“Mr. Talent* was taken into custody by airport police.”
“What? Why?” I rubbed my bleary eyes in the hotel room bathroom, trying to understand what my wife was saying on the other end of the line.
“They found the AirTag in the rug and thought it was a spy device.”
“Oh no.” I tried to keep a low voice since my brother was still asleep in the hotel room.
“He came to pick up the rug today, just like you asked him to. But then they detained him. Mark* kept trying to get ahold of you, but couldn’t reach you, so he called me. I didn’t really know what was going on either and I also couldn’t get through to you. Where have you been?”
“Oh no. I’m so sorry. We’ve been passed out in a hotel room in Doha. We missed our connecting flight and they put us up in a hotel in the city. We didn’t get any sleep last night, so we got to the room and have been sleeping like dead men for the last four or five hours.”
“You’d better call Mark.”
I rang my teammate Mark right away, still standing in the hotel room bathroom. A similar conversation ensued with Mark, but with the welcome news that Mr. Talent had been released, though only after much haggling and persuasion on the part of Mark.
“They thought the AirTag was a spy tracker of some sort. I pulled up the Apple website and insisted that it’s a normal consumer device that lots of people use. But they’d never seen one and didn’t want to believe me. Why did you have one in the rug again?”
“Well, last time we flew back they lost two of our suitcases for good. I didn’t want that to happen this time around. I didn’t think it would cause any issues though. Don’t lots of people use them now to keep their bags from getting lost? They really thought it was a spy device?”
“Apparently they’ve never heard of them in our city. And you know how sensitive they are about spy stuff here. They were pretty freaked out, gave Mr. Talent a very hard time about it. I was able to talk us out of it eventually, but we’ll need your help to resolve things.”
“Understood.”
I shook my head. All this for a rug.
Poor Mr. Talent, our servant-hearted, ever-loyal friend. Then again, there was that time he had gotten me and Mark detained when he took us on a surprise outing with AK-47s.
So, how had we gotten here? Well, a number of months into our medical leave in the US, it was looking like we’d need to resettle in Kentucky for the long-term. A friend and former missionary had given me some good advice before I took a trip back to Central Asia to sell everything.
“Even if it’s costly, bring back whatever household items are special for your family. Trust me, it’ll be worth it, because it will mean a lot to your wife and kids.”
We didn’t have too many household items that were special for our family. But we did have a beautiful blue Persian rug. We had bought it at the beginning of our second term and for a number of years it had been a central piece of our family’s hosting and spending time with one another. It carried sweet memories of chai visits from neighbors, Covid lockdown dance parties with the kids, Bible studies with local believers, and nights where we all slept on the rug because the living room was the only room warm enough or cool enough to sleep in. Yes, it’s normal for missionaries to have to liquidate their households over and over again. But, I decided that if I could, I would try to save this rug.
However, at the end of our surprisingly successful five day trip (quite possibly the most efficient five days of my life), this rug stood out as a very problematic outlier. First, we had had to do research to make sure it wasn’t illegal to bring an Iranian-made rug into the US. It wasn’t technically illegal, but none of the shipping companies would touch it. We knew that some visitors had successfully brought back rugs on planes before. So then we decided to get it specially cleaned, folded, and plastic-wrapped for air travel, a process that wasn’t complete until late on our final night. We thought we would simply pay a little extra for the weight and size of the rug, but that it wouldn’t be too bad.
When we checked in, however, the counter staff informed us that the rug was six kilos too heavy to be allowed as oversize baggage. It would have to be sent as airfreight, but only if the airline approved it – and this wasn’t for certain.
An anxious conversation in a side office and a new plan gave us a bit of hope that everything might still work out. If the airline agreed, they would hold the rug for us, the following day Mr. Talent would come get the rug from the airline office, find out the price to ship it as air cargo, get approval from me via WhatsApp, and transfer the rug to air freight. They wouldn’t be able to send it to Kentucky, but they could get it to Philadelphia, the city where my brother lives. Then somehow from there we’d figure out getting it halfway across the country.
The next day, our plan B worked reasonably well – until the rug was scanned upon exiting the departure area. That’s when the scanner found the AirTag, and the airport police proceeded to detain Mr. Talent.
A number of hours later, after Mark had successfully sprung Mr. Talent from airport jail, my brother and I walked around Doha. I was eager to hear from Mr. Talent about the possibility and cost of air freighting the rug.
When he eventually called, I did my best to make amends for the fact that I had just gotten him arrested, making sure to pepper the conversation with multiple respectful titles like “my only-begotten brother.” But I could tell from his voice that even Mr. Talent’s enthusiasm for helping was wearing thin. Still, we had come so far, and I didn’t want to give up now. Would that not mean that Mr. Talent’s detention and all our efforts so far would have been in vain?
Mr. Talent then told me the price they were asking. I had to take a minute. It would cost more than the price of the rug itself to send it via airfreight. Yes, Persian rugs in Central Asia cost only a fraction of what they do in the West, but the air freight fee was still no sum to sneeze at. Yet there wasn’t time to hesitate, a decision needed to be made. I sighed and bit the bullet. If we were to live in the West for years to come, I really wanted to have that rug around to remind us of our beloved Central Asia. I told Mr. Talent to pay the hefty fee, and told him I’d reimburse him from our furniture sale money. Finally, it looked like all would be well. In several weeks, the rug would arrive in Philadelphia and my brother would pick it up for me.
The weeks passed quickly and one day my brother got a call from the air freight department of the Philly airport. The rug needed to be processed by customs, so he’d need to come in to fill out some forms.
Unfortunately, once he arrived at customs they told him there was a $180 per day fee to hold the rug, and that they had no way of telling him how many days it would take them to complete their processes. It could be weeks they might have to hold the rug until they got around to it.
“Please give us your license and sign these forms,” the customs guy said.
My brother absorbed the bad news, did the paperwork, but in the process also managed to joke around and make friends with the customs guy. This natural ability of my brother’s has always impressed me. It’s a gift he got from my dad and grandfather, a genuine delight in people that leads to spontaneous friendship – something that can also come in handy in a tight spot.
As he drove away from the airport, my brother filled me in on the ever-mounting cost of this whole rug endeavor. No one could say how many days they would hold it, nor what the total charge might be. But it was likely to be in the thousands of dollars. After my brother hung up, I slumped in my chair, processing the bad news. I should have just sold the rug with our other stuff and been done with it. Was I just stubborn and foolish to keep going like I had? And was there even a way out now? How do you balance the intangible value of keeping something like your family’s favorite rug with the very real fiscal costs that just seem to keep mounting?
An hour later I got another call from my brother. He was laughing.
“You won’t believe what just happened. When I was at the airport earlier, they forgot to give me back my license. I was laughing and talking about our trip with the customs guy and so neither of us noticed that I didn’t have my license when I left. I’m halfway back to my house when my new friend calls me up, horrified that he had caused me to drive without my license, and he tells me to come back right away. He felt so bad for his mistake that he said they would expedite things and process the rug right away. I’ve got it with me now in the car!”
I smiled and shook my head. Praise God the rug saga was finally coming to an end. And my brother – what a champ.
The rug sat folded up in my brother’s basement for a few months until he could make a trip to Kentucky, when he brought it to the little parsonage where we were staying. Sadly, it was too big for the living room, so once again we had to put it in a basement, still folded up and plastic-wrapped.
But at least we had it now in the US to remind us for years to come of our life in Central Asia. And once we found a long-term house to live in, the beautiful Persian rug would once again be one of our favorite places in the home.
But… then we decided we weren’t staying in the US after all, but moving back to Central Asia. And now I don’t know what I’m going to do with that blasted rug.
p.s. We did at last get to unfold and use the rug for an event with a partner church (pictured above). As soon as my wife suggested the idea, I was all over it. “Yes! Must use that rug for something!!!”
To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
*Names changed for security
Photos are from Unsplash.com
Entrusted to the Dirt 