My heart skipped a beat as my hand felt the empty left pocket of my trousers. Where was my wallet? Could it possibly have fallen out of my pocket onto the seat? I felt around the tattered seat of the Jakarta bus. It did not take long before I was forced to accept the obvious. I had at last fallen victim to my long-time adversary - the pickpocket. As a frequent traveller, I had been quite proud of my record in foiling these predators, but this time I had met my match. Although well aware of the Jakarta transport system's reputation as a haven for pickpockets, I had let down my guard at the crucial moment when I joined the crush at the front door of the bus.
My first encounter with a pickpocket was in Seville, twenty years ago, when I was travelling around Europe with my wife, Yoong, and two young sons. We were on a local bus, returning from a day of sightseeing, and it was standing room only. A decently dressed man smiled and nodded at us and patted little Kit on the head. At the same time he was attempting to remove the contents of my left pocket. As that contents included my left hand, he did not succeed, and he soon alighted empty-handed, unless, of course, he had found easier targets in the meantime. He appeared to be working alone, which later experiences suggest is not the usual modus operandi.
Pickpockets will try to exploit those situations in which potential victims are at their most vulnerable. Some of the popular stalking grounds are airports and train-stations, where disoriented new arrivals are in abundance. In public transport, any amount of luggage in excess of a day pack is a clear indication of vulnerability.
In 1985, we were on a Round-the-World trip. After a crime-free three weeks in China, we had attempted to fly from Hong Kong to Paris via Dubai, but we had missed our connecting flight and had ended up in London instead. The airline had kindly put us up in the Airport Hilton until the next available flight to Paris later the same day. We had arranged to meet my parents, who were doing their Round-the-World trip in the opposite direction, and we had to get to the American Express office where they had left a message for us explaining how to find them.
So there we were, the four of us, on the Paris Metro, trying to get to American Express before closing time, standing room only again, surrounded by our bags, and, I soon realised, surrounded also by a very interesting group of young Arabic gentlemen. Of course they were doing their best not to look like a group at all, and to appear as individual commuters who had nothing to do with each other. The most striking of the gang was a tall slim beanpole of a man, who was leaning back against the door in a very relaxed manner, looking like Morocco's answer to Bruce Spence. He had extraordinarily long arms and, in particular, long thin fingers which seemed to have a life of their own, as I noticed they were busily exploring the pockets of the other passengers, mine included. Somehow he managed to look far away from the rest of us, in his own little world, while, in fact, he was engaged in a very real way with the people around him. He would have put Roald Dahl's 'fingersmith' to shame.
Having come straight from the airport I had made the mistake of not wearing my money belt, and it was still in my left pocket, containing our passports, air-tickets and all our cash and travellers' cheques for the remaining four months of our trip. My left thumb, therefore, was firmly hooked into my pocket, and the rest of my hand clamped against our valuables. This did not deter the nonchalant beanpole however. He had expertly hooked the strap of the money belt around a finger and was slowly but surely sliding it out of my pocket. I clutched it harder, pushing it back down where it belonged, and the finger disappeared instantly, as though it had never been anywhere near my pocket. I looked at his face, but he was gazing absently at something at the far end of the carriage.
For a while I thought the incident may have taken place in my jet-lagged imagination, until I noticed a watch being passed quickly and quietly from a long thin hand into the palm of an accomplice. A small purse also surreptitiously changed hands. One of the other passengers seemed to have become aware that he had lost something and made some kind of accusation to the beanpole, who protested his innocence and held up his hands to show they were empty. This exchange did not appear to be noticed by the other passengers. I dared not speak. Who knew how many were involved and what kind of weapons they could be carrying? And in any case I told myself my French would not have been adequate to cope with the situation. I endured the rest of the long ride in guilty silence, trying unsuccessfully to signal to Yoong to take care in the unlikely event that she was carrying anything of value.
When we left the train the gang remained in the carriage waiting for more customers. No doubt they had initially targeted us, obvious tourists laden with luggage, and found we were not such easy marks after all. But they were clearly not going to leave empty-handed.
I looked quickly around for a policeman. Maybe if I pointed at the carriage and yelled "Voleurs des poches!" or something like that the message might get through. But there were no likely authority figures in sight, and we had about five minutes to find the American Express office.
We did manage to get my parents' message just in time and found their hotel where they had booked a room for us. The pickpocketing attempt at least gave us a story to tell them, but then they were able to top it with their report of how a thief had snatched my mother's handbag in Barcelona and they had actually managed to retrieve it after a dramatic chase ending with the villain in the arms of the police.
In some ways the Paris incident was the most dangerous in my long career of avoiding pickpockets, because normally my valuables are securely tucked away in my money-belt. I generally keep just enough money for the day in my wallet. But my experience in the Budapest subway some years later was more frightening at the time.
Yoong and I were waiting for a train when she accidentally dropped a piece of paper on the platform. A well-dressed gentleman immediately picked it up and handed it to her politely. This should have alerted us to the fact that we were being watched.
As soon as we got onto the train, there was an instant crush of people, an artificially created peak-hour type jam. I was surrounded by a seemingly impenetrable mass of bodies, all men wearing suits and ties, including the kind gentleman who had retrieved the paper, standing tightly packed together while I could see that the rest of the carriage was not crowded at all. Yoong had managed to get through to a seat further down the carriage. It was obviously not her they were targeting. She was calling to me to join her, and she was receiving signals from nearby local passengers that I was in danger.
Even before the train began to move I could feel the hands beginning to explore and decided that I would have to throw politeness to the wind. I gave a sudden push and managed to break through the linked arms of two of the men. They jostled me hard as I made my escape, as though they were punishing me for my rudeness in rejecting their company, but they knew they had failed and did not pursue me. I moved with relief into a seat vacated by a sympathetic local, and a few quick pats assured me that my wallet and belt were still intact. In such a squash even a seemingly secure money-belt could have been whisked away from under my clothing.
Okay, I've never experienced the mustard trick, where you accidentally have mustard squirted on your clothing or fake bird-droppings land on you, and a kind stranger helps to clean it off while his accomplice picks your pocket. I've never been approached by a group of gypsy children holding newspapers, excitedly pointing out the headline to me while the contents of my pocket quickly vanish. Or had a gentleman drop some coins in front of me and stoop to pick them up from between my legs while his partner sneaks up behind me. Nor have I had a gypsy woman walk towards me with her baby, then trip and fall forward, tossing the baby into the air for me to catch, only to have my pocket picked while heroically saving the child. In fact, I have some doubts that anybody has really experienced this one.
But I did regard myself as something of a veteran in outwitting such pocket-picking parasites. So it was a shock to my ego when I recently found myself minus a wallet on a Jakarta bus.
Buses in Jakarta are incredible. No matter how crowded they get, there is always room for hawkers to get on and off selling cold drinks, food, books, screwdrivers, stuffed toys or snake medicine. Sometimes a performer will get on and vocalise, to the accompaniment of anything from a simple tambourine to a hideously amplified home-made “guitar”. After five minutes of something akin to singing, the hat will be passed around and the performer will alight and board a bus going in the opposite direction. At the next stop a hawker will get on and deliver an energetic sales-pitch before going around the bus pushing whatever wonder-product he is peddling. I found all this a lot of fun, except for the times when I didn’t have a seat, as I was too tall to stand up straight in these buses.
But it wasn't any of these novelties that distracted me on this occasion. It was simply someone taking advantage of the crush that always takes place getting on and off. Yoong later put it down to the fact that I was travelling alone and that I tend to be less competent without her to look after me.
I did a mental calculation of the contents of my wallet. The biggest loss was my Singapore transport card, which still had about twenty dollars stored on it. Apart from that I had about eight dollars in Rupiah. All my other money was in the belt, along with my passport and air-ticket. Although I lost nothing of value (apart from my wife's photo), being robbed was a rather unpleasant feeling.
I consoled myself with thinking how disappointed my assailant would be with his spoils. A Singapore transport card would probably be of little use to him, even if he knew what it was. And despite the unpleasantness of finding oneself the victim of an anonymous assailant, it is far preferable to being held up at gunpoint by drug addicts in a big American city.
While not quite the world's oldest profession, pickpocketing has no doubt been around since we humans started wearing garments incorporating enclosures that enabled us to carry our possessions around with us. There is little the authorities can do to discourage it. Certainly they can put up warning signs in the most notorious danger spots. But then, I tend to automatically put my hand on my left pocket when I see a notice saying "Beware of Pickpockets". I've heard that pickpockets like to hang around these signs watching for this unconscious indication of the whereabouts of our valuables. The best solution I have found, short of staying at home and not travelling past the front gate, is a well-hidden and inaccessible money belt. And, now that I no longer believe in my own invulnerability, I always try to carry even less in my wallet than I did that fateful day in Jakarta.