Jhonatan. From Prison Inmate to Third Sector Professional
FROM DRUG DEALING TO A BOCCONI DEGREE THANKS TO THE UNIVERSITY'S SVOLTE PROJECT. THE STORY OF JHONATAN ABD EL MALEK IS THE PARABLE OF A YOUNG MAN WHO HAD THE STRENGTH TO TAKE HIS LIFE BACK. IT WAS RECITED LIVE AT THE CLOSING EVENT OF THE INITIATIVE BY SDA BOCCONI AND CORRIERE DELLA SERATaking a new direction, perhaps one never considered before. Taking stock of one’s existence and putting oneself back in the game. The Svolte project by SDA Bocconi and Corriere della Sera has told many stories of change originated by the new skills obtained through study. From the stories of individuals, who have turned their careers around thanks to upskilling or reskilling, to stories of transformation and reorganization of entire companies, thanks to targeted training. These are many different stories, told in 12 videos published during this academic year, but also told in the form of a theatrical script and recited live at the closing event last April 21. Here, the story of Jhonatan Abd El Malek.
Freedom ... I always think about what this word means.
Listen to yourselves carefully. Yes, I am talking to you.
Because everything starts from there: from our thoughts, in the form of words, in our mind. And thoughts change constantly, if you notice, over the course of your lives. Several times just in the course of days...
And think how much they can change lives, like mine, in which days change, and changed in a revolutionary way within a few years.
I'm putting in a lot of words and concepts, I'm too emotionally involved, but don't worry. It is part of me. Now my managerial mind comes out and we are going to rearrange all the bits. Everyone in their seats. Relax.
My name is Johnny, I am 26 years old, I am an educator. I work for the Kairòs community, where teenagers and young adults with a criminal record are welcomed. Bad stuff, but I've done far worse, so I'm not impressed. And do you know what I am telling you? I feel really free in being able to help various guys who had borderline experiences, helping them escape certain mental patterns that are rooted in their heads and affect their actions.
They are schemes that do not make you free... and oh do I understand them. Why dealing, having a lot of money, feeling powerful, be treated like a cool guy when you enter the clubs, have big cars, be observed with gusto by the girls and a whole community that looks at you as somebody who made it... Well, it you makes you fantasize about being free! And I don't need to be told about it by the guys I oversee. I have experienced all that.
Let's start with the small pieces that I put in order.
My name is Johnny, I'm 26, and just over 10 years ago ...
- Wow how time goes by, I'm no longer a kid, now I'll make you feel how I matured.
I was arrested after being caught with a large amount of cocaine, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Now I'm not going to tell you about the 4 months spent sleeping on a cot in the Vigevano prison, the odyssey of the 15-hour night transfer to the Udine prison, the periods in which the next youngest person in jail was 40 years old, when I spent weeks without being able to speak to anyone in Italian, about the search for alibis, justifications, the psychological abyss...
Exactly, I don't want to talk about it, even if I told you a little about it. It is a rhetorical figure, it's called preterition, Francesco Petrarca also employed it, can't I use it, too? Yes, it might surprise you but also Economics and Management graduates know how to use rhetorical figures ... and also former inmates, haha!
But I'm digressing ... I was telling you about prison, about the cold, about when you lack air, about when you don't even have a thought to hold onto.
But then the TURNAROUNDS do really arrive. They are possible. Gigantic, long, complex, incredible things happen if you think about it in hindsight... but in reality, it takes little to activate them, after all.
My name is Johnny, I am 26 years old, I am an educator. I messed up a lot as when I was younger and this got me in jail. It was very hard. But I made it out of it. I got out of it the day I realized that the only thing of value is time. I couldn't waste time anymore. Many days, inside San Vittore, seemed gray, motionless, useless. But it is up to each of us to fill the gray settings of our lives with colors. Paint is everywhere.
And it's crazy to think that my salvation, my freedom, have become books. It almost makes me laugh to think that my experience of recovery and rebirth is the one that thousands of young students regard as the closest thing to forced labor... It's crazy how different the world can be depending on the point of view from which we observe it. Is it not true?
My story has something fairytale-like about it. The super baddie that turns out good. And often, in fairy tales, the transformation occurs thanks to a magic helper, the one that helps transform the villain into a good hero. The Pinocchio’s Blue Fairy, remember that?
In my fairy tale, I’ve had plenty of magic helpers. Many teachers who have helped me in every way to evolve as a student and as a person... especially Laura. And also many volunteers, people who really convey to you all the sense of humanity there can be in the world. And the volunteer who led me by the hand is called Ilaria. It was she who saw something good in me. It was her who believed in me. She was the one who spurred me on. The one who listened to me. The one that was there for me.
And it is by her that I am inspired when I carry out my work as an educator: you must not act in the place of the young person in difficulty, you must be there to welcome him, make him feel accepted, give him your hand, and when he falls to the ground ...
The same hand that I felt turned towards me when I did my studies, in prison, until I graduated: 99/100 in Social Sciences, not dumb, mind you... and then the gates of the University open for me. Me, the former drug dealer. University?! Think about it!
Me becoming a model student! Me who a few years earlier had been defined as a "person with a well-defined criminal structure, now fully assimilated into his personality"... who knows, maybe a criminal structure can be transformed into a nerd structure?
Oh yes, you should have seen the string of 29 and 30 then I started to accumulate. And not at some easy university for stragglers... at Bocconi, oh! Bocconi University of Milan. Yes, Ilaria persuaded me to enter here thanks to a scholarship. And after some doubts and thoughts I realized it was the right thing. Even if I dreamed of doing Educational Science and here I was doing Management instead. But it doesn’t compare. I mean, a Bocconi graduate!
What an adventure to get to graduation. Getting to know a lot of very strong teachers, very good guys, very nice girls ... What an adventure to live! Which wasn't that easy: I was doing 12 hours as a student and 12 hours as a prisoner... Sometimes I’d be studying, at night inside the Opera prison, which aesthetically is not exactly like the new Bocconi Campus, haha. And my comrades didn't know that I was an inmate. They still hardly believe it today. Some are still in shock after reading my story reported by the Corriere.
Well, I confess: I was ashamed. I couldn't talk about prison. I was Johnny, the nice one, the smiling one, the good one, the one you could always count on, the one who made you discover volunteer experiences. That’s who I wanted to be.
And to be like this I had to tell some baloney: like the fact that I didn't have a smartphone because I had had problems with gambling addiction and therefore it was forbidden for me... ahha, what an imagination!
And all this I'm telling, it was I who did it. With the initial push that started from within, when I realized that all that money I was handling had no value, that I felt omnipotent but in reality I was nothing. That the only resource that has real value is called time. When you understand it and understand how you want to exploit it, then, and only then, you are free.
Come on, I'll tell you one last time so you will remember me.
My name is Johnny, I am 26 years old, I am engaged to Emanuela. A beautiful story with her, eh. But I don't want to go off topic. In life I am an educator. I won’t do it for life. It is too exhausting ... but I could continue to work in the education sector perhaps with a managerial role. I have a degree from Bocconi, just saying... or maybe I'll go into something else. Maybe another turning point will come. Inside I feel the freedom to brave it. This is the real breakthrough.
And I'm not afraid. I've been through worse... trust me.
by Lorenzo De Belli
Translated by Alex Foti
