Human Hearts
An ex-offender opens his heart to others who find themselves in a similar place.
Your mother is not well at the moment,” Firdaus Abdul Hamid heard his father say during a visit to the Singapore prison where he was incarcerated. It was 2003, and 23-year-old Firdaus was a reluctant inmate. The young repeat offender was no stranger to prison life but learning of his mother’s illness, with father and son separated by a thick glass panel and speaking through a corded phone watched over by guards, was devastating. “Please pray for her,” his father said.
Back in his cell, Firdaus’s thoughts turned to his mother resting at home, enduring the pain and discomfort of a breast cancer operation, diabetes and heart disease. Despite her illness, she made a point to visit him every week, walking the one kilometre from the prison bus stop to the visitors’ room. Her visits were his lifeline. “She would talk about my sister and other things happening outside prison,” Firdaus recalls. “For me, seeing her was enough, it made me feel human again.”
When his father broke the news about his mother’s weakening condition, he was serving the longest imprisonment he’d yet faced – an 18-month sentence for being absent without official leave from the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), as well as insubordination and other offences. A harsh reality hit him: “I felt the punch – what if she passed away while I was still in prison?”
It was the first step of a long and difficult road to redemption.
PRISON EXPERIENCE
Firdaus left school at age 15, soon after his parents divorced. He found a job as a dishwasher at Changi Airport, and later worked long hours as a canteen helper, a cleaner and a busboy. Despite his labours, his monthly salary was S$1500. Occasionally he gave his mother $100 for expenses but for the most part, he spent the cash on himself and partying in nightclubs. He
soon found a bar attendant job. But as his social circle grew, Firdaus slipped into the wrong crowd, joining a gang and playing his part in their activities.
His young life began to spiral out of control after he was caught driving without a licence. He reacted angrily, throwing his wallet at the police officer, which saw him sentenced for four months. “I felt proud going to prison then – but that was my youth,” said Firdaus.
Searching for a stable life, he quit the gang and joined the SAF, where he was placed in its combat division. But three years later, while doing training in the forest, he tripped on a tree root and fell, dislocating his left shoulder. The injury healed badly and Firdaus was no longer able to do combat work. He was transferred to the army’s logistics division and his salary was reduced. Firdaus found the change traumatic. Unable to manage his mood swings, he landed in trouble and in army detention. “I was frustrated and demoralised,” he says.
“I love combat work so I started to quarrel with the officers, I fought in camp, I absconded from work and I was even absent without official leave (AWOL).
“But when I heard that my mother was sick, it pushed a button in me.”
THE RIGHT PATH
“I told myself enough is enough. I rebooted my brain. I wanted to pay forward and make her happy,” says Firdaus. He was scheduled for the pre-release programme where prisoners are given small privileges, such as reading books and watching television. But following his father’s visit, Firdaus went to the officer in charge and asked for those privileges to be withheld. “Punish me all the way,” he said, which meant staying in his prison cell until the day of his release with “no extras”.
However, when he was released, he found it difficult to find a job without proper qualifications. He needed to study further but found people reluctant to help because of his past, “saying that I’d just find my way back to prison”.
Firdaus found help when a close friend recommended him for an assistant technician job at a local marine engineering company. For the next six years he got by with a salary of $900, before joining a Norwegian marine company. Over the following six years he worked his way up from a technician to a marine engineer. The company sent him on large projects to Southeast Asia, Africa and Saudi Arabia and his salary jumped to a five-figure amount.
Unable to manage his mood swings, he landed up in trouble and back in prison
Proud of his achievements, Firdaus left to launch his own logist ics and engineering company. However, after two years, he realised that running a company was much harder than being an employee. After winding down the company, he took a contract job in Saudi Arabia helping set up petrol stations, before his life took another dramatic turn.
In June 2017, Firdaus returned to Singapore for a holiday to celebrate Hari Raya Puasa (a religious holiday that marks the end of Ramadan) with family and friends. Exhausted after a long day visiting relatives, he fell asleep at the wheel while driving, crashing the family’s car into a tree. His wife and three children were seriously injured, and Firdaus fractured two ribs. The trauma that followed affected his sleep and mental health. He suffered flashbacks and constantly worried about the family’s spiralling medical costs.
Absent from Saudi Arabia for months, Firdaus also lost his job, but he stayed positive, saying he was “just thankful that my family was alive.”
The life-changing event made Firdaus determined to give back to others, and at the age of 38, his dreams of studying finally became a reality. He received a Study Award in 2018 from Mendaki, a self-help group, and graduated with a diploma in counselling at Kaplan Singapore, while working as a freelance marine engineer.
One year later, with his diploma under his belt, Firdaus and a few friends founded the non-profit organisation Human Hearts.
Human Hearts focuses on assisting current- and ex-offenders to navigate the social, emotional and psychological journey towards rehabilitation and reintegration into the community. It also offers support in family care, youth guidance and education.
Last year, when Firdaus lost his job due to the COVID-19 pandemic and funds for the organisation dried up, he and his friends pooled their money to keep Human Hearts activities going. Human Hearts has about 300 beneficiaries and four volunteers and depends on private donations for its operations. “We are not an IPC
organisation [an organisation registered under Singapore’s Charities Act], so it is very difficult for us to get funding to run our programmes,” says Firdaus.
But he is not one to avoid challenges. While doing odd jobs such as cleaning, house painting and delivery services to eke out a living, Firdaus has helped find homes for ex-convicts made homeless and jobless during the pandemic, and supported them with their reintegration to a stable life. “So far, they have not relapsed,” he says.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Firdaus would get two people per week coming to his centre for help.
He also visits prisoners for counselling. “I don’t plan a programme for them,” he explains. “I just talk to them and tell them ‘you are here now, I don’t need to know your past, just tell me what you want to do’.
“One session can carry on for four or five hours. I want our beneficiaries to leave our centre with something.”
One prisoner he helped rehabilitate had a very caring family, but he initially relapsed because he was not comfortable with the special treatment he was getting at home. He turned to drugs for respite, Firdaus recalls. “It is not easy because it is unlike a mass programme that is usually given to ex- offenders. I focus on the heart. If the heart can heal and repair itself, other things will fall into place,” he says.
Human Heart s takes an holistic approach by offering its beneficiaries help with speech and language training, counselling, as well as support for offenders’ children with behaviour or learning issues in school. During one counselling session, for example, a beneficiary revealed that his daughter was doing poorly at school. Human Hearts found out that the child was dyslexic and they taught her to read and write. Eventually, she even wrote her own book which is now for sale on Amazon Books.
Firdaus is currently looking for sponsorship and plans on doing a degree in psychology and criminology. He hopes to develop Human Hearts into a hub where other organisations can come together to support former offenders holistically.
“If the heart can heal and repair itself, other things will fall into place”