Assignment Five - Scenes

Jason strode over to the window and pulled the drapes shut, but not before he checked out the sand parking lot that bordered one side of their hotel. It looked like a typical day out there. Sun blazing in its dusty, cloudless sky, while Indians, Filipinos, and Arabs were going about their afternoon business. There were a few fairer heads too, but in this part of town, where it was all 3 star hotels and late nights souks, the former-USSR ‘business ladies’ didn’t come out until much later on.

“I don’t know how you could even tell a narc in this place.” He said to Alex.
She was sprawled diagonally across the bed on her stomach, feet crossed at the ankles behind her. She looked up from the magazine and propped her chin on her hand. “Don’t they look the same everywhere? Like an ugly scum who is trying too hard to look bored?” The bit of fringe that had fallen across her eye was flicked away and she went back to the magazine.

“Alex, don’t you get it? What you did last night was amateur. Why won’t you ever bloody learn to
keep your mouth shut?”

“I kept my mouth shut for two whole shitty years in that hell hole in Delhi. And what? You think now I don’t know who is kosher and who is not? I talked to her all night. We cried together. She knows the score—and she’s connected.”

He rubbed his eyes and took a long pull on the joint. “That’s exactly why you shouldn’t have said anything. How do you know—no—how do I know that they’re not still watching her? Or that she’s not working for them? She told you she got out in record time—it just stinks of rat if you ask me.” As he said that he slammed his fist down into the sofa cushion beside him. “Damn Alex!”

Alex got up now and stood in front of the dressing table, her barely covered bum cheeks brown and round in front of him. She talked to his reflection in the mirror while she added more eyeliner to the fading smudges around her eyes. “You’re paranoid. And that doesn’t help,” she said, nodding at the stash on the table.

Two years of fighting for her freedom had taken its toll on Jason; they had to be more careful than ever now. He watched as she pulled an envelope of tissue paper out of the Christian Dior shopping bag and unwrapped the delicate black lace bra. She looked like a child. And acted like one most of the time. He had bought her the bra so they could get out of the shopping centre, and because he knew she would parade around the room in it and little else.

“Ok,” he said, call her.

Place

There’s that music again. I know I’m drifting in and out of consciousness but it seems like every time I start to come back, I hear that same mournful organ music. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Hours? Days? All I know is this music is like a soundtrack to my pain. I crack open my eyes and start to find some focus. I’m lying on my side, looking through the bars at the wall straight ahead. It’s pale grey. A nothing shade of grey. Its only feature is a slice of windows high up, with more bars. I can see it’s dark outside. The wall stretches to the left and right of a corridor lit by a single dull fluorescent tube. I push myself up on the bunk and my arms shake. I have to squeeze my eyes shut to stop the dizzying galaxy of stars that fill my head. After a few breaths I try again, this time making it down the ladder to place my feet shakily on the concrete floor. I see that there is no one on the bottom bunk. It’s little wonder, I’ve probably been moaning and writhing around on that top bunk since I arrived. But I can’t be sure of anything because I feel removed from myself now, just a shell. I turn left towards the huge iron door at the end of the corridor and as I walk, a sea of faces seem to float past me, behind those rows and rows of bars.

Characters part 1 - Sasha

Alexandra strides over to the iron door and bangs on it with the full force of each hand. There is a brief lull before she starts banging again. “Eh! Ehhh! Someone come!” She looks down at her red hands and sinks a little into her skin. “Piz deet!” The Russian curse slips out of her mouth, quieter now, and in one liquid movement she turns and slides down the door until she connects in defeat with the concrete floor. The other girls in the room look up from their card game, and when they realize her eyes are closed, a couple of them stare. It is a rare opportunity to study her. To avoid the eye contact that could set her off again. She is young. Way too young to be in this place

Watching

Under the sea foam

twirling shadows find their feet

Aqua blasts them deep

The image is one of Andrew McIlroy's beautiful paintings. 

heidihaiku

My Romance

Stretching it out
Gently goes the summer leaf
Crumbs in my fingers

That Knight

Lemon dressed bed
a summer scene, serene
Fitful tossing dream

The Game

Too much to bear
or else I bare my heart
Stand up and stay cool

Watching

Under the sea foam
twirling shadows find their feet
Aqua blasts them deep

Writing Exercises - Senses

Smell
You could almost see the stink lingering in puddles outside the main dorm in RAK.
The khaki bubbles popped and spread like craters on cooking pancakes as they released their eye watering fumes of pee. "I guess they didn't unlock for the toilet again last night..."

Taste
The taste of your tattoo against my tongue on that long summer morning, not so long ago

Sound
Metal against metal; the sound of the iron skeleton key rapping against the aluminium table with speed and force. Thwak thwak thwak thwak thwak!

Touch
The feel of the prison issue blanket against my skin. It was heavy with the grease of hundreds of bodies that had used it before me. I itched. After a week I could feel the irritation growing under the skin of my back. After two weeks my back had exploded in a mess of angry red pus filled spots. A Sri Lankan girl squeezed and bathed it for me.

Sight
The vision of Derek standing calm, almost nonchalant in the visiting courtyard, while to each side of him it was chaos. His stance almost an inversion of all those around him. They shouted, waved, gesticulated, jostled to be seen and heard by their visitors on the other side of the bars, many of whom were wilting and crying in the afternoon heat. He just stood still and stared into my eyes, searching out my heart, as I wilted and cried too.

Taste
The tiny salty black bubbles popped between my teeth and I looked over at mum with eyes that didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. The caviar was first class. I sipped from my glass of Dom and started to notice long forgotten senses waking up. The Champagne bubbles tickled my mouth and nose and washed the salty eggs down in one exquisite swallow. I had eaten prison food for two years. The only alcohol I'd drunk was a couple of capfuls of baby cologne. This was my very first taste of freedom.

Writing Exercises - Emotions

Love
There’s a lightness that comes with love. People talk about butterflies tickling their skin from the inside out, but doesn’t it all start in the head? It’s the brain that suddenly bursts with these long dormant hormones. It’s the neurones firing off with pleasure that create space where once there was longing. For me, the lightness means I can relax when he meets me at Schiphol Airport. Relaxing means a feverish afternoon of lovemaking in the tiny White House hotel in Amsterdam. The feverish afternoon becomes an affair born in security, surety and complete physical surrender. I had melted into my man and he into me. He said I love you Hyde. And I finally said I love you back.

Fear
It’s like a game of tetris. The ball of fire is suspended around my heart and drops down into my flaming belly pit. The moment it drops another forms, and drops, then another and another... There’s a tightness that runs from deep inside my brain and fingers its way through my body. It hurts. It’s like my soul is trying to tear through - to get away. But I need it here. I need to be alert, I’m straining to pick up a hint in their fast flowing Arabic, a hint that I’ll be ok, that it will all be over soon. But deeper down in the pit of fire is an emptiness that tells me it’s useless. A knowing that tells me the only place I'm going is back to jail.

Self loathing
You can tell the girls who actually have some legitimate reason for being in prison. The ‘what ifs’ and ‘what have I dones’ hang unspoken, like a weight slung across their shoulders as they move through the hours of each and every day. This ghostly appendage to the soul balances two buckets - one on either side - overflowing with regret and sadness. When you’re carrying the buckets, it usually means you’re going to be here a while. You’ll watch girls come, some with buckets, some just in transit; and you’ll watch girls go. That’s when your own buckets get heavier. How can you go? How can you even just make it ok? Sorry, I screwed up is not a currency accepted here. You are powerless to change events. In the end, you can only change yourself.

Joy
I look at the new text message and can’t help but smile. It felt like the roof opened up to the sun right there in Sexy Nails salon. A burst of pink spread across my cheeks then leaked all the way to my fingers and toes. I looked up, not looking anywhere because my eyes were glazed, just recalling his hands gently laying me back onto the bed. I see the sun tattooed on his solar plexis. Maybe that’s where the warmth is coming from. I want to reply but know now it’s ok. I don’t have to rush. He’s still there. And I’m still smiling.

So I craft my response while the Vietnamese lady paints hot pink wax between my legs.

The Passport

The sun was peeping over the dunes behind us, its low glow making dazzling halos on the sea grass dotted on the horizon.

There was laughter from somewhere up the beach and I watched as a trail of pixels caught up with the direction of my stare. The acid had settled in nicely; much like our cavorting posse of partygoers.

Thanks to the Fender Passport system the sand was bumping. Bass vibration shimmied up my legs and raised the hairs on my arms. It felt like every pore opened a little wider to take the music in - straight to the nerve endings. The perfect outdoor audio kit, the Passport comprised two speakers and an amp that clip together into one solid 20 kilo suitcase. All you need is your music source and a generator and you’ve got yourself a party. We had the speakers on tripod stands facing in towards the barasti hut. The psychedelic fabric fastened to two sides of the bamboo frame gave us walls of fractals within which to dance, while Ganesha made a dexterous salute to the sea from behind the DJ desk.

The boys were just wrapping up a two hour back to back set, mixing and mashing minidisc, DAT and vinyl into a journey through the darker corridors of psy-trance. Most of the tunes were fresh from India and Germany, heavy with layers of complicated beats and vocal samples over the traditional pounding four-four bassline. It was stomping music. It was twirling and contorting make-your-body-elastic music. It was not for the faint hearted music.

Evidently, because only the hard core remained. The rest of the party goers had come and gone in the night. Half the excitement is actually finding the party, negotiating sand dunes in the wilderness of a 10km stretch of beach. If you don’t have a four wheel drive, you better have a pre-arranged pick up plan. Quite often there was no phone signal, and even if there was, no one at the party is going to hear your call. There was lots of driving through the dunes with the windows down and constantly cutting the engine to listen out for the thud thud thud thud of the bass. >>>>

The laughter that had stirred me came from Aslam and Emil. A moment ago you could only see their outlines on the horizon, then it lifted its veil and illuminated their faces. They were speaking in Hindi, the sing-song timbre exaggerated by the twilight.

I don’t think I’d actually spoken a word for the last couple of hours.

Chained to my dreams

Dear Catherine,

I keep having this dream. The dream is always different, but the outcome is freakishly the same. I’m back there and I’m clean. Squeaky. No way I’m going to screw up this time. Derek is close by, but still out of reach. We’re in the same country at least. I’m going to a party. I’m not going to take drugs. But other people are. It’s absolutely not ok for me to have anything in my system. We all know that. One more strike and I’m out...

I never remember the detail of exactly how it happens, just the earth shattering moment when I’m stopped by the police and realise that they’ve got me again. As they’re taking me back to the station for a urine test I’m ready to tear my own heart out. My free life disappears before my eyes. How could I have slipped? I can’t tell my family. Better they think I’m dead. There are no more get out of jail cards left. The worse part is, I don’t even know whether I’m guilty or not. I feel guilty. I know they’re going to get a positive test out of me. But I don’t think I actually took anything. Or was it just one teeny tiny taste? That’s enough of course.

The next part of the dream could be anywhere. But I’m inside. Locked up. Sometimes some of the faces are the same. Sometimes I’m in a completely foreign prison, drawing only, I can imagine, on pictures in my mind from Sasha’s stories of Delhi prison, or the numerous books written by people like us. The despair is indescribable. Yet I never, ever see my parents in these dreams. Maybe it’s my mind’s way of protecting itself? Do you think my sub-conscious knows that’s territory too painful for even a dream?

I’m too ashamed to even call my lawyers.

The dreamscape chaos is mixed with a sense of déjà vu. It’s like that scene from Midnight Express when they’re walking circles chained to the wheel, sinking deeper into the maddening rut walked by their own feet. I know I’ve been here before. It’s all the same but different. I know it’s hopeless. I keep dreaming. I go to court. I stand clutching the bars watching bus loads of women released to carry on with their lives, knowing that will never be me, on that bus. I can actually feel the despondency gnawing away at my soul. It’s a sad, sad place I’m in and I’m slipping off the edge. Giving up...

Then there’s a sharp turn. It’s like a knife slices through the middle of the dream and changes its course from a point back in some premonitory corner of my mind. It’s as sudden and shocking as finding out I didn’t actually do it. Of course I didn’t do it. Who could be so crazy? And I’m walking out of the jail, heart beating faster as it settles back into my conscious body.

I know I’m awake and I cry.

Ramble

I know I want to end the book with the journey home - the beginning of a new, young life - but I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. There was something in Fiona's idea - telling the story from multiple perspectives...

There are the Emirates staff at the first class check in watching me approach in handcuffs. There were the fellow prisoners saying goodbye. It would be amazing if you cold focus up close on their faces and hear their internal monologues as each encountered this shell of a girl. Woman. Was I a girl or a woman at twenty six? Wow, there's a question all of its own.

I can see the shotias - Fowzia in particular watching me leave, and Major Sabah 'Will she be back? Third time's a charm.' That's where the nightmares come from, always that third time lurking, waiting to happen.

So this shell of a girl, she's empty, dry of tears, a grey, vaporous shadow of her former self, while all around, every pinpoint along the way, there are faces looming close, watching and passing judgement. What's it like to enter the world with this flag hanging over your head? Forever. There's a passport with an international drug peddling charge attached to it. A profile on interpol, a world wide web where a search of your name returns a digest of your personal history, etched into the screens of the future.

And there are the friends who've been let down. The family who will never look at you the same way, the secrets that exist to protect grandparents, the fear that prospective employers, clients, boyfriends and colleagues will one day ask the question...

What's it like to go back into the world? Where do you start?