The Mexican Bible

This was written by my father in 2006. It's a true story and it reflects some of the issues Arizona's latest and greatest fascist stupid law, SB 1070.

Someone left a Bible in the back seat of my taxi recently.
I know he was an illegal alien because of the nature of how the book got left there. It was Halloween night, and I received a telephone call from a colleague of mine. There were three Hispanic men standing outside a convenience store. They spoke only Spanish. He spoke only English, and was not going to take the trip. Maybe the trip would be worth something. Would I like to talk to them?
I hate to turn down an opportunity without at least looking at it. And besides, I have learned enough Spanish to get by. I drove up to the convenience store to see what I could do.
Three young Hispanic men stood in the shadows by the pay phone. As I eased my taxi to a stop, one detached himself from the shadows, and approached my car. We greeted each other in Spanish, and he proceeded to tell me that he had to get to Los Angeles to see his fiancé.
I know enough about the law to know when to ask questions and when not to. Plausible deniability is not just the prerogative of presidents. I could surmise why they were not taking a bus or airplane. I named a price; they agreed. The trip was uneventful until we got to the Arizona California border. The three men were nervous about the border check point. I told them to relax, the authorities were only checking for fruit coming across the border. I don’t know if it was true or not, but it sounded good. They relaxed.
We swung into a gas station outside of Twenty-nine Palms to fuel up. There was a police cruiser in the parking lot, and once again, the three men in my cab hunkered down, and tried to stay out of sight. I filled the gas tank, and shook my head. My suspicions of their immigration status had been confirmed by their behavior. I didn’t tell the cop. I’m not that kind of person. Besides, I didn’t want any trouble for myself. It might not be legal to cross state lines in a taxi with a cargo full of undocumented migrants. I was not really in a mood to find out.
A few miles away from the gas station, we witnessed a bad car crash. I dialed emergency services on my cell phone, but did not stick around to see the police show up. Again, the less trouble the better.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. I left them at a house in Los Angeles. It wasn’t a real upscale neighborhood, but it wasn’t a slum either. Sort of a middle class home that everyone in America dreams of owning some day.
I was home before I noticed the Bible.
The bible is a Spanish version, small, with a battered black leather cover. Inside it had a few notes on small pieces of paper. The New Testament was heavily thumbed through, and the pages of Mark and Luke were rather dog-earred. Many verses had been underlined. The Bible has sat on a shelf in my bedroom since the day I found it. I had not even thought about it until I was tidying up today, while a talk radio station played in the back ground from my clock radio. The host was on some rant about W’s new immigration policy.
I wonder if the talk show host realizes that these illegal aliens have lovers? That they have expectant, future father in laws, who are glad to see their new son in laws, yet somehow apprehensive for the future of their daughters? Does the radio talk show host know the fear these men felt waiting in a gas station for a cop to leave? Does he know the joy on the faces of these men as they stepped out of the taxi in Los Angeles? Does this same radio talk show host that almost every day claims to be a good moral conservative Christian know that an illegal alien left his Bible in my cab? A Bible that had been studied, and marked by some one just as devoted to the same faith as he? Or would such thoughts put too human a face on the issue? Would thinking these things mean that we have to deal with real problems involving real people, not just abstractions of law breakers?
And am I the only one who finds it ironic that the very Bible that both the radio show host and the young Mexican man read says to be kind to the strangers in your land?