A Family Awaits Its Wayward Son

When your brother is the first Bangladeshi police officer in the Citys history and your father is a devout Muslim who prays towards Mecca five times each day, you know whats in store for you when you get home after a three-week stretch on Rikers Island.
"They are not going to be happy with me," said Jewel Subhan, 23, of Jamaica, who spent 20 days in Rikers for violating his probation after taking part in a robbery. "They are going to hug me and then they are going to beat me."
Coming off the Rikers bus on Jackson Ave. just after 5 a.m. last Thursday, Subhan looked frightened and gaunt despite his buckled black leather jacket and the shades perched on his forehead.
"I have been crying inside all day long," said Subhan. "I didnt think I would ever get out." Like the other 40 or so prisoners who were preparing for release that day, Subhan was fingerprinted at about 2:30 a.m. An hour later, in order to insure that they were releasing the right prisoner, Subhan was asked to verify his address and fathers name. Before the bus arrived two hours later, he had a minute or two to change out of his prison jumpsuit and into his civvies.
On the bus, the guard warned Subhan and the other ex-cons to leave Queens Plaza as soon as possible. "They said that if they caught us loitering they would lock us up again," he recounted.
Unlike the other prisoners, who ran to the counter for crullers and jelly doughnuts the second they get off the bus, Subhan wanted to wait for his mothers cooking.
"Ill take anything she has in the refrigerator, but what I really want her to make me is chicken curry," said Jewel, whose mother, Momowara, was so upset by his imprisonment that she was hospitalized with heart pains.
Subhans father Abdus was waiting up for him when the boy arrived before 6 a.m. With a salt and pepper beard and a garb of traditional Bangladeshi and Muslim smocks, Abdus Subhan didnt look anything like his westernized tough-guy son.
"I always tell him to stay away from bad people," said the father. "But he doesnt listen to me." Jewels older brother Suhle Subhan, a Manhattan cop, was still sleeping when his little brother arrived. "He is ashamed of me," said Jewel. "I guess I am the black sheep of the family."
Jewel swore that he has turned over a new leaf. Like most other ex-cons, he also said that he has found God and invited The Queens Courier back the next day for afternoon prayers at a neighborhood mosque.
When a reporter and photographer arrived the next day, he was not there.
-RS