Chapter 6

Taken In

A Drunken Cop; A Distracted PSB Officer; A Dilusional Detective

Back now at Hill Bar and no wiser to the fate of my bank card or the whereabouts of Peter, I decided to Email my sister about money. My laptop was stored there with a small travel bag in a backroom where the bar's fix-all man, Lao Shen lived. He greeted me with his usual broad smile and "Heyro Miko!", shaking my hand most genuinely. It was people like him that kept me in China so long. The friendship of one earnest and happy migrant worker was more desirable to ten of the new middle class yuppies anytime.

If I wanted to do some writing, reading or surfing the Net, I would go sit at one of the old fashioned cafe-style booths, located beside large floor-to-ceiling windows. These looked out onto lush greenery: bushy ferns, cast iron plants and bamboo, all overshadowed by immense Kapok trees, or "Hero Trees", their wide, flower laden branches draping over the park area and Huang Xi Dong Lu. I would wile away the hours there and observe the world go by.

While booting up my laptop, a dark mass of people entered the front door. A contigency of policemen, or "Jĭng Chá" stood just inside, looking around for someone. I was the only person in the bar, or I had been 15 minutes before. But then I noticed Peter, who seemed to magically appear, sitting in the same spot at the bar an hour before and was now completely ignoring the scene transpiring behind him. How he did he get into the bar? Why had he not sat with me, or at least said hello? Then I knew he had everything to do with the police coming to the bar that day. Some time later I worked out how he was involved with my dilema.

From the small clump of officers near the doorway came a singular old policeman. He approached my dark little corner of the bar. With the blood shot eyes and ruddy complexion of a drunk, he leaned toward me, the strong scent of "Bai Ju" (Chinese wine) wafting off him, said in horribly mangled English, "Paaashh-paawt-uh?" At first I had no idea what he had said. My look of confusion had not gone unnoticed, so he repeated more slowly, making it sound even more ridiculous, "Pa-a-a-sh-h-h p-a-a-w-t-uh!"

I shrugged my shoulders to convey I didn't comprehened what he had said. Sighing out a lung full of his putrid dragon breath, he straightened up and looked toward the knot of officers and addressed a Chinese gentleman wearing a suit who had been lingering behind them. "dragon breath" rolled off some slurred Cantonese to him. The man looked over an officer's shoulder and said, "Passport" in clear English. He then glanced at Dragonbreath for approval, who in turn looked at me for recognition. I had none to offer.

Then I was struck by a realization--this was the Sergeant of the police station where I made my theft report several nights before! He was the obnoxious one; strutting about like a plane-delayed businessman, talking loudly to no one in particular, waving his hands around exaggeratedly. He had ignored Daisy and I the same way people ignore beggars on the street. My first impression of him had not been good and now it was doubly so. "Suit man" spoke again, "They wish to see your passport". I pointed to "dragon breath" and said, "He knows my passport is stolen! His station took my report!"

The suit man wore the plain, masked expression so typical of the Chinese men when confronted with the unexpected. He looked back at dragon breath the same way, speaking no more than two words, and I knew at once that he had not told the officer what I had just said. He had simply said in Chinese, "Mai yo", meaning "not have". So much for honest translation; suit man was now in the same company I held dragon breath in--not good.

{Needs Editing Below]

A young and handsome Cantonese boy who had only been working at the bar a short time, interrupted the conversation after the policeman said something else to me. Perhaps he didn't like that Suitman had not translated properly for me, or he simply wanted to help because he knew me. He told me the police wished for me to come with them. At this point I looked at Peter, who was trying his best to fade into the wood grain of the bar and become invisible. It's worth mentioning the reason for Peter's behavior; he had been living in China on an expired visa, in fact several months out of date, so I felt it my duty to call attention to him now. I was fed up with his lecherous ways and his psychological abuse of Daisy and also of his complete indifference toward ever paying me back the thousands he owed me.

"Hey Peter! Can you come here a moment? I need you to take care of my computer for me." The police now focused on Peter momentarily and I reveled in it for a few seconds. I shut down my computer, put in it the carrying case and handed it over to Peter. I asked him to contact Daisy so she could come translate as well, but he said she was working. He looked at me with a hopelessness which he was so very good at portraying.

It turned out that would be the last time I ever saw Peter, although I would eventually get my computer back, no thanks to him. Even though he would be contacted by the American Consulate on my behalf various times in person or through email, and the Vice Consulate had informed me they had given him my messages, my simple requests to him never transpired. Fate finally caught up with the Welsh devil, and he has completely disappeared, owing money to several other people.

I was escorted to a parked vehicle not far from the Hill Bar. I climbed in the back, pinned between two other riders. There were three policeman and Suit-man. I didn't understand his presence until much later. The entire ride he simply stared straight ahead, while I pondered this new and odd predicament.

We arrived at the same police station that I had been to several days before. I was ushered into the same receiving room that night with Daisy and left to sit for a long time, at least an hour. When I asked about my passport, no one responded. When I stood up, an officer told me to "Sit please". So I did. It was then that I realized that there was more going on than I realized. A terrible panic began to settle into the space behind my ribcage.

Two young Chinese, a man and a woman, appeared in the doorway. The girl spoke with the officers who had brought me there for a moment, then she told me in very clear English to follow them out. We walked down a sidewalk toward the back of the police compound to a building in the rear. We walked into a large dark room that contained two conference tables, big enough to seat at least 15 people each. At the far end of the room sat several off duty or on call police at one table. Me, the girl and the young man sat at the other, alone. I notice that the two of them had badges hanging from necklaces, much like FBI or CIA. Later I discovered they were from the dreaded Public Security Bureau, or the PSB for short. They handled all things involving foreigners, much like the Customs Agency in the USA.

The first question was asked by the young woman. "What can you tell me about the ATM last night?" I looked at her with a blank look, then at the man and I stated, "What are you talking about?" My lost bank card was the last thing on my mind, I wanted to get my passport back.

The woman snorted, like a pig grunting and re-asked the question, "What can you tell me about an incident with an ATM you...used last night?" Small and smoky wheels began to grind and turn noisily in my head. I heard sounds, I saw flashes of images, but it all dissipated as soon as I became aware of it. Something amiss.

I cleared my throat and told them, "I thought I was brought here because they found my passport, or found something out about my stolen property!"

The girl paused, pursing her lips and now she had the blank look, borrowed from me, and then she passed that look to her partner, who shrugged and shook his head and raised open hands with a "no clue" gesture.

In the next few minutes I told them about the robber and then produced my police report from my pocket. If there had been a large clock on the wall, everyone would have heard it grinding to a halt. They studied the report, then she looked over toward the languishing officers at the other table. I noticed that two of the officers were involved in my case. One was the passenger of the police car that night, the other, the one who wrote the report.

"Those two officers know about it. That one took that report. The other drove in a car with me and my Chinese friend to where the incident occurred." These guys looked at one another and said nothing. I had the feeling they wish they could dissolve into the woodwork much like Peter had earlier that morning. The woman got up and along with the young man, approached these men and questioned them, handing the paper to the officer who had written the report. He glanced at me, then at the paper, played with his hat a moment, realizing he was in trouble and said something to the woman. It was in that moment that I realized something that I had suspicions about all along, and this is what I mentioned that I would point out earlier in the previous chapter--the police report had never been filed, and now I knew for sure. Something was being covered up.

The woman talked a moment more, then tapping the paper with her other hand, she returned to our table, handing me the report and sat down, clearly thrown off balance by this new information. Smoky wheels were turning in her head now. She talked a moment with her partner, eyeballed the other policemen, glaring it seemed, then she turned her attention back to me.

A new look, only for a moment, came over her face, expressing what I believed to be an acknowledgement of my previous conclusion, I had been shanghaied. She began again with some information that finally shed light on why I was now obviously being detained there.

Chapter 7

Accusations

The Blind Leading The Blind

"We are sorry about your stolen property, but let's talk about why we are here. Do you, I mean can you, tell me about the ATM you destroyed last night?"

The proverbial "room began to spin" thing happened. I felt the whole of my vision alter out of balance, focus and perception. Destroyed? ATM? Me? How? What? What was she on about? I closed my gaping mouth and spoke to them slowly, carefully, as my brain verged on popping a vessel or just shutting down altogether. The room was still out of kilter, but talking seemed to slow the vertigo feeling. "Last night, I remember attempting to get money from an ATM. When it didn't give out any money or my card, I remember punching several buttons, then hitting my hand on the keypad, but, destroy?No way!" The woman turned to her partner and made subtle signals between them with their eyes and faces.

I thought a moment, as it had been several hours since this had transpired and for the first time I truly felt out of sync with myself, as if something on me or in me was out of alignment, or even missing. Think of waking up and breathing, only you can't catch a full breath because overnight one of your lungs vanished, that's how I felt; incomplete and nervous just beneath the surface. I knew right now that it was very important that I didn't show any outward sign of stress, anxiousness or nervousness. Anything could be interpreted wrong by a questioning authority, and a foreign one at that.

I continued, "I went out this morning, or perhaps early afternoon with...a friend to try and find the ATM center where my card was lost. You realize that the machine stole 500 RMB from my account, don't you?"

The woman looked at her partner, said a few words and then continued our conversation. To this day I have no idea why the other officer was there. He never spoke, only nodded his head a lot. Was he there as a witness? Her boyfriend or husband? Someone in training? Regardless, she would always say something to him and like an obedient lap dog, he would nod his head and nothing more; good doggy. I later realized that all people in touchy situations like this must have an abiding witness present to back up any lie, half-truth or non-evidence that is produced by the questioning party. I had an experience like that years before when I worked in a commission sales position. A manager who didn't like me and wanted her friend to get more hours by either getting me fired or causing me to lose more hours set me up, and then used the very person who set me up as her witness; of course the patsy was going to follow anything she wanted, and as a result I lost my job. My wife at the time, being from Eastern Europe and having no respect for authority, completely understood and sympathized with my explanation. She had seen it done too often in her own country, and she full well understood that everywhere in the world corruption, greed and dishonesty walked hand in hand, regardless of borders.

Now it was she who had a look of incredulous disbelief. She even laughed, if a bit nervously. "You mean.." she paused to look at her partner again, and continued, "You don't remember beating the ATM to pieces? There is a video! We have photos! Would you like to see?" At this moment she opened a folder she had with her and took out some papers. She spread them out in front of me and I looked at them. They were color prints taken from a surveillance camera. In one photo it showed a close up of an ATM; there was no glass cover, but a small TV-type monitor sat askew inside a larger rectangular hole, a few wires poking out around it. In a second photo, a long dull gray metal object lay at the foot of an ATM, looking a bit like a section of rain gutter. The other two photos were obscure pictures of the room where two ATMs were and another photo showed a man in a yellow shirt and longish, wavy hair exiting the room, presumably me.

I looked at them both, tossed up my hands and folded them on the table and sighed despondently, "These mean nothing to me. It doesn't register. I recognise that it is a mangled ATM, I assume that one photo is me from the back, I did have on a yellow shirt yesterday. All I remember is what I told you. I made a transaction on an ATM. I heard the machine process it, you know that sound? Whiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrr! That's what I heard, it was counting the money. The door opened and nothing was there! The whole thing shut down and kept my card!" I looked at them earnestly, with no reaction. I continued, "I punched buttons, I banged on the keypad and then the last thing I remember, I was standing in front of the Garden Hotel, with no memory of having walked there or leaving the ATM room." Then I looked down at my lap, brooding.

They talked between themselves for a moment, then she gathered her files and folder, and stood to go. I told her I would like to go now, and she smiled and informed me I wouldn't be going anywhere for some time. I then said I wished to call my Embassy. As she and her "dog" walked out, she turned to me and said to me with a disdainful smile on her pretty little mouth, "You can call anyone you want, but nobody can help you now."

Chapter 8

A Clear Blue Sky

A Novel Detective

I was escorted back to the main building as the two young PSB officers talked with a few policemen, then left in their own car. Inside, instead of being seated on the wooden couch by the reception desk as before, I was led to a small room adjacent to that desk where a long and wide wooden table dominated the space. Only two chairs stood on the back side of the table, so I walked around and sat down. Another man, Chinese, squatted in a corner. He looked to be from the lower working class, most likely there for stealing something. Another man, or I should say boy, stood guard at the door. He was interesting only by the fact that he was trying to appear human. I thought of him as "Monkeyboy".

He didn't wear a policeman's uniform. He had on army fatigues and he wore weight lifter's gloves--the kind with half the fingers cut off. He wore military style boots and he looked at me with dull, unintelligent eyes. He simply stared at me, so I gave him a Robert Dinero, "You lookin' at me? You lookin' at me?" challenge. He just kept staring, then he walked over to a barred window to one side of the room and brought up something thick and disgusting from the dark regions of his throat and spat it out through the bars, then he walked back, still watching me and parked himself by the door. I stared back a while, a half smile on my face, showing him I had no fear and he could stare all he wanted. He finally looked away, realizing I wasn't like the Chinese he was used to intimidating with his demeanor, and played with his stubby, short fingers, which looked as if they hadn't been washed in a week. He then attempted to wedge one grimy little digit into one of his nostrils and later inspect what he laboriously spent a full half minute to disengage from the shallow recesses of his intertwined nasal and brain cavity.

Later, they came for the skinny man, who Monkeyboy dragged out rather roughly and they disappeared. Shortly after I heard screams from another part of the complex and I at once knew that the small thief was being beaten. about an hour later he was brought back and he acted as if he had trouble standing on his feet or arching his back. He shifted constantly on the balls of his feet, groaning and sighing, never opening his eyes. Monkeyboy stood at the door again, leaning against the jam, glancing at me with his incredible dull, "No lights on in the attack" look. I tried something. I stood up and walked slowly around the side of the table toward him. He stood up straight right away and approached me with open hands, arms at length. I looked passed him at the wall. he tried to push me back, but I pointed over his head, I said in Chinese, "I see the time." Then I turned back and sat down, smiling at him as he glared at me, what else could the moron do? Then I thought, "Nobody knows I am here" and I realized I could be in for some very real trouble. There was already two stories of foreigners who had mysteriously died in recent years; one a covered up murder on the streets by the PLA, the other, a man taken in and beaten to death by police.

Later a uniformed policeman showed up, said something to Monkeyboy and took his place. The policeman looked at the man in the corner and said something to him, with only a grunt for a reply, then he asked me in fair English, "You want eat?" I said yes, and water please? He left momentarily and came back about ten minutes later with a Styrofoam container, chopsticks and a plastic cup of water. I opened up the container and ate heartily. It wasn't bad actually, probably the same things the officers were eating. Some steamed green vegetable, an egg and pork mixture, along with an ample helping of rice. I had not eaten since mid-afternoon the day before, so this might as well have been a rib-eye steak. At some point the thin man was removed and never returned. I on the other hand sat there in that chair, slept on folded arms on the table or walked around occasionally for the next 24 hours. Sometime in the morning I was served more food, and again in the afternoon.

Finally, around 4:00 pm or 5:00 pm I was brought out into the reception area and asked to sit upon the wooden bench. A bit later two gentlemen, one much older than the other, came in and the older gentleman addressed me. "Please come with us." And with that I was escorted to a black SUV with the two men and a third, who sat in the back with me. They handcuffed me before I got in and as we drove out of the station, the man in the back chatted with me. I can't recall anything he or I said, but it was small talk to be sure. Ten minutes later we pulled into a large building complex. Several buildings surrounded a central courtyard, where a number of vehicles were parked. I guessed this to be another police station of sorts. I was ushered into a waiting room and there the man who had sat with me on the ride there came to me and talked while the other two men disappeared.

"You know, this is a simple case. If you offer to pay for damages, I am sure this will all be over soon." I got excited at this information. Finally! Someone was telling me something I wanted to hear. "Can you pay for the damages? Also, if you apologize, it will help." I told him of course I could pay, but I would have to contact my sister, because my money was in the USA. He seemed to accept this as a good answer, then he went off. Later the other two men appeared and talked to a receptionist at the desk before me. They signed some paperwork, then they ushered me to follow them. We walked out into the open air courtyard where the older man stopped me as the younger man went ahead to another building with several small barred doors, one of which he unlocked, turned on some lights, and sat at a computer desk. To this day I have no idea who the other man had been. For all I knew he could even have been some representative of the court, being sure I was treated humanely as I was being moved out from the jurisdiction of the small neighborhood police station and now onto more daunting real estate, that of the Guangzhou Detective Bureau of Investigation.

The older man began to speak to me as he stood there, smoking. "I am the detective assigned to your case." He spoke carefully, but very well I thought. He looked up, rather contemplative and continued, "You can call me...officer Blue Sky." He seemed to be thinking something, watching the sky above, large billowy white clouds drifted by lazily in an unusually clear blue sky; so that was it, he had just made up his English name on the spot. He finished his cigarette and led me to the room where the younger man was. Inside on the back wall was a police mug shot wall, long black stripes with measurements written on each line. They handed me a small board with my name and other information on it, to hold against my chest and asked me to stand in the center of the wall, first a side photo, then a portrait shot. After that they fingerprinted me on a digital system, no ink! I rolled my finger over what looked like a supermarket register-scanner device that evidently read my finger print with lasers. Then I was led outside and Blue Sky walked me over to a line of toilet stalls enclosed in a walled area. I relieved myself, door open by request of Blue Sky, washed up for the first time in a day and a half, then I was led to another building across the way, near the reception building. I still had the idea of paying and moving on coursing through my head.

Here there were several rooms, one after another, each with a desk and two long wood benches. We went into the second one where I sat on a bench and officer Blue Sky sat on the edge of the desk, smoking, while the young man sat behind it, looking prim and proper. Then the interrogation began. For the next four hours I told the same story I had told the PSB officers and the younger man recorded it all by hand, but only after Blue Sky translated it to him.

Blue Sky showed me some paperwork which detailed the damage and expense for repair of the ATM in question. The total came to a little over 14,000 RMB. He asked if I would be able to pay this. I told him if I were allowed to contact my sister, I could pay it within 24 hours. He mulled this over, but continued to ask me if I had any memory of beating the machine. I replied that no, I did not and through the entire course of my predicament I never admitted to knowingly destroying the machine.

I found Blue Sky to be pleasant, if not distracted by something only he realized. He offered me green tea, which I accepted, and cigarettes, which I declined. We took a few breaks here and there and at one time had dinner together, similar to what I had at the police station. Sometime around 10:00 they wrapped it up, and I was then asked to sign some papers, which showed that I was officially being arrested. I asked Blue Sky when I could call my Consulate representative. He said that I was not allowed to call until 24 hours after my arrest. I told him I thought he was wrong about that and perhaps he could get into trouble. I also told him I sat in the police station for more than 24 hours. When he said that I had only now been arrested, I pointed out that at the police station the night before, I had also been fingerprinted and photographed. This gave him pause, evidently he juggled this information about, then he said, "I will contact them in the morning then." I thanked him, then we piled into the same SUV and drove out into the ever present Guangzhou traffic.

On the drive to god knew where, I contemplated what had happened over the last few hours. The comment the other man had made about this "being over soon" was just a ploy I gathered. Either that or the man actually believed it would happen. I never did find out exactly who he was or why he had been in the car with us that afternoon. Did he represent the bank? Had he brought those papers detailing the expenses for repair? Perhaps, but I will never know now.

All I knew was that I must have suffered for the first time in my life, a nervous breakdown, destroying an ATM in the process with no memory of it transpiring. Here I was, in a country on the opposite side of the world geographically and politically as well. An undercurrent of thought began to flow rapidly across all others that was totally useless but unavoidable nevertheless; had I not been robbed several days before, none of this would ever have happened. Had I not helped Peter and not stayed at his place and had I moved into my own place I would definitely be 15,000 RMB richer for it. My return from An Whei was my undoing.

Why? What had changed in that month away that so thoroughly ruined my life in China? Was it the recent death of a friend there? A friend who was also incredible as it would seem, tied to Peter as well? Maybe it was I thought. The haunting ghost of a recently deceased friend--was his spirit now driven to curse me after his death upon my recent return to Guangzhou? Because I didn't visit him while in the hospital, which turned out to be his deathbed? And that made sense to me really, because he had cursed Peter as well, but for different reasons. I only hope that Paul, one of the key people who came to my aide more than once during my time in jail, didn't receive a ghostly curse from our late friend Michael upon his lively hood. For one short moment I considered myself lucky; I was still alive while Michael had slowly and perhaps painfully wasted away in a foreign hospital, never knowing really that he was dying, until the very end and of course, what can anyone do then but accept fate, or go out raging against the world, or God or both.

A vengeful spirit, stolen money, loaned and borrowed money, I.D.s and bank cards and psychotic machines mocking me with open empty steel mouths. It all unraveled like a loosely tied bag full of things no one wants to lose, yet lost it becomes. And now I had lost too much. Strangely, I had been holding together so far. Perhaps I was still numb, numb from going berserk the day before, a madman beating a steel monster into electronic limbo. To this day I have never seen the video of my destruction of the ATM. I was told through various sources that it was extremely violent, and my friends said I was in all the papers, even got a writeup in Shanghai! Now I felt I was running on autopilot, my psyche locked into a frozen state, while all the auto-features ran at a bare minimum--breathing, blinking, heart beating. And now Detective Blue Sky began to tell me to my horror, where I was being taken.

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.