Memphis black'n'blues

I arrived in Memphis by an overnight Amtrak from Chicago, which left Illinois at just after 8pm and crossed the Mississippi at dawn. For anyone who loves American music, Memphis is a very special place. I grew up listening to rock?n?roll and reading about the civil rights movement. Memphis is central to both stories?this was where Elvis emerged and Martin Luther King died.
I was about to turn 31. I had been working as a television producer for the same company for almost six years and was tiring of the cycle of empty routine and disappointments my life seemed to embody. I wanted to remove myself from all that with a few weeks travelling across America. This was my first visit since 11th September and, as a Muslim male, I expected to be singled out. In the week before I arrived in Memphis, I had been through US immigration and undergone airport security on domestic flights in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. But, although the security measures were rigorous, I did not feel uncomfortable. The airline staff were polite and, while it was slightly humiliating always being the last person to board a flight and having to take my shoes off while being searched, I knew that such scrutiny was inevitable. The one time I did travel with someone else, my white female friend was stopped and searched while I was passed through.
Once in Memphis, I took a cab to my hostel, which was a fair distance from the city centre. There was a music festival on, and cheap accommodation closer to the centre was hard to find. But I quickly made friends with some of the others staying at the hostel and we went to Graceland together. After wandering through Elvis?s home, I bought a small metal ?Graceland? keyring which I clipped to my belt. Later, we drove to Sun Studios where Elvis had recorded That?s All Right Mama in 1954?arguably the first rock?n?roll record. By the end of the tour, there was no time to visit the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was shot and killed. I decided I would return to pay my respects the next day.
As evening descended, our group split and I joined the friendly crowds in Beale Street, the bustling heart of Memphis. I found myself easily falling into conversation with strangers. Some approached me because they assumed I could supply them drugs (from Manchester to London to New York to Memphis, being non-white and possessing long hair is the international stereotype of a drug dealer) but most were simply being friendly?not the bigots I had feared. At the back of my mind there was still a faint, residual prejudice against the south?where lynching had once been a sport. ?Please try to drop your preconceptions of this town,? one man said to me. ?We?re good people down here.? It was hard to disagree. I have had more trouble walking the streets of Luton.
As the night crawled on, I decided to head back to my hostel. The streets were thronged and there were few cabs around. Someone suggested I walk to the local Greyhound station because taxis frequently stopped there. The streets were still busy but there was, I sensed, a sharper edge to the atmosphere. The effects of alcohol were filtering through and the people on the streets seemed more threatening. Some taxi companies operated people carriers, where up to seven people could get in and the driver would ferry each of them to their destinations. I ran to one and breathlessly described my predicament. ?If you can get the others to find you some space you can get in,? the driver said. I looked to the group hunched inside the taxi. No one moved. ?There ain?t no more space in this cab,? said one man finally. I turned away, sure that if I had been a blonde woman space would have appeared. It was 2.30am when I reached the station. I walked into the concourse and rang the people who I had met at the hostel to tell them where I was.
?Hey, you got a bus ticket to get in there?? I turned to see a powerfully built man in a tight black T-shirt with menace in his manner. Every instinct told me to ignore this potential threat and hope he would lose interest in me. But he wouldn?t stop following me. ?Hey, I?m talking to you, come here. Hey, I said I wanted to talk to you!? Maybe I should have stopped, told him that, no, I didn?t have a bus ticket, I just wanted a taxi. The truth is, I was afraid he would bundle me into a corner and rob me, so I kept walking, faster; weaving my way towards the queues of people waiting to board buses; trying to get among the crowds. My eyes darted around the platform looking for security officers, but there wasn?t anyone in uniform. Then the man seized my arm and started barraging me with threats dressed as questions.
Eloquence drained away. I had trouble breathing; words limped out of my mouth without making sense. I mumbled that I was a tourist from England. The next thing I knew, the man had me in a headlock. I said that this was a mistake, that I had done nothing wrong. But he wasn?t listening; he half dragged me out of the waiting room and threw me onto the floor.
It was so sudden and frightening that the memory of it is like a blur of motion caught in a photograph. There were scores of people around and to anyone who would meet my eyes I said the same thing: ?Please do something. I haven?t done anything wrong, help me.? But no one returned my looks. What they saw was a dark-skinned unshaven man with long messy hair. I was pushed onto the concrete floor, the man on top pulling my arms back. At this point I didn?t know if he wanted to rob me, hurt me or worse. I remember saying out loud: ?I can?t believe this is happening.? I had visions of being taken into a dark alley and beaten to a pulp. The man was much bigger and stronger than I was, so I could only wait for his next move. My sunglasses lay broken at my side. The arm of my leather jacket had been ripped off. My ribs were crushed. Then he slipped a pair of handcuffs on me.
I felt terror. What kind of sadistic criminal kept handcuffs on him? Was I going to be thrown into the boot of his car and dumped in the Mississippi? Then it struck me. ?Are you a police officer?? I asked.
Ever since I can remember I have been afraid of the police. It is almost a reflex, which I have had since before I could explain it. To me, the police have always been a monolithic, non-accountable, white force. Before the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the beating of Rodney King my prejudice was already ingrained. But any fear I had of the British police was as nothing compared to the US and specifically the southern police. Accounts of the civil rights movement are littered with stories of their small town injustices. A recurring nightmare of mine has me somewhere in the south confronted by a bigoted police officer. I would be accused of a fabricated crime which was punishable by a lengthy jail sentence.
I was led out of the bus platform, my hair falling down my face, my jacket shredded, my hands cuffed behind me. ?Hey, he?s got an Elvis keyring,? I heard someone laugh. I was taken to a small office at the front of the station and pushed into a chair, my mouth dry from fear and heat. The man explained who I was to his superior. He said I was causing trouble and had refused to answer questions and had started to act ?wildly.? His superior listened, disgust fizzing in his eyes. He was an overweight bear of a man, probably in his early 40s, dressed in black, with holsters for two mobile phones and a gun. He wore leather gloves. I wondered if this was to avoid leaving fingerprints. Then he started firing questions: who are you, why are you here, didn?t you understand the instructions my colleague gave you and why did you not follow them?
Despite everything, I was sure that once the men knew that I was British, they would let me go. I thought that they would have to be morons to give a journalist a hard time; there must be easier people to pick on. So I gushed out my story. I had stumbled into the bus station seeking a cab. I was sorry that I had not responded to the other man?s questions but I was unsure of who he was and had been over- cautious. I was stupid and I was sorry.
They were not impressed. The first man repeated his version of events, but with embellishments. He described me as being out of control, said that I had started lashing out. When I interjected that this was nonsense, I was told to shut up. The bear started telling me how sick he was of having to deal with garbage like me. People who have no respect. People who need to be taught a lesson. People who ruin his nights. I listened, waiting to find out if this lecture would end with me being released. I asked if I would be getting a caution. ?You ain?t getting no caution,? he barked. ?You?re going to jail.?
A new wave of fear rose inside me. What sort of company would I be keeping? What would they do to me? I needed to control my thinking, to stop my imagination from running amok. I began trying to take mental notes of where I was and what was happening. I looked around. The office was small, its walls a sickly green. A large desk occupied most of one side of the room. Among the paperwork was a large bottle of Vaseline intensive care. Various people drifted past, glancing at me. It suddenly made me angry that I was getting dirty looks from people who were less well-off and less well-educated than me.
The pair took turns to guard me. I quickly learned that the best strategy was to appear pathetic and beaten. When I asked questions or maintained my innocence, I aggravated them. If I bowed my head and was silent they seemed less irritated. I had not drank anything since earlier in the afternoon and I felt weak with dehydration. I thought I might faint. I asked the younger man if I could have some water. ?Yeah, sure,? he sneered. ?You want some cookies too??
Time passed slowly. I waited in silence for the police van to arrive. The man who had apprehended me hinted that if I could come up with someone to post bail, I might not need to spend too much time in prison. My heart lifted a millimetre. I explained that if it was a matter of money, one phone call to my newsroom could sort that out. He started to relax a little. Tired from having been up all night, he became slightly less hostile. I tried to appeal to his good side?I assumed there was one?and told him that I had learnt a valuable lesson that night which I would always remember. I told him that I had a train ticket booked to take me out of Memphis the next night. I tried to talk in a manner that suggested closure was looming. I sensed he was beginning to realise that I was not the usual sort of vagrant they picked up. When I asked him to take off my handcuffs, he replied, ?I can?t do that because that would mean I was wrong to put them on in the first place.?
The police van arrived and a man from the station came to pick up the details of my case. He seemed less intent on making my life a nightmare. As soon as the pair left, I tried to explain the misunderstanding to him. He seemed to take it on board. It began to dawn on me that the two men who had been tormenting me were not policemen at all, but security officers employed by Greyhound with a quasi-police role. They carried guns and handcuffs but did not wear a uniform?small people able to act big due to semi-legal impunity. Their victims were mostly those who had the least ability to fight back.
The real officer removed my handcuffs and bustled me into a police van. Inside were small cubicles with slits for seeing outside. I turned my stopwatch on to time the journey. I could not see the others in the van but I could hear them muttering to themselves or screaming. I tried to catch a glimpse of a river. I was still petrified of being thrown into the Mississippi. Was this how Emmett Till felt as he was dragged to his death? I felt utterly alone, yet momentarily close to all those who had been beaten or lynched. Still, the victims of that struggle had been black and this time one of my assailants was himself black.
For four hours I had, in my mind at least, been closer to jeopardy than ever before. I had thought how strange it would be to die in Memphis, all for the desire to see the home of Elvis Presley. I thought whether I had done enough in 30 years, and realised that, yes, I had done and seen a lot. I realised with sadness that when I sought someone bigger to pray to for strength, there was no one. My internal conversations were with my mother and the ghost of my father rather than God. Instead, I went to other scriptures: fragments of songs from Bruce Springsteen and U2. I mouthed the lyrics of ?One.? ?Have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head??
I had gone to America to remind myself why it was worth living and the answer had come in a more direct manner than I really wanted. The van stopped. The door opened. It was morning. I found myself at a gas station. ?I want you to get yourself a cab and head off home,? the officer told me. I could have hugged him. Instead, I shook his hand and gave him my business card. He never got in touch.