drawing by Akil Jahi
It was early September in a small, windowless cement block room with little in it other than half a dozen banks of hard plastic chairs. We the guests brought the feast, a clear plastic garbage bag cradling a careful selection of vending machine snacks in its bottom. Two garbage cans had been gussied up good for our long awaited visit: the overturned cans were both first covered with a large square of cardboard, and then topped with scratchy and stiff folded paper towels that had been carefully arranged so that their creases made a pleasing pattern on the makeshift table. We were seated on two banks of hard plastic chairs which had been arranged in a wide V. The V was too wide for all of us to be heard in the very loud room, so we screechily dragged one bank closer to the other with the tables in between. One of us gleefully dumped the goodies out on the festive tables – this type of feast was a very rare treat for him.
Another of us was the man of the hour. Abu had been all over the news for several days now. He had just learned he would live.
The celebration began. Abu read a poem about forgiveness, and said a few holy words. He used the word gods, not God, surprising me. I relaxed quite a bit after that - it hadn’t been easy for us to get there and I was quite nervous.
Then Abu sang “Amazing Grace”, and boy can that man sing! As far as I know he has had no musical training, but he put my thirty years of training to shame. The entire room went silent for his song, both the watchers and the watched.
You can read about what happened next in that room, a death row visiting room, in this post:
https://steemit.com/freedom/@owasco/freedom
That’s right. I am using this contest to pimp my previous post! Please go read it if you haven’t already, it would mean an awful lot to me if you did. It’s both a very important story and way past payout, so reading it is pressure-free. It is also the best story about hope, faith and love I have ever known. I had nothing to do with this story other than to see it with my own blessed eyes. Treat yourself – go read my post! And thanks for reading this one!
This is my entry to PHC's contest https://steempeak.com/contest/@zord189/powerhousecreativescontestastoryoffaithhopelovecontestdetails-62hbckl1qu
All images are my own unless otherwise stated.