Visiting Zahid Imran

While waiting in the parking lot, sitting in an old yellow school bus, I watched other visitors board the bus. “No tobacco products, no cell phone, no guns”, was the mantra the bus driver repeated each time a new passenger entered the bus. I was told not to have more than twenty dollars with me, all in singles or in quarters, so that the vending machines can be used. This was the parking lot of the Maxwell Air Base where all the visitors have to park their cars to go to the Federal Prison Camp, a minimal security prison, and wait for the shuttle. My friend who dropped me there noticed that most of the visitors were white. It somehow strengthened his faith in the system, or was it just an observation!

I wanted to be there at 8 in the morning, at the time of the start of visiting hours, so that I can make use of all the time I had but could not be there before 1030.  I had to stay overnight in Atlanta, where I met another friend after seventeen years and could not leave earlier. 

I thought, for how long I knew Zahid Imran. It was early 80’s and as a young idealistic student in medical college at the vulnerable age of 21 during military dictatorship I was involved in student politics at Nishtar Medical College. We, the Liberals, had more than a verbal argument with the pro-government Islamic Jamiat party. As a result, we were on the run from the law enforcement. We found shelter with the fraternal anti-government student group, the Eagles, in neighboring Quaid e Azam Medical College, Bahawalpur, some sixty miles away. That is where I met Zahid Imran. He was a few years senior, very passionate in politics and very cerebral. He had the power to engage you and make it very hard to disagree with him.

We remained in touch for a while. I moved on to Rawalpindi and we both migrated to USA. Years later we met again at one of the APPNA meetings. He was still an activist at many levels. Some fires are never extinguished and things you are passionate keep engaging you. That was true with Zahid Imran.  In his life as a successful psychiatrist and in his more than twenty years of association with APPNA he remained in the vanguard for social justice, rights of the disenfranchised and assisting the needy.

We have worked together on many issues of social justice. In APPNA politics, however we often found ourselves supporting different candidates. That did not come in the way in our mutual work ranging from issues of young physicians, restoration of democracy and justice in Pakistan, opposing military dictators of all stripes, women rights, and prisoners’ rights.

If one doesn’t pay attention to details, things catch up and that is what happened to him, in a nutshell. After more than a decade of locking horns with the feds, he has landed here. He is in this prison for almost two years. Bureaucratic inaction and personal inertia take their time and now I am here to visit him.

Maxwell Air Base is at the location where the Wright Brothers opened a flying school. Many overseas Airforce pilots come here for training. I know one classmate from Pakistan who was here. At the other end from the entrance is the Federal Prison Camp, perhaps on land leased by Airforce to the Bureau of Prisons. All the visitors to the prison have to be prescreened and to undergo background check. A bus takes the visitors from the parking lot to the prison every 15 minutes on weekends, the days of visitation, from 8 to 3.

While waiting in the bus, I recalled often long telephone conversations we had over all these years. The length of calls grew exponentially when he was in the middle of his court battle. He was passionate and convincing that he is right and is being slowly framed. In the end, he realized that he is against the most powerful force on earth which is hell bent on destroying him. He acquiesced.

I was the only ‘brown’ person in the bus. My friend was right. Most were Caucasians. Most were putting up a happy face, kids and senior citizens included. Here was a young mother with a toddler, there were two teenagers with a grandma; mostly people were in a group of two or more. Riding through the Airforce Base reminded me of movies where military base are shown. They don’t look much different from many cantonments in Pakistan, but here you don’t see them in your daily commutes. After going through the base, we reached the camp.  It took a long while to fill the forms and get them cleared.  You sign a paper that you do not have any medicines, explosives, tobacco products, electronic gadgets, telephones, cameras etc.

The computer system was down, and all the applications had to be hand processed. Then there was a door and I entered a long big room, not much different than an airport lounge. People were sitting on leather chairs facing each other with tables in between, and food from vending machines being consumed. And at the other end of the room was a lawn where people were sitting on benches and walking around the inside of the wall. The only difference you notice, between here and elsewhere, is that every group of people had a male with dark green pants and half sleeves shirt; that is the inmate.  It looked real and surreal at the same time.

He was not there. I looked around and then settled for a seat. Later he told me that they do not get any official notification. Each prisoner knows through personal communication that he is getting a visitor so he has to be attentive to the announcement on the loudspeaker that his visitor has arrived.  Otherwise he would miss it. Many of the 800 or so inmates do not get any visitors at all. Most of the inmates in the visitor hall were locals or have local families in the neighboring states.

FPC is a working camp. That means all inmates have to work. In fact they share a nominal amount to pay for their stay. It is 25 dollars for most, for Zahid it is 50 dollars. Monday to Friday, excluding federal holidays, they have to work. Zahid has some health issues but still cannot get away from some kind of manual labor. Currently he is assigned mess duties, and has to clean the tables and serve. That allows him to interact with more people. He had a hard time getting out of the kitchen duties. He has a bunker bed and fortunately he is on the lower level and does not have to climb the bed. There is TV but closed during day times. Fight for the remote is as aggressive as it can be at home with kids, if not more. Some inmates have newspapers delivered and that is how he can read what is happening in the world. Smoking is not allowed in any of the federal prisons. So smokers have extra punishment to deal with. 

They earn money for the work they do in the prison, but feds take a share out of that towards the 40M+ he owes to them.

He came out of the door. Looked just the same, gray thick hair and a bit heavier that I thought he would be. He was in his usual self, full of energy to talk and talk endlessly. He talked most of the time and he was, I think happy about it. He was very thankful to all those who had send his messages through me, which I had forwarded ahead of time to him by email, so that he could think about them and respond in due course of time. He told me about his life inside, his interactions with fellow inmates and the guards. As usual, it seems that he has created an image of himself which is helpful to him but has the potential of putting him in trouble. Any minor offence will add extra time. He gets two months a year break each year for good behavior and is hoping to be out of the prison by the end of 2020.

Going in he lost everything he had. He lost his house, savings, bank accounts, even the life insurance he had, was forcibly surrendered and its cash value taken by the feds. Even if he had liquidated any of his assets in the last ten years, feds could get hold of it as it might be considered an attempt to evade paying the feds.

After coming out of prison, life is not that easy for an ex-felon. You cannot vote, cannot work in many places (federal government may hire you however), and cannot get many public services. One may have restrictions on travel abroad, cannot have a gun (in fact if you are in company of someone with firearms, even if you do not know it, you can be imprisoned), lose parental benefits and jury duty. He had surrendered his license so he may be able to apply for one, but cannot see Medicare and Medicaid patients. He cannot earn more than minimal allowance as he has to pay the 40 Million dollars or so, which keep on adding up on daily basis as the interest keeps on increasing. He tells me that there are over 150 thousand restrictions on felons so they are never free and never become full citizens.

He is not clear what he will do once he is out. He had met people in prison who are passionate about prison reforms. Jesse Jackson Jr was there, he is out now. He would like to get his license back, even he cannot earn much out of it. He keeps himself updated on his field.

It is a minimum security prison, all inmates have less than ten years to go before they can be accepted here. Most are sentenced in so called white collar crimes. Some come here after serving a longer sentence at another place. 

He is hoping to be transferred to a similar facility in Louisiana close to Houston so that his family can easily visit him. For an outsider, it is a long way to be there. Montgomery has an airport but has to be reached though one of the hubs of American Airlines or Delta. Federal officer was surprised to see my NY driver's license.  Most of the visitors are locals.

He gets visits from his family. His wife is in Houston and it is a long trip to be here. After going through all the paperwork, I met him around noon time and had to leave at 3.

All his life he has been in the business of helping people. He is still doing that. He tried to help one by contacting others to come to some kind of rescue. He has no money, he cannot be somewhere for someone, cannot picket outside the symbols of powers like Consulate offices and Congress.

He was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he belongs to what is considered a privileged class. He has always been an "awami", a peoples' person, but no one including him would have predicted that he will be where he is and do what he is doing on daily basis. 

It broke my heart to see all that. I managed to keep smiling. 
He has managed to keep his head high.

His wings are cut but his spirit is still buoyed up.


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I visited him on May 14th, 2016