I felt panic. I had no idea how to handle the situation or what could be done now. I was just wrapping up my second year in law school in Virginia and didn’t know how the criminal process actually worked, much less worked in Maryland. But I figured I should at least, at least, get it in writing that no one had ever contacted Asia. To me, a failure this big should be remedied by a court of law; there had to be some mechanism.
I pulled out a yellow legal pad, wrote the word “Affidavit” across the top, and handed it to Asia to write down what she had just told me. I asked her if her boyfriend and his friend would be willing to talk to me and give me affidavits too, but she hesitated. She asked me not to contact them just yet, but assured me, if her affidavit got the case reopened and Adnan’s lawyer summoned them to court, they would definitely come. I didn’t want to push the issue so I said ok, let’s just get this affidavit down for now.
It was a Saturday, banks were closed, and we didn’t have smart phones to track down the closest notary back in those days. Saad remembered a check-cashing place across from Security Mall, right next to the Best Buy, and he was pretty sure they had a notary.
We drove to this little square building covered in bright signage. It cost a few bucks, we paid, Asia notarized the affidavit, and then we dropped her off back at her house.
I immediately went to Adnan’s parents’ house with the affidavit and discussed it with them. We had no idea what to do. Aunty called Gutierrez’s office and left a message, but it was a weekend so there was no response. She had gone to visit Adnan a few weeks prior to discuss appeal options, but since then no one had heard from her.
It just so happened that Adnan called his parents while I was with them and I told him what I had just learned—that Asia had never been contacted. He sounded perplexed at first, and then incredulous when the monumental nature of what I was saying sunk in.
“She’s filing a motion for a new trial, Rabia,” he said. “We have to get her to include this.”
We tried in vain to reach Gutierrez, but she wouldn’t return our calls. So I told Adnan to write her a letter and I drafted one on behalf of his parents to send along with the affidavit.
We waited after the letters were sent but still heard nothing. Frantic that the clock was ticking and she was clearly done with Adnan, we knew we had to do something. I felt strongly that she needed to be fired, but Adnan’s parents weren’t so sure. They feared her and thought if they fired her she would sue them—she had continued to harass them for money, threatening to take their house away.
After a long discussion with the family and some of the community members, it was decided that Gutierrez had to go. I drafted a letter for the family to Gutierrez, firing her, and then we sent one to Judge Wanda Heard.
Nothing came of our frantic flailings to get Asia included in the motion as a supplement. The sentencing was postponed, however, and Judge Heard accepted Adnan’s request to dismiss Gutierrez. Adnan now had to get a public defender to represent him at the sentencing.
The sentencing was scheduled for June 6, 2000, at which time the judge would also rule on the motion for a new trial filed by Gutierrez.
We already knew what was coming but it was hard to internalize. A part of everyone hoped against hope that the judge would show some leniency, take into account Adnan’s age and clean record.
Adnan had prepared remarks expressing grief for Hae’s family but maintaining his innocence. The public defender, Charles Dorsey, who had met with him only briefly, advised him not to do so.
“Show remorse for what you did,” he said.
Adnan said he couldn’t; he didn’t do anything.
“Fine then,” Dorsey said, “you’re fucking yourself.”
Hae’s mother began by giving an impassioned plea to the court through an interpreter:
“I’m the mother of Hae Min Lee. In Korean proverb there is a saying that parents die, they bury in the ground, but when children die, they bury in their hearts.… [O]ur daughter, my daughter, our daughter was so precious to us and everybody surrounding us … [H]er hope and aspiration was my hope and aspiration, and her dream was my dream, and she always wanted to be a good person in her life as her society … I would like to forgive Adnan Syed, but as of now, I just don’t know how to do that, and I just cannot do that right now. When I die, my daughter will die with me. As long as I live, my daughter is buried in my heart…”
* * *
Urick followed the statement, focusing on the potential Adnan had in his life. That he came from a good family, had religious instruction, medical training, but used his “skills that he had as a paramedic and used them to kill.” He said that during Ramadan, a holy time, instead of following religious practices, Adnan planned to kill Hae. He argued that there were no mitigating factors, that Adnan committed a “deliberate adult act that was reprehensible.” He recommended the maximum sentence.
Dorsey then began, and much to Adnan’s horror, threw him and his innocence under the bus.
“Your Honor, my client was 16 at this, when this happened, in a relationship and in love … my client comes from a quality family of quality religion. He made a bad decision, and I ask this Honorable Court to have mercy on him, consider possibly a sentence within the guidelines that would give this young man an opportunity to somehow make up for his mistake in his life.”
Dorsey then turned to Adnan and asked if he had anything to say to the judge.
Adnan, showing remarkable composure for an eighteen-year-old facing the rest of his life in prison and having just been screwed over by two attorneys, said, “Since the beginning I have maintained my innocence, and I don’t know why people have said the things they have said that I have done or that they have done. I understand that I’ve been through a trial, and I’ve been found guilty by a jury, and I accept that. Not because I agree with what they did. I respectfully disagree with their judgment; however, I accept it and there’s nothing at this point that I can do except to be sentenced and to go on with the next step, which is to file my appeal.
“I have maintained my innocence since the beginning and to my family and to those who have believed in me since the beginning, I would just like them to know that it is for a reason. I can only ask for the mercy of the court in sentencing me, and I can only remain strong in my faith and hope that one day I shall have another chance in court.
“I’m just sorry for all the pain that this has caused everyone.”
* * *
Despite Adnan’s claims of innocence, and our prayers, Judge Wanda Heard showed no leniency, no mercy, no compassion. Her cruel words, as she sentenced Adnan, were like a knife to the hearts of all who loved him, all of us there.
“This wasn’t a crime of passion. The evidence, as I recall it to be and the jury found by its first degree conviction, meant premeditated with malice aforethought, as we say in the law. That means you thought about it. The evidence was, there was a plan, and you used that intellect. You used that physical strength. You used that charismatic ability of yours that made you the president or the—what was it, the king or prince of your prom? You used that to manipulate people. And even today, I think you continue to manipulate even those that love you, as you did to the victim. You manipulated her to go with you to her death.”
* * *
We were reeling from the sentence. It was not just life and not just life with thirty years concurrent. It was life plus thirty years to run consecutively. My parents later asked me, what does life mean? Twenty years? Twenty-five years? In Pakistan that was what life meant.
I explained to them that in the State of Maryland, life meant until you died.
After Adnan was convicted and sentenced, the ISB community quietly faded away. His family stopped talking about him with others. They didn’t know how to explain the case or conviction, and were going through so much internally that they didn’t have the additional strength to deal with the community. People in the community didn’t know what to say either; how do you console the p
arents or siblings of a convicted killer? They whispered among themselves but otherwise stopped mentioning him at all.
The only exception was my mother, who unabashedly took up for Adnan, fought with anyone who had anything negative to say about him, never stopped talking about him with Aunty Shamim, and prayed for him with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.
I watched, over the years, my mother stay up many nights saying special prayers for him, fingering her prayer beads 120,000 times, reciting the prayer of the Prophet Jonah when he was trapped in the belly of the whale.
She collected the pits of dates, sacks and sacks of them, and commandeered groups of women to gather and say a prayer on each pit, counting tens of thousands in a number of hours.
She vowed to read the Quran, in its entirety, dozens of times, to send blessings Adnan’s way, and she did. She copied and clipped prayers out of booklets and pamphlets to send to Adnan, ordering him to follow the prayer instructions exactly to make sure they worked.
And most importantly, about a year after his conviction, she went all the way to Mecca and prayed there for him during a pilgrimage. She told us she prayed more for him than she did for any of her children, more than anyone she has prayed for in her life.
While there, she had a dream.
Dreams, you see, are not just overworked imaginings of a tired, dozing mind in Islam. They are doors to the spiritual realm, found in scriptural parables, remnants of prophesy. If you are spiritually pure, of good and kind character, and sincere, your dreams have meaning.
My mother dreamt that she saw Adnan emerge from an underground chamber after having been held captive there for a long time. He was shining, she said, he looked “brand new” even though he had aged. He blinked, looking around, smiling slightly. My mother had a good feeling about the dream; she said it meant he would be exonerated and freed from incarceration. She also said he looked like he was in his mid-to-late thirties.
At the time she told us this, Adnan was around nineteen years old. Instead of feeling uplifted, I got angry. Muslims believe that dreams come true once they’re told to others. We don’t relay bad dreams, she shouldn’t have told us about it.
Letter from Adnan written after sentencing
“No,” my mother said, “it was a good dream. You just don’t know.”
I guess I didn’t.
* * *
After being sentenced, Adnan was moved from the Baltimore City Detention Center to the Maryland House of Corrections in Jessup, Maryland, a prison notorious for its violence. The blessing here, though, was that he could have been moved hours away, making it hard for his loved ones to visit. Jessup was only about twenty minutes from his parents’ home, with fairly generous visitation hours and enough corruption to give the inmates more freedoms than regulations otherwise allowed.
There was a tremendous amount for Adnan to process: being in a new prison, with new inmates, knowing this would likely be his entire life, and struggling to figure out what the hell had happened. He still tried to keep things light for us on the outside, and his letters were mixed, full of jokes with moments of sadness and infrequent glimmers of his emotional turmoil.
Shortly after writing this letter he wrote me again, saying he had decided to reach out to Stephanie. He would send her a short note to see if she responded. If she didn’t, he would send a longer letter, a plea to her based on their years-long friendship, to tell him anything, anything that could help him. He would keep trying.
She never responded.
Adnan’s family was preparing, financially and otherwise, to hire an attorney to file a direct appeal to his conviction. That would take time, years even. In the meantime he had to just get by in a place where he encountered people and situations he never could have imagined.
Adnan’s family suffered greatly, each of them falling to pieces in their own way.
Yusuf was in elementary school, nine years old, when Adnan was arrested. When he was convicted he was ten. He had seen the police take his brother away in cuffs, he saw the story all over the news, he heard it in the hallways at school. But his parents did their best to shelter him, not taking him to the trial, not discussing it in front of him.
But the day Adnan was convicted, his mother and Tanveer came home and told him. The three of them went to tell their father, who was in his bedroom, in bed, together.
Adnan’s father has largely been missing from the story, but not because he was missing from their lives. Uncle, more than two decades older than his wife, simply couldn’t bear to see what was happening to his son.
Adnan is his father’s spitting image, just a foot and half taller and twice as broad. When Adnan was born, his father, who told the story to my mother, had wanted to name him “Qurat-ul-Ain,” a beautiful Arabic name that means “coolness of the eyes”; it is a blessing found commonly among Muslims upon the birth of a child; we say “may this baby be the coolness of your eyes,” meaning may the child bring you joy and contentment. He had a dream, though, in which he was told to name the baby “Adnan” after an ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad. Adnan means “one who abides or settles in an area,” who has characteristics of stability and fortitude.
If their firstborn Tanveer was his mother’s favorite, Adnan was the apple of his father’s eye. He took great pride in his second-born son, in the fact that they had similar upbeat natures, that Adnan was talented, kind-natured, and hard working. Yusuf, a chubby boy with a curly head of hair, was pretty enough to be a girl when he was born and was everyone’s darling.
Adnan’s arrest emotionally debilitated his father, who was already approaching retirement age at sixty-three. He went to visit his son but could not bear to see him in a court of law, to see him being brought in and out of the room in shackles. Over time he became increasingly frail, and today, at eighty years old with a white wizened beard, he looks like a slight, small Father Time.
On the day the verdict was rendered, Uncle didn’t leave his bed. When his wife and sons came to him, he sat up, looking at them expectantly. They broke the news to him and he didn’t say a word. His eyes, Yusuf remembers, went wide.
“Something in him died right then,” Yusuf says.
Something died in all of them. There were no second chances after the conviction, they knew what was going to happen at the sentencing.
Tanveer, who was so close to his mom he often took her out for dinner and took her to events, began withdrawing from the family. He spent less and less time at home until one day he just disappeared. For years they weren’t sure where he was, though once in a while he would call the house to tell them he was ok, but he never told them where he was.
If the loss of Adnan was heartbreaking, the loss of their eldest, who should have been shouldering the tremendous collective family burden, was perhaps harder. They knew where Adnan was; Tanveer, they felt, had abandoned them.
Adnan’s mother, father, and brothers all grieved in different ways. While Uncle turned slowly into a hermit, and Tanveer simply vanished, Aunty did her best to keep up a chipper exterior. She continued to run her home-based daycare center, and would sometimes show up at parties or prayer gatherings or the mosque. I had watched her sit through a verdict and sentencing no mother could reasonably bear, stoically. She would smile at Adnan, reassuring him that she was ok, and he would do the same.
But at home, at night in particular, she would come undone. Yusuf recalls too many nights to count when he found his mother weeping alone in the dark. Some nights, he said, “she totally checked out.”
She would tell him to leave the lights on so Adnan and Tanveer wouldn’t have to return in the dark. Or she would tell him that when Adnan and Tanveer got home, to tell them to turn the lights off before going to bed.
If her older sons were physically gone, her youngest son was emotionally lost to her. A mere child when his brother was sentenced for murder, he was regularly approached by a fifth-grade girl named Latoya whose older sister attended Woodlawn High. She would taunt him merciles
sly, saying the entire high school thought Adnan was a killer. He wasn’t safe at the mosque either, where he’d be approached by kids asking nonchalantly, “Hey did your brother do it?” or teasing him, “We all know he’s guilty.” Once Yusuf warned a kid that he had five seconds to run before he would get pummeled.
A number of kids got pummeled by Yusuf, who ended up moving from school, to school, to school.
He left his elementary school during fifth grade because, along with becoming sullen and depressed, uninterested in school work, he had become belligerent and quick to anger. Toward the end of sixth grade this anger got him kicked out of the next school he attended, Al Huda, a private Islamic institution about twenty-five miles away.
He remembers how much he missed Tanveer in those days. Thinking back on it, he is full of both sadness and rage at his big brother. There were days, he said, he would call Tanveer twenty times with no response. On other occasions Tanveer would promise to come pick him up and take him to the movies and he would wait two, three, four hours for him, right by the phone, and Tanveer wouldn’t show.
Tanveer dropped out of college with a year remaining; his parents had no idea where he was working or what he was doing. Yusuf says they thought maybe he had become a junkie. Once, after Uncle tried repeatedly to go see him, Tanveer capitulated and gave him his address so his father could see where he was living.
It was snowing that day, and Uncle spent much of his time wandering around in the cold, asking people to help him find the address. The address didn’t exist, Tanveer had made it up.
A few years after he was imprisoned, Adnan, frustrated with Tanveer’s lack of responsibility, had a talk with him. He urged him to finish college, to get his degree, to take care of his parents and little brother. He told him that it was his job to be there for him. According to Yusuf, that was the last time Tanveer ever visited him.
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