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‘The beginning of a thing is a mirror of its end.’ –Asadullah Ghalib
“All these years, Jack, you were a prison warden, and I never really asked you about your prisoners.” He had just turned 70 and we had been talking about politics, in the way we did, never trying to reach a definite answer. We talked about the revolutions in the Middle East, about Syria, about Ukraine about why so many people were ready to die for abstract concepts like freedom and territory.
In all the years I had known him, we would talk about everything, but we would not cross that one red line. We never discussed our own working lives; we talked about others, about the world outside rather than inside. I am not sure why I decided to ask him that day and equally I am not sure why he answered. Maybe it was because he thought he was getting older, he would mutter that line from Elliot, 'I will show you fear in a handful of dust.'
Maybe it was because he was worried his own stories would be lost.
“So Jack, I have always wanted to ask you this,” I said. “What does every prisoner want?”
He brushed me off at first. “What does everyone want?” he said. “The stock answer is they want freedom.”
He hesitated, like a criminal before a confession. And then,
That is what I used to believe. I lost that faith a long time ago.
“What happened?” I asked, wondering even as I said it whether I wanted to know the answer.
“You remember I once mentioned I was worked as a nurse in the high-security prison? I was quite newly trained, and you used to mock me for working within the prison system. It was actually really interesting. All the clichés they tell you about prison being a microcosm of society are true. The first thing I noticed was the hierarchy among the prisoners. Without being told, they divided themselves into two groups.
“On one level were those with long sentences, ‘the high levels’ as they were called, they were often educated and usually polite. Then you had the ‘lower level’ criminals, the petty thieves, who you needed to explain things to again and again. They were those who had slipped through the cracks in society. They had missed out on opportunities, education and basic parenting; their fate was an unending cycle of prison-release-reoffend-prison or an early death.
“At the higher level we used to see them all, the white-collar thief, the paedophiles, rapists, killers. They would often come across as well-dressed, clean-shaven and unapologetic about what they had done. Many of them knew freedom was a remote possibility, and so they were happy to extract the best out of the prison system – whether that meant tapping into the underground smuggling network or joining prison gangs to assert their authority. That division between the ‘high levels’ and the ‘low levels’ applied to almost everyone except him, except Prisoner 4978.”
I thought to stop him there, to make him explain more. I had so many questions about how things worked in the prison and why he worked there. At the same time, I could see how uneasy he was at the mention of 4978 and I let him continue.
“Prisoner 4978 was a particularly nasty specimen. He had been in prison a few times for assault. ‘I’d had a rough life, my father wasn’t around, my Mum was a drunk and I‘ad to make do’ was his explanation. In the end he went too far and was given two life sentences without any possibility of parole. The first conviction was for killing his wife who he beat to death ‘She’d been cheating on me’ (she had not). The other was for the gardener who he hacked to pieces with an axe for sleeping with his wife (which he had not).
“Prisoner 4978 was different from those in the higher level. A mammoth of a man, he towered over me at 6 feet 2, compared to my measly 5 feet 5. While the others seemed comfortable with life in prison, he didn't feel the same. He wanted to be free and he would often vent his feelings about how he would get out and do whatever he wanted once again. Instead, he would end up being confined to his cell on a regular basis for having started another fight with a prisoner.
‘Unprovoked violence’ was the technical term for his behaviour because there was no rhyme or reason to his fights. The victims of his violence could be anyone who happened to be crossing his path. There was one exception though. He would leave the prison guards alone and would often say to them, ‘I’ll do anything to get out of this prison’. I could not understand his logic. Why would someone who knew he would never be getting out of prison, still talk about all the things he would do when he was free? But for him, freedom came above all else.
“One day, many months after I started, another guard and I were escorting Prisoner 4978 back to his cell, when the guard tripped and lost his balance. Prisoner 4978 lashed out and slammed me and the guard back against the corridor. There he stood unshackled, cell door open and prison corridor empty. He had a choice; chances were he could get out and away before the prison guard could sound the alarm. Or he could attack, but attack whom? If he attacked the well-built but off-balance guard he could easily knock him out, get his corridor keys and make an escape pretty far away. Sure, there was a good chance he would be captured but not before being free for some time. Or he could attack me. I was no match for him physically and with one punch from him I would likely be hospitalised for life. BUT attacking me was not going to benefit him in anyway, I had no corridor keys nor did I pose a threat to him.
“He paused, weighing his decision, and in that brief moment I saw in his eyes something I never want to see again in another human being. He ignored the guard, the empty corridor and the keys to his freedom, and lunged at me. I managed to duck and he lost his balance, just long enough for the guard to grab him and force him to the ground.
“I never saw him again. He was locked up in solitary and a few weeks later, I was rotated to another centre. But I have never forgotten him. For sometime after, I struggled to understand what his motivations were in that split second. Why would he choose a pointless attack over the possibility of the freedom he so craved. He was a predator who sought out the most vulnerable creature to target. That’s why he went after me. I was easy prey.
“And now you ask about freedom? That is not what he wanted at all. Or rather, he made a choice. He could have had his freedom if he had grabbed the keys and run. But it was less important than what he really wanted. Power over others.”
Later, I asked what had happened to Prisoner 4978, the man who had placed the opportunity to strike a smaller man over the chance to escape.
“He died,” said Jack. “In prison.”