by Courtney Manning
After being imprisoned in Pakistan, former computer scientist Iman returns to New York to discover many things are different, including himself.
Part I: New York
Iman Reza is full of charisma, but would rather predict the futures of others than ruminate on his past. A computer scientist, with an MBA and a Presidential Grant for research study at the City University of New York, he was one of two promising Pakistani business students selected by his home city to study in the west. Thirty years later, he lives on the stairs outside Riverside Church, making conversation with passersby and praying for the resolution of wars near and far.
Iman speaks in poetic metaphors, blessing the people and places that sustain his modest but comfortable collection of shopping carts and large blue poly tarps. It’s difficult for him to justify why he’s unhoused, but he details dates and events from before 2010 with the exactitude of a court reporter. I first received snippets of his life between lines of poetry when I greeted him on my walk to and from Columbia University each day.
He dislikes dogs because his brother was bitten as a child.
He enjoys numbers because they reflect repeating patterns in nature and architecture.
He’s never done drugs and his religion forbids alcohol, though he tells me he did suffer from addiction once.
“To what?” I ask, scribbling notes in my journal. I’m thinking of the men at casino halls, gambling to pay debts to other gamblers. It could happen to anyone, I think.
“To love,” he said. “Love for a western woman.”
Iman met Giana when he was 26. At the time he was working for a computer hardware company, designing components for machines as large as a Manhattan office. Giana was an Italian gardener from New Jersey, brash and almost a decade older. She smoked, which he hated, and her cooking was admittedly awful. Still, as he puts it, he was “addicted,” and they married in 1992. “Through sickness and health” meant a lot to the couple, says Iman; Giana had diabetes, so he quickly took on the role of her caretaker and nurse. Settling down to domestic bliss, Iman didn’t think much about politics, wars, or protests. Then 9/11 happened, beginning a chain of misfortune that triggered a Doppler shift in his life.
“My wife dragged me by my ear and said ‘these guys are going to bother you now!’ and I said ‘who’s gonna bother me? I’m a peaceful man,’” Iman remembers. But they did bother him. He became the subject of racialized ridicule and harassment at work. His coworkers would call him Islam instead of Iman and left newspaper clippings about hate crimes in his personal possessions. His coworkers knew Iman was from Pakistan, but had no idea, and apparently no interest, in the fact that Iman came from Pakistan’s persecuted Hindu minority, not its Muslim majority. Iman left his job as a hardware engineer, but according to Iman his Pakistani passport and the post-9/11 climate made it difficult to get another job.
Less than a year later, in 2002, Giana had a stroke and died. She was buried in New Jersey. Iman says he gave every dollar they had to the hospital when she fell ill, hoping it would save her. After her death, according to Iman, her parents unceremoniously picked up her things and left. Penniless, unable to find work, and at the behest of his family back home, he returned to Pakistan. His American dream was crushed in a few short years.
Part II: Lahore
Known as the “Cultural Heart of Pakistan” and “City of Gardens,” Lahore is a bustling metropolis known for its history and cosmopolitan ideals. When he returned to his family home in 2002, however, Iman faced more persecution; this time, not because he was perceived to be Muslim, but because he wasn’t.
As a descendent of Hindus in Pakistan, Iman was used to being a religious minority. He and his siblings recieved Muslim names to help them assimilate growing up, but it wasn’t enough to shield his identity. Hindu women in Lahore faced forced conversion, most Hindu men were bonded labourers, and practicing Hindus suffered under persistent harassment and abuse. Iman was not practicing, but frequent bombings and targeted attacks against his small neighborhood left him shaken. Like hundreds of other Hindu and Christian young men in the 2000s, he was arrested under the accusation of spreading blasphemy against Islam.
This is where Iman’s memory becomes less structured; in his retelling, his voice shakes. The scars on his hands and the sorrow in his eyes suggest, it was a difficult time in his life. He returns to speaking half in metaphor, lost in tangents and comparisons that I feel guilty redirecting. At one point he gives me a small stone to hold.
“First they took my teeth, then the nails on my fingers,” he says, recounting the torture he experienced while in prison. “But, like leaving our mother’s womb, we long to go back where we can’t. I miss my country.”
Iman was hardly a rebel in either the US or Pakistan; he studied hard, worked in a non-political field, and had an impressive list of credentials. He claims he did not intend to change minds, protest, or oppose Islamic principles. But it didn’t seem to matter. He says he would cry for his wife long into the night.
“Her memory kept me going when all was lost,” he said. “When I needed her, that’s when she finally returned to me, like a ghost from the darkness. And she never left.”
Part III: Awakening
To this day, Iman claims to communicate with his wife and receive messages in return.
“Last week,” he tells me, “I woke up with three fall leaves resting gently on my face. When I whispered to them, they floated away. She is always giving me these little gifts.”
His time in prison, according to Iman, was a time of both loss and discovery. Iman claims he was frightened when he experienced dissociation for the first time, but diving deeper into the feeling blessed him with psycho-spiritual gifts that were ‘locked’ in his pre-prison state of mind. He began to see ghosts, spirits, and auras in addition to the physical realm. After being released without charges after an unknown number of months incarcerated, he felt paranoid and isolated living in Pakistan. A job in the US might come easier now that over ten years had passed, but more than that, Iman felt motivated by Giana’s spirit calling him back to New York. When he landed and saw the manicured planter boxes outside the airport, he considered it a sign from her that he was home. Though it is unknown whether he arrived on a travel visa or received a job offer from a US business, he believes he was destined to stay in the US and abandoned his former home for good.
“They told me I was a ‘non-citizen,’ so I burned my passport. I got a government scholarship, how am I not a citizen of my father’s country?”
After his return to the US, Iman strove to find meaning in his experiences. He started by reading Greek philosophy, religious texts, and political articles on torture at the New York Public Library. One of his new “gifts” after prison was a near-photographic memory for dates and numbers, so he dove into research on sacred geometry and architecture. He spent more and more time outside, comparing the shapes and angles of trees and grasses to buildings in Manhattan and Jersey City. He became vegetarian and picked up a few hobbies to pass the time.
“In 2019, I started doing cold water dives. The lowest temperature I got was 44 degrees, at 4 o’clock in the morning.”
“How do you do it?” I asked incredulously.
“You have 44 litres of water in your body. It takes a long time to chill all of that water. Four, four, four. Do you notice it?”
At some point, Iman lost his housing, apparently due to the fixations dominating his mind. He claims to have sat, with his collection of shopping carts and all, and lectured US businessmen on spirituality and morality in front of a building on Wall Street. He says he gained a reputation on Wall Street and the attention of a few curious photographers. Despite his degree in management and clean-cut appearance, it didn’t bring him satisfaction.
“They were the real bums because they had no knowledge, all these so-called executives. They would come to me and talk about management and take my jabs. They already knew who I was, likely because somebody had told them, ‘oh that crazy guy that will talk to you, did you hear he has all these degrees? Just listen to what he says.’”
Unlike the other homeless individuals in the neighborhood, Iman claims to have made peace with his ‘golden’ mind.
“If you treat them right, the voices don’t bother you. They settle down and adapt with you, like perfume.”
Part IV: The Real War is on the Streets
According to Iman, his largest challenge has been his struggle to secure safe housing and basic services. He refuses to renege on the promise he made to himself to never claim Pakistani citizenship. He carries anger at the NYPD for forcing him to move his shelter every 30 days, and for allegedly dumping out his bottles of harvested water. He also accuses officers of trying to freeze him out when he does not comply, forcing him awake early in the morning to move his shelter. He points out that his tents and battery-powered heater create an igloo that needs to stay sealed to work properly. On a positive note, he claims that the groundskeepers who tend to the area are his friends, often fetching him water when they know he is too cold to leave his tent and sending him extra meals from their wives.
Despite the sacrifices he makes, overcoming his pride might not make a difference in Iman’s quest for greater safety. To attain residential assistance and food stamps, individuals in New York City must procure a form of photo identification and official proof of residence. The easiest means to attain a photo ID is to apply for a NYCID, a free government-issued photo ID card for anyone 10 years old and older. Requiring 3 ‘points’ proving identity and 1 ‘point’ proving residency, the application requires proof of 30 days residence in an authorized shelter, a legal photo ID, and proof of birth. Foreign passports have to be expired within three years, and one needs an address or PO Box to have a new one sent. A PO Box requires a photo ID and proof of current residence. He would first need a NYC ID card or other photo identification to live in a shelter for more than 30 days.
Iman, trapped outside the system like thousands of other New Yorkers, simply survives however he can; by the grace of others, through creativity, and through habit. He never pities himself, or anyone else; instead, he offers his advice and wisdom to the Morningside Heights community. He picks up litter while chatting with young couples strolling through the park and mingles happily with churchgoers after Sunday service. He offers to meditate with curious Columbia students and gives small stones to those who sit down for a chat. I’ve never heard him ask anyone for anything, but he always seems well-rested and well-fed.
Despite his skills as a storyteller, and the hours spent talking about the real and unreal, there are still entire chapters of empty pages. As the book goes on, it becomes filled with interconnected webs of math and beauty, energies and mystical gifts, pain and privilege. For the many passers by who stop to listen, whether Iman’s stories are fact or fiction is beside the point.