In the summer of 2022, I gained insight into the British penal system when I was jailed for a month following direct action against Elbit—this is my prison diary (9/9)
In the summer of 2022, I gained insight into the British penal system when I was remanded to Her Majesty’s Prison Eastwood Park. I was sent to jail for one month along with eight other activists following direct action in Bristol against Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private arms company. During the month I spent in the penitentiary, I documented everything I saw, heard, felt, and thought as a form of resistance. This is my prison diary (9/9).
June 8th 2022
The night had passed, if it’s even possible to call it a night. My new cellmate, Lilly, is a daughter of working-class Walsh miners who were robbed of their livelihood by Margret Thatcher. “You can see ‘Ding dong the witch is gone’ graffiti everywhere in my town”, she tells me. Not being able to see her children is driving Lilly out of her fucking mind. I’m listening to her, but because of sleep deprivation, I lack patience. She needs the TV to constantly be turned on. Although I understand that this is how she masks the noise around her and although I must be considerate, I’m having difficulties handling that. “The hell is the other”, Sartre says. Yet it could have been much worse. It’s difficult for her too to deal with the noise pollution and for me as well. Let’s hope our brains will adapt.
In the night, I was so happy to be dreaming because a dream is proof of sleep. In the dream, I met my classmates from high school, and told them that the body is a prison. It’s true.
In my window, there’s a tree that moves gently as the wind touches it as if they are dancing in eternal peace. One day I will also be dancing that gently, almost flying.
Nothing of the external world is of any concern of mine now. Everything is negligible and it is a great relief to be excused from the rats’ chase of life under capitalism. It is true freedom to be released from the commitments that have tied me to matters of no significance. I see my imprisonment and everything that would ensue as a blessing that came my way.
I am thinking of the years I spent in the library. Some memories from the Stadtbibliotek had passed before my eyes when I copied the pages from Frankl’s book. The contrast between my current whereabouts and the silence of the “Stabi” is stark. There, it was possible to hear a pencil dropping in contrast to the cacophony that is ever present here. How we carry our fate determines the dimension of meaning to bring into our lives, Frankl writes.
Every day here is a rebirth. Awakening feels like being thrown into a new material existence and into a new body in an alien surrounding from which there is no escape but death. The body is the prison of the soul. And so I feel like being thrown into the corporal, physical experience of prison. I wake up confused and can barely remember or know anything; don’t know how I’ve got here, just like a newborn. Slowly I begin to recall what I’ve forgotten: Who has sent us here and why. We were sent to prison, but never left it. We are forced into life, forced into a body. Our lives we must live till their end.
There are no essential differences between prison and the outside world – only aesthetical ones.
I was ready to flee this world, but that would have been a win for the “Invasor”, for the pigs. I must continue to live, as Rikle wrote, until the point where my life reaches and until when the night begins (“Bis wohin reicht mein Leben, und wo beginnt die Nacht?”).
It’s evening time. Today was an emotional day when I received letters from Yuval and Abir. Not only that I was happy to read them, but I again realised how important friendship is.
Now the sky is coloured pink, like on the day I got sent here. Lilly, my cellmate, says that tomorrow there will be a bright day, according to an old Welsh shepherds’ saying. Down the hall, there’s a lady who screams all the time. Lilly suffers tremendously from the woman’s screams.
Thanks to a reasonable night’s sleep, it looks like things are getting better. We are cracking jokes and it is the laughter that alleviates our pain. I am staring at the photos which Yuval sent me of Laish, my cat in heaven. Such pureness and sweetness she embodied. I can only ask that Laish guards me from above – such beauty I have never seen in the world. I kiss her beyond the worlds. Here, Laishon, I’ve fulfilled the promise I made to you. Laishon forever.
June 10th 2022
I’m drowning again in my own dreams to alter the present into something less real.
I’m so physically weak that I feel like a scarecrow due to depravation of medicines. The only thing that moves me is the thought of the future, and the continuity of the cause. The subconscious floods me with memories of my youth, but I must detach from the past. The past is there to take pleasure in it, but I am in the present. Prison is the future of my past self. My entire life had led me to be exactly here. I must not seek meaning in the memories but in what the future holds.
June 11th 2022
This night too, sweet memories embraced me to show me how sweet my life was. I must stay focused on what is to come, to prepare for imprisonment no matter how long it takes. I still don’t know how long I will stay here and what meaning my life will carry after being imprisoned. I want to go to Paris or go back to Sardinia to swim with the small fishes, to see the beauty of life again, although my memories are constantly surrounding me with it.
When I am thinking of our victory I imagine it like marching down the Elysian Fields, the fields of freedom and liberty, those which lie above.
As I was writing these lines, the cell’s conditions have already deteriorated. The prison guards have thrown another soul to our cell. The overcrowded cell leads to an overload of stimulations in my mind. Oh, how good it was to be alone in the upstairs detox unit! All I can do now is try to use the opportunity given to me here. Fortunately, the new cellmate is nice, and the girls show consideration of my need for quiet. I must learn to read and concentrate with background noises. This is an opportunity to learn to focus.
June 13th 2022
In this short morning, I’ve gained a few moments of peace. I began by memorising the leading doctrine of Epicurus: Death is none of our concern; Evil is easy to bear, and the good is easy to acquire; the only freedom we have is the freedom to surrender to reason; it’s impossible to have justice without pleasure and pleasure without justice.
If death does not concern us, neither should imprisonment be of any concern to me.
Despite these insights, anxiety has found its way to me yesterday, a fear of the unknown. On top of the noise pollution which we all must endure here, I could feel the psychological pressure of not knowing how long I must stay here. That’s the purpose of being put on remand.
This week there’s going to be a hearing in my case. It’s drawing near. Although I can do nothing about it, this hearing will determine my near future. I must gather emotional and spiritual strength.
“From whence cometh my help?”
My aid will come from the pursuit of a life of justice and from being unmoved by the consequences that follow virtuous actions. There’s nothing I can do but gather strength and accept my fate with grace, understanding that life in jail is not essentially different than life outside. I cannot control anything other than myself. I must remember to breathe deep and exhale more than I inhale. All the memories surrounding me will always be there, and I am lucky to have them show me how beautiful my life has been so far. I haven’t seen my past in this light until now. The time I’ve spent with Yuval was the most meaningful for me. The times on the beach, the Berlin parks with their endless sky, the Passion Garden, the pristine shores of Sardinia, the times with Laishon. It was a beautiful life, and there’s more life ahead.
I’ll keep my head up no matter what. People have suffered much more than I do throughout history and have paid horrible prices for the sake of freedom. For justice, for freedom, one must pay the price. Now I could earn my sufferings and be hopefully worthy of them. How I carry myself and employ the opportunities this place might bring and would determine whether I am worthy of these or not. Oh, Laishon in heaven! The only fear I should have is not to prove worthy of the suffering.
June 14th 2022
I am thinking of John Brown that made the entire American south tremble and stood against the entire institution of slavery. The words he wrote before being executed give me strength:
“I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day, nor a storm so furious and dreadful as to prevent the return of warm sunshine and a cloudless sky”.
I am thinking also of Gramsci who succeeded in writing a masterpiece in Mussolini’s prison. I must learn to rise above the noise and transcend the circumstances.
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my aid?
My aid cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.
[…] Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade”. (Psalms 121)
If I should have to go to prison: I shall. If I should die: I will.
And at the end, we’ll have white roses.
One of the letters I got made me cry, and the other made me laugh.
I must rise above the state of my physical existence here. I can’t be thinking all of the time about cleaning materials, washing liquids, or laundry – like the prison administration is asking us to do. I also refuse to participate in gossip and cannot control what the other prisoners might think.
I was so happy to receive Epicurus’s doctrines. I shall study them all the time. This is my opportunity to practice philosophy and not merely contemplate it. Reading Epicurus’s doctrines, I recall that we fear only two things: death and pain. Evil is embodied in pain and the good – in pleasure. It is evident just like the sweet is sweet, and the bitter is bitter. And so why would I fear prison? Why would I fear death? It does not concern us. And pain? I will never experience here pain harsher than the one I’ve already endured. Acute pain cannot last long. I can reach a state where I have no pain in the body and no anxiety in the soul; in that state, it doesn’t matter where I am.
Feds wrote in her letter: “Nothing can deem the light that lights you from inside”. I was so happy to read that. Nothing can break me here because the soul is immaterial and not breakable as such. The noise around me will also not make me surrender because I have eternal peace.
Everything is in constant movement, Heraclitus teaches. Nothing stays as it is. Even if things appear static it’s an illusion. In essence, the cosmos is moving and shifting at great velocity and is constantly changing. And so am I and so is the material existence in which I’m captured. I know I have the ability to recover from this imprisonment because my inner self cannot be damaged. After all this ends, we’ll march in the Elysian fields of the above, the Elysian fields of freedom. I may be locked up, but that doesn’t mean I’m not free.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, a grey cat comes to visit the soldiers. The soldiers have packed the cat and taken him away in a birdcage that they’ve found in the village. It reminds me of the grey cat that came to visit me in my house in Sardinia. One day she even slept in my bed and cuddled with me. We’ve both escaped the cold together until one day she brought a mouse home and I’ve never returned. Those days were not that long ago, but they seem so far away in time. I shall return to Sardinia even stronger.
In prison, I’ve realised what is most important to me. Besides my inner freedom, Yuval is the dearest to my heart.
The girl down the hall never stops screaming, she screams all night long. We are all having difficulties sleeping and functioning because of the screams. My cellmates are saying that she had spice exploding up her bum. Her shouting and screaming remind me how irrational prison is – how damaging people can benefit society?
June 15th 2022
Just before the plea and bail hearing.
I remember again that all I could do is to control my breathing. To inhale one time and exhale out in a long breathe.
What do I have to fear of? Death? Pain? Fearing them is the real, far worse, form of pain. What happens shall happen, and if torments are to be my share, I’d know that I was worthy of my sufferings.
I only hope that my strength to bear my fate will not fail me and that I could carry myself with grace and compassion. Sufferings are finite, but virtue knows no end.
~ Stav
