A Prayer Before Dawn: A Nightmare in Thailand
by Billy Moore
(Maverick Press, €9.99)
Billy Moore describes watching an inmate stab another to death in the opening paragraphs of his graphic, horrifying account of his imprisonment in Thailand.
Killings are routine in filthy, fetid Klong Prem, the facility better known as the ‘Bangkok Hilton’, where Moore, a former drug-dealer and addict, spent three years among murderers and child-abusers. He endured countless beatings, and once shared a cell with a corpse.
That he survived the ordeal, mentally and physically intact, was in large part due to the help he received from ‘Kathleen’, a Christian missionary.
Visitor
She was a regular visitor, bringing him money and wholesome food, listening to him, arranging for medical treatment. The welfare of foreign prisoners in Thai gaols depends largely on the work of missionaries and charities. Beyond delivering a complementary burger and chips one Christmas, and helping with his return to Liverpool, the British embassy took little interest in Moore.
Chains
Escape from Klong Prem isn’t impossible. While convalescing after an operation Moore slipped out of the hospital into a deserted city street, only to realise that a ragged white man in chains wouldn’t get far. He went back to prison, accepting that he would have to serve his time.
As time went on he increasingly associated with people of faith. Kathleen’s visits, and prayers with the Muslim prison librarian were a refuge from the violence and monotony. His safest cell was the one he shared a cell with men of various religions who would rise before dawn to pray, one to Jesus, the other to Buddha, another to Muhammed. The other inmates seem to have accorded respect to religious prisoners in the same way as common criminals everywhere respect prisoners of conscience and political prisoners.
In the end it was a wrench to have to leave Klong Prem, for it contained inspirational people he would never seen again, as well as vulnerable inmates who had come to rely on him for help and protection.