How Peter Greste survived his time in prison.

Imagine being trapped in a foreign prison, where no one spoke your language, and where you had no bearing on what you’d done wrong.

That’s what happened to Australian journalist Peter Greste in 2013.

He spent 400 days unlawfully imprisoned in Tora prison in Cairo – one of the largest and oldest prisons in Egypt, where guards are notorious for torturing inmates.

The foreign correspondent has since won a Walkley, a Human Rights Medal and was a finalist for the Australian of the Year for his courage in the face of imprisonment.

And now, in the Fighting For Fair podcast, he details the conditions he faced, and the lengths he went to in order to halt his descent into madness.

You can listen, here:

“In that tiny concrete box, about two meters square, there were 16 guys. Now some of them had been in that space for the better part of six months, and frankly as far as I could see they were going crazy, they were going nuts.” he said.

“[The cell] was so tightly packed that I can remember feeling the pulse at least two guys next to me at any one point,” he said.

“After watching what was happening to the other guys I started to realise the greatest responsibility in prison was to manage my psychology…to stay mentally strong.”

After a time, Peter Greste was moved into solitary confinement – a small cell with nothing but a bed and a toilet, and scratchings on the wall.

“I realised it was a calendar. Someone had marked off the weeks. Five scratches vertically and two slashes across them. I remember seeing about 30 of those. And I realised I could well be in that concrete box, on my own,  for a very long time.” he said.

As his family, colleagues, the Australian Government and Amnesty International were mounting a campaign for his release, the Al Jazeera journalist was mapping out his days in his tiny concrete cell. With no books, no writing material, no watches to mark the time, he used the sun, shining through a small window at the back of the cell, as a sundial to work out the hours. 

"I would exercise for about an hour a day, I would meditate for about an hour a day. But of course still in that void, your mind starts to do crazy things."

Knowing he was innocent,  he started to believe he was in prison for other reasons. Karmic ones.

"Perhaps this is some way of the universe punishing me for all the bad things I've done over the course of my life. For all of the wrongs I’ve committed to other people for the hurt that I’ve done, perhaps for the string of broken relationships that I have left behind..." he said.

But it was the kindness of four Egyptian inmates, bloggers, activists, other Al Jazeera journalists that became his greatest lifeline. They would whisper to him through the cells, saying things like “be strong Mr. Peter”,“we’re with you Mr. Peter, you can make it through this”.

After 400 days the Egyptian authorities relented to the pressure, and he was released.

But it was a bittersweet moment for the journalist, who says he still harbours regret at having to leave behind others that were also wrongly imprisoned.

Listen to the full, incredible story on the Fighting For Fair podcast. Go to iTunes, here, or to the Mamamia podcast app.

To find all our podcasts in one place, please go here, where you'll also find any books written by the many Mamamia guests.