‘People visit my friends for Raya, but not me’
Women prisoners in Kajang pine for a warm Aidilfitri celebration with family and friends.
KAJANG: In a small, stark room inside the Kajang women’s prison, Abang Zam recalls with sadness and regret, the last time she felt the warm embrace of her father.
It was Raya 2012.
She cannot however remember the exact conversation she had with him then, or if her 80-year-old father is in a coma or not today.
Abang Zam – a moniker inmates gave her – is in the dark about so many things regarding her family members because no one has come to visit her or update her about the goings-on at home. Not friends, not family, all of whom have avoided her like the plague since her incarceration for a drug related offence.
This coming Raya will be no different and she will likely spend the celebration with her prison mates as she has done every other year before.
“It’s sad. People visit my friends every Raya, but not me,” a melancholic Abang Zam told FMT recently.
The absence of familiar faces in her life for the past seven years however has given her ample time for some serious soul searching.
Prison life has also imbued the 47-year old with a new sense of responsibility. She says her free spirited days of the past are over and she is more mature now in how she deals with situations in life.
“I hope to open a restaurant once I am out, since I have some experience working in a canteen” she said with a faint smile.
Abang Zam also longs for a companion to share her life with and is hoping that after two failed engagements, she will be luckier the third time around.
“Everyone deserves a second chance, and maybe even a third chance, because life is too complicated to get it right the first time.”
Unlike Abang Zam, this will be Nurul’s (not her real name) first Raya away from her family.
She’s now into her second week of serving a six-month sentence after being convicted of abusing her firstborn.“Obviously, I feel sad,” she said cradling her second child of eight months.
“This is the first time I will celebrate Hari Raya away from my family and from my child,” she said, her voice cracking as she fights back tears.
The 27-year-old also spoke about her frustration at not being able to comfort her mother, who is struggling to come to terms with her imprisonment.
“I never expected it would come to this, nor did my family. When I saw my mother sobbing, I told her that there must be a reason for this and I was going to be okay,” she said, as she wiped away her tears.
And already, she has learnt a thing or two about life.
She said the first lesson was that people could be both a friend and an enemy at the same time and therefore one should be wary about who one trusted.
Secondly, that family was important. “They will stay with you through thick and thin,” she said.
Nurul is now looking forward to her release from prison come October. She said the prospect of once again being a mother to her daughter is the prime motivating factor in getting her through her time behind bars.
” I don’t know what’ll happen to me without her around,” she said, adding that she’ll look for a job once she is out so she can be in better financial shape to take care of her children.
While Abang Zam and Nurul dream of a better life beyond the prison gates as well as the chance to celebrate Hari Raya like other Muslims with their families around them, both women have resolved to put their troubles behind them and make the most of their life in prison.
To this end, both were recipients of the “Sehelai Tudung Segunung Harapan” programme, organised by Aidijuma Scarf in cooperation with prison authorities.
Apart from receiving a headscarf each in conjunction with the Hari Raya celebrations, Abang Zam and Nurul were happy that the programme organisers were doing their part in trying to change the public’s perception of prisoners.
They were also hopeful that society would someday welcome them back with open arms despite their past.
Speaking about the headscarf programme, Norjuma Habib Mohamed, founder of Aidijuma, said that too err was human.
“At the end of the day, it is not the mistake that should be the focus but the effort to become a better person because of it.”
She said it was also her hope that more NGOs would organise events aimed at helping prisoners regain the confidence they lost when they entered prison to serve out their sentences.
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Afiqah Abdul Aziz contributed to this article.