Midnight Express, book that spawned an Oliver Stone movie, has the real story of American hippie Billy Hayes' jailing in Turkey for drug smuggling
Billy Hayes co-wrote this book about how, as a naive American on the hippie trail, he was caught in Turkey and jailed for trying to smuggle drugs
When his sentence was converted to a life term he made a daring escape - though not by killing a prison warder as he does in Stone's movie
Billy Hayes lived out one of the worst nightmares of anyone on the 1970s hippie trail: during a random drug search at Istanbul's airport, he was picked up for smuggling hashish and jailed for four years in Turkey.
One of the best-known books on doing time in a foreign prison, Midnight Express earned almost instant cult status when it was released in 1977. Hayes' story is dramatic and spawned plenty of spinoffs - a movie and even a ballet - and while many people think they know what happened to Hayes in that Turkish prison, you have to go back to the book for the truth.
For a naïve young man from Long Island, a Turkish prison came as a serious shock when he was sentenced in 1970 and he had to learn fast how to survive. Ironically, there was no shortage of drugs on the inside, consumed by prisoners and guards alike. Just weeks from his release, his term was changed to a life sentence - and that's when he decided he had to escape.
Smuggling dope out of Turkey was stupid, getting caught was even less smart, but Hayes showed some daring initiative when it came to fleeing: he stole a boat, rowed to the mainland and escaped to Greece, then to the US. His father had gone bankrupt trying to get him out of prison and he returned home filled with remorse.
When freelance writer William Hoffer suggested collaborating on a book about his ordeal, he saw it as a way of repaying some of the money.