* * *
In 2003, I was living with my five-year-old daughter back in Virginia and working at the General Counsel’s Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in D.C. Things had smoothed out for me and I was starting to enjoy life again.
At twenty-eight, I was free and loving it.
Every so often I would connect with Irfan online. At some point I mentioned my daughter, taking him by surprise. When he asked me about my husband I told him I was divorced. Not long after that he asked if I was interested in getting remarried.
“No,” I said unequivocally.
He had some friends, he said, in case I was interested.
Thanks, but no thanks.
A few months later he finally got around to saying what he had been wanting to say—what did I think of him? Would I consider him for marriage?
Now, to be clear, all this time we only chatted online infrequently. I didn’t even remember what he looked like. When he proposed over instant message I was exasperated. Was this his agenda all this time?
I shut the door to his romantic aspirations in 2003 but still kept in touch and once, when he was visiting the area to lead a prayer service, I finally got to meet him properly. He was, I grudgingly and internally admitted, pretty good looking.
But still, I wasn’t ready to be married.
Adnan, on the other hand, totally was.
* * *
Kandra is tall, mocha-skinned, and beautiful, exceedingly sweet and gentle, with a radiant smile and warmth you can feel even in her voice. A native of Indianapolis, she’s lived in North Carolina for over two decades now.
She’s in the insurance industry, highly educated, a consummate professional.
The first time she ever laid eyes on Adnan she was at the Jessup prison, visiting a friend in Maryland who had a loved one at the prison. The friend had asked Kandra to tag along, which she reluctantly did.
The Maryland House of Corrections in Jessup had an extraordinarily bad reputation—for violence, corruption, and extreme laxity. Inmates were able to “earn” the freedom to do things, albeit not officially, which they wouldn’t ordinarily be allowed elsewhere. Visitation was also fairly relaxed and didn’t require you to be on a predetermined list to pop in and see someone.
As Kandra sat in the visitation room, slightly bored, a tall, broad-shouldered, bearded man entered. His eyes went directly to a small woman with a head scarf who was smiling up at him as he walked her way.
Aunty Shamim was there to visit her son.
Kandra, now completely distracted, was thinking, “Hello, this man is gorgeous. Just gorgeous!”
“I’m not a stalker,” Kandra says to me, “I’m very shy, and old-fashioned when it comes to relationships. I don’t approach men, I’m not that person.”
She reached over to her friend and whispered, “Isn’t he cute?”
The man they were visiting heard it and turned around to see who she was talking about.
“I know him! We call him Saaaeeed.”
“Do you want to talk to him?” the friend asked.
Kandra squirmed. She did want to talk to him, but this was all just too weird. She knew there were women who got involved with incarcerated men, but she never envisioned herself to be one of them.
But there was something about this man that compelled her to say ok, yes, I’d like to speak to him. At the time she wasn’t looking for a relationship; she was busy in her studies in nutrition and health care administration along with her twin sister. But in that moment she stopped acting like herself.
Her interest in Adnan didn’t go unnoticed. Aunty Shamim saw this strange woman staring at her son and glared at her. The situation was tense, and Kandra certainly wasn’t going to make it worse by asking to be introduced right then and there.
She left but only after giving her number to the man they were visiting to pass along to Adnan if he was interested in talking.
It turned out Aunty Shamim wasn’t the only one who noticed her.
A couple of days later, before she left Maryland, she got a call from Adnan.
“He was just sweet,” she remembers. His radar had picked up the beautiful woman with the big smile sitting in his periphery. Even in prison, he was deeply aware of not disrespecting his mother. Kandra and he connected immediately and spoke for a couple of hours, sharing their backgrounds.
“I laughed a lot,” Kandra says. “He’s got a great sense of humor and just makes you feel like you’ve known each other a long time.”
Even though she was still in Maryland, she didn’t swing by the prison to see him before leaving. She wasn’t ready to do that and she wasn’t quite sure what she was getting into; instead she returned to North Carolina.
It was the fall of 2008, and for those first few months they spoke incessantly over the phone, connecting daily, multiple times a day. The rapport was instant, and they quickly grew attached to each other. Even in prison she wasn’t the first woman he had “spoken” to. But this woman was different.
Prison is not exactly a conducive environment for love—those inmates who have a partner, a romantic relationship, a spouse on the outside who stick by them are very, very lucky. Many relationships die off after a person gets locked up. But the moral support and hope you get from someone who cares about and loves you gives you a reason to dream about a future outside bars. In all these years Adnan had not met anyone who made him feel like he did now.
He told her, “I’ve never had feelings like this since I’ve been locked up. I don’t know what I’m feeling.” Kandra really did “like” him and cared about him but wasn’t head over heels. He was funny, sweet, attentive, smart, handsome, but he was also serving a life term for murder that he said he was innocent of. She believed he was innocent. But how would they ever actually have a future together? And how on earth do you tell your family about a relationship like this?
For Adnan there was little caution, and the feelings came much faster. “This was the second time I fell in love in my life,” he says.
They still hadn’t spent any time together in person, but she was planning on making a trip up to Maryland to see him soon. Adnan began to worry a bit. He knew where this was going, but he couldn’t quite go there. Over the years his juvenile posturing about Islam had turned into a serious commitment. He knew he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be physically close to Kandra unless they were married.
A few times a year the prison held “family days” when inmates, family, and friends openly mingled either in the yard or inside a large gymnasium. I’d been to a couple of the events and it was actually quite wonderful. There were no cages, no barriers. Inmates were in charge of the festivities, barbecuing, playing a live band. Everyone hung out as if they were at an actual picnic. Lots of things changed hands on these occasions. Once, when I went with Saad and our sister, he had a new pair of sneakers on for Adnan. We sat at picnic-style tables and as we casually chatted, they traded shoes under the table.
Family day was coming up and Kandra was going to be there, and while neither of them expected any physical intimacy, not to that extent, Adnan at least wanted the chance to hug her, hold her, kiss her. But he not only wanted to do what was right by his religion, he also wanted to do what was right by her.
She was struggling in some ways back then; her finances weren’t strong, and she had run out of money to finish her degree. Adnan wanted to take care of her and he wanted a relationship that gave her the right to expect to be cared for.
He asked if she would marry him in an Islamic ceremony, a “nikkah.”
“The ceremony would be real, a legitimate marriage in Islam,” she said, “but just not on paper.”
She felt how conflicted he was, that he wanted a romantic relationship with this woman but his faith was preventing it. After thinking about it she agreed. After all, it was a verbal ceremony with two witnesses, nothing legal. It would put him at ease and not be any kind of a burden on her.
He began discussing a dowry wi
th her.
“A dowry?” she asked, perplexed.
Yes, he explained. In Islam a man must give a woman a dowry, the “mahr,” when they marry, as a gift, and for some, as a form of financial protection. The dowry was an obligation, the nikkah wasn’t complete without it. He wasn’t just posturing, he was doing this for real, as real as it got in his religion.
“What did Adnan give you?” I asked.
“Ten thousand dollars,” she responded.
I balked.
How the hell did Adnan have ten thousand dollars? I laughed, joking with Kandra.
It turned out that by working small hustles, like making photocopies, trading items, getting other inmates things they needed like medicine, books, and other “contraband” over the past eight years, he had managed to save up quite a stash. There was an elaborate system set up with the inmates in which they managed to get prepaid Visa cards to send to the outside world, and Adnan managed to send Kandra her dowry before she arrived for the ceremony.
Kandra first met Adnan formally on the same day they got Islamically married, sometime in the winter of 2008. It took a total of five minutes, with another inmate officiating and two others standing witness.
I had to ask.
“Did you have a chance to … er … be close after the marriage?”
“No. We never consummated the marriage.”
There were some rules about physical touching during family day, as guards stood in the perimeters. No prolonged hugging, no kissing, no funny business. Despite the rules, funny business was routine. With the right incentives there were always guards willing to look the other way as a couple would find a corner, or duck under a table, for a quickie. Some were so brazen that they would have sex while sitting openly—the woman having come prepared in an easy-access skirt, she would sit in her partner’s lap, often at the table where others were eating, for a few minutes until the deed was done. Kandra filled me in.
“Are you telling me people are shagging on family day?”
“Yes.” Kandra laughed. “All over the place they’re shagging. The guards know what’s going on.”
But she wasn’t raised like that, she was shy and she wasn’t going to be doing any public shagging, married or not. Adnan was fine with it. “He knows me, he knows I’m a private person, he never pressured me,” she said.
Adnan tried to get a private room arranged for them but wasn’t able to. Barring that, it was not going to happen. And it never did.
She went home, now a duly married woman, and Adnan finally felt like he had the freedom to speak to her affectionately, intimately. He constantly sent her gifts, mostly thanks to Saad.
“Yeah, any time he needed flowers or candy or gifts sent, he’d ask me. I helped out with her smaller bills sometimes, and would do the travel arrangements for her. He’s my boy. Of course I’d do that for his wife,” Saad said.
When Adnan told me he had gotten married I was shocked but genuinely happy. I could hear the levity in his voice and I knew what it meant to find someone he could dream of having a life with.
He wanted me to talk to Kandra. She was interested in Islam and he wanted to foster that interest, though whether or not she became Muslim wasn’t paramount. He asked me to answer any questions she had, give her any support she would need. He also asked me to talk to his mother—he had broken the news to his family and, forever the traditional Pakistani mother, Aunty Shamim wasn’t happy that he made the decision independently. Marriage, where we’re from, is a family affair.
I spoke to Kandra and she was lovely. I could see why Adnan had fallen for her. She had tried visiting a mosque and didn’t feel comfortable because she didn’t know anyone there. I, admittedly, did not encourage her to go again unless she could go with someone. I didn’t want her feeling like an outsider and frankly, I knew too many converts who had left Islam thanks to the judgment and dysfunction of other Muslims. She didn’t need to be around us en masse just yet.
Adnan wanted his family to get to know her, so his father and Yusuf spoke to her a number of times.
“They were very nice and friendly, really welcoming,” she recalls.
But Aunty Shamim wouldn’t speak with her. I tried to work on that.
“Aunty. Come on. There is no reason to object to this, he is allowed to marry who he wants to in Islam, and he can marry a Christian woman, and you know it.” But I got nowhere. She just repeated, “It’s not fair, he can’t make a decision like that without asking.” It was the first time she seemed truly hurt.
Kandra visited Adnan four more times before he was abruptly moved in 2009 from Jessup, which was shut down and eventually demolished, to the North Branch Correctional Institute (NBCI) in Cumberland, Maryland.
After his move to this supermax facility, an institution of legendary security housing the most violent criminals in Maryland, and hours away from Baltimore, she never saw him again.
“He’s done more for me than any person I’ve ever been with. He took care of me. He made sure if I needed money for anything I got it. He had flowers and chocolates sent to me all the time. He made sure my travel was paid for, my rental car, my hotel, the best hotels, when I went to visit. He had it together, he knew what he was doing. But once he was moved, everything changed. He changed. For the first time I heard him depressed.”
I could tell too. He wrote to me on June 20, 2009.
Dear Rabia,
I pray that everything is well w/you + Arfan [sic] and the girls, inshaAllah. I have been transferred to the Cumberland area. Everyone who is maximum security status was transferred to this region over the past two years. I was part of the last load, mashaAllah. The rules are stricter up here … but … it’s not that big of a deal. It’s a 2 ½ hour drive from Baltimore, so it’s kinda far away.
Alhamdulillah other than that, everythings pretty much ok. My mother’s still beefin about my marriage, but not so hard as before. InshaAllah, she’ll come around. My wife is alright … our relationship is long-distance to begin with. She’s been helping me out a lot, doing some computer searches and making copies for me. We don’t get a chance to talk as much because I’m using the regular phones now, but we write everyday.…
I’ll be honest, I’m very nervous about this appeal. I’ve spent all these years researching & praying. I really hope Allah will grant it. I’m so anxious about this, cause I’ve been waiting so long … all these years I’ve been waiting for this. This Post Conviction Petition was the event I was working towards. And it was steadily coming closer, I had it to look forward to this past year. It seems like this incarceration has finally started to wear me down. My heart feels so heavy. Having this life sentence, I feel like there’s no light at the end of this tunnel. And that’s what I need; some light. Even if I don’t go home now, if they were to cut my time. I have 10 ½ years in, with a good record and no past criminal history. If I could get a sentence that would get me an expiration date, it would change my whole perspective.
Kandra and Adnan remained married only for a short while longer, until Adnan told her it was better if they ended it, though they could always remain friends. He was hitting rock-bottom in Cumberland. In Jessup he had an active life with some semblance of normalcy. He had an extraordinary level of freedom, working in different parts of the prison, having an excellent relationship with the staff and guards. Once, while he was assisting the prison librarian, she asked him to go drop off some books in her car. She handed him her keys and he walked out to the lot where her car stood. He was outside the prison, free and clear, in the employee parking lot. If he had wanted, he could have gotten in her car and driven away.
Instead, he put the books in her trunk, turned around, and went back to his imprisonment.
He had a cell phone at Jessup for a number of years, thanks to an elaborate scheme in which one of the maintenance workers would bring in a few phones at a time inside the cavity of a drill handle and leave the designated drill in a shop for inmates to retrieve. The doors of their cells were
solid, so guards couldn’t see inmates speaking on their phones. Some of them knew but looked the other way, not wanting to come down hard on those they had developed friendships with, to the extent they could be called friendships.
The freedom and hope he felt at Jessup all faded at NBCI. Gone were all his relationships, his gigs, his routine, his friends, his community. There were no more family days, no more mingling with his loved ones. Here he was on level ten, state-of-the-art, supermax lockdown. He was surrounded by crewcut white guards who didn’t give the inmates, mostly men of color, the same kind of leeway the mostly black guards at Jessup gave.
And he was far, so far from his family. His visiting hours were shrunk, his phone access cut to a fraction.
Kandra sensed the change in him, a despondency that he hadn’t ever shown before. There was another reason for the despondency, though: it was high time to hire an attorney for the PCR, but there was no money for it.
7/14/09
Dear Rabia,
Asalaamualaykum wa’rahmatullah wa’barakatuhu [peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you].
… I got the message from my mom, and I tried to call you, but I guess it got your machine. Right now, there really isn’t a set phone schedule, but inshaAllah it may improve soon. I don’t know when’s the next time I can call, but I think I can catch you soon, inshaAllah.
You know one of the 3 law firms I mentioned was the one Christopher Flohr recommended, Larry Nathan. You + him both contacted that firm back in 2004. I just received a letter last week after I had sent him the # of pages my transcripts were, and asking his fee. He wrote back and mentioned that you both had contacted him regarding my case in 2004. Anyway this guy said that the review fee (because I have so many documents) would be $30,000! And that wouldn’t include the separate fee of litigation. Bair wanted $20,000 for the review fee, and I think the firm of Byer Warnken is just as much as Nathan if not more. In fact, he sent me a booklet, in it are his prices. He charges $15,000 for 2 issues and $8,000 for each additional issue. That’s his litigation fee. I’m pretty sure his review fee would be between $20,000-$30,000. Allah knows best but I think they are financially out of the question.
Adnan's Story Page 22