MY EXECUTION IN DASALA

By Julie Stevens

PART 1

This is so unreal. I cannot believe this is happening to me. I do not belong here. I have never had so much as a parking ticket and I always felt guilty about overdue library books. Now I am  There has been a terrible mistake. I want to go home. How long will I have to endure this?

Less than an hour ago I was in a courtroom listening to a judge tell me I am going to die by hanging for a crime I never committed. Even my lawyer was shocked. He promises me his government would never execute "a pretty American girl." As I was led away in shackles, my lawyer promised he will appeal. He says I am a pawn between the two goverments and Dasala will only use my death sentence as "political leverage" with the United States. He says I will never go to the gallows like the judge said. I hang onto his words now as I enter the Dasala woman's prison where I will remain until all this is settled.  I do not know if I can trust my lawyer. I barely know the man. I was not allowed to even speak to him until the day my trial started and the smell of alcohol on his breath and his bloodshot eyes convinced me I had not been given the best defense lawyer in the city! Everyone else around me, though, seems quite happy with the prospect of my hanging!

A ring of guards nudge and push me through the prison entrance. I feel foolish now in my pink dress suit that I wore to impress the judge before he sentenced me.  The guards take me through a series of steel doors. No one guard has all the keys and we have to wait at each door until the guard with the right key shows up. The sound of those heavy steel doors locking behind me is terrifying. Each door takes me further and further away from the world. They usher me into the "processing room, which is crowded with people curious to see the American woman who will die for her crimes. I am pushed to the center of the room and told brusquely to take my clothes off.

I hesitate, but a guard's baton in my ribs hurries me. I take off my jacket. I step out of my pumps, slide out of my pantyhose and hesitate again. There is no privacy. No one looks away. I consider my options. Two guards aim their pistols menacingly at my face. The warden warns me that his men will not hesitate to shoot me. I sigh and unbutton my white silk blouse and slip out of my skirt.  I reach for the smock, but the guard stops me. The woman guard tells me to remove my bra and panties.
The room is full of guards, officials and clerks who have come to see my strip tease. They all want to see the American woman naked. I try to block out the leering grins and do as I am told. I try to cover my breasts with one arm and my vagina with my hand. A tough looking woman wearing rubber gloves approaches me. She pushes me back roughly, stands face to face to me, looking me firmly in the eyes as she rudely inserts her finger into my vagina. The men in the room snicker.
Her finger presses deeper into me. I wince and bite my lip. My eyes water.  She has me turn around and bend over. Wordlessly she spreads my cheeks to give her access to my rear end and her fingers penetrate my rectum. It is the hateful "cavity search" for contraband . The police did this to me when I was first arrested but it was private and more professional. This is so humiliating.

As I shiver naked in the middle of the room, the warden welcomes me to his prison. He is very unfriendly and says he does not like having me here. He says he will not tolerate any problems from me. He asks me for my pumps. He tells me his teenage daughter will like my shoes. He takes the barrettes out of my hair and tells me he will give them to his wife. My jacket and skirt are for his mistress. Someone grabs my pantyhose.

All my possessions, even my wedding ring, are taken from me and distributed to the men in the room for their own personal mementoes. My things are apparently handed out by rank, but an argument breaks out over my underwear. An officer claims he should get my bra and panties. A guard wants my bra for his girlfriend. The warden intervenes and orders the officer to hand my bra to the guard. I am told I won't be needing my things anymore since I will be leaving the prison in a coffin. The woman who did my cavity search holds up a  filthy, thin cotton prison smock. She says it is reserved for "the condemned." She tells me the woman who wore it before me was crazy and killed her husband and babies with a knife. The guards laugh and say it has not been washed.  I will be allowed to wear nothing else, only the smock and my chains.

"No more diamond earrings for the spoiled American princess," a laughing guard says. Those were taken away from me the day I was arrested.
My skin crawls as I put on the filfthy blue smock. It comes down to above my knees. A mean looking guard catches my eye and makes a dramatic show of licking his lips and smiling evily at me. I shudder and turn away, ashamed. He leans close and whispers a frightening promise, "You will be seeing a lot of me!" I cringe.

From the processing room, I am led to the prison doctor's office. It is a requirement.
The doctor is very different. He is  intellectual who speaks softly. He looks at me intently with penetrating eyes behind his glasses and he has an interesting beard. He is almost gentle with me.
His English is pretty good and he knows a lot about America. He mentions almost casually that  it is his job to pronounce me dead while I am still hanging from the noose!

The doctor has me slip out of the cotton prison gown. He fondles me as I shiver naked in the cold air. It is more of a man with a woman, than a doctor with a patient. He runs his fingers gently along my throat, telling me I have a beautiful neck. His touch and his words make me shiver. He kneads and squeezes my breasts and pinches my nipples until I wince. The doctor has me sit up on his cold stainless steel table and he pulls my knees apart. I do not resist him as he moves his hands freely over my body, poking and probing, stroking and pinching me. When his finger penetrates my vagina, I stiffen and tell him someone else had just done that. He tells me they were doing it for security precautions, while he is conducting a medical exam. This man is clearly exploiting me.

The doctor tells me he is conducting a study and wants to compare my body while I am alive with my corpse. He takes pictures of me and writes notes.  He says his work is important.  He tells me he will be calling me out of my cell frequently for  research purposes'  as my execution date approaches.
As he examines me the doctor tells me about another woman he has seen executed. Kathleen. He talks wistfully of her. They had an affair before she died. The story is touching, even romantic in a sordid tragic way. I get the sense this man is attracted to doomed women.

I know the doctor's examinations serve no real medical purpose. He presses the cold stethoscope to my chest and says I have a strong heartbeat. He says my pulse is slow because I am a runner.
He shakes his head and says it is such a waste, that I am a stupid woman for what I have done. He said he wishes he could have my corpse immediately after the hanging. He would "harvest" my kidneys and heart to give good people better lives. He would even take my eyeballs and lungs. He says the government should come up with a more efficient form of execution to preserve my organs. If the government let him sell my organs back to sick rich Americans, Dasala could make the United States pay for my execution. He looks at me, and asks: Wouldn't that be ironic? He whispers to me that if the president of Dasala needed my kidney, he bet they would change their plans!

 It is all so humiliating. But I have no rights. Everyone has told me that.  The judge who sentenced me to die. The guards who push and slap me around. Even my lawyer. I am a convicted felon and deserve no better treatment than any convicted felon gets in this prison. I have been warned that because I am an American, in fact, everyone takes special pleasure out of making me suffer.  So, if I expect any one to care that this doctor is abusing me, too bad. Until that horrid day I was arrested no one touched me in those places except my husband, now strangers defile me routinely!
It is part of being a prisoner.

 Prisoner! That word overwhelms me. I used to think of myself as mother, wife, daughter, hostess. Now words like prisoner, convict, criminal and condemned define me. Being a condemned prisoner in Dasala is as close as a human being can come in this century to being a slave. That is what my lawyer told me.

The doctor lectures  me about Dasala. During my vacation I had seen the beach and the hotel we stayed at, but I never saw the rest of the country. The people are poor and oppressed and they resent Americans, especially me. The lucky ones get jobs serving the tourists, but they all detest the rich Americans who exploit their country.  My execution is viewed as a great opportunity to see an American get theirs, he told me. "They see you as an immoral American bitch," he says matter-of-factly. "It will be like a holiday for the people of Dasala."

" They all want to come to see how a young and pretty American girl, convicted of a crime in their country is punished like all other felon women are. It is good for the country," he said with a smile as he patted me on the knee. "Your death serves a purpose. It will be good for them to see you  are no more wearing  fancy modern clothes: just a plain inmate's uniform., barefoot, your soles dirty like the miserable peasants', heavily shackled, like a slave, humiliated, terrified, begging for mercy, receiving none. Just a slow, painful and degrading death, slowly strangulated by the hard noose, having enough time to think about your crimes while in sheer agony, dancing like a puppet at the end of the rope."

The doctor does have a way with words.

After the doctor is through with me the guards lead me through the prison yard. We pass women playing volleyball and reading books in the sunshine. We walk by the rows of cells. The women have decorated their cells with pictures and paintings. There is a community room with a television set. The guards nudge me with their batons as I shuffle slowly in my shackles and bare feet. My wrists are cuffed in front of me and linked to a chain around my waist. The other inmates have no restraints. They all eye me hatefully as I shuffle past.

I am awkward. My ankle chain is too short for me to to take a full stride.  As the guards force me to walk faster and faster, I have to trot with my legs stiff. I feel like a puppet and I look ridiculous. The guards and inmates laugh at my pathetic stumbling.

I do not get one of those cells. The guards push me to keep going. They guide me down into a basement. It is dark and cold. I shiver and goose bumps rise on my arms.  One guard pushes my head down to force me through a narrow door into a cramped, dark room. I cannot believe this. It is out of my worst nightmares. The ceiling is so low I cannot stand up. My clothes closet at home is bigger than this. My eyes adjust to the darkness and I shudder. I see big spiders in the corners.
Water is seeping down one wall and puddles of stagnant liquid pool in low spots on the floor.
As the guard releases my wrist restraints I scream at him. "You can't do this to me. I am an American Citizen!" He calls me a felon and spits in my face, then shoves me away. I trip and fall back into a stinking pool of liquid. I thought I had cried all my tears when the judge said I would be hanged, but this wretched place brings out even more tears.

Even in my cell my ankles remain shackled by heavy iron chains. I am told the shackles will never be taken off . I have to shuffle and carry my chains whenever I move around. There is a small steel bowl I must use as my toilet. I have to squat over it to pee or poop. It is so degrading. If I miss the bowl, the guards tell me I will clean the mess with my fingers. They tell me the bowl is my sink, too. I will never wash in that!

When I am allowed out of my cell my wrists are cuffed in front of me and bound to a chain locked around my waist. My chains and dirty blue smock distinguish me as "a condemned." My light complexion distinguishes me as an American. I am one of a kind in this horrid place.

Only the condemned are shackled constantly. Some of the other prisoners in the clean, modern cells on the floors above me are killers who will someday walk free. Those women are allowed to shower and shampoo daily. They receive visitors twice a month,  write letters and even watch television. They eat real food in a modern cafeteria. They are sent packages from their families and wear their own clothes. Since I have been sentenced to die, the government considers any money spent on me to be a waste.  If I was not certain the American government would get me out of this place soon, I would go crazy.

When I walk escorted through the prison I can never mingle with the other inmates. It is one of the rules that applies only to me. During my hour outside my cell, the guards follow me. They warn the other inmates that "the American felon,"  "the Yankee offender" or "the gringa whore" is coming. No one calls me by my name. The guards sometimes call me "convict."
That is usually the nicest thing they call me.

One guard especially frightens me. The one who licked his lips so lewdly when he watched me put on my prison smock. He was one of the guards who kept touching me on my way to my cell. He pressed himself against me that first day and blew me a kiss as I was pushed into my cell. He says I belong to him. He calls me "sweet meat". Whenever he sees me he makes an obscene gesture with his baton and licks his lips. I try to avoid him, but I have no control, except of my eyes. I do not look at him if I can help it. But that makes him angry, too, and he backs me into a corner, poking his baton between my legs and demanding I look at him. His breath is bad. He says he wants to see my pretty green eyes. He laughs meanly, then says he will be there to see my pretty green eyes roll up in to my head!

I am given a cup of water three times a day. That is not enough. The roof of my mouth is dry and my tongue sticks to it constantly. Usually there is a dead cockroach or spider at the bottom of the cup. I know the guards put the insects in my water and in the thin, cold soup and cereal I am fed every day. My meals come from the garbage left over from the inmate meals upstairs. It seems it takes two or three days for their leftovers to reach my cell. Sometimes I am given cold rice, and I have to be very careful to pick out the maggots. Potato peelings usually have worms. I dream of the salmon and pot roast I used to eat at home. I think of red wine. I miss my morning cup of tea with a spoonful of sugar and a dash of cream.

My cell is so dim during the day I can barely see the ugly spiders in the webs they have spun in the corners of the ceiling.  There are no windows, except on the little door and it is closed.  I sit in the gloom and marvel at the bitter irony: I had come to Dasala hoping to get the tan of my life!

I have to sleep on the concrete floor with my head cushioned only by my bare arm. I am even denied a blanket and wake up frequently shivering in the cold. My back is sore and stiff. I dream of my waterbed back home. I have to be careful where I sit. There are only a few spots in the small cell where I can sleep without rolling over into one of those disgusting pools of liquid.

If I lay still I soon have flies crawling on my skin. The flies are constantly buzzing around my little toilet bowl and landing on me. I never thought it would be possible, but as the days turn into weeks, I stop noticing the flies or the smell. It becomes my life.

The little window on my cell door opens only when a guard wants to watch me. If they hear my shackles clang when I move around the window invariably opens and I see eyes looking in. The guards especially like to watch me eat or squat over my bowl to go to the bathroom. I may never have a moment of privacy the rest of my life.

I hate that bowl. It is about the size of my cooking bowls at home and it dominates my life. The stench is oppressive. I have gagging fits when it gets too strong. I watch as the days go by and the bowl fills with my waste. The smell overwhelms me. I dread having to go to the bathroom. When I squat I have to be very careful not to knock the bowl over with my ankle chains. And I always have an audience. I try to keep the bowl as far from me as possible, which is not more than five feet.
By the end of the week my little bowl is overflowing with urine and excrement. Whenever she comes to empty my bowl, the woman guard wrinkles her nose and calls me a disgusting pig. I ask if I could at least have something to cover the bowl so I would not have to look at it all day and contain the stink. She calls for the men and tells them the gringa bitch gave her back talk! They shackle my wrists to the wall over my head as punishment.  While I am totally helpless, the guard with my wedding ring  comes in and violates me with his baton. When he is done he kisses my ring and laughs.The woman guard pokes at the webs to stir up the spiders so they will come down and bite me. They leave me like that as my punishment for as long as they feel like it. They can do anything they want to me.

I am faint with hunger. When the guards make me stand up I get dizzy. I have never known hunger in my life. I am so weak.I hate the way my mouth feels. I have always been very good about brushing my teeth and using mouth wash. I do not have a toothbrush and the three cups of water leaves me dehydrated. My mouth is dry and my teeth are coated with a yucky film. The mint taste of my toothpaste and mouthwash is a cherished memory. I know I will never enjoy that fresh feeling again.
The guards find me delerious on my cell floor,  moaning for water. The doctor tells them I will never live to hang if they do not inceasee my water rations. He has them increase my water ration to three liters a day. The doctor says it is the absolute minimum to keep me alive. I am grateful to the doctor, but I am still thirsty.

At night I imagine the spiders coming down to eat me. And there are mice and mean-looking beetles that make me shiver and sometimes scream when I see them. At night I can hear them scurrying around. In the morning I find the bowl of dry cereal and stale bread that is my breakfast covered with the feasting bugs. After days of losing my appetite to the revulsion of the bugs, I am reduced to fighting the bugs off for my meals. Often the food is inedible no matter how hungry I am. If I do get a piece of meat it is usually too putrid to keep down and I end up retching. I prefer the stale bread.
It takes me awhile to catch on, but I come to realize the guards are playing games with my food.
They like to see what they can get me to eat. I doubt that I have had a meal without sometime vile planted in it for their amusement. I did not know it for quite a while, but the guards are having a contest to see what terrible things they could get me to eat. I am told there is a chart posted in the guard's locker room listing the gross things I have eaten and what guard provided it. They are given points for each disgusting item I consume. If I spit it out, or pick it out of my bowl, no points. When I hear the guards laughing after I finish my meals I understand that someone added to their tally.  I suspect someone urinated in my soup today. A bitter taste still lingers in my mouth.

My cell is so black at night  I cannot see my hands in front of my face.  This is especially terrible since I have never gotten over my childhood fear of the dark. I try to fall asleep before it gets too dark. I have trouble sleeping out of fear of the spiders and mice. It is not a silly fear. I wake up with bites on my body. A bite behind my knee is infected and does not heal.  I dread the nights. I feel like I am being eaten alive by these hideous creatures.

My skin itches from the filth and the bites. I sit in my cell scratching myself. I spend hours using my fingers to untangle the snags in my lank hair. My condition is so pathetic. I yearn for the time when I could lather my hair with shampoo and conditioner. At night I fall asleep dreaming of taking a warm, sudsy bath. I remember the faint strawberry fragrance of my hair from my favorite shampoos. I always took such pride in my appearance, especially my long hair. I feel hideous.  After awhile I begin to feel insects crawling in my scalp.

 I am appalled!  And I am incessantly picking at my scalp with my fingers to get the bugs out of my hair.

A special indignity comes with my period. I cower in a corner of the cell hugging my knees, making a bloody mess on the floor.  The one concession to my situation is a dirty rag the guards throw at me. I keep it between my legs for three days. The day my period arrives I realize I have been in here three weeks.