Vacaville, California, USA – On a windy evening, Sajad Shakoor is busy unloading cardboard boxes packed with Middle Eastern food onto a kerb outside of Solano State Prison, one of 34 facilities that make up California’s state prison system.
Shakoor, tall and bulky with a light red beard and a white kufi, the head cap worn by some Muslims, lifts one box after another out of the back of his truck, each packed with succulent bowls of lamb shawarma and rice, chicken burritos, and platters of sticky-sweet baklava.
When Shakoor enters this facility, just a few steps past a fence topped with spirals of barbed wire and a cinder block check-in building, he is stepping back into a world he once thought he would never leave.
He brings the boxes into a large room, decorated by incarcerated people with colourful murals of hot air balloons floating over the vineyards of the nearby Napa Valley and emerald waters of Lake Tahoe, a glaring contrast against the oppressively drab features of a prison interior.
In this room, Shakoor will address dozens of Muslim worshippers who have come to hear him speak, and enjoy the mouth-watering food that comes courtesy of Shakoor’s popular restaurant, Falafel Corner.
“I’ve been eating Top Ramen [a brand of packaged noodles] for so long,” Kali, a 69-year-old man at the event who has been incarcerated for more than 40 years on a murder charge, tells Al Jazeera. “So this food is so good.”
As the room fills up, with more than 100 people scheduled to attend, one of the most striking details is the diversity of age.
Young men in beanies and blue shirts with “CDCR [California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] Prisoner” in yellow block letters on the back sit side-by-side with elderly men sporting salt-and-pepper beards and shirts reading “mobility impaired”, digging into their food as Shakoor and others speak at a podium at the front of the room.
“My dad always told me that if success was about hard work, the hardest-working being is a donkey,” quips Shakoor. “All of this is from God.
“It’s a joy that’s extra special to come and serve food, because I spent time here,” he says.
Previously serving a life sentence that included a period in Solano and several other state prisons, Shakoor says he found solace in cooking and Islam – the religion he was born into, and that he became a devout follower of in prison.
The cooking passion that would become Shakoor’s profession, along with his faith, helped enliven the banal routines of prison life and offered a source of purpose and fulfilment that helped stave off despair.
“I thought I would die in prison,” he says. “That feeling that you’re never going to leave, that’s really tough to accept. It breaks a lot of people.”