A Hand Made of Letters

June 1, 2019- 10:50PM

I’m an hour and ten minutes away from my thirteenth anniversary in prison. Had you told me thirteen years ago that I would survive 3 years in solitary confinement, 6 terrifying years in the Special Handling Unit, and nearly 4 years in Millhaven Maximum security prison (where I still live), I would not have believed you.

Indeed, man was created to come through.

Though I have trouble with many of his views, Professor Jordan Peterson was right when he said: “In some sense, human existence is so contradictory that in a manner, technically impossible. We are limited creatures and we face unlimited catastrophe. Everything we know will disappear and everyone we love will die. And so that makes human existence in a sense existentially impossible. But the religious impulse combats that in a sense; because the religious impulse opens up for the human being the possibility that there is sufficient absolute within to serve as an antidote to the absolute without.

The notion that is necessary to have an individual relationship with the Absolute, God, is a statement of the fact that we are adapted to the nature of reality, and that if we draw on everything that is within ourselves, without fear, then we can develop the sorts of personalities that are powerful enough to confront any catastrophe.”

I want to thank you for joining me on this journey. You have no idea how it feels to reach out from this cold underworld, using a hand that’s made of letters and then feel the warm grasp of a living being reach back.

Almost everything you read here is being written as my story unfolds; I have no idea how it will end, but I certainly hope that you’re still there with me when it does.

Your brother,

Zakaria Amara

To read my story, click here: The Boy and His Sand Castle