by Yusef Salaam
There’s a moment when one wakes up to the truth about America. In the era of being woke, there’s something even more pressing, even more revelatory about awakening to the hard facts of how this country has treated Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. America purports itself to be a country built on hope, a promise. But to aspire for something better doesn’t mean hiding from the truth. Hope doesn’t mean hiding from today’s reality. As James Baldwin expounded, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” Hope means confronting the knowledge and feeling of “Wait, I could be a Breonna Taylor,” or “My child could be the next Tamir Rice.” As Malcolm X said, we are awakened to the American nightmare.
But it’s in that moment—that confrontation of truth—where we have to make a choice to stand up and be counted. In that courtroom, I chose to go against what was suggested. I wasn’t going to plead for mercy. Even before that, when they told us to not go on the witness stand, I chose to go. Sure, I was misguided in that regard. The DA ripped me to shreds, twisting everything I said into lies that fit the narrative she was writing. I believed that I was wise enough to be on the stand. To tell my truth. I didn’t realize how insidious these people were. She was laying out her story to prove to the jury that I was guilty, and I wasn’t prepared to handle that interrogation. But I was not going to let her have the last word. I had to stand up for myself. In my own way. And not just for myself, but for my comrades in that battle, too. I suppose I could have remained calm. Did the pleading. I’m certainly not judging anyone who makes that choice. But I was a fighter.
Consider Ahmaud Arbery.
Taking a jog through a neighborhood, he was followed, chased, and murdered by white men who believed their rights superseded his. Video footage shows Ahmaud trying to hold on to his life. With labored breath but still running away from the imminent danger. His humanity was being siphoned away with every slur in that confrontation. How could he not do anything but struggle? We see some police officers saying to people in these recorded accounts, “Stop resisting!” What we often don’t see is that prior to “resisting,” there is a back-and-forth between the officer and the person whose rights are clearly being trampled upon. That fight? That struggle? There comes a point, and I feel we are nearing that place now especially with the protests of summer 2020, when Black people will say, “Enough is enough! I will stand on the truth of my innocence, on the truth of our collective innocence, and if that means we lose our lives in the process, so be it.”
A coward dies a hundred times, but a hero dies only once.
In some ways, standing in front of that courtroom and saying my piece was the only way I knew to fight back. My mother wasn’t allowed to be there. My father was not there. I had to fend for myself. I had to save myself, and the act of trying to do so felt like something close to deliverance. By the grace of God, there is a hedge of protection that’s placed around many of us for a reason. But then when we are ready, when we are faced with our reason to fight, all the things we’ll ever need to show up for ourselves are there, inside of us, waiting to be used, waiting to help us. We can’t focus too far ahead, though. We can’t focus on the destination. We should focus on the journey itself. The process. So let us use our sorrow when it shows up. Let us use that anger when we feel it in our bodies.
As Dr. Maya Angelou tells us: We dance it. We march it. We vote it. We do everything about it. We talk it. We never stop talking it.
EIGHT
The Safest Man You Could Ever Meet
Umuntu Ngamuntu Ngabantu. A person is a person because of people. I be you, you be me, we be we.
ZULU PROVERB
ON THAT AWFUL DAY IN the police precinct, when I was being interrogated about a crime that I had no idea had happened, my eyes were still wide with hope. But my mother said something to me that day I have never forgotten. She said, “They need you to participate in whatever it is that they’re trying to do here. Do not participate. Refuse.”
She was right.
My very survival in the system was contingent on my never engaging or participating in anything designed to dehumanize or define me negatively.
“They need you. They need you to engage in this.”
My mother was telling me that these detectives and prosecutors needed me to be complicit in whatever it was they were trying to do to us. If I complied, if I let them run me over, then I was in cahoots with the system, and that would be the real problem.
Don’t be in cahoots, Yusef.
Because I entered the system at fifteen, there was so much I didn’t know about building and maintaining relationships. As a teenager, you are at the cusp of your understanding when it comes to relational dynamics. You are moving from whatever engagement you have with your parents and caregivers to learning how to navigate friendships. For me, everything was amplified. Imagine being framed as a rapist, imprisoned during the critical years of your late adolescence, but in actuality having had only one sexual experience. Upon my release at twenty-three, I had to learn what it meant to engage in healthy relationships with people, especially women.
I’m still learning. Ask my wife.
One of my first lessons? The power and necessity of vulnerability. Black men have had all sides of ourselves worked over by society in general, and specifically in the media’s representations of us. There are the stereotypes and tropes that have been carefully crafted for us: the criminal, the sexual predator, the Magical Negro, the Uncle Tom. That we are whole human beings with desires and yearnings for love is presented as unattainable or unrealistic. For the longest time, I understood romance and affection only as something that happened over there and with those people. I would watch a movie or read a book and see a couple holding hands, staring at each other on a moonlit pier. I’d think, Oh, that’s cool. But I couldn’t truly connect to those feelings. The trauma I endured at such a young age created a block in my ability to access the appropriate feelings for healthy relationships. It was hard to tap into those emotions.
I’d learned something different where I’d been. In prison culture, letting your guard down meant being taken advantage of—at best. When you come home, you have to constantly remind yourself that you aren’t in prison anymore. Being free feels unnatural. You mean I can kick my feet up and enjoy the sun in Jamaica? You mean I get to run around the park with my daughter, throwing a ball or pushing her on the swings? That doesn’t feel right. Surely someone is coming to steal this peace away from me.
Showing any form of vulnerability means death for too many of us. A Black man brought to tears because of the humiliation he experienced at the hands of a police officer is quietly seen as weak. A Black man who is hardened by these lived experiences of racist profiling and resists that humiliation risks his life. Ironically, not showing any vulnerability—being too strong, too hard—can also mean death. And if not physically, certainly psychologically or spiritually. We can’t win. We aren’t allowed to feel safe enough or free enough to reveal ourselves fully. This affects our wholeness, how well we are able to engage in intimate partnerships. We’re half-empty glasses hoping to one day be filled. Without knowing what that fullness feels like. The notion of being awash with joy and love and peace without any strings attached seems wonderful, but completely foreign.
At sixteen, with hormones doing what they do to teenage boys, I had to find ways to keep myself together while locked up. To keep myself from unraveling. Islam helped me with that tremendously.
It’s natural to long for companionship. For sexual intimacy. My body was afire. I thought about my girlfriend often. The touch of her skin. The sweetness of her kisses. My one sexual experience prior to going to jail, though not with my girlfriend at the time, played like a Memorex in my brain. What it meant to hold a woman, to feel her, was never too far away from my dreams. And yet it wasn’t helpful for me to dwell on these things. If I did, it could tear me up.
I didn’t wa
nt to be like some of the guys I encountered while inside. The ones who would look under the TV when watching music videos to see if they could “see” under the dancers’ dresses. There was something about being institutionalized to that extent that made the natural unnatural. These men were simply trying to imagine something real but, as a young person, using my imagination this way wasn’t what I wanted.
The Qur’an teaches restraint as a practice. It says that everyone should be married. If one cannot marry, then we should fast because fasting kills sexual desire. Prison gave me the opportunity to deep-dive into this aspect of my spirituality in a way I’m certain wouldn’t have happened outside of that environment.
So, no matter the sexual feelings that would naturally well up in me, I had the space and time to practice the teachings that would hold me down. I could wake up for late-night prayers. I could read more. I could do all of this because I knew that when I woke up in the morning, I didn’t have anywhere to go. I’d still be here. I could find some value in the lack of distractions. There was The Cosby Show or skateboarding waiting on the other side of the night to steal an hour or three from me. I had time to do the spiritual work, to put myself in a position to grow in my faith and ultimately become the teacher (Imam) for the Muslim community while inside. Hormones raging or not, I was given a window through which to think about things differently. I could go deep and far and wide in my dreams. This version of mental freedom, where I could explore the heavens and plunge the depths of man’s own philosophies, was the silver lining, what I call the beautiful side of prison. I learned early on how to be isolated and restricted yet simultaneously free. I also learned that sexual power is sacred and can be used to propel you into deeper and more profound truths. By harnessing the sexual energy that bubbled up in me, I was able to move and invest that energy in both intellectual and spiritual pursuits. The ability to abstain is the ability to transform your current reality.
I suspect there was also a part of me that didn’t want to mess up. I didn’t want to violate the tenets of my faith. Also, at any time, any moment, sleeping or not, someone could come by and do a room check. They would turn your cell over looking for contraband items. You couldn’t anticipate when it was going to happen, and you never had an opportunity to hide your stuff. I’d gotten caught with a Playboy magazine and it didn’t feel good. I remember being so embarrassed because a Muslim brother was the officer who caught me. When the brother pulled the magazine out, I felt the shame rising in my body. I felt like I’d let my teachers, my role models, and Allah down. He said, “Come on, Brother, you don’t need this.” Though in my mind, I was like, Umm. Yes, I do.
His correction was significant because it was my Muslim brothers who had protected me. After the first few months of my sentence, I no longer had any fear of being sexually assaulted by another inmate. I had groups on the inside who looked out for me, such as members of the Black Liberation Army at Clinton. But I also had our growing Muslim community, both at Harlem Valley and then at Clinton, ensuring that I wouldn’t be violated in that way. This was how the Muslim community worked in prison: We protected our brothers and taught them the ways of Islam, but we also addressed their immediate needs, like a lack of money in the commissary or issues with officers. We were respected by officers who, when they observed someone truly practicing the faith, such as by attending prayer or studying, considered them a nonthreat and often gave them small freedoms within the context of the unit. When I became the Imam at Harlem Valley, I was able to extend those same protections afforded me to the other young Muslims there. I’m so grateful for their shield and for the opportunity to have been a shield, especially as I know that’s not always the case for many.
I knew enough about my body and its needs to be somewhat aware of what was going on with it, even if I did choose to repress those urges because of my faith. Before the Central Park jogger case, I’d gotten my sex education from my aunt Denise. When I was a kid, she lived in the same building as we did, only seven floors up. Aunt Denise was our Diana Ross. Elegant and beautiful, she was the definition of a free Black woman. Educated, she was a nurse manager at Metropolitan Hospital. The same hospital that allowed the Central Park jogger, Trisha Meili, to receive the lifesaving care needed for her survival until she was transferred from Metropolitan to a medical facility upstate after her attack. The world is so incredibly small.
My aunt, my uncle, and my cousin Frank were all core parts of my village. Frank and I were like brothers, always hanging out. I’d yell out to my mom, “I’m going to Auntie’s house,” and there’d be no resistance. As such, my aunt, most likely with Mom’s prompting, took it upon herself to talk to us about sex, including giving us bananas so we could practice putting on condoms. It was embarrassing as a teen, but as a twenty-three-year-old being released from prison after so many years, I was immensely grateful.
Part of the reason why I believe my mother called on Aunt Denise to talk about sex to us was because I’d gotten busted with a girl in our home. I wish I could say my first sexual experience was with my girlfriend, Asia. After I was arrested and made bail, I returned home for a moment. I met this young lady, and things escalated.
We were on our way to court when she walked past me the first time. She was my age, maybe sixteen or seventeen at the most. When I passed, she said something to me in Spanish. My first thought was, Oh, that’s weird, because I thought she was Black. I didn’t know anything about the identity of Afro-Latinos at the time.
Not speaking Spanish, I asked, “What was that?”
I don’t remember what she said but I was intrigued. I later learned that she was living in the Bronx, and she’d found out my address. Not too long after our initial meeting, she told me that she planned to meet me and found out where I lived. She got a job across the street from where I lived to make it happen. Every day, she’d simply observe me, and though I was dating Asia at the time, with my fifteen-year-old hormones raging, I couldn’t help but be flattered. I could tell that this girl was open to things that Asia, who was the classic “good girl,” was not. The most Asia and I did was kiss and feel each other in the dark. We were teenagers doing what teenagers do. Testing boundaries. That is, until the criminal injustice system swoops in and destroys all that.
One day, things were getting hot and steamy with this girl, and she straight up tells me, “I’m going to give you some.”
“Okay.”
Of course it was fast. And wonderful. And a rush like I’d never experienced. A rush that was amplified by the fact that my mother came home while this girl was still in my room.
I had on a T-shirt and my underwear. My mom looked at me and said, “Who’s in here with you?” I had to talk quickly. “Mom, it’s my um, well, my um, girlfriend.”
My mother said, “Uh-uh, she’s got to go. Now!”
I was just a kid. I didn’t understand yet what it meant for my mom to catch me fooling around with a girl in her house. I did try to explain myself, though. I said, “Ma, we were just in here chillin’.” I was trying to sound as believable as possible—which was probably not working, since I was standing there in my underwear.
“She’s got to GO!”
“Okay, I’m going,” the girl said. She got herself ready.
I pleaded with my mother, “Ma, can I at least walk her to the elevator?”
Mom said, “You can walk to the elevator, but that’s it.”
Then I said, “Well, downstairs?”
“Downstairs.”
Then I decided to push. “Let me walk her to the train station, Ma.”
“That’s it!”
So I walked her to the station, all right. But not the one near my building. I walked her from my building on Fifth Avenue four avenues over to the 4/5/6 line to get on the train and go back to the Bronx. When I came home, I made sure to tiptoe in. I knew I’d taken far longer than expected.
My mother was standing there in the kitchen looking at me.
“You want some ice cream?”
she asked.
“Sure.”
“Okay, go down to the store right now and get us some Häagen-Dazs.”
Häagen-Dazs was my favorite. We never spoke about what happened again.
As you can guess, this girl I’d lost my virginity to turned out to be a stalker, who showed up pretty much everywhere, even after my release seven years later. I remember a more recent time, not too long after the settlement, when she reached out to me and asked, “But what about my money?”
Coupled with my release from prison, I carried the added stigma of being convicted of rape. The public nature of our trial and sentencing made meeting women somewhat challenging. There were times I was recognized, and it soon became evident that I had no chance with a woman I was interested in. There were other times when the realization would come later, and the woman wouldn’t want to deal with me any further. There were also other uncomfortable and awkward encounters.
Most days, I just crept through life hoping that nobody figured out who I was. I met one woman in Mart 125 in Harlem. She walked in and made sure I saw her. I definitely did. I thought she was fly, but I had no game. I was still nervous about approaching anyone so, while captivated, I didn’t say anything, and she left. A few minutes later, a man came up to me and said, “Hey, there’s this young lady outside waiting for you. She said she saw you, but she didn’t know how to say hi.”
Whaaat?!
I went outside, and we talked a little and ended up in a bowling alley down on Forty-Second Street. After hanging out, I was excited. I wanted to connect with her, and we exchanged numbers and began talking. We’d have long conversations on the phone and then started dating regularly. She became my girlfriend. One day, while hanging out at her apartment, I decided to tell her my story.