Fort Smith terrorist?

 

guest commentary by Jack Moseley, award-winning columnist and former editor of the Southwest Times Record

Maybe I shouldn’t have grown a beard that made me look so different from my passport photo, but whatever it was, the Irish homeland security folks in Dublin found something a wee bit suspicious about me.

And I don’t know if I was ever actually under arrest, but sure as the grass is green over there, I was in custody as a possible terrorist for a brief time. I’ll simply accept that fact as one of the grand adventures of living in today’s world.

Mary and I had had a wonderful week in Ireland as we boarded the bus outside our hotel for the Dublin airport a couple of Sundays ago. Visions of warm and delightful people, hedge rows, rock walls, green fields dotted with sheep and new lambs, plus that delightful Irish music, danced through our still drowsy brains.

The bus stopped a ways from the terminal, since both Northern Ireland and Ireland were on alert in the wake of a fatal bombing of a police vehicle in Belfast a couple of days earlier. We lugged our luggage to the American Airlines check-in and continued on with our boarding passes and heavy carry-on bags.

Our first real difficulty came at the Irish security checkpoint. A very Irish security fellow was not happy when I told him to please slow the machine-gun flow of words from his lips, since I could not understand what he was saying.

“Damnit, man, you’ll answer my questions,” he insisted.

“I’ll be happy to answer anything you want to know,” I replied, “but can you slow down just a bit?”

“Damnit, I will, but you’ll answer my questions.”

“Yessir,” I replied as I noticed him look first a my passport photo on his computer screen, then at me and finally at my actual passport and back at me. He also was holding my boarding pass.

After responding to his questions as best I could, he returned my boarding pass and passport, then waved the two of us through. Holding both mine and Mary’s passports and boarding passes, we quickly were waved on our way, or so we thought.

We visited the Irish tax station to get partial refunds on our purchases while in the country, then moved on through an Irish customs checkpoint, next the American customs checkpoint. Finally, we went through the American Homeland Security station without a hitch. All this took about two hours, and my back ached from the continued weight of my shoulder-strapped carry-on bag.

I had no idea I had been the object of a two-hour manhunt as we walked toward the ramp to our jet.

Two men in black suits were standing beside the American Airlines attendant who was checking boarding passes.

“May I see your boarding pass, Sir?” asked a balding, black-suited man.

“Sure,” I replied, handing him my pass.’

His next words stunned me.

“You’ll have to come with me,” he said.

“Where are we going?” I stammered.

“Back to the security station for an explosives check,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Can I go with you,” Mary interrupted.

“No, you may not.” he said, guiding me away with his hand on my arm.

“I’ll wait right here,” Mary said nervously.

The carry-on was cutting into my shoulder. “How far do we have to go?”

About a quarter-mile,” my new companion said, not offering to assist with my load.

Back at Irish security, my hands, feet and the fly of my pants were swabbed while my carry-on was probed, swabbed and searched.

“Why are you swabbing the front of my pants?” I inquired.

“If you made a bomb, you probably had to pee as some time. You could have left explosive residue on you britches.”

“Okay, that sounds logical,” I said.

After the swabs were fed into some kind of analyzing machine, the black-suited man said I was clear to travel. He even got cart and pushed it himself as he escorted me back to the plane.

And there stood Mary.

“They kept trying to get me to get on the plane without you,” she explained. “And I told them I was not leaving without my darling Jack.”

Damnit all, it’s nice to be loved, even when the Irish constabulary thinks you the worst of you.

A good life and the luck of the Irish be with you all.

FOOTNOTE: During the explosives check, it was explained that my boarding pass had been punched initially by the fast talking Irishman, either as a genuine suspected terrorist or as a hapless fellow in a random spot check for explosives. I suspect the latter, since I had definitely annoyed that fast talking fellow.

I learned also that I was supposed to have been swabbed and searched before I left that security checkpoint the first time, but probably was waved through because no one noticed the hole in by boarding pass, possibly because Mary’s pass covered it up.

But as John Denver might say: Gee, it’s good to be back home again.