. . . I usually awaken at the sound of the guard's clanking keys as he does his rounds through the unit. Ever since an inmate committed suicide down here a few weeks ago, rounds have become more frequent to ensure nobody else follows suit. Isolation can be quite difficult to cope with, and some simply cannot.
After two weeks, I finally became accustomed to waking up in a prison cell. At first, my surroundings - the metal sink/ toilet, the steel bed frame, the cold temperature, the constant clanking of keys and shackle chains coming from the hallway - served as reality checks as to where I was after I expected to see the familiar sights of my bedroom. This is no longer the case. I rub my eyes; looking around, my cell is pitch black except for the pale orange flow of the floodlights that dot the perimeter of the prison, faintly creeping in through the narrow window that looks out towards the razor-wired fence that customarily surrounds most prisons around the world.
My first order of business is to find out the time, since watches, clocks, calendars, etc. are all forbidden down here. I rush out of bed to catch the guard before he leaves the unit, calling out to him from behind my cell door: "Hey, C.O. (correctional officer)! Time?" "Four." Perfect, as it leaves me a good hour and a half to pray before Fajr time comes in. After being used to depending on an alarm clock to wake up. I've managed to wake up early nearly every morning and been able to take advantage of the well-known pre-dawn blessings, thanks to Allah, without one here.
After performing wudu', I begin to pray. I don't stop until I hear the guard make three more rounds - my signal that the hour and a half until Fajr time has passed (each round is 30 min).
Thus begins my days as a prisoner here at the Plymouth Correctional Facility. An essential part of staying strong in prison was to first establish a personalized and stimulating schedule for my days and nights to do away with the routine and bland pattern of life in here. In his memoir, Nelson Mandela says: "Prison life is about routine: each day like the one before; each week like the one before it, so that the months and years blend into each other... Losing a sense of time is an easy way to lose one's grip and even one's sanity." So, this helps in distinguishing one hour from the other, one day from the other, maintaining a sense of connection to reality. The second aspect of having your own personal schedule is to maintain your own humanity and individuality. Again, Mandela says: " Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality - all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are... Ultimately, we had to create our own lives in prison." And this is exactly what I am experiencing here. Prison, I've found, is like a vacuum. It sucks away whatever life, relations, pleasures, tasks, concerns, etc. you had on the outside and replaces it with nothing - nothing except what you decide to replace it with. I've found that the main struggle in prison is to avoid being sucked into that void, which is the very nature and essence of the place! A writer to me summed it up quite well, saying: "... the whole point of the constrictions that the prison puts on people is to erase part of - if not all - their identities to consume them as part of an institutionary machine which rotates on exact hours in exact locations. Forcing out choices mean forcing out of personalities and ideas. Thus, within the prison system, that makes sense, because this is the goal..."
The challenge is to counter this within the confines of the narrow limitations that my conditions here force upon me. I realized early on that since I had very little in here, I would have to learn to make the best of it. I would have to learn to extract every last ounce of benefit, pleasure, and strength from whatever was available. As they say, I would have to take (sour) lemons and make lemonade. This is a maximum security prison, which means it's not like in the movies where I can go outside to an open yard to lift weights, play baseball, or work in a metal shop. Rather, every minute aspect of life here is incredibly supervised and regulated. Strip searches are constant. Shake downs are random. I am restricted to limitations in my daily affairs that are often devoid of logic, to the extent that a plastic bag used to collect trash in our cells is considered to be contraband and is forbidden. Nothing comes in or goes out except regular mail. From the moment I was booked to the moment I will be released ( O Allah, hasten it), I will never set foot out in the open without a barrier between me and the sky. Even when I leave the prison for a court hearing, I am loaded into the van in the prison garage and am unloaded in the court garage, fully shackled the entire time
This all applies to general population prisoners, but these population units are quite relaxed compared to Unit G. Unit G (the isolation unit) is a prison within the prison, and this is where I've been since first arriving. I am on lockdown 23 hrs. each day, which means I'm let out for an hour a day (population gets eight hrs.); I'm in solitary (population inmates have cellmates); my hour outside my cell is spent alone as well. So, it is an existence devoid of substantial human contact (population inmates have 150 other inmates in their respective units to socialize with for the duration of those eight hours). "Recreation time" consists of the freedom to take a shower, make a collect call to preapproved numbers, or walk around the unit. This is the way it is ever day, 365 days a year. الحمد لله
What does a person have to do to merit being kept down here? Some are down here for temporary discipline time for assaulting staff of fellow inmates, possession of homemade weapons, or generally exhibiting violent behavior such that they are a danger to others. Some are here to be protected from others because they fall into one of the three categories most hated & despised by even the worst criminals: rapists, child molesters, and informants. Inmates who fall into one of these three categories are universally hated across the prison, and are more often than not physically attacked, and I have seen the scars & injuries to prove it. These inmates are under what we call 'Protective Custody,' and one such inmate was just brought in last week. He is accused of raping a five year-old girl, being arrested for it, released on bail, and then raping a three year old girl. Needless to say, he is not very well-liked, especially with those who themselves have young children. Even though these guys are brought down for their safety, the other inmates here have come up with some rather creative ways of making life miserable for them. More on that later, in sha' Allah. Then you have guys like me who are here with the vague excuse that my being in isolation will "contribute to the safe and effective functionality of the facility," even though I've never been violent or involved in violence of any kind throughout my life. Admitted murderers, arsonists, home invaders, and armed robbers walk around in population; about two years ago, there was a guy brought in who'd killed a homeless man, cut off his hands, took them to a local bar, and proudly displayed them to all around him. He was not considered too dangerous to remain in population...
So, it is through these lenses that my experiences here are to be perceived. This is an environment where your senses and perceptions cannot help but to be altered and sensitized.
... I lay awake after praying, waiting for breakfast to arrive. The guards wake everyone up by slamming open the beanholes (small slits in our cell doors) through which they slide in all of our meals. I eat every meal alone, in my cell. After breakfast, I pray Fajr, and then proceed to the window to await one of the few true pleasures I have come to enjoy in here: watching the Sunrise. See, I spent the first 63 days here in cell #103. Cell #103 had the misfortune of having its window blocked by the gray wall of the adjacent wing of the unit. This meant that there was almost no access to sunlight. Furthermore, the cell was directly underneath the unit's air vent, which for some odd reason was blasting cold air 24/7 despite us being in the midst of a series of snow storms! Needless to say, it was an unpleasant experience to be locked in a cell, three paces by four, for 23 hrs. a day with no sunlight (there is no light switch, and cell lights don't come on until late afternoon), in near arctic temperatures! I had my eye on cell #108, which was in the far corner of the unit and that I could always see immersed in sunlight. For months, I put in written request after request to be moved into it, since it was usually empty. I came to realize that the prison functions like the military: very hierarchical in structure where little gets done unless you speak directly to those on top. So I was able to get my request to the unit captain, who is actually a decent individual who has a reputation for being true to his word. Later that day, i was buzzed in 103: "Mehanna, pack up your ★#@*. You're going to 108."
When I entered the cell, I was so overjoyed that I immediately performed a prostration of gratitude (sajdat shukr) to Allah. Remember what I said: in here, your senses and perceptions are altered. Your balance of what brings your mood up/ down changes. At that moment, I couldn't believe that I was finally in a cell with sunshine, where I didn't have to wear four layers of clothes to keep warm, and where, best of all, I had a perfect view of the sky & surrounding trees. I've always loved to be outdoors and enjoy nature, so at that moment, I felt like the most fortunate man on Earth. no more gray cement wall in my face 24 hrs. a day...
So, as I have done every morning since, I stand at the window and just stare. I stare at the trees, I stare at the dark blue horizon turning pink as the Sun slowly crawls up. I stare and wait patiently, anticipating one of the few times for me to lay eyes on the Sun in over two months ( I had seen it twice before when I was allowed into the cage). Finally, there it was. In this world of concrete, metal, and glass; this cesspool of vulgarity and filth devoid of any warmth, freedom, or beauty; in this bastion of captivity that suffocates the dignity of man, I was witnessing a blessing and relief. I cannot justly describe what I felt as the vivid colors of this scene - Sun, sky, clouds, trees - painted themselves before my eyes. This was a sweet reminder of life - it was something in common with life back home, and that made it all the sweeter. As I mentioned at the beginning: "I would have to learn to extract every last ounce of benefit, pleasure, and strength from whatever was available." It is at this time every day that I feel much khusu', and thus take the chance to engage in dhikr and du'a'. From the first day in that cell that I witnessed this simple, credible, daily occurrence that I now saw as anything but simple, I gained a new perspective on the verse of Surat Ibrahim, v. 32: {"And He has made the Sun and the Moon, both following their orbits, to be of service to you."}
I also take this daily event as a glad tiding and reminder that after every period of darkness, there must come a light so bright and overwhelming that darkness and its forces are nowhere to be found.
As the Sun fully appears, I turn my sight to the trees and land beyond the razor-wired fence. They have their own story to tell. I bring my mind back 400 years in the past, and I try to imagine the original inhabitants of this land as they traversed the very forests i am gazing at all those long centuries ago. See, the Mayflower landed here. Plymouth Rock is just a stone's throw from here. Plymouth Plantation, the earliest colony established in this region originally owned and inhabited by these Indian natives, is also very close by.
Whenever I look out at those forests that now lay silent, I try to imagine what those natives thought to themselves - if they had any idea at all what was about to befall them - upon first sighting these strange, foreign guests. I also think to myself that it was the descendants of these very guests who built the prison from which I now sit and pen these words.
The forests behind the razor-wired fence tell a story. It is a story that I'm not completely unfamiliar with.
(To be continued, إن شاء الله)
طارق مهنا
Tariq Mehanna
Friday 15th of Muharram 1431/
1st of January 2010