My faith is a work in progress, a frail thing — very much a case, still, even this late in life (I’m 66), of “Lord I believe, help my unbelief”. It is, though, never more deeply felt than when visiting people detained at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre.
I’ve been visiting people there, on and off, for a decade or so. At first, it was often intimidating. With familiarity, though, much of the awkwardness evaporates. What remains is a kind of secular pilgrimage: from central London to Heathrow and then on to the Immigration Removal Centre, the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life falls gradually away. This happens so simply and naturally, more so with repetition. You focus on the individual you’re about to meet — why wouldn’t you? —and on navigating the mundanity of detention: the searches, the security and so on: have you got that all-important pound coin for the locker; will that friendly officer be on duty — or that officious individual instead (most of them are lovely, just doing a job to make ends meet)? The benign tedium of it all gently strips away all the stuff that clutters one’s mind on the outside: the meetings, the bills, the family, friends, and colleagues; the blessings and irritations; the triggers and suffocations. What remains is a meeting with a human being in the raw.
It can be boring, dull, a bit embarrassing even. That man sitting across the table may be silent and sullen; he may mumble or barely be able to string together a sentence. Viewed superficially (and I am a very superficial person), we may have nothing in common: many times, I’ve fumbled for a conversational straw to clutch; too often, have fallen back on football, hoping the universal language of the Premier League would do the trick. It rarely does. But then, with time, acceptance, resignation, even, the penny drops — a gift from God? — and it all falls into place: a certain unwilled ease settles, dust-like over the visiting hall; and somehow or other, consciously or not, the message goes out “I’m here for you”. Make of it what you will, friend — it seems to say: that’s all that matters, nothing else: this is no challenge, simply an acceptance of our shared humanity.
