From Inquest:
At 3 a.m. on a Friday morning last April, I woke to say goodbye to Saboor, my cellmate and friend. He and I had decided to get up even earlier than usual so we could eat our last breakfast together and perform our final Fajr prayer. In a few hours, he would be transferred to a new facility — not by choice, but as a consequence of the Illinois Department of Corrections’ reclassification process.
Ours is an unlikely brotherhood. Saboor is a freckled, red-haired white kid from Decatur, a town 40 miles east of the state capitol in Springfield. I am a dark-skinned Black man with a beard more gray than black. I was raised in the Robert Taylor Homes on Chicago’s South Side. Growing up, my life was shaped by economic and racial segregation, and my contact with white people was characterized by virulent racism and violence.
By all typical measures, Saboor and I should not have trusted — let alone liked — one another. But over the years, I have come to love him as if we came from the same womb. And that morning, as we prepared to perform wudu, a ritual washing required before every prayer, I realized it might be the last time I would ever see him. Continue reading >>>
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