Zim & Chris' Turkish (Mis)Adventure

The first thing to cross my mind was that there were far too many people in the room. In retrospect this was the mother of all understatements, I felt like I was in an Amnesty International brochure. All of my worst fears in one and yet for some strange reason I was too shocked or scared be scared just yet. Forty nine pairs of eyes turned to look at me from what I would have considered a single cell. I stood there frozen with my back against the door, barely even enough room for me to stand and glanced around. In that brief moment everyone in the room looked like a terrorist, long beards and angry eyes, exactly the people that I was trying to avoid and now here I was locked up in a very small space with loads of them. Surely the fact that they were in jail meant that they were all hardened criminals and were willing to chop heads for the cause or even just for fun?

"Salaam..." I mumbled in a weak gesture of peace."Sit down, sit down" a voice came from somewhere near my right knee. There was some shuffling and a small space appeared, just about large enough for me to squat in."Where are you from?" the inevitable question. I winced as I answered them knowing that British citizens have few friends in Iraq, but also silently grateful that there weren't any British soldiers in this part of the country.

Before I could even stop and think what had happened to me I was summoned to meet the boss. It took me a minute or two to negotiate the five metres to the other end of the room, carefully stepping over the sprawling mass of people that lay in my way. Despite the intense lack of space and the boss and his sidekick being the two fattest people in the room, they were sitting in relative comfort and there was easily enough space for me to sit down next to them. For a moment I sat there in silence, their stares fixed upon me and I began to contemplate my fate. The very fact that there was a boss at all scared me as it played to one of the many stereotypes that I had about life in prison, the other being that I was going to spend the rest of my very short life being savagely ass raped by the fat sweaty mass that I saw before me, and, for that matter, anyone else who cared to have me as their bitch. Fortunately my first impressions were wrong and the fat sweaty mass extended his fat sweaty hand and introduced himself.

"You are English? Welcome to my room, my name is Naif. You know like the English word knife." With which he slowly drew his finger across his throat. "Ha ha, do not worry I am joking." I tried to crack a smile but forgive me if I didn't think it was the funniest of gags

"I like English. What is your name?" and with that we were friends. There was of course an ulterior motive for his 'charming' manner; he wanted someone to help him improve his English.

He called over an older Egyptian man called Ahmed, one of many, so we called him Caca Mouserie, (Egyptian Uncle). Caca Mouserie was one of the nicest people that I was to meet in prison. He had travelled the world as a ship's engineer, had lived for many years in Greece and Spain and spoke almost fluent English. Being able to speak to someone who could actually understand me made such a difference and he really helped me get through the first few hours. I was still visibly shaking and there was a tremble to my voice so he got out a small chess set carved from pieces of candle and we began to play to take my mind off things but somehow it made things worse as if I was putting off the inevitable. I have never tried so hard to loose a game of chess in my life, so after a few short minutes he carefully packed the game away and introduced me to some of the people that we were lying on.

"This is Karzan, he is the Kurdish taekwondo champion but he has been in here for the last seven months." Karzan was missing all of the toes on one foot and delighted in telling me that he had killed five people. He then proceeded to point people out and give me each person's body count, simulating the method in which each victim was dispatched in gruesome detail.

I suppose that I should have been scared, which of course I was, I was petrified, but everything was just washing over me. I was still under the impression that there had been a terrible mistake and I would wake up any minute safe and sound back in Turkey. All I could think of for ages was that today is my ex girlfriend's birthday. For the last few days I had been looking forward to e-mailing her as her birthday is the only real time that I feel welcome to communicate with her. Now as the reality of the situation dawned on me I came to realise that I wouldn't be able to wish her a happy birthday after all.

After a few hours the door was opened and food was handed out. This cut down on space even more as we all crouched with our knees under our chins and tucked in to the food which was a chicken drumstick and bread which we ate with our hands as there was only about ten plastic spoons to go around. There were four two litre plastic coke bottles of water that we were allowed do drink from but we had to be sparing as that is not very much between fifty people. Everything was shared by two in the cell and eating was no exception. Luckily for me on that first night I shared with Naif, who obviously normally ate alone, which meant that I was well fed as he could pretty much eat as much as he liked.

Shortly after we had finished our food we were allowed out to the toilet in twos and threes, but only for a minute or two. Prisoners assigned to the task would walk up and down shouting"De de hasara de, yalla de yalla de yalla yalla yalla", which loosely translates as get a fucking move on. There was no lock on the door which meant that they could kick on the door causing it to crash open on to your head if you spent any longer than a few second in the booth. This just added to the misery as we weren't even allowed to piss in peace. For some people this was a serious problem. Caca Mouserie, for example had diabetes and a bladder infection, neither of which benefited from this kind of treatment.

While I was washing my hands I was called over to talk with the guard who was supervising us all. I was a little nervous but I was to become very accustomed to being the object of attention. It turned out that he was the nicest guard in the whole prison and a really nice guy as well. His name was Ahmed and even thought the real motive for him calling me over was to practice his English he gave me a cigarette and assured me that there had been some sort of mistake and that I obviously wasn't a terrorist and he was quite sure that I would be released the following morning.
"Do not worry you will not stay here long. You are only here because you arrived after the director had gone home and no one can be released without his approval." He said "I am sure that you will be out of here in the morning."
He even went to another cell who were still eating and got me another chicken drumstick and a piece of bread. I felt quite bad as I was feeling so scared that I didn't really have an appetite and I knew that there were those in my cell who were watching me that would have loved to be eating it and were also more deserving of it. I sat there eating with him hoping that they wouldn't resent me too much for the preferential treatment I was getting.

All too quickly it was time to lock the door again and so I reluctantly went back in. As soon as the door was locked behind us people started praying. This took up at least half an hour as most of us would have to stand with our backs against the wall while fifteen or so people prayed and then they would swap and the whole process would start again. I was one of three people out of fifty that didn't pray.

This happened five times a day, the first being before sunrise every morning. To me it was just one more inconvenience that I could have done without, but for them it seemed to provide a real focus to their days. There were people in there that certainly weren't so religious on the outside and yet in here they were as pious as could be. The only two books that we were allowed in the cell were Korans and they were treated with the utmost respect. So much so in fact that I, as an infidel, wasn't even allowed to touch either of them, even if that meant waking someone else up to pass it along the cell.

As we felt the night draw in (it was hard to tell as there were no windows in the cell), we arranged ourselves for bed. Naif and his three friends, Mohammed Fil, Cac Najat and Karzan all had enough space to lie down comfortably. They took up about four metres squared between them, leaving fourteen square metres for the remaining forty six of us which works out as almost exactly one square foot of space each. We were all in pairs and took it in turns to lean against the wall and half lie down. We slept in three hour shifts. I say slept but being six foot I am taller then the average Iraqi and so had even less space to play with. The space was the worst thing to have to deal with but there were other factors too such as the strip light that was on twenty four hours a day which took some getting used to. Then there was the heat. Fifty men in one very small cell with no windows, you can imagine that it got pretty hot. Thankfully it was only spring.

For my first night I was paired up with this kind but very annoying man called Kawa who slept against the door. This was kind of a mixed blessing as the strip under the door was our only supply of fresh air, so I was relatively cool, but everyone else in the room became very concerned that I might block it up so I was constantly being told off in either Arabic of Kurdish, neither of which I could understand. I hardly even closed my eyes that night and after three hours Kawa and I changed places, but three hours after that he refused to change again so I spent the night sitting up trying to get whatever sleep I could until five thirty when I had to get up to make room for people praying...