We've all been there: on vacation in a dazzling new city, single and ready to mingle with some cute strangers. Hooking up while on holiday is usually a fun challenge, but when 24-year-old Jhanzaib Malik decided to flirt with the front desk clerk at Brooklyn's Sheraton, he quickly found himself arrested, stripped of his passport, and locked up in jail.
Malik, a Pakistani man, travelled from South Africa last month to spend the holidays vacationing in New York City—a trip he told the Daily News he took two years to save up for. While chatting with hotel staff, he boasted that his Guess suitcase was "the bomb." Malik's choice of words were apparently grounds for suspicion, and on December 22nd he was arrested, questioned by the FBI and held on Rikers Island for 11 days without charge.
“I just came for vacation and my stupid joke led to all this,” Malik told the News. “I was just flirting. I’m a flirty guy.”
The victim of a racially-charged homonym mishap, Malik is now stuck at a very bleak impasse: prosecutors have confiscated his passport and his visa was revoked by the U.S. State Department, making it impossible for him to travel home. His family has stopped loaning him money while his attorney fees continue to climb, and the South African airline that employed him recently laid him off. U.S. authorities are currently holding $2,700 in cash that he had brought along to spend on his trip.
Malik also says his predicament has been mocked in a skit on national Pakistani news, and, on top of everything, he was assaulted by another inmate while in jail.
With no clear path out of his legal woes, Malik is currently renting a room in Jackson Heights, Queens and trying to keep his head up. “I don't want to go back to South Africa or Pakistan,” he told the News. “Keep my passport, just let me stay here. I love this country.”
