Iโm so sick of talking about self-mastery… and the redemptive power of writing… and race. Ugh, race. I wrote a 140,000-word novel on the subject and still feel no closer to closure. How about Trump? Anybody wanna argue some more about Trump? Such an easy target. Lately, Iโve been noticing how all my essays adapt this stuffy, professorial tone. Like Iโve got it all figured out. Weird how I do that. Especially since Iโm writing them from my bunk which, letโs be honest, is a clear indicator that I donโt know jack.
There is, however, one subject that Iโm fluent in: Prison life. After two long bids and a quarter-century behind the razor wire, I feel like I have a PhD in this violent little microcosm of civilization. Since itโs the anniversary of my last arrest (March 2005) and my time is finally winding down, I figured Iโd write about some of the people who populate my world… Starting with Mustafa.
Crazy name, right? Mustafa is his Muslim name. His real name is Josh. And heโs the smartest person I know. I can guess what youโre thinking: The yard is not exactly a Mensa convention. Agreed. Still, I think youโd be surprised.
I used to walk the track with a dude who taught literature at a state university. And every compound has a few former doctors and lawyers that walk among the uneducated and gang affiliated.
Not that all gang members are uneducated. Josh was a gang member. He was 16 when he got locked up. And thatโs what young Latino men are expected to do when they come to prison, join gangs. So he did. It didnโt hurt his rรฉsumรฉ that heโd been boxing since he was 12 and was a technician with his hands. One of the first things you notice about him are the words โThug Lifeโ tattooed across his knuckles. So misleading…
At age 24, right around eight years into a mandatory 25-year prison sentence, he found himself alone in a confinement cell, hungry, lonely, miserable, cut off from his brothers, cut off from his family, cut off from the world. His only company was a paperback someone had left under the mat, a book on the Jewish religion called The Road Less Traveled. He read it. Then he prayed the prayer that most of us humans pray in our darkest hour. There was no bolt of lightning, no sun breaking free from the clouds, no clichรฉ calm that fell over him. But if there was a watershed moment in his life, a pivot point between the unconscious gangbanger he was and the brilliant young man I call my friend today, that night was it.
The way back was gradual. Ground was gained incrementally. He spent two weeks in his bunk healing from the beating he took upon renouncing his affiliation. Then he went to the chapel. Ironic that a confirmed Catholic who found God via a Jewish book in confinement finally settled on Islam as his spiritual path.
But itโs not jailhouse religion that makes him unique, itโs what heโs accomplished. Heโs now a GED tutor with an unbelievable success rate. Once his students have demonstrated a firm grasp of the required criteria, he pushes them even further. He teaches them physics. Heโs teaching ME physics. In addition to English and Spanish, heโs fluent in Italian and is now tackling Japanese. But the coolest thing about Josh is his ability to impersonate any inmate or guard on the compound. Heโs one of the funniest people Iโve ever met. Keeps me rolling. Keeps my time moving.
It couldโve gone either way. A 16-year-old gangbanger with a 25-year mandatory sentence does not have much incentive to evolve. Not in a beneficial direction at least. But against all odds, Josh has.
Iโm proud to call him my friend.
(Next up, Eli. A half-Senegalese, half-Jamaican, 21-year-old surfer with the sunny demeanor of a Walmart greeter and the hardheadedness of an eighth grader.)
You’re blessed to have a friend like Josh. And he is doubly blessed to have a friend like you. It seems to me, anyway.
Even in a place where the dregs of humanity are assumed to congregate, gold being refined exists.
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