Little Omar broke away from his mother and ran to Ghassan.
“Baba” detached the boy from his leg, picked Omar up, gave him a big hug, and kissed him. Omar is the youngest of Ghassan and Majida’s six children. “He is a special child,” Ghassan wrote to me, “who was born with Down Syndrome. Since his birth he has been the joy and the focus of the entire family.”
“We are sorry, the boy doesn’t understand,” Majida tried to explain, as Ghassan reluctantly let his son go, and she led the child back to the visitors’ side of the room, but the guard didn’t let her finish.
“But you do understand, don’t you? Hold the boy tighter next time!”
The room was silent, all eyes on Majida and Omar as they joined the rest of the visitors waiting to leave.
The officer filed a report against Ghassan. He was found guilty of not responding to directions given by a guard. His punishment was six months with no family visits.
It is not easy to accept being in prison, and certainly not when one is innocent, and especially hard to accept being held for months on end in solitary confinement. For the HLF-5 this was a recurring thing. According to a description I received from Ghassan, he was confined to a “small room, seven by eight foot with a bunk bed, a sink, toilet, shower, and a small metal table adjacent to the wall with a small stool attached to it.” That is the entire living space, and more often than not two inmates share it. “There is a six- by five-inch glass window located seven feet from the floor.” That is all the natural light the inmates receive. The cell has a 200-watt light, but the light switch is outside the cell and is controlled by the guards. Another 40-watt light is always on, day and night.
Ghassan and Majida with Omar
One has to wonder how a human being maintains sanity in such conditions. But Shukri, Ghassan, Mufid, Abdulrahman, and Mohammad all used the inhumane conditions in which they were placed as a tool to further their religious and spiritual practice.
There are few sentences that devout Muslims utter that don’t end with either “Alhamdu lillah” (“thank God”) or “Insha allah” (“God willing”). Whether someone is sick or all is well, Alhamdu lillah, Alhamdu lillah. This is because Islam means total devotion, complete surrender, and gratitude to the one and only almighty God and to all that He offers, good and bad. When God presents us with challenges, even with enormous difficulty and pain, we thank him for choosing us, for believing in us, and for helping us believe that we are up to the task.
As it is written in the Quran, second Sura, verse 286:
La yukalifu Allah nafsan, ila was’aha –
God would not burden a soul with a burden that is beyond its capacity.
And so believers accept the burden and carry it with devotion.
“The first day I was imprisoned in Seagoville Detention Center I was placed in the SHU, Special Housing Unit, which is another name for solitary confinement, for six months.”
No explanation was given as to why Ghassan was placed in solitary at all, let alone for six whole months. But Ghassan used the opportunity to embark on a special task, a task that is dear to all devout Muslims: “I made the decision to memorize the Quran in Arabic. This is the daily task that enlightens most of my day.”
Muslims believe that the Quran was revealed to the Prophet Mohammad through the angel Gibril, or Gabriel, and that Mohammad recited it countless times until he memorized it. Then the prophet transmitted the Quran orally to his companions and they also memorized it and so on through the decades and centuries.
But prison rules don’t allow inmates to bring a Quran with them to the SHU, so Ghassan asked the prison guards to get him a copy. The guards informed him that there was an official request form he had to complete and that the form would be delivered to the prison chaplain, who comes every Sunday to the SHU area. Ghassan would have to wait five days to get a copy of the Quran.
“But I had been to this same place before when I was arrested with my brothers in 2002 and then in 2004 with the other HLF defendants.” There were detainees there who remembered Ghassan and who knew Ghassan’s brothers. “Through my tiny cell window I waved to another inmate and asked for a copy of the Quran.” Within a few minutes a guard brought Ghassan a copy of the Quran and immediately he began the memorization. “The Quran immediately filled me with hope and comfort.”
Ghassan starts his day two to three hours before sunrise by performing wudu, or ablution, a meticulous ritual of cleansing the body. He washes his hands, rinses his mouth and nose, washes his face, then his arms and both feet. “Then I spread a white folded sheet and stand to pray, facing towards the northeast, the direction of Mecca.”
In the beginning, Ghassan had to pray by reading from the Quran, having only memorized about ten pages. In spite of being moved from prison to prison and the enormous difficulty of adjusting to each new location, he was always able to find a suitable, quiet place to pursue what he refers to as his “noble task.”
In US Federal prisons, breakfast is served at 6:00 a.m.
I would eat my breakfast, made up of cereal, milk, and a piece of fruit. Then I would take a warm shower and sit on the top bunk, as near as possible to the window and start my daily journey of memorizing the Quran, slowly repeating the verses one by one until I memorized a whole page.
Prior to his incarceration he had memorized ten pages. By 2011, that number had grown to 285 pages, just short of half of the Quran. By 2016, he had memorized 90 percent.
An inmate in solitary confinement is supposed to receive one hour of outdoor recreation five days per week. During “recreation,” the inmates are placed in cages, similar to cages that used to house animals in a zoo before zoos realized that this was too cruel and developed living spaces for the animals that resembled their normal habitats.
This recreation hour is a chance for inmates to chat with other prisoners, albeit through metal cage walls. “Most of the time I would have the chance to go out only two to three times a week instead of five. They told me that there were not enough guards. I would use the one-hour recreation to walk fast and later I started jogging on the cement floor.” Ghassan had to buy a pair of sports shoes from the prison commissary. “I started jogging for twenty minutes, and each few days I added few additional minutes until I reached fifty minutes jogging at a time.”
Mufid, too, has learned to take advantage of his recreation time. “I learned a lot in prison,” he told me as we sat side by side in the visitation room. “I’m in good shape hamdulillah; maybe on the outside I would have been a diabetic, overweight, who knows. I work out two hours every day, except for Friday and Sunday. I watch what I eat. In this place if you don’t take care of yourself, you die, but I intend to be the fittest fifty-six-year-old in the prison.”
At around 10:30 a.m. lunch is served, which Ghassan says “is usually cold cuts, sardine, or tuna, or a microwaved TV lunch with meat and vegetables. After lunch I perform the noon prayer.”
After his noon prayer, Ghassan returns to memorizing the Quran. He told me that he would pace back and forth inside the small eight- by seven-foot cell, reciting over and over until his eyes would get tired and he had to stop and take a short nap. At 4:00 p.m., dinner is served, again a frozen microwaved meal served with a piece of fruit and wheat bread. After dinner Ghassan would pick up the Quran and continue where he left off. Then he would get ready for prayer once again, perform ablution followed by the afternoon, sunset, and the nightly prayers according to the schedule.
Recreation cages, SHU
Prayer usually takes ten minutes, but “I would usually prolong the prayer by reading more verses from the Quran and also perform additional prayers called Sunnah so it would take me half an hour to forty-five minutes all together.”
At one point Ghassan tried to convince the warden at Seagoville Prison that he was not a threat to anybody and should be allowed out of solitary confinement and into the general population. He reminded the warden that many detainees in the general population were familiar with his brothers who were detained there from December 2002 until October 2006. But the warden just repeated to Ghassan what had been written about him and his connections to terrorism.
During the almost four months of the first HLF trial, Ghassan was taken from his cell to court every day by US Marshals. “Every day my hands were placed in handcuffs in front of my waist with the black box added to restrict my movement.”
The “black box” is a handcuff cover which protects the handcuff keyhole and prevents the wearer from picking or tampering with any parts of the lock. It is situated between the hands forcing them in parallel positioning. A chain runs through the box and encircles the prisoner’s waist. The chain is tightened so that the prisoner’s restrained hands are pulled back against the stomach.
The black box
Ghassan’s legs were shackled with a metal cuff around each leg, joined by a chain. “I had to go through this process when leaving the Seagoville Detention Center to go to court and then the same thing on my way back.”
He had to go through the same ordeal during the two and half months of the second trial as well.
After the end of the first trial, Ghassan was taken to the Oklahoma City Transfer Center. “When I got there, I was immediately separated from the other inmates and housed in solitary confinement. Again, the first thing I did was to ask for a copy of the Quran to continue my task of reviewing and memorizing.” Once again, upon asking the guard for a copy of the Quran, Ghassan was told to write a note to the chaplain, who would be coming around pushing a cart with Bibles and few copies of the Quran. “It was a huge relief for me. The chaplain handed me a copy of the Quran and a sheet showing the prayer times for Oklahoma City.” The chaplain also showed Ghassan the direction of northeast so he could pray toward Mecca as required by Islam.
Islam has been a source of more than merely spiritual support for Ghassan. The same principles that drove HLF to care for the people of Palestine also granted him care when he needed it.
Between the two trials, Ghassan was sent to be held in Atlanta, Georgia. For once, he was not held in solitary confinement but released into the general population.
“I was […] escorted to the living room unit,” he explained, after being processed into the prison at nearly 11:00 p.m. It was a very cold night and the temperature dropped below zero. The lights were all off except for a few dim bulbs. The guard unlocked the room that was assigned for Ghassan and pointed to the upper bunk bed. “It was next to the air conditioning unit, which was blowing cold air right at me.”
He tried to cover himself with a cotton blanket, but the cold air still entered his body. He added a sweater and curled up and tried to sleep, but it was all in vain.
In the morning, when the doors were unlocked, he left his room to find a place to pray. Ghassan noticed another inmate carrying a prayer rug and greeted him, “Asalaamu Aleikum.”
“Wa’aleikum Salaam, please join us for Fajr. We perform wudu over there, and we pray in the TV room.”
After the prayer, the other Muslim introduced Ghassan to the others.
“This is brother Ghassan,” he said.
“Asalaamu Aleikum, brother Ghassan.”
It wasn’t long before one of the Muslim inmates brought Ghassan a bag. “This is for you, brother.” Ghassan opened the bag and poured its contents onto his bed. It contained food, hygiene items, T-shirts, and shower slippers. A few hours later, another brother brought him a bag. “Here you are brother, this is for you.” This time the bag had cookies, popcorn, candy, canned sardines, and canned tuna. The following day a third brother let Ghassan use his AM-FM radio with earphones, and a fourth lent him his sports shoes. It turned out there were over one hundred Muslims in the Atlanta prison; as in most US prisons, the vast majority were African Americans who had converted while in prison. The Imam, Imam Sabree, was the prison chaplain. He was a black Muslim who graduated from the Islamic University in Saudi Arabia. “He was well versed in Arabic and Islamic knowledge,” Ghassan told me, “and had a very positive influence on both Muslims and non-Muslim inmates.”
Imam Sabree led a weekly class each Monday evening.
“We would read a book about a Muslim personality and engage in discussions.” The inmates spread carpets on the floor and sat in a circle for the reading and the discussion. Ghassan taught a basic Arabic class, and the inmates were excited about reading the Quran in Arabic.
It was a full circle: Ghassan had given, and Islam had given back.