Mailing a Qur'an to Jail
We held our hands in prayer. “Te lo pido, señor.”
That week, it was my turn to visit Marco at the Elizabeth Detention Center, a contract detention facility in New Jersey used by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to detain immigrants determined to be “suspicious” or “illegal.”
Marco was eighteen when I met him, shy at first, but a total character. He was seeking refuge from gang violence in El Salvador, had seen and felt enough adult pain to last a lifetime. But he was still a teenager. When he started feeling comfortable enough with me, he’d crack jokes or comment on a cute girl visiting another inmate in the visitation room, a large space that seated about twelve inmates and their visitors. The space looked like a drab and strange reimagining of an underfunded elementary school cafeteria. On the far wall, there is a child’s painting of the Statue of Liberty dedicated to the 9/11 firefighters. Each week, we were seated a highway exit and a half away from the Statue of Liberty, yet so many of these asylum-seekers ended up shipped back to their countries of origin without ever seeing the real thing.
One week, Marco asked me to send him a word search book. Another time, someone had given him his father’s phone number. His father is a US citizen who abandoned the family in El Salvador and had not contacted his son since he arrived in the States. Marco said to me, “Please call and tell him you are my friend, and that I am in the EDC.” You are my friend, he said.
At the end of each visit, we prayed with him in Spanish, though Spanish is my third language and I am not a Christian. Marco would always ask me to start and, by the end, he would offer his own benedictions.
That week was different. We were now visiting the EDC in Trump’s America, dejectedly unable to promise our detained friends that the US government would fight to protect their rights. Long before news of a travel ban and a large wall against immigrants became real, we knew we could not come affirming that America had voted to love them and care for their wellbeing. We could only tell our friends in the EDC that this week we had so many volunteers show up we didn’t have room for them all in our giant van.
That week was different. After we prayed and stood to say goodbye, Marco turned our friendly handshake into a hug for the first time. Many of the men at the EDC are not used to embracing or touching women, but they seem to appreciate the warmth we bring; with their families thousands of miles away, they rarely have visitors.
Marco hugged me and lingered. “Maya, ¿te pido un favor? Could you send me a Qur’an - translated to Spanish?”
I was surprised that a faithful Pentecostal wanted a Qur’an. “¿Porqué, hermanito?” Why, little brother? I knew Marco had never met a Muslim before being detained, but he was curious about his dormitory mates from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
“I’m curious. I want to know more. What do they really think, these guys from Arabia?”
“Te lo juro, hermanito. I will find one for you.”
I went to Ahmed for advice. Ahmed was the first detainee I ever visited at the EDC, the former director of an eye hospital in Pakistan who was arrested upon arrival at JFK due to improper entry and asylum documents. Being an Ahmadi Muslim from Pakistan, I was the first Jewish person Ahmed had ever met. He surprised me deeply that night as he sat across from me in scrubs. He was eloquent and intelligent. He told me that in his free time in the EDC he had been reading about a rabbi. When Ahmed won his asylum case after seven months of detention, the first thing he did the following Monday was show up in his salwar kameez, clamber into the white van, and return to his place of imprisonment to visit current detainees, inspiring them with his civilian clothes, unfailing smile, and living proof that they too could win their cases. The EDC officers and guards still greet Ahmed merrily each week with a clap on the back.
“I have something to ask you.”
“Anything.”
“What’s the EDC address to send packages to? Marco asked me for a Spanish Qur’an. I’ve never seen one, but I’m sure I can find one.”
“I will find such a Qur’an at the masjid. I am sure there is something,” Ahmed said.
Two days later at the meeting of Interfaith-RISE, a Refugee and Immigrant Services and Empowerment network housed in a church, Ahmed took the Qur’an out of his backpack. It was smooth and dignified, gold embossed lettering on a deep forest-green hardcover binding you might find in a university library.
“Thanks, Ahmed. This will mean a lot to Marco,” I said, reaching for the Qur’an. Ahmed stopped me. “They won’t let you send it in with the binding.”
I cocked my head. “Should I find a paperback copy?” I asked. Ahmed shook no. He was practical, and we already had the Qur’an in hand.
In that moment, I watched a devout Muslim rip the binding off his holy book. I was paralyzed.
The meeting started and Ahmed placed the Qur’an behind him. When I returned to him at the end, he presented me with the pages, gently folding the once beautiful binding into a hollow triangle and slipping it into his backpack.
We rarely live metaphor in front of our eyes. I was shaking: afraid, angry, and deeply moved. Ahmed did not doubt for a moment that this was the right thing to do. Sometimes we have to remove the binding to convey the message. Even if this was a Qur’an intended for a Pentecostal, or if the message was packaged by a female Jewish recent college graduate to send to a male eighteen-year-old Central American asylum seeker. That beautiful green binding had to be removed, because someone in the United States government with enough power to dictate the course of life of other human beings had decided that men who live in scrubs and cannot use cell phones could pose a danger to others by owning hardcover books.
In the past three years, we have seen a terrifying and swift assault on refugees, Muslims, and immigrants; the most vulnerable newcomers. I do not know what will happen next in Trump’s America to our friends and neighbors fleeing life-threatening violence and persecution.
Ahmed’s faith helped him survive his time in the EDC. His very real case of religious persecution was recognized two weeks before Trump’s election. By the grace of God and a working asylum system, his family was able to join him over a year after his release to start a new life in America.
I cannot know if sending a Qur’an to Marco helped him survive. If the words of our letters or of any religious book brought him freedom or protection. After ten months of detention, he received deportation papers and returned to El Salvador, free but in great danger of violent gangs who could kill or forcibly recruit him. We stayed in touch through text messages and photos for a while, but I have not heard from him in many months. I cannot know if he stopped being able to afford his cell plan, or if he met a far worse end.
All I know is that no matter who we are, we help each other as best we can. We bring each other closer to God in ways that seemed sacrilegious when we began.
-Maya Wahrman
Maya Wahrman is currently the Reception and Placement Case Manager and Refugee School Impact Coordinator at Interfaith-RISE refugee resettlement agency in Highland Park, NJ. She is also a student in the Rutgers University Intensive Weekend Masters in Social Work program, doing her field placement with Spanish-speaking mental health clients and trafficking victims at the Reformed Church of Highland Park. She graduated summa cum laude in 2016 from the History Department at Princeton University with certificates in Near Eastern Studies and Creative Writing. Wahrman has had opinion pieces published in the History News Network and the English and Hebrew editions of Haaretz, essays published in Novelly and in the new book Acting on Faith, and has had poetry published in Nimrod International Journal, Lilith Magazine, Love, Struggle, Resist, Fifth Wednesday Journal, The Copperfield Review, the Jewish Currents Poetry Anthology Urge, Califragile, Sweet Tree Review, Heartwood Literary Magazine, and Nassau Literary Review. Her writer's website: mayawahrman.com Mailing a Qur'an to Jail was originally published on the Novelly.org app, a social justice reading community for teens and others. The app can be downloaded here, to view the original publication: https://www.novelly.org/the-app