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THOMAS THE TOUR GUIDE

thumb and index finger with a small gap between them, which was the Bolivian way of asking for a quick chat. He leaned towards the bars and said, ‘Dígame’ – ‘Tell me.’

I told him that some people had come from the other side of the world especially to visit me. ‘Can you help me? I don’t have any family here,’ I pleaded.

‘Do they have their carnets? If they don’t have a carnet, they aren’t allowed in the prison,’ he stated. I already knew that was the rule, but I kept arguing.

‘But my lieutenant, that doesn’t seem fair. I am a foreigner, so all my family are foreigners! That means my family can’t visit me.’

‘So, these people are your family?’

‘No, but all my friends are foreigners, too. Please, maybe I can help you also,’ I hinted. His expression began to change. ‘Where are they from, your friends? From your home town?’

All the guards knew me as ‘ingles’ and I thought about saying my visitors were from England too, but they definitely looked Israeli.

‘They are from Israel. I used to live in Israel where I met my Israeli girlfriend. You know my chica.’ I had seen the lieutenant admiring Yasheeda whenever she was leaving, so with my hands I made an outline in the air of a full-figured woman, exaggerating the size of her breasts and buttocks. The lieutenant and his men all started laughing.

‘Ahhh. ¡Su chica!’

I had them now. ‘Can you help me?’ I winked at him. ‘I can introduce you to her pretty amigas!’ I traced another curvaceous woman in the air, this time pulling her towards me and grunting when I got to the hips. They laughed even louder.

‘¡Qué bueno! Gringas. Just a moment.’ He went off to discuss it with the major. Things were looking good.

That was the first of many lies I told to the police in order to gain admission for foreign tourists to San Pedro prison. Yasheeda had always been friendly with the major, which probably helped with getting her friends in that time. However, later on, when travellers I had never seen before began turning up and asking to be let in to see me, it became more and more difficult to come up with new excuses. My family tree became more and more complicated as distant cousins, nieces and half-brothers with passports from Egypt, Iceland and Japan came to visit me. The guards must have joked among themselves about

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