Article November 5, 2001 Issue

A place apart from fear

By Bettie Gray

OUR PLANE TIPPED its wing down after a long night of flying toward the sunrise. I glimpsed the green below and pinched myself to see if I was really awake, so near the destination of my dreams. England. "This green and pleasant land," I whispered William Blake's words to myself.

But as soon as we touched down at Gatwick, uneasiness became my traveling companion. At times this feeling led right into a headache, an upset stomach, a sore throat. For a while I chalked these sick feelings up to jet lag or the food or the water. But when I prayed, I was quickly healed of feeling sick. Only the uneasiness lingered.

Then one evening in York, while at supper in a World War I-themed restaurant decked with sandbags, weapons, and stuffed-soldier effigies, I realized I'd not given a single thought to something I felt was significant: For the first time in my life, I was in a country that had been under air attack in wartime. More than 40 years before, the country I was now touring had been repeatedly bombed. I recalled what my sister had said to me back in the fifties when I had told her that I wanted to visit the British Isles: "Why would you want to go there? It's all bombed to ruins." Then I realized that the uneasy feeling I'd been traveling with was a kind of "emotional empathy" connected to the danger and terror that the people of England had faced year after year during World War II.

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