The Words of the Cromwell Family
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The Words of the Cromwell Family |
Father
consistently expressed God's love at Danbury.
In my mission country, the ultimate terror was to ace questioning by the Mukhabarat. The security service was only mentioned in whispers as there were countless stories of careers and lives destroyed by them. Christians worried in particular, as they were in a weak position as a minority. Fear of the Mukhabarat was used by mischief-makers against personal enemies. To spread false allegations (such as accusations of political or religious agitation) Muslims looking for a convenient weapon with which to attack Christians were sometimes tempted to use the Mukhabarat weapon to blackmail, intimidate or rat on an enemy. Of course, Christians could use it too and this is how I came to be interrogated.
When my turn for interrogation came, I was already sure of my game plan. Instead of denying that I belonged to the Unification Movement, I stressed that I thought it quite natural for me to have a religion and that it was likewise natural for me to discuss it and share literature about it with others. I told them I was a big supporter of the President and that I thought this was a great nation which historically had tolerated all kinds of people and ideas. They seemed to accept my arguments, and I was released.
These experiences deepened my understanding of Jesus' suffering. He offered himself in all purity and simplicity to save mankind, yet the chosen people did not recognize him, misinterpreted his words as blasphemy, scorned his sincerity and sought to discredit his words and deeds. Eventually a key disciple, Judas, betrayed him to religious authorities who used the law of their religion to, in effect, serve the purpose of Satan. They turned him over to the Roman authorities who, in turn, misused their own secular laws to kill Jesus. All human decency was denied, all morality violated, all justice travestied. God's purpose of creation was perverted through the desecration of the principles of human dignity and love. Now I had tasted the bitterness and sorrow Jesus must have experienced being so alone in a world that completely misunderstood him. I understood betrayal by your own closest disciple to be an especially bitter experience.
My wife Katherine and I had both found jobs at an American company, doing editing and proofreading. While working there one day, I was taken (by a man in grey) to the immigration department. I had no idea what was happening, but I soon found out.
I gathered that I was to be arrested and sent under guard to the capital. When I was told to go with two policemen to another office (just to answer some questions, the officer assured me with one of those smiles), I immediately guessed something serious was afoot. My concerns were confirmed when suddenly they tried to put handcuffs on me.
I was stunned. There is something completely demeaning about having to wear handcuffs, as if all one's manhood and dignity are being taken away. You become a puppet of the one who holds the key. Since they wanted me to take the two policemen with me in my car, I argued that I could not drive with my hands in cuffs. This was logical enough and they decided to forego using them.
The handcuffs episode made it clear that I was in for real trouble. I agreed to go with the officers (what choice did I have?), but as soon as we were moving I turned the car towards our apartment. The officers protested loudly, but a small baksheesh (a coin) persuaded them to accept the diversion. Once home, I left a note for Katherine, who didn't even know I had left work, saying that
I was going to the capital and suspected that deportation was the reason. (I had not been told anything by the police). I also left my passport with her, knowing that I would have to return to get it before leaving the country. That way I would be able to see Katherine and make arrangements before departing from the country.
Leaving the car parked outside our apartment, I took a taxi with my two guards to the train station. After a while, we boarded a crowded train to the capital.
As we pulled out of the station, a Ramadan evening was falling. Our train wound slowly through Nile delta farmlands, while the sun slid gracefully towards the horizon. My mind went back over the three years I had spent here. I felt a deep sense of internal peace. I was not afraid of whatever awaited me. I knew I had laid a foundation in the three years I had been in my city. It had been a period of many difficulties but eventual victory.
Once the sun had finally descended out of sight, the Muslims with me on the train broke their fast. They generously invited me to join them. By the time the train arrived several hours later, I was on good terms with the policemen. They had been told to take me to the immigration department, but of course there was no one responsible there at 10 p.m. Somehow they figured out that I was to go to the prison, at the foot of the citadel, several kilometers away. We finally found the prison, and I "checked in."
Prisoners from other countries were kept in a single large room with a concrete floor, a lone light bulb and a few roach-infested toilets at one end. There were a few blankets to be shared among the inmates, meaning that on crowded nights some prisoners had to sleep on the bare concrete.
I sat against a wall, and for the first time the reality of being in prison sank in. I had often wondered what prison would be like and had wanted an opportunity to share Father's experience of jail, even if only on a small scale. This was definitely a good place for an authentic prison experience.
The worst thing about incarceration is that you are deprived of your free will. You cannot leave your room when you want to. I longed only to be able to walk into a cafe, order coffee, drink it at my leisure and then leave. I could not imagine Heaven offering more than that simple freedom.
Prisoners in my large cell were from various countries. While I was there I met inmates from Iraq, Syria, China, America and Japan, but especially Palestinians from other Arab countries (or without any nationality at all), some of them being expelled after being tortured for alleged political activities. To a man, they were very bitter.
We were also joined by a wealthy butcher who had stabbed someone and should have been with the other prisoners from his country but paid a daily bribe to be allowed to stay with us, sleeping on a soft mattress and served by attentive guards. The prison quarters for the natives themselves were not fit for dogs.
I decided to fast to protest my imprisonment without an explanation. Since it was Ramadan, I fasted completely, not eating or drinking. However, after four full days of this, with no visible interest shown by the guards, I stopped.
There was no opportunity to phone or contact the outside world. I had just disappeared. Fortunately I had been able to inform my wife, otherwise she would have had no idea at all about my whereabouts.
I was soon joined in prison by the Japanese missionary brother who had been working in the capital and had also been ordered to leave the country. After a few days together we managed to organize our situation in the prison fairly well, moving up to the favored position closest to the door. We paid the guards for some wire and a light bulb and rigged a light bulb above our beds so that we could pass the time reading. (When the main bulb went out, ours was the only one left in that large dark room.)
The day after I arrived in the capital I was ushered in to the smiling colonel. When he found I had come from my city without a passport (or clothes, or money), the grin on his face rapidly evaporated and he became very angry indeed. He had to arrange for me to return to there under guard so that I could gather my things and return.
That took four days to organize. Once the preparations were complete, a prison truck turned up to take me to the train station. This was most remarkable. On every other occasion (before and after this one), movement from place to place under guard was accomplished according to the transportation I could provide: my car or a taxi if I paid for it. The alternatives were a public bus (free of charge for the guards and their prisoners) or walking.
At any rate, on this occasion I was treated like a real threat to the security of the country. Four guards, including an officer, were detailed to escort me. One of them (the smallest and least able to argue with his superiors) was detailed to be handcuffed to me (poor fellow).
We made it to the train without a group of crack Unificationist commandos mounting a daring raid to free me from my captivity, and the guards all sighed with relief.
When we arrived in my city, I was turned over to a lone "grey man," who single-handedly managed to check me into a police station. The next day I was able to meet Katherine, explain what had happened, get a suitcase of clothes, money and my passport. We arranged with the officer in charge for Katherine and me to drive back to the capital with two guards as our passengers. I delivered myself to the prison, and then said goodbye to Katherine (and my guards).
With my passport now firmly in his possession, you would think the colonel would be in heaven. Wrong. My passport had been water-damaged in a boating accident (not serious) that resulted in blurriness on the page that had the number of my previous passport. At any rate, he decided I should not be deported on a less than perfect passport.
I was to get a new one first, so that I could be deported properly. This added the complication of having to get me, with two recent passport photographs, to the British embassy; but the colonel was up to it. He had me escorted to the courtyard where several people made a living taking photographs with some wonderful 19th century cameras (no shutters, just caps over the lenses which are removed for a short period to expose the film).
That picture was taken some 20 days after my arrest when my hair and beard were rather long and wild, making me look like Moses or a terrorist, depending on whether you were a Middle East border police officer or not. However, the British embassy could not complain that my picture was out of date.
When I did finally get to the embassy, the consular officials were very surprised to see me, wondering where I had come from. My captors had not bothered to inform the embassy of their decision to deport me and the consul (a wonderful, sympathetic lady) was amazed at my apparent calm. (She told me of two foreigners, a Dutchman and a Japanese, who had died from shock on being thrown into my prison.)
The consul was angry that I had been sent to the embassy handcuffed to a guard while the officer in charge at the prison kept the key. This was the only time that happened as it violated regulations and clearly was dangerous. I had to drag the guard around the embassy and everywhere else I went that day. The embassy processed a new passport rapidly and called the Japanese embassy to inform it of the Japanese brother's status, which they had not known. (The Japanese embassy then acted very fast to get him out of prison and onto a flight out of the country.) The consul drove me back to prison. As we rode along, she asked me what the guards were talking to me about. When I told her they were asking for a baksheesh and I was refusing to give one to them, she was horrified. By that time I was used to the country, but she was just learning.
On Sunday, September 18, 1978, the 24th day after my arrest, after a final night in the airport prison I was put on a plane to Athens and freedom.
That was also the day that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Peace Accords in the presence of President Jimmy Carter. The negotiations at Camp David had paralleled our period of incarceration and I felt we had paid part of the indemnity necessary for that historic breakthrough for peace in the Middle East.
During the period of imprisonment, there had been many trips back and forth between the prison and various offices of the Ministry of the Interior, finalizing the paperwork for my deportation. Typically, a guard would call the names of those of us who had to go out each morning. We would be handcuffed to other prisoners or to a guard and then taken to the office for that day. Most of the time, I never even spoke to anyone at those offices. My guard(s) would just attach my handcuffs to a convenient bar and take care of the documents. Signatures from two different offices would take two days.
At first I refused to put on the handcuffs. However, when the Japanese missionary also refused, the guards became afraid (they had seen too many Bruce Lee movies). They would not let our group leave without putting handcuffs on him. I suggested the two of us be hand-cuffed together. From that time on, I accepted the handcuffs.
It was a very humbling experience to have to walk through the very center of the capital in handcuffs. Passersby would comment on what they assumed your crime to be, and some were remarkable authoritative in tone. (Interesting, since to this day I do not know the reason myself.) I kept expecting to bump into a former student or friend. After my money ran out I could no longer afford taxis. The only alternatives then were the public bus or walking.
Yet this was a rich experience. I had held a secret desire to experience prison so that I could understand Father's course better. I was not disappointed. On the one hand, I had to swallow all false pride, substituting for it the pride of God's son going that course for the sake of the providence of restoration. Being escorted, like any other criminal, through the city streets was only a humiliation if I didn't offer the experience to God.
I felt Father walking beside me, victorious. Unlike the bitterness of my previous experience, when the suffering of Jesus became so real to me, my experience this time showed me the world of Father's unassailable victory over Satan, and over every sort of adversity. I felt closer to him in that prison than I ever had sitting in front of him during conferences in America. It was a priceless experience of the substantial True Parents.