The Best Letter I Never Received: Mohamed Hassan

This letter was commissioned by Verb for Verb Festival’s showcase event on Friday 6 November 2020 at National Library of New Zealand.

DISCLAIMER: ​For reasons pertaining to national security, some of the contents of this letter have been redacted.

Dear Mohamed,

You probably don’t remember me, but we met two years ago, perhaps fortuitously, in the baggage claim area at Auckland Airport.

My name is [​REDACTED]​ and I am a Senior New Zealand Customs Officer.

You’d just hopped off a plane from Istanbul by way of Dubai and Melbourne, a 26 hour journey with a few hours spared in transit. You looked exhausted, but upbeat. I could understand why.

You were returning to visit your parents for four weeks after having spent a year abroad in Turkey. It was the first time you’d been away from New Zealand for that long. You’d also travelled to the West Bank and Israel several times for work, Spain and Greece on holiday.

I know all this because I’d been watching you, or more accurately, tracing your flights across the sky, trying to decipher your world. Where were you going? What were your motives? Had you made contact with anyone suspicious during your travels, for example, [REDACTED] ​or [REDACTED]?

In my line of work they teach us to question everything. Find patterns where others may overlook. My supervisor and mentor [REDACTED] once told me the most dangerous people are always the most unassuming. To suspect the unsuspected. To think of myself as a kind of lighthouse keeper on the shores of civilisation.

When [REDACTED] made his infamous speech in 2005 about the militant underbelly of the Muslim community, the "multi-headed hydra capable of striking at any time" I was sitting in the crowd nodding my head.

When former Prime Minister [REDACTED] warned of Jihadi brides flocking from our shores to fight with​ [REDACTED],​ I kept a watchful eye for anyone in my terminal who could fit the bill.

The Minister for Customs says there's no racial profiling at airports, that it's impossible to determine a person's religion from their passport details, but that's not entirely true. There are clues. When you've done this job as long as I have, you develop an eye for detail. A place of birth. Facial features. A tendency to [REDACTED].​

A name like yours, for example, is a dead giveaway.

As such, I would say that our meeting was less serendipitous as it was devised. I waited for maybe half an hour outside passport control before you showed up. I knew what you looked like because I printed out your passport photo. I knew what you’d be wearing because I watched the CCTV footage from outside ​[REDACTED].

I waited for you to pick up your bags before I walked over, grabbed hold of your arm, and whispered: hey buddy, let's take a shortcut.

I could see your shoulders slouching. A resignation behind your eyes. I felt like a hunter who had finally cornered his prey. A tom to your jerry, perhaps. I am good at what I do.

In my report to Customs later that evening, I wrote:

[REDACTED] under direction from SupCO RA2251. Advised to inquire about photo in front of Dome of the Rock, when asked HASSAN replied ‘I’m Muslim, so what?’

Please note that when HASSAN entered search he was calm and cooperative. [REDACTED] Due to the time taken and specifically the triage of his lap-top and phones he was quite angry by the end of the search. He was short with his answers, and fed up with the process.

But you know this, because I know you OIA’d the report later from my department. That was fine. I have nothing to hide, though I do admit I was disappointed. I was under the impression we were having a wonderful time getting to know more about each other, or really, me getting to know you.

But over those three hours, you became more and more agitated. Combative. It's always the same with you people.

A week before you landed, I stopped a Somali woman and her children for eight hours. Her eldest son, 10 years old, complained that he needed to use the bathroom over and over and eventually we had to escort him. The other three fell asleep on the [REDACTED].

Last month I got into a shouting match with a Syrian man who’d been stopped [REDACTED] times in two years. He’d just flown back from Sydney and didn’t understand why we were questioning him.

It’s in these times I return to my training and remind myself what’s really at stake. Not let my emotions get the better of me.

But there are times when the doubt creeps in. When the borders between good and evil blur.

On March 15 last year I stood in the middle of the terminal staring at my phone. Someone tuned the arrivals screen to the news and we huddled under it in silence. The footage of Hagley park cordoned at one end played on a loop. A man wearing a long kurta stained with something dark walked forward in a daze. An elderly woman in a hijab hugged what looked like a daughter in shock.

Over and over I watched this, the floor of my wits descending. The darkness dragging its hooves out from under my feet.

I drove home in silence, afraid to turn on the radio. When I arrived I walked to my daughters' bedroom, held her tight and wept. It was the first time I'd cried in years.

They said the youngest victim was from a Somali family. He was my daughter's age. I could not imagine what would happen if someone took her away from me. I don’t know what I would do.

When they arrested the guy who did it, I could not stop looking at his face. Every few hours I would open the page and look at him again.

The police said he had arrived in New Zealand a year earlier, around the same time as you. He could've even been on the same flight. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen his face before. That he could have walked right past me as I waited for you outside passport control and I paid no attention to him. Found nothing to suspect. Focused instead on the task at hand. Focused on you.

Last week I took my daughter to visit our local mosque. We took off our shoes and walked in our socks over the fragile carpet. Sat in the corner and watched as the imam called to prayer. As the small congregation washed their faces, arms then feet and stood shoulder to shoulder in three rows. Hands folded over their hearts and their foreheads bowed. The imam read a passage from the Quran and I didn't understand it, but I felt something in me relax.

Afterwards, a man who looks just like my father walked over and sat with us, showed us pictures of his family and narrated the story of this place. How the community had run fundraising nights at the RSA for two years before they had enough money to rent out an old mechanic shop and turn it slowly into a place of worship.

On our way home, my daughter asked me why they prayed differently to the way we did. I told her we were all on different roads leading to the same house. The same way trees come in all shapes but reach towards the same sun. She smiled at me and then out at the world.

'I love the sun', she said. 'Me too, baby.'

And so I decided to write to you, though I still don't quite know what I want to say. Maybe it's to say that I share your pain. Maybe it's to say that I understand something now I didn't before. I get it. I see you. Maybe I just hope you know that.

That I see you now. I do.

Yours sincerely, 

[REDACTED]