19

CHRISTMAS IN PRISON

After Yasheeda left, I tried my hardest not to think about her, but it was impossible. Although we had only been together for five weeks, it felt like a lot longer because we had spent almost every minute of every day together and I was already used to having her around. I took the batteries out of my clock because I found that watching the hours go by made things go slower. Besides, what was the point of keeping track of time in prison? Without her, the only thing I had to do each day was report for the morning lista, and for that they always sounded a bell.

Basically, my life went back to being exactly the same as it was before we had met, only now it was worse because I had had a taste of what it was like to be happy again. I got back into my old routine, spending the days in my room and keeping myself as busy as possible with all the things I could do to take up time. But even without the ticking clock to remind me, each day passed very slowly.

After roll call, I slept for as long as possible and then took a long time over my grooming – showering, shaving, doing my hair and rubbing skin cream into my face. Next, I would clean the room for at least an hour. It was never really dirty because I never did anything that made any mess, so after a while I usually became bored. If I smoked a joint beforehand it made things a lot more fun because I would forget where I had put things and would have to spend ages trying to find them again. After cleaning and smoking, I always had a big appetite, especially if I hadn’t eaten breakfast. I still loved preparing and cooking food, but it wasn’t as enjoyable cooking a meal for only one person and sitting alone to eat it.

One thing I really liked to do was watch my favourite Latin talk show, Laura. The program was the same every single day, but it always made me laugh and I never missed it. Laura is a nice little middle-aged woman who invites couples to appear on national TV in front of a live audience and then asks them if they love each other.

‘Yes, truly. Forever. Until I die,’ they always answer. ‘I couldn’t be with anyone else. Never. Not even if you paid me.’

Laura then points to a big television screen that shows video footage of the man being unfaithful, and all hell breaks loose. The girlfriend starts screaming and attacking her boyfriend, but they calm her down and the boyfriend apologises for what he has done.

‘That was a mistake,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry. You’re the only one. It was only the once with that girl. It didn’t mean anything. I love you so much.’

Then Laura raises her eyebrows as if to say, ‘Really? Is that so?’ and again points to the big screen, which shows video footage of the man being unfaithful again, this time with another woman. The girlfriend starts going really crazy, breaking furniture in the process. Eventually, the security guards have to escort her off stage, while the audience cheers her and boos the boyfriend. Meanwhile, Laura gets the third tape cued up, just in case.

In the afternoons I read until my eyes hurt and then tried to watch the evening news, just as I used to do with Ricardo.

But things had changed. I hardly saw Ricardo these days, and I now found the news too depressing. There were never any happy stories. It was always about government corruption or murder, or something else bad that had happened in the world. The main news headlines at that time were about a gang of rapists that had finally been captured, and a government official, Gabriel Sanchez, who managed to run off with forty million dollars from a government workers’ pension fund. They arrested him but let him go on bail and he fled the country, causing a scandal. When I couldn’t handle watching television, I smoked dope and listened to Bob Marley on my tape player instead.

I had always liked Bob Marley’s music, even before I went to prison. I had memories of hearing some of the classic songs on the radio from when I was a young boy, even before I knew that Bob Marley was the singer. Now that I was in San Pedro, I began to listen to the lyrics properly and I liked him even more. His music is really simple but powerful, and it gave me a lot of hope in my difficult times. Whenever I felt bad, I would smoke a joint and put on a cassette of his and he would chill me down a lot. Listening to Bob made me realise that I wasn’t the only one who had faced tough things in life. It helped, but it didn’t make me stop thinking about Yasheeda.

The time of day I missed her most was in the evening, when the prison went quiet for a few hours while everyone was cooking. That was when we used to have our best conversations. I also missed her during the nights. It took longer to get warm when I went to bed. It also took ages to get to sleep, even if I smoked a lot of dope. One night I had a terrible dream that she hadn’t gone to Machu Picchu at all; she had flown back to Israel and was seeing her ex-boyfriend again. I knew it was a silly dream but I couldn’t get back to sleep. I lay there wondering if she was thinking about me. I doubted it. She was probably having the time of her life.

Apart from a visit from two of my lawyers, I spent Christmas completely alone that year. Sylvia had other commitments with the church, but I was still half-expecting her to drop by or at least phone. Yasheeda was off who knows where, having a good time. She was the best thing that had happened to me, but now I wasn’t even sure if she would keep her promise and come back to see me.

It was the worst Christmas I’ve ever had in my entire life. Constanza Sanchez had only come back once after she had organised the rest of my ‘legal team’. I never saw her again. My two remaining lawyers had promised to have me out by Christmas and since I had sent money to the judge, I had started selling my things in anticipation of my release. But it hadn’t happened.

‘Merry Christmas,’ my lawyers said when I opened the door. They both hugged me.

They had bought me a fruitcake. I should have been grateful that they had at least thought of me, but seeing the cake actually made me angry and I wanted to throw it back in their faces. I didn’t want cake, I wanted answers. I wasn’t paying them to make me a courtesy visit at Christmas or to buy me cakes; I wanted them to get me out of prison.

They didn’t have any updates on my situation. They couldn’t tell me when I would be out. In fact, they had no answers at all; everything was up to the judge, and he hadn’t communicated with them for weeks.

‘Why can’t you call him, then?’ I demanded.

Apparently, it was best not to pressure him. He had received the money, so all we could do now was wait. My lawyers started cutting up the fruitcake. However, I was so distressed that I couldn’t eat. They ate it in front of me.

Fruitcake was the only Christmas present I got that year. It was the world’s most expensive fruitcake. All up, it had cost me over twenty-five thousand dollars and I didn’t even eat a single slice myself. It cost even more if I included the three thousand dollars I had lost with Constanza Sanchez. Maybe I was naïve to give them all that money, but they gave me a receipt for every payment and I had to trust them – they were my lawyers.

They kept promising to get me released, but they were the same promises they had made six months before, and nothing ever changed, not even the promises. They used exactly the same words as before. They didn’t even have enough respect for me to change their lies: they needed some more money to pay for photocopying, a filing fee, a witness who was going to be my character reference, administration charges, someone they knew who might be able to take a message to the judge, or a specialist lawyer who was going to make a technical submission. Everything required money.

They weren’t lying when they said that. I had already established that that much was true after eight months in the Bolivian prison system. However, I now understood how much things were really worth. Nothing cost anywhere near what they were asking. I was being taken for a ride because I was a foreigner. But what could I do? I could fire them on the spot, but that would mean losing all the money I had already paid and starting afresh with new lawyers who might be worse. Without their help, I couldn’t see any way out. So, although I knew they were ripping me off, I felt I had nowhere else to turn. I began to regret not having escaped when I had the opportunity.

After my lawyers left, I got a bottle of rum and started drinking it on my own. I drank it too quickly and after half a bottle, I felt like vomiting, so I bought a small envelope of cocaine to sober me up before finishing the rest. In the section courtyard below, the celebrations were just getting under way, so I bought another bottle. Christmas wasn’t traditionally a big part of the Bolivian calendar, although it was catching on. For the children it was all about the presents and this new character they were beginning to believe in, called Santa Claus. For the inmates, it was another excuse to get drunk. After spending some time with their families in the morning, that was exactly what they did.

The next day the party was still going, so I bought another bottle of rum and another few packs of cocaine and continued partying on my own. Christmas dragged on until it turned into New Year’s Eve and then it all stopped suddenly and the prison returned to normal. Not for me, though. I carried on drinking in my room and thinking about Yasheeda and worrying about whether I would ever get out of there.