Dear Gareth
In the course of two and a half years l have got to know you well enough to understand what your life is all about. Your story and its ramifications, trials, terrors, tribulations, temptations, truths and untruths told so searingly honest has been a veritable education to me, who thought l had one.
It is a tale of profit and loss, courage and endurance such as l have not encountered in all literature.
Having covered most of the journals there still many questions l want to ask, but you must be so tired of them by now that l must ask them after my work is almost done.
It is a modern story of gathering and scattering according to seasons the is recorded in Ecclesiastes.
Most impressive is the underlying faith you have despite the hostile environment regarding that.
I hope l live long enough to complete this so that justice to your cause can be done.The journals map the route you have taken through family, friendships, education, army, profession, business, life experience, need, compensation, fortunes gained and lost, freedom won and lost, and existential angst, trauma and pain in the very core of your being. At this point you are surrounded by positive people all working in your cause.
These appear as bright stars in a darkening universe, with Gavin, Carlos, Nick, Kim and Yianni, Kim S and Shireen prominent among them.
The trouble in Kim S's life caused by her son's erratic educational progress and flirtation with harmful substances has occasioned intense night prayers in sleep and out of sleep from me.
They see a psycholgist today.
Then Shireen's trauma that night has similarly brought about night prayers through broken sleep and quiet awakenings. My own mother, an imperious lady with whom l had a strained and difficult relationship, would say l can't live people's lives for them. True, but one of my characteristics is empathy. I suppose it is this feature l could use to train emotional casualties and social misfits at school through drama the rapy.
But now all that is gone, and here l am still doing what l did all those years ago. Healing through story telling. Some folk, like the two ladies recently introduced, are capable of great and vivid articulation. This is what becomes so clear to me - all possess a strong presencd, an incisive style of relationship and recording of their stories so vividly that l am in awe of such reality and what l must learn still. There can be no substitute for real life when it comes to writing. You have it, l have it, they have it. All as individual as a fingerprint and as universal as a galaxy of stars.You will know then there us not a page in your collected writings that does not affect a visceral response in the reader. Because your experience is so real it must reach a wider readership. I am only a courier. TS Eliot, one of my favourite poets, says in Little Gidding something to the effect that after all we have experienced we arrive at the place where we began and know it for the first time.This is indeed what has happened to me. I just hope l don't run around in circles like a marble in a revolving cup.
Yours, as always, in the cause of free spirits
AXEL B
Here’s wishing you a safe countdown to your release and your freedom.
I know the challenges are going to be great, but at least you will have a chance to recover from the trauma and the endless waiting, not to mention the dislocation of your life. You have indeed been blessed by your friends and your family during this period.
The most important thing that I have gathered from this saga is that you will have left behind you a number of sincere friendships and a fine example of selflessness. Your transition from bewildered and frantic prisoner to a balanced and well-controlled inmate may have left a lasting impression of both those with whom you were incarcerated and those who incarcerated you. That I believe is the central tone of the writing. There is still much to write yet and edit. So again patience becomes essential.
10th aug 2018 book progress
Some of the work I have done has required research as you know, and this was not easy, nor was it pleasant. Circumstances may have changed, but human nature stays essentially the same. There have been times when I have shared your trauma in the second and the third degree to the extent of needing anti-depressants myself. Compassion is an essential sentiment, but can be costly.
If anything, I have learned never to take anything for granted, especially the goodwill of others and the freedom surrounding one alone and in company. I shall continue working in your interests (i.e. writing) as long as it may take.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Axel and Ruby" <axelruby@gmail.com>
Date: Feb 28, 2018 7:49 AM
Subject: Upping the stakes
To: "Gareth Rutherford" <rutherfordgareth@gmail.com>
Cc:
Dear Gareth
It comes as no surprise that your stance on your innocence in the course of the last ten years has not changed. The persons responsible for your present circumstances have benefitted largely by your sentence and incarceration, and most of them are unchallenged.
It is my belief that the work l have been doing over the last year has not been in vain. It slows down then it picks up pace as l research the background of each section.
The negatives have been the climax of the setuo, arrest, trial and incarceration. The positives have been your assimilation into a new and potentially hostile environment which may have (and may yet) altered your thinking and attitude. You have made circumstantial friendships and strong interpersonal connections. You have adapted yourself to the milieus of society and faith within the context you find yourself. You have earned the respect of your jailers. People far and wide have supported your cause. All of us outside know, love and care for you, but have been overwhelmed by the fact that despite your innocence, you have been kept inside relentless of the injustice of your sentence. Finally, the damage done to your family is unconscionable. That alone deserves the utmost compassion and the condemnation if those who pinned this charge in you. I know about taquiya, and jihad methods, and know it is embedded in the regional faith. I have no issues to discuss in that regard since it is a regional belief, and particular to its people. It does become very frightening when such principles are deployed to entrap and destroy the worthy and the innocent to negative advantage in the extention of an imperial and supremacist dream.
Small man you may be in the eyes of the general public who know little about about you. But to us you stand tall as a giant in spirit and principle.
I continue to write and hope l shall complete my work to facilitate your freedom.
Yours
APB.
Just thought you might be interested to see this letter by my ghostwriter.. Axel in simonstown
