Refugee Prison Break

Chapter 8

I gave Ernesto Bas's parents' contact details, and he spoke to them directly. He introduced himself as Bas's housemate, and explained how Bas had overstayed his visa and had taken up employment when he wasn't supposed to.

Mr. and Mrs. Zaidi convened an emergency meeting. I was invited along, and flew to Penang especially for it.

"We need lawyers! Let's hire the most expensive lawyers!"

"Can't they just deport him, just send him back to us?"

"How can we afford expensive lawyers? We need help. Maybe the Malaysian embassy in America can help. We should start making contacts."

The atmosphere was flustered and confused. A lot was still unknown, like where Bas was exactly, how to get in contact with him, and why he wasn't being sent back.

It took a month of back-and-forth consultations with a plethora of officials to get a clearer picture. Bas was being held at a detention center in the middle of a swamp in Florida. He was not only suspected of flaunting immigration rules, he was being investigated as an Islamic terrorist.

"That's insane!" cried his mother. "He doesn't even believe in God." They had raised him as a Muslim, but he rejected his faith when he reached adolescence for reasons unclear to them. I, of course, knew why.

I wasn't sure whether I should tell Mr. and Mrs. Zaidi their son was gay. It was a bad time. And also, Bas had hidden his sexuality for so long and so rigorously, it didn't seem my place to out him. After three months locked away, Bas was finally allowed to make phone calls. They were kept to a strict five minutes, and could only happen once a week. The first time he called, we huddled in a room waiting for the phone to sound. When it rang and we heard Bas's voice for the first time, everyone became emotional. Little information was exchanged, and that became the norm for many future calls. He didn't mention the true nature of his relationship with Ernesto, who was acting as a liaison for the family on US soil; he vaguely said the asylum case he had filed for was related to his atheism, not to his sexuality; other than that, he only had time to let everyone know how he was feeling, what conditions at the facility were like, and what they were feeding him.

"I would do anything for fresh fruit!" he crackled over the speakerphone.

Bas's asylum application, running in parallel to visa infringement charges and absurd terrorism suspicions, made things very complicated. Amidst all this confusion, Bas, intentionally or unintentionally, had somehow surrendered his Malaysian citizenship. He had become stateless!