Watermelon

Before the tail end of the first decade of this century, I had a mighty problem with the law that took more than a decade out of my life. I was sent to one international prison not far from my base then and handed 15 years.

Not a funny year out of one's life. But, you can always see terms like that through whether you believe you can or not. Whether you have that spirit needed to see it through or not, it will be provided to you by forces beyond your control to divert your attention from thinking too much about your sentence.

So, while inside there, I met many characters from different nationalities and races. Some think it is a kind of UN we are into. Almost all the continents are represented and each came with their kind of characters that you can't stop wondering about the people where such characters came from.

Some are over-sound, some are overly crazy, one thing I figured out early inside there is that if you ever arrive at the conclusion about the people where those you are with came from by equating the character there with every other where they came from, you will make a mighty mistake. There is no way they can be the same, simply impossible. Am I the same with everyone where I came from? That is how you arrive at correct answers on others. I am not even the same with those that  came from the region I came from that was there with me. How then can others not with me, millions of them where i came be judged correctly by observing me act and talk. That is bad logic.

Anywhere, i met about three Nepalese guys inside there and one we nicknamed "The King" funny guy. He doesn't even know deep down inside him his own identity. He was a British passport holder, Nepalese and Hong Kong papers holder too. The King has little problem in his head but I am not even sure he has a problem or maybe, it is just the strategy he chose to pass his sentence with. In prison, people play their own games and maintain it for decades even.

The king likes to stay with foreigners and when I say foreigners I mean people that are not of his own race. Southeast Asian.  The Blacks, whites, Arabs and even those indigenous Peru guys that you need to look and squint a lot to tell them from the southeast Asian guys. I don't see anything different, only character and spoken language. Those are races the king feels at home with most. 

He is not that young if you are wondering why. I think he was in his mid fifties that period and had been inside for about twelve when i met him. According to a story going around there had been playing border guards for a long time till that very day he was caught. He got himself drunk and was as usual hauling his watermelon full of cocaine along with him and his staggering caught the eyes of a sharp border guard who was wondering why he as drunk as he I was holding tight to a single watermelon from hong kong to china when you can get one for free if you bend your neck well and use the right voice to beg for one from the locals. 

He told him to pack himself well but the king was too drunk to follow orders and was marching towards the guard and was even asking a little mandarin about the address of a pentecostal church he was heading to. They used force to pack him and his meleon well and after discharging others that queued, they turned their attention to him fully. That was how they discovered that the king that was snoring within minutes of being packed well was hauling watermelon full of cocaine with him. They put him in a bus and took him to the detention house where he woke fully after they poured cold water on him as a shower. You know how carwash guys wash cars, right?- with the hose a little far from the car and directing the fierce force of the water on the car, that was how the king took his night wash that evening in the detention house and his head cleared 50% when he was assigned a room. 

In prison, there is nothing like alcohol in the shopping list but a year plus when I stayed with the king, he was always looking like a person 20% drunk. He always staggers when he walks, his speech is never clear, his eyes the same and the exercise even those far older than him partake in, The King can't try. So fragile looking to me. 

The man maintained his story only that in court, he never knew his address in Hong Kong, maintaining his innocence on the ownership of the watermelon and who he was asked to hand it over to. But the church and the name he was calling never existed. He himself doesn't know his own address in Hong Kong or the identity of the man that handed him the watermelon. He was just an errand guy, a victim of his goodwill he maintained. Even to his country men, he maintained that story only that one of them knew better. 

Those dark complexioned asians. He was the guy that told me that: "In this world, God the Father(he is christian) created two races in this world and nothing else. Black and white. If you are not black man, you automatically belong to the white group. Nothing like a yellow or red. Therefore, according to him, he himself having that thread in his head is a white man. He was demonstrating and emphasizing with his hands to make sure i got the message well. 

I did get the message well a long time ago when I started hanging around him in the evening during news hours. The fellow is sick in the head but in reminiscence, I am wondering if he is truly sick. I think the man is just a good and deep actor that missed his calling. But then something happened to him afterwards that made me wonder about the people we were under their care. You will come in healthy, work 24 hours each day for more than a decade and then two weeks to go, if you are not limping, you are slurring. 

That was The King's fate inside there. He was scheduled to leave in the morning when we were heading to the factory. He was still sitting in the cultural room when we returned for afternoon rest. He was slumped in the chair they gave him and when we peep inside the room and hail him, he will say in a weak voice: "I conquered them. They want to finish me with a quota but I am the winner" we will laugh and weigh him sitting like a man his days are numbered. Something is seriously wrong and we believed that thing was man made.

Why anyone will go after the king in such way puzzles many. Funny thing is that our host are the kinds that when they can't get a breakthrough with you in penetrating you, they conclude you are playing them for a decade and arrived at the conclusion that you packed billions under your bed and was pretending to be crazy. According to the story from there, the address he gave them, nobody like him lived there or was known around that area. They came back frustrated and that must be reason he was nuked.

To think he was eligible to be sent back to Hong kong but he insisted they return him to Nepal. A terminal decade drunk like the one The King manifested there doesn't have that good. He,to us the inmates: The Drunk OutFoxed The Fox.