Book Review: No More Tomorrows, by Schapelle Corby and Kathryn Bonella

Phill, Garth - thanks for the book, friends.

I have been young and now am not too old
and I have seen the righteous man forsaken
his health, his honour and his quality taken.
That is not what we were formerly told.
--Edmund Blunden

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock
that shadows a dry thirsty land
He hideth my life in the depths of his love
and covers me there with his hand
and covers me there with his hand.
--traditional hymn

I am determined to keep mind, body and soul healthy. I don't know how long I'll be waiting for my day in court but I will not cause more anxiety, stress and pain to the people who love me and are doing everything they can to help me. I will never be able to repay or thank them enough, so I'll start with respect. RESPECT." -- Schapelle Corby, diary entry 4 November 2004

I'll start there, too. With RESPECT. Respect for a support community begun in Schapelle's homeland and still distnctively Australian but which has expanded to welcome foreigners like me, illuminating Schapelle's 'bloody long tunnel' for as long as it takes. Respect for Schapelle's incredible family, standing by her through the storm, enduring with equal graciousness the trickle of government support and the cataract of media sensationalism. Respect for her co-author, journalist Kathryn Bonella, who does her job only too well - keeping her own personality in the background and leaving no barrier between us and Schapelle, experiencing her story in linear time as if we are staring out through the bars of Kerobokan Prison with her. Respect most of all for the gallant and gentle one herself, daring all to tell her story before it is finished, allowing us to see her vulnerability while seemingly unaware of her strength.

Different people have different reactions to a book like this of course; I have had supporters tell me they read it almost in one sitting and others who said they had to put it down for days at a time, both of which I completely understand. For a book so unavoidably harrowing in parts that before two Aussie friends sent it as a gift I had tried to avoid reading it at all, my own first impression was how understated it seemed. The endless catalog of horrors is treated unflinchingly but with with no more detail than is needed to make it clear; there is no sensationalism for its own sake. There are some awful descriptions of the unhygienic conditions everywhere at Kerobokan, from baby rats in her shoes to carelessness with sanitary napkins by her cellmates to the toxic mosquito infested pool she was sometimes made to clean as punishment, but she describes her reactions honestly and matter-of-factly and moves on. The book is not a long argument for her ( obvious) innocence. You could fill several pages outlining the many UN criminal code violations in Schapelle's show trial and some intrepid supporters have done so, but Schapelle spends a few paragraphs highlighting the obvious idiocies in the prosecution's case, and the failure to do the most elementary tests, and leaves it at that.

Schapelle's story is her own and people who wish to cast her as Nelson Mandela or Joan of Arc will be disappointed. She is not the poster girl for Australia, or injustice, or Christianity. You can sense her exasperation at attempts to idealize her in her caption to one photo showing her crying in a holding cell - "I'm not praying. I really don't have anywhere else to put my hands - they're cuffed." Her reticence concerning her faith is explained partly by the people who attended church with her only for the opportunity to get a covert cell phone camera shot which they could sell, or of the prison pastor who baptized her in jail and then rushed to sell the story to the newspapers. Her real and deep commitment however is shown by her diary entry describing the "bashing" by the guards of an American prisoner caught trying to escape and her attempts to help " ...they won't let Gabriel go to a hospital...I went back to my section and paid the guard to use her mobile - with a friendly smile I told her I was calling my sister. I quickly told Merc what was happening and to call the Australian consulate and the Red Cross...couldn't sleep at all, spent the night crying and praying. The next morning I found out that Gabriel had stitches. He's now in isolation - the tower of the bombers. I went to church . Walking past the tower I yelled out, 'Thinking about you and praying for you." She describes the endless betrayals and apparent friendships of those who wished to profit from her misery with less bitterness than we would believe possible, even with a sort of desperate humor. Her chapter on her self-described "white knight" celebrity supporters ( cell-phone businessmen from Australia who invited themselves into her life, supposedly to help) reads like a poorly written and abandoned script for Twilight Zone. The reader stares in stark incredulity as Schapelle describes the endless pressure and the ridiculous demands - she had to explain to them that (1)she did not wish to write a song about her experiences (2)she was not amused by letters to the Australian Prime Minister and Indonesian President, published in the newspaper as being from her, which she did not write but suspected them of writing, for more publicity, and (3) she did not wish to sign an agreement giving them half the royalties from the presumed eventual book/movie about her life. With "friends" like that, you can't blame Schapelle for being reluctant to trust people. You wonder, rather, why she talks to anyone outside her family at all.

Schapelle throughout does not pretend to be strong when she isn't or to understand when she doesn't. Her description of one act of kindness at the interim holding prison at Polda, beautiful in its simplicity, shows her quiet courage and unassuming character as well as anything can. I'll quote it in full because once we leave the quick summary of her happy childhood in the early chapters, this is the only soft oasis for the reader to land in a book that is otherwise almost all nightmare, all inferno.

"Very early one morning a guard came and 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 rushed over with a huge smile on my face. It gave me such a calm feeeling 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 had become so precious."

photo by jhuff6 at flickr.com,

used with her kind permission

We are left with the image not of a saint or a symbol but an individual, precious in God's sight and loved for who she is. In our instant gratification , "this-is-boring -let's -change-the-channel culture, the book strikes an awkward note. We are waiting for the happy ending, the neat little wrap-up at the end. But this monstrous injustice is still going on, and we serious supporters are in a constant struggle against the bitterness like that in the top quote in this post ( Blunden was describing World War One, in which he had fought at the front) , and in a continuous effort to keep our energy focused, our anger controlled, our tears silent. Those of us who have followed this case online from the beginning ( Oct. 8, 2004) lor like me from the first verdict ( May 27, 2005) are in awe of Schapelle's own faith and courage, and the dedication of her stronger supporters, like the strongest one pictured below. Some new Americans on the support forum have said they have had trouble following this case in the news ( unsurprising in this the most provincial country on earth, with the world's shortest attention span) and were unpleasantly surprised to learn how little has changed in four years. For them and for all other men of goodwill who have never heard of Schapelle, there is no better introduction than her book.