Chapter 9

The Chinese Oz

Steel And Fear

Prior to leaving the interrogation place, Blue Sky said I would be "held in detention" for at least seven days. While in the car heading to this place, Blue Sky gave me a speech he most likely told all foreign detainees. "You may be here for a few weeks or even longer. You'll eat very simple food and you'll meet others like yourself, perhaps make interesting friendships." He paused in his usual manner, searching for the right phrases to put me at ease no doubt and he continued, "Yours is a very simple case. This will all be over soon." Yeah, heard that before from another guy who disappeared. Yet my mind clung so desperately to those two words, "seven days" I began to hope for salvation yet again.

When I asked if I would be put in with Chinese or other foreigners, he explained that I would be in a cell with both, the foreigners being mainly from Pakistan and Africa. He said there were a great deal of Muslims there. I considered this for about 15 seconds and then I told him that being an American, it might not be safe for me to be mixed in a room with a number of Pakistani or Muslims in general, given the current political and religious tensions created by the Bush administration. I could see that Blue Sky thought this over seriously, then he said, "Alright. I'll speak to the guards.

After about a twenty minute drive out of the city we approached a high walled structure, lights running around it's perimeter. At one corner we rounded, I saw a block-shaped lookout turret. I remember experiencing a "This isn't real" feeling for the first time. Yet the last thirty something hours had been feeling that way, come to think of it. Because it was night, the pitch black sky added to the spookiness of the austere structure we now approached as it loomed up grotesquely before us, taking up everything within view.

In the "Wizard of Oz", as Dorothy and her menagerie of friends come to the end of the yellow brick road and cross the bridge to the large gate into the city, I felt a twinge of recognition and similarity. As the police vehicle curved up the wide driveway, there before me rose the most massive solid steel gate or wall I'd ever seen in my life, but instead of a tiny door mounted into the massive one, as in Oz, a small guardhouse stood next to the gate. One officer got out of the SUV and showed something to the guard on duty, then the guard opened a door and I was escorted from the vehicle across the parking lot and through the door. The imposing steel monolith set into, or part of, the wall never moved.

Inside we crossed a driveway that ran between the wall and the inner buildings. We then walked into a large waiting area in the main building where Blue Sky checked in with a female officer. For the first time I saw bars. Blue Sky led me through two heavy jail doors into what is usually shown in movies involving new inmates n a prison--the search and shower area. Fortunately there had not been a lot of high crime in Canton in the last several hours because I was the only one there, or perhaps that was arranged for me as well--bring in the American under cover of darkness so as not to disrupt the flow of sameness. A Chinese man in a white smock, the doctor no doubt, took my blood pressure and height and weight measurements. I was then asked to strip and place my clothes on a table. I removed everything from my pockets first, then took off everything and placed them in the bag. The doctor gave me a quick body inspection, mainly looking for any identifying marks, like tattoos and the like. There was no actual strip search, thank god. My clothing was first passed through a strange conveyor machine that made huge electrical sparks as they passed through to the other side; "What the hell?" I thought. They were retrieved and then placed in a plastic bag, vacuum sealed, labeled and set aside. By this time I had put on the prison togs that were given me. I looked ready to go play a round of soccer with the boys from the pub. Dark navy blue with double white stripes down the sides; can you say Adidas, Chinese style?

Then I was asked to remove my glasses. I hesitated, and told them I would be completely blind without them. I didn't like the idea of going into a prison cell not being able to make out anything, "Oh! Excuse me! Didn't mean to touch you there..." and all those type of horrible mishaps came to mind. Blue Sky looked my glasses over and talked with the doctor, then he asked if I could remove the temples, then it would be OK. The temples were flexible steel, so could be conceivably made into a weapon. I took a few moments to remove the tiny screws with my finger nail. I succeeded with one, but the other had to be clipped off. The sharp edge that was left went unnoticed to Blue Sky and the doctor, but came in handy later as a scratching tool I used to label my personal belongings, such as my lunch box and so on. Also, as a few other prisoners with glasses came to be known to me, I pointed out that although their temples on their glasses were plastic, plainly visible inside of them ran a length of bendable steel wire. Guess it was the "out of site, out of mind" principle that ruled in this place. Later I would find that to be true in many and various instances.

Blue Sky pointed to a large plastic storage box and told me to take it with me. Before we left I pointed to my bare feet. Blue Sky talked with the doctor, who rummaged through a locker nearby and found a large pair of rubber slippers. I found that this simple request was worthwhile later on, because several new inmates that came to the prison after me arrived with no slippers--they had to purchase them!

We left the examination area and passed by the check-in desk and walked across a large garage area to a door on the opposite side. We walked up six flights of stairs to the third floor. There, a small group of guards stood behind a desk on the opposite side of a locked, barred gate. Beyond that stretched a very long hallway. Door after door lined one wall of this great corridor, while the other side had open air, barred windows.

This gate was opened and I was ushered in. Blue Sky and his associate behind me. He talked with the guard as we slowly walked down the hallway. One of the other guards that followed tried to converse with me in English. "Where you are from?" America I replied. As I continued to walk and follow the lead guard who talked with Blue Sky, I looked around a bit. To my right and below was a central garden and basketball court. The building was a cube of sorts, surrounding this courtyard. There were four floors and from what I was able to discern later on, the hall and the adjoining right angle hall on the second and third floors were prison cells. The remaining two hallways opposite me on the other side of the courtyard looked to be officer's quarters because of the normal curtained windows, doors and lights shining from within.

The guard halted and stopped me in front of doorway. Another guard opened a steel solid door with a large key, opened it to reveal a second barred jail door, which he opened with a digital key he touched to a pad on the outside wall. Now I got my first view of the cell. It was nothing at all like I expected. As the door swung open I walked in. On the floor sat three other inmates and one of them motioned me with his hand to walk on in. The guard closed the two doors noisily and the loud clanging behind me echoed down the hallway forever it seemed. I can still here that haunting solid sound in my mind to this day; unnerving to say the least. I had arrived and I was pulling up every ounce of courage and determination within me to see this through without showing fear; it was then that I realized I had stopped breathing a moment before. I exhaled my last breath of freedom into my new home of unforgiving steel and cold tile. The unknown. The frightful.