prison

Tag: prison

The prison bus

I find myself pushing my way through small groups Germans and Americans on tour around the ‘old city’ area of Damascus – foreigners, eyes and mouths wide-open, gobsmacked by wonderful this country is, how friendly it is, and how great the food is, and of course they are right, it is, but step a mile outside the old city (which of course they rarely do) and you see the reality for everyday Syrians living here in the ‘City of Jasmine’.

For the locals life can be very tough, considering the potential for tourism in a country with such a great cultural heritage, with few jobs and little prospects. Whilst at home there is often a lack of public utilities such as regular electricity and water supplies.

Crossing the road, and away from the tourists, I pass the Damascus Central Court to be confronted by a scene that looks like something from a 1950’s American movie. A small crowd had gathered and was pressed up to and staring eagerly through the iron gates, behind which were parked two buses filled with dishevelled men wearing stripy blue pyjama’s.

If I wasn’t in Syria I could describe the scene as being quite funny, but their sullen faces said otherwise. Old and young men alike were being moved from one bus into another, some were “lucky” enough to find seats, the rest were pushed-in until the bus was completely full, with no standing space left. As soon as the doors were shut the bus started to leave, making its way slowly out of the court gates. I gazed around to watch the onlookers straining to see the occupants of the slowly moving jam-packed bus. This whole area was also filled with local and secret police, but they made no attempt to move the watching crowd back and away, this spectacle was seemingly a public example to the people that this is where they will also find themselves if they too cross the blurry red line.

I looked closer at the individual faces of the gathered onlookers, now I could see a great sadness in their eyes, one man close-by cried quietly. As the bus moved slowly in-front of us one of its occupants with his face squeezed hard against the window gave a sad pathetic wave to the man next to me, I realised that within the watching crowd were many relatives of these men, coming to see them for the last time before they are driven away to prison.

This was ‘a daily procedure’ I was told later by a friend. But those men’s faces told a thousand stories as they passed-by. Criminals, political and criminal I guess, but with such a harsh and difficult daily existence here for ordinary poor Syrians one is left to wonder what their crimes were and what really motivated them.

Needle and the damage nearly done

Dentist Rima was waiting for me again; veiled as ever “Ramadan is nearly over, it will be Eid next week and we need to get your bridge ordered before then”.

Before I knew it I was back in the chair with a needle entering the roof of my mouth then another to the back followed by 2 more monsters to the gum. “I must prepare the tooth for the bridge fitting”, I murmur some pathetic remark about needles in the roof of the mouth being painful but she ignores me and starts drilling away at the numbed gum around my tooth in preparation to fit the bridge.

My mouth fills with my blood gushing out of my disintegrating gum and I nearly throw-up on dentist Rima, she pulls back just in time and I manage to spit the blood into the nearby sink.

“What is it?” she asks, bemused at my behaviour. “I can’t stand the taste of blood” I tell her pathetically, “Or the smell of my tooth being ground-away”, “I haven’t even removed the excess gum yet” she says impatiently, I really didn’t need to know that I think to myself before deciding to shut up and let her get on with it.

A family arrive. A veiled woman and her 3 lovely children sit around me watching, obviously fascinated by all the blood and the foreigner in the dentist chair looking awkward and scared. This isn’t a sight for kids I think, I remember back to the time I fainted with fear at the dentists as a child, I saw the needle and hit the deck. Maybe these are hardened Arabic kids, they watch as dentist Rima drills away tearing back the gum from around my tooth, I stop her again to spit out more large mouthfuls of deep red blood to the absolute delight of my attentive audience.

Another family arrive with yet more kids and the audience builds, Rima pushes my head back and continues to drill around the tooth, despite the anaesthetic I feel sharp jolts of pain in my gum but still she drills on and on and on, I continue to spit out mouthfuls of blood and wonder if this will ever end. I try taking my mind off it by thinking about the week just gone, it has been a hard slow week trying to make my film but at least my dental bill is only £100 as opposed to the £850 I was quoted in London.

Finally, I swill my mouth out for the last time, “I must see you on Wednesday” dentist Rima demands, “Eid will begin on Thursday so we should fit the bridge on Wednesday”. Coughing and spluttering I make my way down the hot dusty street to find a cab, I climb in nursing my wounds like an injured soldier, the young driver looks at me and smiles. As he drives I notice a deep scar to his neck and arm and point to them, he shows me other deep one into his belly, speaking no English he indicates that it happened in prison and he smiles at me again, suddenly my mouth feels less swollen. We drive in silence and I stare straight ahead into the glare of the busy Syrian highway.

Oliver Twist in Japan

I was out looking for the luxurious hotel where Lost in Translation was shot. I wanted to re create that scene in the panoramic bar with me staring over a beer into the midnight sky, staring into space. Outer ‘Space’.

This is my Japan. I said to a friend the other week despairingly, “Being in Japan is like living on the moon. Japan is my new prison”. We walked amidst the luxurious hotels that towered above us, but I was still moaning, “I hate Japan”. I declared to my patient Japanese friend.

In the distance I saw a queue of homeless people; I mean hundreds of them standing in lines of three shamelessly outside The Crown Plaza Hyatt Hotel. I had to go look closer. Bowls of rice were being handed out at one of Japans many soup kitchens. I watched the faces of the poor old men and women who come begging for food. None of them drunk, all of them dignified and grateful to the 20 odd volunteers who were serving up the bowls of rice.

Each line of three people would emerge take a bowl of rice and bow thanking the volunteers. They would move away and eat as the next three dark dirty faces emerge. It was Oliver Twist in Japan. I felt sad, sad for these people and the country that they’ve all worked so hard to build, a country which after economic recession provided no safety net for them as they fell from grace and onto the streets. Many of them lost their jobs after the economic crash in the early 1990’s. They rely on day-work for £35 a day if they are lucky.

Later I traveled around Shinjuku Park visiting the many makeshift homes with the volunteers. Tokyo city council is finding apartments for the homeless now. It is officially estimated that there are 25,000 of them in Japan, although the real figure is expected to be twice that. Many of the homeless feel free of the pressure of being in the rat race. Some described their life in tents in parks as ‘free’. Free is my favourite word in Japan. I think about it everyday as I watch this machine-like society plough ahead; where to? No one really knows or seemingly stops to think.

Later I find myself in a panoramic bar having a beer and a plate of chips. I am lost in my translation staring into the ‘space’ that is my new prison, that is my Japan. From the panoramic window I notice the empty spot where the soup kitchen and hundreds of homeless once were. Now it is vacant, they too have all disappeared into space.