LOCK-DOWN (Again)

Day 1027

Asalam alaikum wa rahmatullah…
In the Name of Allâh, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful

We went on lock-down mode again today…nothing would complete a 3 week break like another lock-down. Same usual routine follows; stay in your cell, phones, yards, showers, visits, etc… all privileges are gone… until the whole jail is searched. It used to be annoying early on, but after so long with the same routines, it makes no difference, just a temporary inconvenience. Thing’s haven’t been working out too well for me lately…the inoperable procedures strike again… I’m waiting to get some meds from the nurse for the past week, because they don’t know how to respond to a mistake from their side, and the procedures are too fool-proof apparently, of coarse no one listens to the guy in orange because…he’s the guy in orange. Maintenance, we’d be lucky to get a hold of them if something is urgent, and if its something that only effects the guy in orange…good luck getting anything… so, here I am getting the run-around as usual, waiting for a response from them about my issues… 3 days and counting… lock-down doesn’t help…by the time the lock-down is done it will be the weekend and maintenance doesn’t work weekends. This is all just too perfect.

To add insult to injury…I got a slab of ‘humus’ on pita bread for lunch. Now I understand they’re trying to accommodate taste buds with a touch of middle-eastern flavour, but…humus, like salad, isn’t a meal, it’s the guarantee of a meal to follow… its when you go to a restaurant, they bring the salad, and you know the meal is soon to follow…similarly…who dips bread in humus and calls it lunch? Anyways… I was hoping for a nice supper, instead, it was the worst of the worst! I got ‘chicken pot pie’. This simply cant be happening! The last time I actually opened the meal was in Ramadan out of sheer desperation. To give you an idea, basically, its like cubes of chicken in ‘stuff’, I don’t know how to describe it besides that. Its some white mushy ‘stuff’, mixed in it is some green peas and topped with a thin layer of croissant like bread, which is completely soggy by the time we receive it, due to the whole pre-cook, wait for a couple of months while it stays frozen in the kitchen, then re-heat, and serve… desperate times, desperate measures? Uhhhm, no…this just aint goin down…plus, the ‘chicken’ is dark grey colour… I thought chicken was supposed to be white… *shriek*!

To clarify the matter, this isn’t the kitchen’s fault, the blame is squarely on ISNA. They label these pre-packaged meals as ‘halal’, missing one essential point; ‘halal’ is supposed to be edible! There’s nothing edible about this. ALLAH azza wa jall says ‘halalan tayyiban’, I guess they just disregard the tayyiban part. With all seriousness, the manners of slaughtering an animal includes minimizing the suffering as much as possible, to the extent that they aren’t supposed to see the knife before being slaughtered. These chickens are dark-grey in colour. They’ve clearly been traumatized. So if anyone from ISNA reads this, Please brothers, try tasting the meal your about to approve as ‘halal’ for a change, and see if you feel any guilt in your heart, knowing hundreds if not thousands of Muslim prisoners are about to receive them.

The Next Day…
Nothing like a 6:30am search to start off your day. The C Os were cool this time, so it wasn’t like a hurricane had just run over my cell… sometimes when you come back, its like, ‘did I just leave this place??!’, but it was good this time, al-hamdulillah. In fact, after the 3min familiarities, I just came back, spread my sheet back on my bed, and knocked out.

Loooooonngggg day…. Loooooonnngggg day! I hate cloudy days, even though I’m not out there to even feel the weather, it still effects me in here. I can see the top of the window across the hall from my door, and it looks like dark clouds have gathered. I hate that gloomy feeling. That’s the kinda day its turning out to be. Well, tomorrow’s another day. The only thing one can do to snap out of these kinda gloomy days is open up the tafseer and contemplate, its never failed me.
أَلاَ بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ تَطْمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبُ
“Verily, in the remembrance of ALLAH do hearts find rest”. (Ar-Ra’d: 28)