From Pen 2 Pen...

By Abdul-Hakim Muhammad MSW

From Pen 2 Pen… examines the life of an individual who spent time in the Prison Industrial Complex. The story begins by analyzing society in regard to the constitution and how men and women are treated based on the color of their skin. As a result of the rules that govern society, the author describes his stay in a maximum security prison. This episode led the author down a path that was unforeseen but became a reality, which affects how he looks at and examines certain people based on skin color.

The author utilizes the ink/pen to explain how he made the transition from Pen life to learning about the components that make up our criminal justice system. In his quest for understanding, he became a student that examined many of the factors that lead to incarceration. The tools of education are outlined throughout the story. It helps the reader understand what it takes to make that transition from criminal activity to fundamental awareness.

The author managed to attend a community college, a four-year college and, later, graduate school. While engaging in these institutions of education, the author developed a passion for learning the best form of rehabilitation. The path this book follows can be used in any society in any part of the world. Moreover, the author continues to explain how none of his achievements were successfully completed without the help, instructions, and guidance from his Creator and Sustainer: Allah, Lord of All the Worlds.

The author looks at this component as a decisive factor he used in all of his affairs. He closes with this statement: "All praise is due to Allah, and may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon Muhammad, his family, his companions. May Allah be pleased with them all and all of those who follow him until the last day. Ameen."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098076771

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From Pen 2 Pen...

Abdul-Hakim Muhammad MSW

Copyright © 2021 by Abdul-Hakim Muhammad, MSW

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

This book is dedicated to a generation of youth who have been abandoned in the face of success and left to be victims of crimes inflicted on them by society. Children are the future.

Volume 1

The Pen Files

Chapter 1

Where Do You Live

I’m glad you asked. This question can be answered from many different perspectives. It depends on the person who is being addressed. When we examine history, we find multiple interpretations of this place we call home. Some say, Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy made mention of home when she said, There’s no place like home. How many can honestly say America is their home?

Today, home can be whatever you make it. Can I look back into the history books of my ancestors and define this society as my home? This is a tough, challenging question to answer without textual proof to support my argument. I’m not going to go back to the beginning of time, but I will go as far as 1776. Who remembers that time period? What was it like to live in this place called America?

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed. This Declaration was also known as The Shot Heard Around the World. The Revolutionary War had been won, and a new country established—Land of the Free, Home of the Brave—a new country already occupied by the Natives, individuals who lived here for thousands of years. This was your home, and it was invaded. Whatever you named your homeland, that name is forgotten and replaced in history books as America. What would you do?

America is home of the free, land of the brave, home of the Thirteenth Amendment which was meant to abolish slavery. What is the Thirteenth Amendment, and what will help you understand the Thirteenth Amendment? It can help one understand neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Based on this Amendment and careful examination, does slavery still exist even though it was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment?

This is where I live, and the statement from Dorothy, There’s no place like home, does not apply to me. The statement Land of the Free, Home of the Brave does not apply to me. It only applies to a certain group or class of people who have not been victims of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Points of Benefit:

The Thirteenth Amendment did not abolish slavery.

America was occupied thousands of years before it was discovered.

Freedom in America has a price if you’re not from a certain group or class of people.

History has been tainted to only tell a portion of the story.

America was built on Amendments.

The American Constitution does not practice equality.

Response:

Everyone has a story that can be told with a vision or explained and not understood. This story is about a young man who has made a complete transition from a troubled criminal lifestyle to a student sitting in a classroom. The author does not just want you to read the story but to get involved and put yourself in his shoes and walk one hundred miles until you truly understand who he is, all the problems he faced, the obstacles he confronted, and hurdles he had to leap. All of this took place in what’s considered as his home. So again, Where do you live?

Many Years Earlier

At this very moment, I’m lined up with at least twenty other men. All of us have the same thing in common. We are incarcerated. We have been sentenced by a judge to do time. This place is called the State Correctional Institution of Graterford. When you arrive, you are greeted by a thirty-foot-high concrete wall. The look of it is intimidating. You might ask, why such a big wall, what’s inside, and it must be there for a reason?

We are confronted by a group of correctional officers that do not have the friendliest of faces. One medium-dark-skinned officer with a deep voice speaks, When I call your name, bring all of your belongings.

The process of entering a state facility is taking place. Out of all the things that were mentioned, one statement resonated with me for a while. The officer asked this question to every last one of the men that were with me. He looked at me with a cold face and said, If something happens to you, where do you want your body shipped?

In a low tone, I said, What? Can you repeat that?

If something happens to you, where do you want your body shipped?

This is the beginning of my new life in my new home called the Pen. This is shortened for the word penitentiary. As you see from the questioning of the officer, this is not your everyday playground. This is a maximum security prison where you can kill or be killed. It’s just a matter of how you carry yourself. How you deal with others on a daily basis defines who you are. There are multiple types living in this place called the Pen. You have to fit in where you get in, and make no mistakes about that because it may be for you or against you.

You may get sent to a block where you see a friend or foe. Once you enter, all eyes are on you—the new guy. Who is the new guy? Is he tough, hard, a chump, a rat? Who is he? However long you are there, they will eventually find out. You are on this block with 400 cells, with two in a cell on one side and single cell on the other side. That make up about 400 inmates on one side and 200 on the other side. We are talking about close to 600 inmates in one block every day and night for 365 days of the year. This is your life in a nutshell. Now let’s bring all four of the blocks together for yard. Let’s say everyone decides to come out for some air. There are four blocks of 600, which comes up to about 2400.

Remember when I talked about getting in where you fit in and making the best of it? This is when that matters. The officer screams Yard lines going out, Yard Lines, then five minutes later, Last call for yard. It’s your first time, and you have never been to Clay Country. All you ever did was hear about. Now you hear, and you are out in the yard with 2,400 inmates. Twenty-four hundred of anything sounds scary but 2400 accused criminals, accused of robbery, rape, murder, burglary, and the likes? And out of all the people in the world you want to see, its him in the flesh, and he is squad deep.

You try to play like you don’t see him, but you know he sees you, and he calls out your handle. But you act like you don’t hear him. Deep down inside, you say, This coward ass nigga going to try and punk me ’cause he’s forty deep with his crew. What, he forgot I trashed him in front of his peeps? So I know he don’t want no real drama. Always remember, you got options, multiple options. The question is which one is best for the situation. Rule of thumb: everything about who you are is about to get tested. You know how you walk around with that grizzly look like you’re tough? Yeah, that doesn’t work in the Pen. You look or stare at someone for too long, that could mean a problem. My advice, get yourself a sword because, sooner or later, you might need it.

This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. This is where I live because the Thirteenth Amendment says you’re free, with exceptions. This is one of those exceptions. If you are Black, and you commit a crime, you have violated the Thirteenth Amendment and is subject to spending time in prison. Prison is where the story starts, or should I say, Pen, and this is the transition of me going from Pen to pen…

Land of the Free, Home of the Slave

Chapter 2

The Beginning

I would first like to tell you who I am, the person. My name is Abu Ateeyah, Abdul Hakim Ibn Mark Muhammad As-Salafee As-Sijjinee. My name carries a meaning from the Arabic language and from a religious perspective since this is where my true beginning really started and how I closed the files on an ending saga.

I am Abu Ateeyah because of my firstborn child. My firstborn was a girl, and I named her Ateeyah, which means gift or generous. Abu means the father of. This means that I am Abu Ateeyah, father of the Gift, or father of the Generous. The Abdul is broken down into two parts, and each part complements the other. You cannot have the ABD without the UL. The word ABD alone means servant, and when coupled with the UL, it then changes the meaning to servant of. In the Arabic language, this is known as a definite article, just like in the English language.

The name Hakim is not usually pronounced the correct way unless one understands the Arabic language. So this name Hakim is mostly translated to the English reader as Hakeem. This is because the letter I has a kasra which gives a sound familiar with E. It is coupled with a YA, which is a letter that takes the double EE. Hakim takes on the EE sound, but is written with the letter I.

The meaning of Hakim in the Arabic language literally means wise. This word Hakim is known as an indefinite article because it is not accompanied by the letters ALIF, which is A and LAM, which is L. When those two letters are placed in front of Hakim, it would read as AL-Hakim, which means the wise. This name is only a description of the creator Allah, Lord of All the Worlds, and is not permissible for human beings.

This is why my name is Abdul-Hakim because we are all servants of the creator, and therefore, my name means Servant of the Wise. I am Ibn Drinks because my father’s last name is Drinks, and the word Ibn means the son of. Every child carries with them the father’s name. The lineage of every child is traced back to the father. When the two names come together, it means I am the son of Mark Drinks. My name is Muhammad, which means worthy of praise.

My nickname is As Salafee because I follow the way of the first three generations of Muslims. My other nickname is As Sijjinee, which literally means the prisoner. Since the ending of this word Sijjin ends with EE, I was the one who was affiliated with prison life. I was known as the leader of the prisoners because I was put in charge of the Muslims in the Prison Industrial Complex. That is my name and, yes, a story in itself.

I was born in Philadelphia and raised in West Philadelphia, then moved to the Olney-Somerville neighborhood. I attended Martha Washington Elementary School, then Cooke Junior High School, then Northeast High School and then Olney High School, where I graduated. I never truly benefited from my education until I went to prison.

I state, I spent more than a third of my life in and out of prison. I am who I am because of the shortcomings and trials that I faced in my younger adult years. I tasted the true reality of defeat and seen with my own eyes rock bottom. I tasted failure at the expense of stupidity and arrogance.

I make mention of my life being like a tragedy and a gift in one breath. I state, I say that because I put my mother through a lot of conflict and always said things to her like ‘Mom, it wasn’t me’ or ‘Mom, I didn’t do it.’ I would say to myself, "I know I was guilty. I know I did what they say I did, but when it comes to Mom, you never want her to see that side of you."

I then mention that I finally got back on the right track and promised to myself that I was going to do right by my mother. I was given a second chance by Allah, the mighty and majestic. I stated, The way I realized this was from my sentencing judge. The courts were trying to give me every bit of twenty years, and my parole officer was trying to give me some years to add to that. I was supposed to see a judge for another case, and there was no telling what he wanted to do with me. It was a gift because I ended up with a two-to-five-year sentence, and my parole officer gave me eighteen months. They made sure they got the max from me.

I completed six years of incarceration and six months in a halfway house. However, I was the picture boy for recidivism. This is the face of recidivism, and this is one of the reasons why prisons are overcrowded

After completing my time and being released, I was informed there was a warrant out for my arrest. Can anybody guess the reason why? Do you remember the case that got lost in the system? Yes, that case. It was an old drug case which came to surface, and I was wondering what they were going to use for evidence. This was that gift that was previously mentioned. If Allah is