UA Flight 922 - Part V

At some point I snapped out of my stare and attempted paying attention to her questions.  She had me in an interrogation room.  There was one metal table we sat at in the middle of the room.  Four metal chairs.  Everything was chained to the ground.  I guess the government was weary of a detainee grabbing a chair and getting away with it.  

I looked around and was walled in.  She sat closest to the open door.  I couldn't believe I was being interrogated.  All I wanted to do was chill with friends and worship at church.  I looked forward to spending my Saturdays at any of the various art galleries.  I wanted to sit at the Tate staring at paintings for hours on end then writing my responses.  Poetry.

Instead, I sat in a room with windows that had wire in between the glass panes.  There was nothing poetic about the experience.  Not like I'd write my entire Cantos within an eight-and-some-odd-hour span in detention.  I wasn't some traitorous ex-pat speaking out about the Iraq War after abandoning his homeland.  But if anyone else saw me, they'd probably think that. 

"Are you okay?" She asked, meaning something more like "Are you healthy enough to proceed?"  I simply answered yes.  But I wasn't "okay."  My being "okay" would view something like cramming into a tiny European car with four grown adults, five life-sized bags, screaming all the way home because - as I hear it - Tom's driving is more like a Six Flags roller coaster.  

So no, I wasn't okay.  I wasn't okay in the least.  I was detained.  My private life became public.  I was beginning to become paranoid.  I didn't know what time it was.  I didn't know where anyone was.  And this lady had the procedural gaul to ask me if I was okay.

You see - the tough part about any seemingly-life-threatening situation is that you can't think about the situation.  There's no room to dwell on your circumstances.  If you do, that's when problems start.

When I sat with mom earlier I prayed for grace.  My continual prayer was for more grace.  Then more grace.  Then even more grace to make it through the night.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus.  (1 Cor. 1:4)

I wasn't just given grace for that one single night.  God wasn't saying, "You there, kid, here, I'll help you to walk only one more step, but that's all you get."  He wasn't leaving me with a time-limit for his grace.  And he didn't even limit this grace in any sort of way.  It was near scandalous the amount given me.  An obscene amount.  When you look up at the stars, that's the vastness to his grace.  Completely unbelievable.  When you drive a never ending road, that's the freedom of grace.  That's the I'm looking around and all I see in front of me is a world wide, wide open.  You question when it will end; it won't.  You wonder its endless amount; it's incapable of comprehension.  You exhaust all your resources; grace remains.    

My voice shook, nervous.  She asked me to be specific because she had to write verbatim.  She went through the motions at first.  Asked me the same questions I already told the other guy.  I wasn't quick with responses.  I laughed to stall.  To think.  My future hinged on those answers.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge.  (1 Cor. 1:4&5)

When she asked me why I was in England I told her, "I'm here to visit with friends, to re-connect with the church I worshipped at while attending Middlesex University and to pursue my newly acquired writing career after graduating from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth."

When she asked me what my itinerary was I blanked.  I didn't have a strict schedule.  No trips planned.  No nothing.  It didn't occur to me that I should have told her something like, "Oh, I'll be going to church on Sundays."  Or, "I'll be going to the grocery store at least once a week."  Or, "Well, the queen invited me over for some afternoon tea on the 15th of September 2008 at 2:18 sharp so I mustn't miss such a grand occasion."

She kept questioning.  Kept poking and prodding and trying to figure out if I was incognito or if I was real.  She never hinted at whether I answered sufficiently or poorly.  She was immovable - a statue.  Why didn't the British just hook me up to a polygraph with some mysterious agent all decked out in black, no wrinkles, fedora to cover the top of his face, smoke ominously making it's way out of a shadow from where he stood then to a vent in the ceiling; the meanwhile I'd be sitting there under a half dangling light swaying back and forth, sweat beading from my forehead, wetting my tongue as I pulled out some syntacticly mixed up sentence for an answer?  It would have been easier.

Nothing was easy that night.  Not even answering small questions as to my comings and goings.  Not even waiting between the silence of my answer and her next question.  

It was a waiting game we played; one that I didn't like.  But one that continued for the next several hours.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge - even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you - so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end.  (1 Cor. 1:4-8)