It's been a long time since I watched the entire series of "Madam Secretary" on Netflix so I began watching it again.
The first story was about two young men being abducted overseas, with them demanding to call their American Embassy.
That took me back to a time in Sri Lanka (where I lived for 14 years) when I, too, demanded to call my American Embassy.
It's a long story, one that seemed like a bad movie while it was happening.
In Sri Lanka it's typical to hire a live-in woman to run the household. I had had a wonderful woman who filled that spot but she migrated to Israel for better wages. In her place I hired a maid who turned out to be very disturbed. She saw our stack of videos of "Sex and the City" starring Sarah Jessica Parker, and to her uneducated brain, thought they were pornography. She wrote an anonymous letter to the police chief of our area that we had illegal porno videos and that we were taking porno photos of children. We were wedding and portrait photographers, a far cry from what she accused us of doing!
The agency who recommended her later told us that she was mentally off-balanced.
But that didn't stop the police from reacting to her "anonymous" letter.
A pair of motorcycle police, wearing jeans, T-shirts and flip flops approached me and Lipton, my photography partner who I mentored, who lived at my house. They spoke no English and showed Lipton the letter the maid had written.
"This is not good," said Lipton as he read it. He had a genuine fear of police, knowing that most came from villages, were uneducated and when given a gun, they became power hungry.
They insisted we show them our DVDs.
Not confident in my rights as a foreigner, I took them up to the TV room, with its bookcases full of DVDs. Funny thing, they selected one DVD entitled Candy. I had seen only a few minutes to know that I didn't like it. The scene the flip flops played over and over again was of a man pumping a woman…over and over again.
The entire time, Flip Flop 1 had his gun on my coffee table. I told him to put it away. I was angry. Lipton whispered to me to be quiet, the cops might look like idiots but they enjoy their power.
It was a harrowing experience.
Flip Flops escorted us both to the police station, with two of our videos in hand.
Once at the station, flip flop guys took us into a small room with a small table. A man cowered on the cement floor, handcuffed to a leg of the table. A bare bulb swung from the ceiling. The smell of BO was thick. I know, it sounds like a scene from a black and white film. One cop sat at the table with his gun pointing in my direction as I sat across from him. Lipton stood at the doorway. He interpreted as the cop didn't speak English.
"I want to call my embassy," I said.
"No, Madam, not now."
He wanted me to explain why I had such a large collection of DVDs. "Sri Lanka TV," I said. Implying that my DVDs were better entertainment than the local television channels.
I was there for five hours. Five freaking hours! In that dimly lit room, with the poor guy chained to the table! Finally someone came who spoke English and who acted as if he was my friend.
"I want to call my embassy!"
"Not now, Madam." He wanted me to write my story and that I had invited the cops into my home.
They wanted to cover their ass, so I agreed, but I wrote that I DIDN'T invite them in, that they intimidated me with guns, and on and on.
At some point, I made a call to a lawyer friend, who it turned out knew the big police chief and I was let go immediately.
My lawyer scolded all involved, told them I was an American journalist who had written articles garnering help in the aftermath of the tsunami, who brought in millions of dollars in aid (thanks to an aid group in California)!
I was ready to pack up and leave Sri Lanka, but I had wedding shoots coming up, good friends who talked to me to calm me down, and Lipton who was like my son.
What was a girl do? I stayed for several more years, but each time I drove past that police station I flipped them the bird!
Lucy Llewellyn Byard is currently a columnist for the Record-Bee. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.com
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