee table we used for cooking and to have our meals. Most days, Mohammed sat peacefully on his prayer rug on one side, while I sat on a sling chair on the other, the table between us; a wall of storage lockers forming the house’s periphery.

From our first meeting onwards, Mohammed and I enjoyed one of those rare but pleasing relationships based on an instant simpatico. Mohammed and I, sharing only a dozen intelligible words, easily understood one another, and felt a deep mutual respect and friendliness.

We spent most days in companionable silence; I boiling water for tea or preparing food, he working diligently at a peculiar task. Hour after hour, day after day, Mohammed wrote long columns of Arabic characters on a thin white plastic board slightly larger than an eight and a half by eleven standard sized piece of paper.

For ink, he used sugar and water with some other ingredients he was careful to keep secret. It was a warm brown color and was water soluble. His pen was a piece of plastic, fashioned from a fork or spoon that had been carved to form a kind of quill. A special glass bottle was used solely as his inkwell, and when not in use was hidden away, safe from curious or ‘polluting’ hands. He was not shy in telling people these items were never to be touched and grew agitated whenever anyone came too close for comfort.

When the entire board was covered in Arabic characters, he would set it down and vanish for a few minutes. He went into some dark corner where he could act unobserved, and would ritually wash it off. He’d return shortly with the clean board and a self-satisfied expression on his face, as doing a job well done. Rarely, he ‘d return frowning, the task a strange disappointment.

I never asked what he was doing and he never volunteered to speak of it. This was not because of a communication problem; the language barrier turned out to be largely nonexistent. Our minds must have had similar methods of thinking, as we shared very complex subjects using the simplest gestures, with a word or two for clarification. Over a period of weeks, we traded stories of our backgrounds, our former livelihoods, and other details of our pasts.

Mohammed lived his entire life in the jungles of North-Western Ghana in West Africa. He was raised a Muslim, and received immense respect from the Nigerians for the fact he was one of those uncommon individuals who
had memorized the entirety of the Qur’an. He was thus considered a scholar and an Imam, or religious leader.

He had three wives, more than a dozen children, and was a grandfather many times over. He projected an aura of great dignity; emphasized by his white beard, his slender form, and his stately carriage. His eyes were bright, lively, and missed nothing.

What dire crisis forced him out of his remote home was unknown, and did not become a subject for discussion. This suited me, partly because I was thoroughly sick of hearing prisoners’ tales of woe and tedious cases of supposed innocence and gross injustice. Also, it was partly the fact I did not like to dwell on the circumstances that landed me in prison.

He was carefree and completely at ease, similar in many respects to Thais that had spent their lives in poverty. Privation was neither remarkable nor a source of trouble for him, unlike the vast majority of Westerners.

The only conflict he experienced came from Sam, an African American, who, for convoluted reasons of inheritance, had a locker and shared space in Johann’s house. Sam was easy-going, a rather dim bulb, the sort of person of whom one would say that “he’s a legend in his own mind.” The nature of Sam’s relationship with Mohammed was unclear and unfathomable; it is likely that Sam himself did not know. What was obvious, however, was that Mohammed manipulated Sam into performing every chore of daily living. This was a source of amusement for Johann and I, who viewed their arguments like a long-running situational comedy.

Sam bought the food and did both their shares of labor in the ‘food group’ they belonged to. Sam also did the cleaning up in the house for both of them; paid for coffee and little treats, such as the occasional cookies or ice cream, and arranged and paid for the necessities from clean bathing water to postage stamps. In short, Sam did all the drudgery and paid the thousand-and-one
petty extortions Thai prison authorities and Thai prisoners practiced on farangs.

At fairly regular intervals, about once a week, Sam would get into arguments with Mohammed. Fortunately for the sake of domestic tranquility, they tried to keep their disputes private. Regardless of how serious the situation, in the end, Mohammed always won, and Sam continued to act as the beast of burden.

It was not entirely a one-way street, for Mohammed was continually getting gifts from the people who came to consult him. These ran the gamut from expensive packaged foods from the West: special coffees, dehydrated soups, sauces, to costlier items, such as shoes, clothes, cologne, etc. He unstintingly shared these with Sam, and though hard to calculate, came at least part way toward balancing the books.

Why Nigerians—a notoriously tight-fisted lot, were bringing a stream of tribute to Mohammed was one more thing neither Johann nor I could explain. Like so much else in prison, what did not concern you was best left alone. In time, it slipped below our conscious threshold, no longer noticed or questioned.

Had it not been for the blue boys in the house next to Johann’s, it is probable we would never have discovered Mohammed’s secret.

The blue boys occupied the house next door to us, directly across from an old mango tree that shaded both our spots. The confrontational attitudes normal between blue boys and farangs were absent. They were very kindly disposed towards Johann and the rest of us, even respectful.

Strange as it was, they never molested Johann, though he was a heavy heroin user. He would chop up his powder on a mirror inside one of the lockers, and then snort it—in direct view of the blue boys.

The two Americans Johann usually shared with, Bruce and Toad, had been busted for precisely the same behavior. The blue boys, clever spies that they were, always knew who had drugs. After count time in the dorm cell,
the blue boys simply told one of the guards that ‘prisoner X’ had heroin on him. The guards made a search of bags, bedding, and clothing, the heroin was duly discovered, and off the miscreants went to Kondeo. They did nothing that Johann did not do every night. There was some factor we could not determine that was at work with the Thais, which protected Johann.

The blue boys’ house was used as a smaller version of a guard shack. They kept a daily logbook; relaxed there when off-duty, and cooked their shared daily meal there in the afternoon. We had little to no direct contact with them. Each side attended to its own business and respected each other’s privacy. Nevertheless, the blue boys’ senses were fine tuned from endless spying, and actions, no matter how inconsequential, were noted and recorded for future reference.

Tooey was the one that inadvertently brought the blue boys’ name for our house to our attention. A heavy rain one night flooded several houses in a row, ours amongst them. As the morning clean-up began, the blue boys brought out their possessions and laid them out flat under the mango tree. They also put all of our furniture and goods on pieces of cardboard to facilitate the cleaning effort, sweeping out the filthy water backed up swamping the row.

When the houses were clean, the furniture was wiped off and returned to its normal place. Johann and I helped carry the lockers and desk back in along with Tooey. Our furniture was mixed up with that of the blue boys. Several times, Tooey and the head blue boy separated the two, using a strange name to identify our stuff.

I did not pay any attention, but Johann became intrigued by it, and when it was all back in place, he questioned Tooey closely.

“House of the Three Somethings” was all Johann and I could make of it. Tooey tried several variants, but none that was intelligible. “House of Three Strange Things?” “House of Three Rare Monsters?”

Curious and tired of fumbling attempts at translation, we dug out an old Thai-English dictionary from its resting place in the depths of a locker, and Tooey found the right word.

Wizard; sorcerer; magician. “House of the Three Sorcerers,” they dubbed it, and Johann instructed Tooey to root out the reasons for such a name.

Johann’s designation was fairly straightforward. His collection of Castaneda and other occult books; combined with his penchant for trying out every possible hallucinogen he could lay hands on had earned him the sobriquet of Shaman. The fact that the blue boys knew the nature of his reading material was a shock. We had no idea they were so well-informed, but once we heard this, the appellation naturally fit Johann well.

My own reputation as a black magician had been established earlier that year during a stay in the hospital. The night a storm devastated the prison and eight people had died was attributed to Bruce and my maleficent intervention. That, and the fact that I didn’t use heroin and that I acted more than a little weird sometimes cemented the blue boys’ opinion of me.

The true surprise, and the one that was based on solid evidence, was their opinion of Mohammed. As Tooey discovered, Mohammed spent his days casting spells, with none of us the wiser.

Focusing his intent; mastering his will; the plastic board acted as a physical medium with which to gather psychic energy. The Arabic characters were a passage from the Qur’an dealing with wish fulfillment, and were repeated a ‘magical’ number of times. When he felt his energy had built up sufficiently that he considered it capable of manifesting a desirable result on this plane of existence, he would “release” the spell’s force by ritually cleansing the board.

Mohammed confirmed it, though he did not elaborate much, and only gave a grudging admission. Johann and my own familiarity with the subject made it all plain to see, once it had been pointed out. The many gifts were
from grateful clients, above and beyond his “fee.” His many successes were a testimony to his magic’s effectiveness.

Aside from our respect and surprise at Mohammed’s newly found skill, nothing changed. We now understood the attitude of the blue boys, as most Thais are fervent believers in an unseen spiritual realm, their “hands-off “ approach towards us was born of caution. Disturbing those who traffic with the spirit world was regarded as foolish, even insane.

Life continued unchanged, with one crucial difference. The date of the Thai Prisoner Transfer Committee meeting drew near. The Committee included among its members such luminaries as the Thai Minister of Justice; the Minister of Foreign Affairs; one of the Prime Minister’s second-in-commands, and the head of the Corrections Department.

The foreign embassies job was to arrange each of their schedules to find a common day where they all could spare a few hours. This was a major logistical nightmare. Often these meetings would be postponed due to last minute crises or unavoidable commitments. By law, the Committee met twice each year, deciding the fate of foreigners in prison that wished to repatriate. Those approved were allowed to return to their own country to finish their Thai sentence.

The United States, Canada, and most European nations have treaties with Thailand, allowing for an exchange of prisoners. Other countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, were still in long-drawn-out negotiations over treaties, or were waiting for ratification by one parliament or another to finalize the agreement.

In theory, transfers were routine; nearly automatic once the treaty requirements were met. For many years, a restriction was in place stipulating that anyone convicted of smuggling more than one kilo of heroin was ineligible for repatriation. This restriction was eliminated by the early nineties, much to the relief of many prisoners who had been excluded by the so-called “Kilo Clause.”

The other treaty provisions were simple. For any life sentence, or a sentence of more than fifty years for narcotics smuggling, prisoners had to serve eight years in Thai prison before becoming eligible for transfer. Prisoners with sentences under fifty years were eligible after serving four years in Thailand. The government of the prisoner’s country had to agree to the transfer. The embassies did the paperwork and submitted it to the home country’s department of justice or its equivalent. Once approved, the application awaited final approval from the Thai Transfer Committee, which required the signatures from the group of ministers responsible.