Exclusive: How I smuggled Bibles across a border

Concealed beneath jigsaw pieces, twelve Bibles illegally crossed a border somewhere in North Africa. But it was the courage of the Christians waiting to receive scripture that left our journalist reflecting on what it truly means to give Jesus your all

I try not to watch as my suitcase rolls through the airport’s luggage scanner. Inside it are twelve Bibles, concealed inside an empty Spider-Man toy box and beneath the pieces of a children’s jigsaw. On the other side, the customs officer stares intently at the screen.

Less than 18 hours earlier, back in the UK, my best friend’s living room had been remodelled into a makeshift Bible-smuggling operation.

I sat on the floor, surrounded by Spider-Man wrapping paper, overthinking whether wrapping the Bibles was more cunning or conspicuous. Across the room, my friend sat with Google Translate displaying short messages she had translated into Arabic: “Christ loves you.” “God sees you.” Holding coloured sticky notes against her phone screen, she traced the Arabic lettering before sticking each message to the inside cover of a Bible.

By the time I had returned home with the wrapped Bibles, it was 3:28am. I still had not packed.

My nephew had once owned a Spider-Man bow-and-arrow, the empty box that it came in now among that category of children’s clutter nobody quite knows what to do with. Almost providentially, six Bibles wrapped in Spider-Man paper fitted seamlessly inside the Spider-Man box. 

In the same chaotic pile of my nephew’s belongings was a box of jigsaw pieces he had not yet found time in his five-year-old schedule to assemble. I emptied out most of its contents to make room for the larger Arabic Bibles. They were a tight squeeze, but I managed to arrange them and leave space for the remaining puzzle pieces on top. In the unlikely event that customs officers investigated my suitcase and then the jigsaw box, I hoped they would encounter the loose pieces covering the books and cease any further enquiries.

Ten Bibles were now hidden inside two boxes. Two remained. Having exhausted my capacity for conniving, I tucked one inside the leg of a pair of jeans and buried them beneath the rest of my clothes. I then placed the other inside my rucksack, as though it were simply my own personal Bible. If the others were discovered, at least this one would get through. 

Illegally smuggling Bibles into a foreign country where Christians are oppressed is not something I’d ever daydreamed of, let alone…