The Man Who Paid for America’s Fear

From the moment he applied for his job at the warehouse two years ago, Hamid Hayat worried that his co-workers would find out about his past.

The simplest way to explain how Hamid ended up in prison is that he made the wrong friend at the wrong time. The friend was an FBI informant, and the time was August 2002.

A year and a half earlier, two FBI agents knocked on the apartment door of an Oregon convenience store clerk.

The Hayats were met at the airport by security personnel. Onlookers snapped pictures. His sisters — Najia was 18, Raheela was 10 — were afraid. “My mom said to smile because we haven’t done anything,” Raheela recalled.

Wazhma Mojaddidi was running errands in Sacramento when she got the call that changed her life.

“He talked about jihad, jihad, jihad,” prosecutor Laura Ferris said of Hamid, addressing the jury at the start of his trial.

Hamid was 25 when the government gave him a beige prison uniform and locked the solid metal door to his small cell. The room was bare except for a sink, a toilet, a desk and a mattress. Insects crawled through fissures in the walls. A tiny window covered with bars looked out to the gray skies of Terre Haute, Ind., more than 2,000 miles from his family in California and half a planet from the wife in Pakistan he’d barely gotten to know.

I am not perfect I say stupid things I laugh when I’m not supposed to. I have scars left by people who did me wrong. I’m a little crazy, and probably won’t change. Love me or not. But I make one promise, that if I love you, I do it with a full heart.

The Muslim brothers, as they called themselves, liked to pray together outdoors, on a beat-up, netless tennis court in the exercise yard at FCI Phoenix. They were a diverse group — Black, Latino, some of Arab descent — and out there under the desert sun, a few would sit every day on the blazing-hot court and talk about their obligations to God. Every Sunday night, they gathered for a religion class in the prison’s interfaith chapel, where staff allowed the men to keep a small library of Islamic texts that anyone could borrow.

There are two bounties that many people lose (by not taking full advantage of them): Health & Freedom (Al-Bukhari) ... Your health before illness — your free time, before your preoccupation … The one who has free time actually has no excuse for not performing his Obligatory deeds & improving his self.

Hamid’s last hope for freedom rested in a 127-page legal document.

Hamid was coming back from lunch when the prison guard who had served in Iraq beckoned him into the unit office. “I need you to clean up this mess right here,” the officer said.

He caught a ride with Carlos Cervantes, an employee of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, a nonprofit organization that helps people adjust after prison. They pulled over at a rest area for Hamid to pray, then at a Walmart so he could buy a cheap cell phone. As they crossed the Arizona border into California, Hamid requested they stop at a Popeyes. He ordered chicken and biscuits, staring in wonderment at the bounty before digging in.

After selling the yellow house in Lodi to pay their legal bills, the Hayat family now lived in nearby Stockton. The neighborhood wasn’t as pleasant — a desolate motel stood a few blocks away — but the new house was comfortable, with an apricot tree in the backyard. There was a mosque 50 or 60 steps from the front door.

By this point, Hamid understood he was “really lost” and needed help.

On a bright, warm afternoon in May, Hamid’s relatives gathered at the mosque a block from the family’s home. It was Eid, the breaking of the fast at the end of Ramadan, and local Muslims were celebrating with a barbecue. On one end of the building, children played in an inflatable bounce castle, watched by their mothers, while in a separate area, men tended to a grill, cooking chicken and hot dogs and piling them onto paper plates in wildly generous portions.

Hamid doesn’t intend to work at Amazon forever. College still appeals to him — he wonders if he could get a religion degree and be a professor somewhere, and supporters recently launched an online fundraiser to help pay his tuition. He has also spoken with Goldwasser about a possible career in the nonprofit sector, working with other formerly incarcerated people. He doesn’t have a firm plan, though, and in our talks last summer, he hinted that he wants more space and independence to figure it all out.

Federal case against Lodi terror suspect Hamid Hayat comes to an end

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Stephen Lam • stephen.lam@sfchronicle.com • @ stephenlamphoto

King Kaufman • king.kaufman@sfchronicle.com • @ king_kaufman