He’d left Syria when he was seventeen, but it had taken him almost two years to get to the UK, in and out of camps in different countries, walking, running, hiding, escaping…enduring. Then finally a terrible boat ride across the English Channel, a night he would never forget, before he surrendered to the British authorities. Zain huffed as he remembered how he’d thought his journey was over, that now his world would turn again.
Six months after he arrived, he’d been officially accepted as a refugee. You’re safe for five years, they’d said, but he didn’t feel safe or settled. Maybe he’d never feel those things again. He’d already used up two and half of his five years and was still struggling to survive.
How could he feel part of this country when there was no guarantee that at the end of five years, he’d be allowed to stay? It was UK government policy that refugees should return to their country of origin if safe to do so. Regimes change. Who knew what the situation would be in Syria in two and half years’ time? All Zain could think about was what was happening to him now.
Once he’d been accepted as a refugee, he’d been eligible for support for a month, but thirty-six pounds a week didn’t go far, and the accommodation was awful. He couldn’t afford the A level books he’d needed, the cost of doing practical tests in a local college, the exam fees or copies of recent exam papers and mark schemes, so he’d worked in some horrible places and even begged when he was desperate. His current job was washing cars and he hated it. But then he’d disliked everything he’d done, except for the three hours of hospital volunteer work on Sundays that he still did.
He tried to be happy because even smiling made him feel better. He’d not forgotten his promise to his father. Be brave, be kind, be true. Be happy. But it was hard. His determination to be in London because this was the city his father had lived in, talked about, wanted Zain to come to, made life harder. His father had said England was safe and Zain spoke English. But it wasn’t safe. Life was difficult. His father had talked of contacting friends in England, people who would help Zain when he got there, but then contacting anyone outside of Syria or even inside had become impossible. Zain was on his own.
Maybe it would have been easier if he’d stayed in Germany. Being stubborn had kept him moving through that country with his sights on England. Now he was stuck. If he’d been prepared to move elsewhere in the UK, he’d have had more help but he wanted to stay here. It made him feel as if his baba was close to him. Zain liked London but he’d like it a lot more if he could afford to live in the city. He was envious of others’ clothes, food, friendship. He lived on the outside, looking in.
Sometimes, he talked to his father as he walked. He did a lot of walking on the days when he wasn’t working. He walked and listened and practised his English. He was fluent now to the point that he didn’t even translate in his head, he thought in English. Some people believed he’d been born here because he spoke the language so well, but the olive colour of his skin led some to ask where he was from and a few people were abusive. He was all too aware of public opinion about immigrants, even those who fled war. He wasn’t wanted and it hurt.
His religion…was still there, lurking, making him feel guilty. He wanted to be a good Muslim, but he wasn’t. Sometimes he prayed. Sometimes he went to the mosque on Fridays. He knew there were people who’d help him in the Muslim community, but his thoughts and the thing he’d done for that last bid for freedom condemned him. Maybe he didn’t want to be a good Muslim at all. It wasn’t top of his lists of wants. Material things were. Clothes. A proper bed. Food.
He rolled over on his saggy inflatable mattress and faced the wall. It was plastered with anatomical diagrams of different parts of the human body he’d painstakingly copied from library books. A way to help him learn and to hide stains he didn’t want to identify.
At first, it had been easy to motivate himself to study. He needed to pass A levels before he could apply to university to become a doctor. Even while he was working at whatever job he’d been able to find, he woke early every day and studied, came home and studied. There was no time to think about what he now had the freedom to think about—men.
Though he did—sometimes.
A month ago, in mid-August, he’d gone to collect his results from the college in Greenwich where he’d taken his exams. Top grades in biology, chemistry, maths, further maths and geography. He couldn’t have done any better. Groups of boys and girls stood around him chattering excitedly but he didn’t know them. He wished he’d had someone to tell, someone to hug him, congratulate him.
Yet pleasure in his success was hollow because he’d applied to every school of medicine in London and been rejected by all of them. The pain of that was like a wound that refused to heal. He’d studied hard for the UCAT too, a university clinical aptitude test, which he had to do well in to have a chance of admission to one of the top London medical schools.
The test wasn’t easy, questions on verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning and decision making among others. Many of the situations described in the questions were alien to him, because his knowledge of England and the way it worked was still limited. Even so, he scored in the top twenty percent and he’d thought that would be enough, but it wasn’t.
Not long until he took the UCAT again, and maybe now he had the A level grades as proof of his ability, he might be offered a place to study medicine.
Though he couldn’t silence that nagging voice in his head reminding him it took five years of study to be a doctor and even if somewhere gave him a place to start this time next year, he could only stay in the country for eighteen months before his case was reconsidered. Was that why the medical schools had said no before, because he was a refugee?
Teaching himself what he needed to know for A level had been hard but doable. He couldn’t do the same with medicine, but he did what he could, even though sometimes he barely wanted to get off his bed and go to work. Sometimes he longed to do bad things because the desire to be touched, to be wanted was an ember burning inside him. He’d seen the glances some men gave him. Maybe others had seen Zain’s glances too.
But that was all he’d done. Glance. His family would be ashamed if they could see inside his head, if they knew what he thought. He hoped heaven didn’t work like that and there was no one looking down on him. Especially Qashim. Zain thought of him more often than he wanted to, wondering if he was really dead, or maybe in London looking for him. If Qashim was here, he wouldn’t be struggling. He’d have found a way to make money, but he wouldn’t be able to find Zain among eight million people.
Zain was now twenty-two, four years older than most applicants for medicine and in spite of all he’d achieved, all he’d suffered, he could feel his future sliding from his fingers, a slow-motion fall to blackness. Everything was so difficult here. So many forms to fill in, applications to be made, conflicting advice as to what he should do, what he was entitled to. In Syria, if you had money, you got what you wanted—mostly. It might have been a corrupt system but at least you knew how things worked. He wanted nothing from this new country except for the chance of a future.
He didn’t want to take money from the benefits system. He knew how many felt about foreigners. He’d been called names and spat at, particularly when he’d lived north of the river where most immigrants seemed to settle. Even though he’d lost everything, fled war, run from death, no one saw that. Instead, he was someone who’d take their job, live in a place they deserved more, someone more likely to commit crimes, someone who didn’t want to integrate with the culture of their country. Zain huffed. They were welcome to break their backs and ruin their hands picking fruit, washing dishes, sweltering in a laundry pressing sheets. Zain couldn’t stand to do any job for very long. Not when the pay was poor and the conditions bad.
Throwing off the covers, he pushed to his feet and padded to his tiny bathroom. Ten minutes later he’d showered, shaved, brushed his hair, dressed, eaten a banana, and a spoonful of peanut butter. He shoved an app
le into the pocket of his jacket, and drank a glass of water. He had no cooking facilities. No way of making a hot drink unless he bought another kettle. His old one had died. Cold water was fine until the weather changed. He looked in the mirror and made himself smile.
I can do this.
I can make it.
All that matters is the future, not the past.
This is my path and I will succeed.
He unplugged his phone and groaned because yet again, it had failed to charge, though there was a small amount of battery left. A bit like me. He’d try again tonight. It was a matter of getting the plug in at a certain angle. Getting my mind in the right place.
The last thing he did before he left his room was take the plastic wallet containing his paperwork, his passport and the right to stay in the country, from his backpack. He slipped it over his head and pushed it under his T-shirt. It wasn’t that he wanted it with him, more that he was terrified of losing proof of who he was. If anything happened to him, no one would know. No one would care. And knowing your name will make them care? He swallowed hard at the pain in his chest.
He didn’t want to lose anything from this room. These were his things, his possessions, his life and he had to take care of all of it. Zain checked his door was locked and headed downstairs and out onto the road. The September morning was chilly and he fastened the buttons on his thin jacket. The coat he’d worn last winter had been stolen. He needed to buy another before the really cold weather arrived.
BB’s Express Car Wash opened at eight and he was there several minutes early. The manager, Musa, who Zain didn’t like, was already in the portacabin drinking coffee when Zain stepped inside. The smell of coffee made Zain’s stomach rumble.
“Morning.” Zain slapped a smile on his face. “Chilly today.”
“Yeah.”
English people talked a lot about the weather, but it was a safe conversation. Zain hung his jacket on a peg and put on the waterproof trousers and the hi-vis jacket they all wore. He shoved his shoes onto the rack below. Inside the waterproof boots, provided as part of his uniform, was a pair of yellow fleece-lined rubber gloves. Only Zain wore those. He didn’t care that he was laughed at. His fingers mostly stayed warm and dry.
He’d been working at the car wash for two months. Five days a week for three hundred pounds. After tax and national insurance, he took home two hundred and sixty-nine pounds a week. Eighty of that went on accommodation. Forty on food, six on the internet, ten for his phone and ten on have-to-have stuff like toilet rolls, shaving cream and travel. The rest he saved, when he could.
The cost of going to university for five years was expensive, more in the UK than anywhere else in Europe. While he had refugee status, he’d pay the same fees as a UK resident, but it was still a huge amount of money, and not just for the course because he’d need accommodation and food as well. He wouldn’t have to pay anything back until he was earning, but he could see why he wasn’t a good candidate when he might be deported before he’d finished training, before he paid off his debt. He’d thought if he had some of the money upfront that would make him a better option. Maybe.
So far, he had a few hundred pounds in his bank account. The chances of saving enough to even make a small dent in the fees were small. Maybe he ought to rethink his plans. Maybe it was just too difficult for him to be a doctor. Yet even contemplating that made his heart clench. It was the one way in which he didn’t want to let his family down.
A never-ending stream of vehicles pulled in to be washed. He and the others worked together in teams of four when they could. Zain wished they spoke English to him, but they chatted in Urdu, a language he didn’t know, laughed at jokes he couldn’t understand. So he kept to himself and visualised the diagrams he’d drawn to help him remember the blood vessels of the human body, or listed diseases from A to Z, then went through the symptoms.
“Zain! Catch!”
He looked up, flung out his hand as something flew at him and wrapped his fingers around a set of keys.
“Do interior BMW,” Musa called.
Zain put his bucket and sponge on one side and headed for the already washed and polished, empty black BMW parked by the vacuum cleaner. He didn’t know much about cars, he didn’t even know how to drive one, but this vehicle looked new and smart and expensive. Usually those who just paid for a wash stayed in their cars but when they wanted a full valet, the drivers often went to the coffee shop next door. Maybe that was where the owner had gone.
He took off his wet jacket, hung it on the fence and groaned when he opened the door of the car. No wonder Musa had told him to do it. The interior was full of sweet wrappers, empty fast food containers, plastic bottles, scraps of paper. Zain grabbed two plastic bags from the dispenser. One was for obvious rubbish, the other for stuff he didn’t want to throw away without asking the owner. Even the T-shirt spattered in blood that lay under a pile of McDonald’s bags. Hopefully just from a nosebleed but… Oh God.
If he found the odd coin, he wouldn’t keep it. The others did. They bragged about how much they’d collected by the end of the day, but Zain thought it was stealing so he added the six pound coins and handful of silver he found to the save bag. He put receipts in there too, just in case.
When he was in the back of the car, feeling under the seats for more rubbish, his fingers wrapped around what turned out to be a leather wallet crammed with cash. High value notes. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds. More money than Zain had ever seen. There was a foreign driver’s licence. Artur Sheripov. The round-faced guy looked to be in his late forties and had dark hair that curled on his collar.
Zain popped the wallet in the save bag and carried on working. He wiped down the leather seats with a special solution, then cleaned the windows and dashboard.
“What taking so long?” Musa stood leaning against the open back door.
“I’m nearly done.”
“What this?”
Zain turned to see Musa holding the wallet. “I found it under the seat.”
“Shit. Full of money!”
As Musa began to pull out a note, Zain snatched the wallet back and dropped it into the bag.
“He’s not going to know if we both took money,” Musa whispered.
“I’d know and I’m the one who’s cleaned the inside of this car. If anything was missing, I’d get the blame.” And you’d have to sack me. His heart pounded because if Musa wanted to take the money, he would. He was twice Zain’s size. But he just laughed and walked off. Zain heaved a sigh of relief.
He put the bag holding the wallet, coins and receipts on the driver’s seat, hesitated then folded the T-shirt so the blood stains were hidden and put it underneath the bag before locking the car. The rubbish went in the bin.
As he pulled on his jacket and dropped the keys in his pocket, he caught a whiff of hydrochloric acid and looked across to see Latif spraying the alloy wheels of a sports car. It was a job Zain didn’t like. Breathing in the vapour was a health risk. Those who worked here weren’t as careful as they should be. Every time Zain smelt it, the odour threw him back to the gas attacks in Aleppo and made him anxious.
It was time to break for his lunch, but he didn’t want to go until he’d given the keys back to the owner. When he looked up, he saw Musa walking over with his hand out.
“You have lunch. I take keys.”
Zain worried Musa would help himself to the cash, blame him if the guy noticed, then sack him. “It’s okay.”
“No is not.”
Zain found himself being manhandled across the forecourt to the rear of the lot where Musa parked his own car. He shoved Zain out of sight and grabbed him around the throat.
“I tell you what you do.” Musa pressed his mouth to Zain’s ear. “You go to car. You take two hundred pounds from wallet and give to me. You don’t do that and this your last day.”
Oh God. Zain nodded. Musa let him go and Zain walked in the direction of the BMW but carried on past it and ran to the café, h
oping the guy was inside. If he wasn’t, he was fucked. He couldn’t see anyone who looked like the photo on the licence.
“Does anyone here own the black BMW in the car wash?” he asked in a loud voice.
“I do.”
Zain turned to see a guy in a dark woollen coat looking at him and went over. The man was good-looking, around ten years older than Zain. He had black hair and long thick lashes framing light blue eyes. Zain’s heart jumped. Ten out of ten. But not the guy on the licence.
“Is there a problem?” the man asked.
“Yours is the BMW with the fuzzy pink dice hanging from the review mirror and the Hello Kitty air freshener?”
He laughed. “Not my style.”
“What’s the registration number?” Zain shuffled the keys in his hand.
“Good to be cautious.”
Zain gulped at the smile. Not because it was a nice smile. It was too cocky, and Zain wished it wasn’t so enticing. Something about strong confident guys that he liked and envied.
The man gave the right number and Zain put the keys on the table. “There’s a plastic bag on the seat with some loose change and a wallet full of money.”
“A wallet? I have my wallet.” He patted his pocket.
“Not yours. Someone else’s. I saw the driver’s licence photo.”
“Right. Thanks.”
Zain left, feeling cross with himself for hoping he might have been handed a reward he could then have given to Musa. Though not two hundred pounds. As he walked back into the car wash, Musa scowled at him from the car he was working on. How much trouble was he in? Was Musa really going to sack him? Zain would just have to hope he let it drop, particularly since Zain worked harder than anyone else. He changed out of his work gear, put on his jacket and shoes and as he went for his break, he saw the man from the café unlock his BMW.
It was sad not to feel better about having done the right thing, but he couldn’t risk getting into trouble with the authorities. That would be worse than being in trouble with Musa.
Whatever It Takes Page 5