One the eve of the publication of her groundbreaking memoir, Les murs ne font pas la prison (“The walls do not make the prison,” to be published by Editions Tamyras), Joëlle Giappési sits down with NOW Lebanon to discuss her experiences in Lebanon’s prisons. A former USJ professor, Giappési was sentenced to five years behind bars for the consumption and transfer of heroin. She spent time in Baabda Prison for Women, Barbar Khazen Prison, and Tripoli Modern Prison before her release in 2006. Giappési tells NOW Lebanon of her experiences in the slammer.

NOW Lebanon: Can you explain why and when you went to prison, and which one you were sent to?

Joëlle Giappési: I turned 50 this year. I started heroin consumption here in Lebanon during the civil war, in 1981, at the age of 23. I lived in Paris and Beirut (I’m originally French, but became Lebanese through marriage), but I was never arrested in France. This happened in Lebanon. First in 1995, [I was arrested] for heroin consumption. I was released after two days spent at the main police station in Zahle. Then in 1998, same place, same reason, but I stayed a little longer. Then in Beirut, [in] February 2001 – I was a university teacher at that time at USJ [Université Saint-Joseph]. I was brought to Baabda prison for women, where I stayed three months, then was moved to Barbar Khazen prison in Verdun, where I stayed four years and three months, before being transferred to Tripoli Modern Prison for women for the last six months of my sentence. I was sentenced for five years for consumption and “transfer” of heroin (the word in Arabic is tarweej, and the crime is assimilated to dealing). 
 
NOW: Can you talk briefly about your experiences regarding how you were treated? Were you subject to any form of abuse from other inmates or workers, or did you hear or know of cases of abuse between prisoners or workers?

Giappési: It is very hard to describe “briefly” how I was treated or how convicts are treated. You should really read my book! Prison is a real training for survival.

- Wardens and management: They need to exercise ongoing mental pressure to keep “order.” Their main tool is threat and mental harassment, as they need the convicts to fear them. Manipulation is an art pushed to the extreme. Besides, they also need informers within the convicts, to follow up permanently what is going on inside the cells. Last but not least, they have little salary, little education and want their share of the prisoners’ material comfort. Physical violence is somehow present, but can always be justified by the “bad” behavior of the prisoners, or by their nervous state. Personally, I must say I never was beaten, but then again, I am not only Lebanese, I am French, and my embassy used to visit me. This might have been taken into account. But I was harassed [in] many other ways.

- Inmates: Prison is the reign of “long sentences,” that is, the people who are sentenced for several years. The longer you stay in prison, the stronger you get. This doesn’t make life easy on the newcomers or the shorter sentence [prisoners], as the cells’ discipline is usually under the authority of the [one with the] longest presence in the cell. I say “usually” because, sometimes, a newcomer having a strong personality would refuse the authority of the long sentence [prisoner], or, in Arabic, the shaweesha, but this is exceptional.

Just imagine what it can be to give power over his/her cellmates to a convict, who knows that he/she must stay there for years, who feels oppressed by the system and is often bitter or desperate. It doesn't go without some abuse. As for the prison administration, they would try to ignore the abuse, if possible, as it is not recommended to make a long sentence [prisoner] too angry. An angry long sentence [prisoner] is a potential bomb. I’ve witnessed the case of two angry long sentence [prisoners] accusing the wardens and the director of the prison of corruption and stealing. There were right, of course. They ended up [destroying] the career of the people they accused, as the investigation proved them to be right. No wonder that the administration would try to ignore the abuses committed by long sentence [prisoners].

NOW: Are you still in touch with any of the inmates?

Giappési: Yes, I’m still in touch with ex-inmates. I happen to have made good friends there, as I used to give language courses. I also taught archeology to the same girl for four years, and she obtained her diploma in archeology after having taken her exams in the prison by special permission of both the general attorney and the management of the Lebanese University!

Some of my inmates were released before or after me, and we met several times. As for those still in prison, I obtained from the captain of Barbar Khazen informal permission to visit them, and I did, twice, thanks to the support of Mouvement Social and Tahaddi.

NOW: Did you receive any form of support from the state or otherwise, or was the support mainly from social groups and NGOs? Did you receive any form of counseling?
 
Giappési: I don’t recall having received any support from the state except medical: hyper-thyroid treatment and ophthalmic treatment. For example, I lost my teeth in prison and had to undergo a hunger strike to obtain a visit to the dentist. In any case, I wasn’t able to eat! It is an NGO, Family Care International, who supported my request with the state. Apart from medical, all other supplies like personal hygiene products, room cleansing products, detergents, clothes or bed sheets and bed covers, or food, were provided by my family, or by an NGOs, or by myself, (I would buy them through a social worker and would pay them thanks to the money I earned with handicraft work).

During my stay [2001-2006], there was no psychological counseling, but I know that by now, a psychologist has been sponsored by Mouvement Social, and some of the women were authorized to talk to him. As for me, I was able to obtain visits of a delegate from the rehab center Oum el-Nour, and this has helped me a lot. Without this and the spiritual help of some of the NGO’s benevolence, I would never have healed from addiction. Prison is only a time that addicts put usually in between brackets, to relapse as soon as they get out. Prison doesn’t cure addictions, oh no. Nor does it heal the underlying pain that leads to crime.

NOW: What were the showering, eating and sleeping conditions? Were you ever allowed outside?

Giappési: Showering, eating, sleeping. You touch here a very sensitive point, as it relates to human dignity. At my time, there were no showers. Not even hot water most of the time. We had to rinse ourselves with water filled in a plastic [container]. In winter, we would beg the wardens to give us a bucket of hot water from their own bathrooms, which were prohibited to us, and for which we had to offer other favors in exchange: doing their nails and varnishing them, dying their hair or anything similar. But at least we would get hot water to wash ourselves. By now, things are getting better, as I’m told by the NGOs who visit prisons regularly.

Eating? I never was able to eat from the government’s cooked food due to [its] bad smell, grease and dirt. We regularly found cockroaches in the food! But believe me, many of my inmates had to eat it, as they could not afford [to buy] food or did not have [a] family to visit them and bring them food. Eggs were provided on Sundays, at a rate of two boiled eggs per person. Season vegetables and fruits were supplied twice a week, from the after-sale stocks. Milk, tea or coffee are provided by prisoners’ families or by associations. Sometimes, the wealthy convicts would supply goods for fresh cooking, and they would feed all their cellmates, provided that there is someone in the cell ready to cook at the prison kitchen.

Sleeping? Promiscuity, lack of space is terrible. I often shared my mattress with one, sometimes two other people because there were too many of us in a single cell. In Barbar Khazen, eight people would share four mattresses, at 2.20 x 2.80 meters, 360 days out of 365. The five remaining days, this number would drop to six. My own cell was slightly larger, but [the] administration would fit sometimes 11 people in there. Privacy is a concept totally unknown. Even cell’s WCs were not isolated from the cell by a door, and we would manage to put a curtain at the WC entrance to provide some privacy, but certainly not to avoid [the] WC’s smell or noise into the cell.

Fresh air: At my time, we weren’t allowed to go out. I succeeded for few months to have a daily 5-10 minute [outing] during summer, as I offered the wardens to [take] the big prison garbage container out daily and to wash it for them. I missed so much the sun that I was ready to become friends with the rats and cockroaches who used to live inside the garbage in order to be able to get out 5 minutes per day! But after a few months, the wardens forbade me to go out, as they needed to punish me for not being understanding enough to their needs. As I protested, they told the director that I was planning an escape! I never got outside again.

Nowadays, things are better, and there is a small courtyard arranged as [a] prisoners’ promenade. This is brand new; two weeks only in Barbar Khazen.

NOW: Did you interact with foreign workers at all?
 
Giappési: Yes, I did interact with foreign workers. As a matter of fact, I interacted with everybody because I took charge of the kitchen service (heating food, making coffee and tea for everybody, working the washing machine and the drying machine) for all the prison for several years. As for foreigners, I had a privileged time with them because I used to translate for them “live” the Bible studies of Tahaddi. [During the] daytime, when the cell doors are opened, foreign workers are not isolated from the others, and all of us used to share the same kitchen and the prison corridor, but they all live in one cell. If they are too numerous, Ethiopians would be in a cell and Sri Lankans in another. Otherwise, in “low season” they would all sleep in the same cell. Sometimes, they accept to give some room to Arab prisoners who are “marginalized” by their peers. It’s much harder to have one of them accepted in an Arab cell.

NOW: How dire would you say is the need to reform the state of women's prisons? If you could tell the government one thing in this regard, what would it be?

Giappési: Counseling, people trained to listen, people trained to deal with guilt and anxiety and stress and frustration… Psychologists devoted to their job… Rehab workers visiting addicts… Prisons in Lebanon do need this, terribly. Convicts have a terrible need to speak and sometimes do not even know it. They also need specialists who would know how to encourage creativity, as designing and working handcraft are very gratifying and represent an efficient way to fight stress and low self-esteem. Material comfort, improving life conditions, all this can be achieved with money. With a little effort, funds can be raised. But you need much more than funds to relieve the pain that prisoners have endured in their life and still endure in prison and that they will most probably [continue to] endure upon their release.

 By the way, something [is] totally missing: preparations [for the] release of long sentence people. It is very hard to get back to normal life after several years of detention. I myself stayed only five years and suffered a lot upon freedom recovery, despite the fact that I was surrounded with people of good will who formed a care group to encourage me to stay away from drugs. Even the relationship with my family was very hard to restart in a normal pattern. I can imagine what it can be for people who stayed 10, 12, 15 or 20 years. Nothing is scheduled to prepare those people to get back to [a] normal life.