he U.S. president had preceded me to London by one day in November 2003. I remember fretting as I read news reports about the extraordinary security apparatus being assembled for the visit. A day before I left Washington, a BBC reporter referred to the joint appearance of George Bush and Tony Blair (with Her Majesty thrown in for good measure) as being perhaps the most tempting target al-Qaeda could possibly imagine. It was not a calming thought.
Yet the fear I felt would actually come after the president had left England. As my hosts drove me through the rain-soaked streets of London, the vulnerability of the place began to occupy my mind: the crowded streets; the almost-impossible traffic; the underground system running deep in the bowels of the earth (deeper than any other place I know); the House of Commons--the seat of British power--sitting on the bank of a busy cross-city waterway; and (as pointed out to me) the numerous close-knit ethnic enclaves staked out across the vast metropolis. The thought went through my mind: What dark mischief brews?
Then up in my hotel room ominous lines from the local papers jumped out at me. "MI5 Track Suicide Bombers to Britain," headlined the Daily Express, citing government warnings that al-Qaeda terrorists were "preparing to launch a 'spectacular' attack in Britain." According to the country's top security agency, al-Qaeda had "activated two 'sleeper' cells in the U.K., with terrorists having already completed dummy runs for suicide car bombings."1
Making the situation even more ominous, the Sunday Times, in its coverage of the same story the day before, made the point that "many [of the terrorists] are integrated so deeply into the Muslim community that they are proving almost impossible to detect."2 We live in an "incredibly dangerous world," said London's Metropolitan police commissioner, as he confirmed that the country was "on its highest state of alert" since September 11, heightened even further by the fact that British police had recently foiled an attempt by terrorists in London to purchase a half ton of chemicals, "with the aim of killing thousands in a poison attack," perhaps in the London Underground,3 (the very facility I'd be using later that very day).
No, London was not a city battened down. In fact, I saw no evidence of extra security when I arrived. Besides, England had just beaten Australia for the World Cup in rugby, and the story filled the screen of every television set in Britain. The festive coverage was enough to counteract the morbid headlines in the papers and remove all sense of danger.
But the mind has a way of coming back to matters of death and life. Lockerbie, as it turned out, resurfaced fresh in the news during my time in England. New York and September 11 came up for mention. As did Bali; and Nairobi; and Baghdad; and Istanbul.
Kismet? Or Providence?
Istanbul, occurring just as the president and the prime minister were preparing for their first meeting, dominated the airwaves my first day in London. Like other terrorist attacks, it captured the imagination for its suddenness, its unexpectedness, its bloodiness.
The haphazardness of who gets killed and who survives these hellish tragedies forced an unfamiliar English word onto the pages of the Times: "kismet." "In its original Turkish," said the paper, "it is still the most common way of explaining luck, providence, fate--the roll of the dice that decides who lives and who dies."4 The article told how consulate official Roger Short, too busy that day to stop for tea with the owner of his favorite coffee shop, hurried back to an appointment at the consulate, only to be blown up moments later. Meanwhile, his wife of 32 years, who'd left the compound just minutes earlier on an errand, survived.
What safety guarantees do we have as Christians in our daily affairs and travels? Does a power beyond ourselves guide us as to the buildings we enter, the trains we board, the flights we take? The answer is exceedingly complex. What we know is that only one part of the kismet doctrine holds for us: Providence. To feel fear is natural, human. But we know a God whose presence banishes fear. In whose hands we take refuge. And who, regardless of what happens, holds out for us eternal hope.
_________________________
1 Daily Express, Nov. 24, 2003, p. 1.
2 Sunday Times, Nov. 11, 2003, p. 1.
3 Daily Express.
4 Ibid., p. 15.
_________________________
Roy Adams is an associate editor of the Adventist Review.
