unlocked my cell door. I warily jumped up and stood in the middle of my cell, confused, wondering what he wanted. I let out a wary ‘Hello’. Then he said, ‘Come, come look at the sky.’ He was pointing to the cage door that led to the outside world. I jumped at the chance and dashed over with a huge smile on my face.
It gave me such a calm feeling to look up at the vast blue sky. How nice of the guard to offer me this. It was beautiful.
As I walked back to my cell, tears were streaming down my face. I hadn’t seen the stars and moon for so long, but it was amazing to see the early-morning sky. Little things became so precious.
The pain of my situation never went away, though, no matter how hard I fought. Living with fear, hurt, anger and devastation, along with my physical aches and pains, became as natural as breathing.
How could this be happening? I don’t know what’s my real reality.
I have this painfully sick numbness in me, though I think I’m in a daze, I don’t really know.
Diary entry, 30 October 2004
Most of the guards weren’t nice, they were creeps who enjoyed making life harder: laughing at me, refusing me visits, mocking me and taunting me. They’d do little things to upset me: for instance, a guard once opened a bag of food Merc had brought me, knowing ants would quickly ruin it. After a few minutes, he gave me a cheesy smile, singing out, ‘Angry Corby!’
I couldn’t help exploding ‘YES!’ as I stared back at this pathetic little man.
He spent the rest of the day saying ‘Yes! Yes!’ in a voice mimicking mine. I just had to sit there and take it.
Another time, I stood at the cage door trying to catch a slight breeze when one of the guards started screaming out, ‘ Tidur, tidur! ’ (Sleep, sleep!), flinging his arms wildly to tell me to ‘move over to your corner’ like I was some kind of animal he had locked up. That sort of thing happened all the time. They were horrible, spiteful creeps who enjoyed abusing their little bit of power.
Sometimes they’d unlock my cell in the middle of the night, come in and just stand there looking at me. I always pretended to be asleep, but it terrified me, because if they tried something, the guys were locked up in the cell behind, so there was no one to help me.
The creepy guards also made me paranoid about using the toilet. Because the bottom of the cell door was quite high off the ground, I’d hold up a sarong just in case the sleazy guards bent down to watch.
I hit a low point when I was told the disturbing news that Amrozi, the Smiling Assassin, had lived in the same cell as me for five months. I felt sick knowing that I was using the exact same hand-held bucket to shower that he did and sleeping in the exact same spot. What had my life come to? One of Merc’s best friends had lost her husband to his bombs, which exploded in two busy nightclubs in Kuta. His bombs killed 202 innocent people. I scrubbed everything in the bathroom because I didn’t want to touch anything that monster had touched. And I changed my sleeping position.
It was such an eerie, horrible feeling to know the terrorist had been in the cell, and I felt like he still had a presence; I suppose he did: his DNA was on the wall. ‘Cobra’ was written on the wall in what looked like human shit – the guards told me that he’d written it. I was so haunted by his writing that it had a strange pull on my attention. I would just stare at it, and I started obsessing over what he’d really written it with. It could have been dried mud, but how did he get his hands on mud? I didn’t want to believe it was shit, but in the end I just had to find out, so got up close and smelt it. It still stank.
I took out my diary and wrote down every single thing that was written on the walls inside that cell, exactly how it was written, just in case there was a hidden code or secret message from the bombers. I also took photos of the writing.
Scrawled right next to where I put my
It gave me such a calm feeling to look up at the vast blue sky. How nice of the guard to offer me this. It was beautiful.
As I walked back to my cell, tears were streaming down my face. I hadn’t seen the stars and moon for so long, but it was amazing to see the early-morning sky. Little things became so precious.
The pain of my situation never went away, though, no matter how hard I fought. Living with fear, hurt, anger and devastation, along with my physical aches and pains, became as natural as breathing.
How could this be happening? I don’t know what’s my real reality.
I have this painfully sick numbness in me, though I think I’m in a daze, I don’t really know.
Diary entry, 30 October 2004
Most of the guards weren’t nice, they were creeps who enjoyed making life harder: laughing at me, refusing me visits, mocking me and taunting me. They’d do little things to upset me: for instance, a guard once opened a bag of food Merc had brought me, knowing ants would quickly ruin it. After a few minutes, he gave me a cheesy smile, singing out, ‘Angry Corby!’
I couldn’t help exploding ‘YES!’ as I stared back at this pathetic little man.
He spent the rest of the day saying ‘Yes! Yes!’ in a voice mimicking mine. I just had to sit there and take it.
Another time, I stood at the cage door trying to catch a slight breeze when one of the guards started screaming out, ‘ Tidur, tidur! ’ (Sleep, sleep!), flinging his arms wildly to tell me to ‘move over to your corner’ like I was some kind of animal he had locked up. That sort of thing happened all the time. They were horrible, spiteful creeps who enjoyed abusing their little bit of power.
Sometimes they’d unlock my cell in the middle of the night, come in and just stand there looking at me. I always pretended to be asleep, but it terrified me, because if they tried something, the guys were locked up in the cell behind, so there was no one to help me.
The creepy guards also made me paranoid about using the toilet. Because the bottom of the cell door was quite high off the ground, I’d hold up a sarong just in case the sleazy guards bent down to watch.
I hit a low point when I was told the disturbing news that Amrozi, the Smiling Assassin, had lived in the same cell as me for five months. I felt sick knowing that I was using the exact same hand-held bucket to shower that he did and sleeping in the exact same spot. What had my life come to? One of Merc’s best friends had lost her husband to his bombs, which exploded in two busy nightclubs in Kuta. His bombs killed 202 innocent people. I scrubbed everything in the bathroom because I didn’t want to touch anything that monster had touched. And I changed my sleeping position.
It was such an eerie, horrible feeling to know the terrorist had been in the cell, and I felt like he still had a presence; I suppose he did: his DNA was on the wall. ‘Cobra’ was written on the wall in what looked like human shit – the guards told me that he’d written it. I was so haunted by his writing that it had a strange pull on my attention. I would just stare at it, and I started obsessing over what he’d really written it with. It could have been dried mud, but how did he get his hands on mud? I didn’t want to believe it was shit, but in the end I just had to find out, so got up close and smelt it. It still stank.
I took out my diary and wrote down every single thing that was written on the walls inside that cell, exactly how it was written, just in case there was a hidden code or secret message from the bombers. I also took photos of the writing.
Scrawled right next to where I put my
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