Breach

by Olumide Popoola

  Nothing is real in the freezer. The bed in Birmingham is not real, but neither are Jan’s feet or his memories. Is he tired or is his brain freezing? Even in the heat of Hasakah, your blood could run cold, as the saying goes. Terror can do that to you. There’s a crack, like the echo of long-ago gunfire in his mind. And then a flash. But it’s not his memory. It’s the door of the freezer truck. As it opens, Jan sees a policewoman, her back turned to them. She’s so sure there’s no one in this truck that she’s not even looking as she pulls the door ajar. They blink in the mild night gleam. As she turns round, before she realises that they are there, Dlo leans into the opening gap, his face frozen into a clown’s grin.

  ‘Bonjour!’ he bellows at her.

  She screams and leaps back, many metres back, an unearthly spring in reverse. Her one colleague wrenches the door wide, another steadies the policewoman. She claps her hand over her mouth. She’s laughing.

  The men climb out of the orange truck onto empty road, shaking stiff limbs. The truck driver is yelling in French at one of the policemen, but he breaks off and storms over to their little group. He glares at each of them in turn and then spits at them. Jan makes as if to punch him, but Dlo holds him back and a policeman pulls the driver away. The policewoman, still laughing, socks Dlo on the arm.

  ‘No Dover for you tonight,’ she tells him. ‘Better luck next time.’

  Her colleague tells her to stop laughing and then turns to the refugees.

  ‘You can die in here!’ he shouts at them in English, striking the truck with his fist. ‘Die!’ He gestures at the driver. ‘This guy will lock his truck and sleep five, six hours. Six hours in this cold? You will die!’

  When they are loaded into the back of the police van, Jan pushes Dlo to the end of the bench and sits beside him.

  ‘Bonjour!’ says one of the others, and they all laugh. Dlo is the hero of the hour.

  Jan laughs with them. ‘You don’t know this guy,’ he tells the others. ‘You don’t know how funny he is, how smart.’

  ‘Bonjour!’ the guys repeat every now and then on the drive back to Calais, laughing every time. They can’t see that Dlo, by Jan’s side, is weeping.

  III. FIRE IN THE SAND

  This shabby truck will be stopped for sure. Jan has been on several like it. They’re easy to open and easy to hide in, so the police and the border guards always stop them. But Jan must take every opportunity. His parents sold their property for him to get this far, their insurance for old age is gone, so he can’t flag, he can’t fear, he can’t fail – he must push on. Plus, of course, he must stay on the safe side of the smuggler who drove him here and who wouldn’t take kindly to his refusing. And after all, he reminds himself, Walat made it. Walat the Fearless. He’s there now, in UK. He left the camp one night, scrambled into a truck by himself – because Walat had no money for smugglers – and got across. It’s Walat who sleeps under the pink quilt on the bed Jan dreams of.

  There’s a boy this time, among the seven refugees planning to climb into this rattletrap truck. It’s the boy’s first attempt and his bravado is unconvincing.

  ‘Listen,’ Jan tells the boy softly in Kurdish, pointing. ‘That driver, he’s the one with the most to lose.’

  The boy turns his big eyes up at Jan. He doesn’t get it.

  ‘We are refugees from Syria,’ Jan reminds him. ‘What can the police do to us? But him, that driver, he’s the one committing a crime. Trafficking, people smuggling. He’s the one who would go to prison.’

  ‘And he’s the one who makes the most money,’ says another guy in the group. Another guy, not Dlo. For the first time, Jan will climb into a truck without Dlo. Every one of the long nights waiting for trucks by the side of dark roads, Jan had waited with Dlo. Every failed effort, Dlo and Jan. Together near Spain, together heading for Belgium, banging on the side of the truck before they could be driven over the wrong border into disaster. Now, today’s truck – old, noisy, loose pieces rattling – Dlo could have breathed in this truck. Air comes in through the cracks. But instead he’s breathing on the train back to Germany. The night of the freezer truck was too much for Dlo.

  ‘I can’t do this again, Jan. My terrible luck. Next time, I’ll die for sure.’

  ‘Where has your brain gone?’ Jan asked him. ‘Your number-one mind?’

  Dlo looked away. ‘I tell you, I can’t do this, Jan.’

  ‘Don’t tell me about luck, Dlo. This is superstitious bullshit.’

  ‘You can call it whatever you like.’

  Should Jan have gone with his friend back to Germany? Dlo hadn’t asked, but then Dlo never does ask. He has the brains while Jan has… What? The muscle, the courage and also, not to be forgotten, the English he learned from watching action movies long ago while Dlo studied.

  How many more nights will he spend on the road, Jan asks himself, before he concedes defeat and heads back to Germany to join Dlo? One month? He’s been saying ‘One month, maximum!’ since they arrived in Calais three months ago. Germany, though? His heart sinks. In UK, he figures it will take him six months to brush up his English and get a job. But in Germany, starting over, four years to learn the language? Five? He doesn’t have the time. He must begin his interrupted life.

  The truck brakes for the first roadblock. Jan puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Through the gaps in the truck’s sides, light seeps in from the police torches. But no one opens the door and the truck pulls off again, rumbling down the motorway.

  Jan can see the whites of the boy’s eyes as he stares. ‘Can you speak English?’ Jan asks him in English.

  ‘Yes,’ the boy says.

  ‘That’s good,’ says Jan. ‘Can you count?’

  Jan has become an expert at stilling fear, after all these months of calming his friend Dlo. Jan can remember his own fear when he was quite a bit younger than this boy, maybe six or seven, living in the village, long before the family moved to the city, before he met Dlo. One of his tasks, after walking back from school, after taking the goats out to graze, was to load the empty pots onto the donkey cart to collect water from another village. He dreaded it. The stubborn donkey wouldn’t walk on, wouldn’t hurry, and night would be closing in while he pumped water into the pots. Always night, Jan thinks. Always darkness. The town square with Dlo eating cashews. The mortar blowing up the neighbours’ house in the night in Hasakah. The boat from Turkey across the sea to Greece. All these nights waiting for trucks or waiting in trucks or running from trucks. Darkness! And then sleeping through the daylight to spend another night standing under dripping trees while the smuggler finds a truck. The boy on the cart gripped the reins of the donkey that plodded through the sudden strangeness where the dark had erased the familiar world. Far away, Jan, the boy Jan, used to see fires where people were burning oil in the sand. Now that many villages have emptied, desperate people are doing it again, drawing something from the sand to sell.

  He’s ready to climb down when they reach the second roadblock, but once more the police ignore their truck. Are they stupid, these police? Are they lazy? This truck might as well bear the slogan Refugees on board. And the third roadblock – nothing. Now they sense the incline as their cronky old truck – beloved truck! – drives up the ramp and onto the ferry. Feel that! Jan mimes with his hands the sway of the sea beneath them, explaining to the boy. But it may all come to nothing. How many refugees have been found in Dover and sent back to Calais? Too many to count. ‘Be still,’ the men in the truck tell each other. ‘Not yet.’

  As the truck drives out of Dover, Jan’s UK SIM card connects and his mobile tells him that he has 3G. He texts his mother: Today, I greet you from under UK sky.

  They wait until the truck pulls over for fuel, a full forty minutes, before they bang on the sides and the driver – too surprised to be angry – releases them. There’s no sunshine as such, but it is daylight, not darkness. And it is UK.

  Jan takes the boy with him. They set out on foot along the hard shoulder of the motorway,
where it’s too noisy to talk. Before long, a traffic cop pulls over next to them.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the cop yells against the roar of the passing traffic. ‘You can’t walk here.’

  Jan stoops to peer into the vehicle.

  ‘It’s illegal,’ the cop shouts at him.

  Jan grins at him. ‘I too am illegal,’ he tells the cop in English. ‘And this boy is illegal. Arrest us!’

  He’s in a police station somewhere, he has no idea where but in UK for sure, trying on some dry shoes from a kind policeman, when he sees a text on his mobile screen from Dlo.

  Do you miss me yet? How is Calais?

  Expect Me

  Alghali steps into the dark room. Mr Dishman shuffles along behind him.

  ‘Sit over there.’

  Alghali sits where he has sat on each of his visits. From the worn-out rocking chair, which can’t rock because Mr Dishman’s old encyclopedia volumes are in the way, he can see a little bit of the small garden. The curtains are drawn but not fully open.

  ‘Did you do the homework?’

  Alghali takes the exercise book out of his bag and hands it over. Mr Dishman needs a while to make it to the other armchair. He sits and takes the book.

  ‘Oh, my glasses.’

  Alghali looks around, rises and picks them up from the dining-room table.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Mr Dishman’s hands are shaking and the glasses won’t stay on his nose, slipping off again and again. Alghali leans back and clasps his hands in his lap.

  The old man’s eyes study the lines in the book closely. The exercises were set in his own neat handwriting, spidery and tidy, the gaps that needed filling in underlined.

  ‘You asked someone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Internet?’

  ‘Just the dictionary.’

  Mr Dishman ticks off each line and hands the book back, pleased.

  ‘Now tell me about your week.’

  It is like this every time. Alghali has to talk about his life to practise his English. He has to do it in complete sentences, then Mr Dishman will review overall accomplishment and leave dated remarks in the exercise book. He is not a man fond of giving praise. Alghali has learned to take his time. It is not the telling; it is the accuracy of his expression Mr Dishman values. He is strict but he is not unreasonable, he helps along when necessary.

  ‘Last week you said you were expecting a visitor?’

  ‘Yes. My friend who is in Birmingham called me last week. He arranged to come and visit me here.’

  ‘How long have you known each other?’

  ‘I have known him for six months. We met when we first arrived in Italy. It was a coincidence.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He ran into me. I was standing with two friends at a street corner.’

  ‘Did he have any news from your other friends?’

  There is nothing new to add, but Alghali explains it again. Only two of their group have made it to England, he and Nabil, or Obama as he liked to call himself before they arrived. Here they are nameless; it doesn’t matter what they call themselves, they disappear and dissolve. Here it is muteness. It doesn’t have a name. Alghali wonders what Mr Dishman has made of his, whether he can say Alghali, or if he is just the Sudanese, the refugee. He only ever calls him ‘young chap’ or says, ‘Well done, son.’ It is clear that he is not Mr Dishman’s son, which in itself is a good thing, for both of them.

  The rest of Alghali’s former group, the young men he travelled with through Europe, are still in Calais, attempting the journey across the Channel night after night.

  Mr Dishman’s hand reaches back up for the glasses and pulls them off with great effort.

  ‘It is illegal. The way you are entering the country.’

  He says it as if Alghali is responsible for everyone, as if he knows each person who’s trying to get here. They have had this conversation before.

  ‘There is no other way.’

  It always ends the same; Alghali has nothing to add. Mr Dishman will talk about how Europe is being overrun and eventually he will pour Alghali a glass of water.

  Alghali comes twice a week. Once with his English homework, the second time with his library books on accounting standards and UK policies. He wants to be ready for when the papers come through – they have to – for when he can resume his life. He was the top of his class and entered straight into a prestigious job. Financial manager. It was unheard of. He had impressed them all during the interview.

  Mr Dishman makes him work through the accounting books paragraph by paragraph. With the dictionary he helps Alghali to understand the different laws in this country. But today it’s grammar and conversational English. And since Alghali’s exercises were flawless there is nothing else to do but talk.

  ‘How are your flatmates?’

  ‘They are all fine, thank you.’

  Alghali wants to ask things but there is no time for this in their arrangement. Their schedule is usually packed tight, like the flat Mr Dishman lives in. There is another room, but Mr Dishman has taken to sleeping in the lounge. It’s closer to the kitchen and bathroom. At ninety-four he is still agile but he is not young.

  ‘They enjoyed the visit from my friend Nabil. He stayed overnight.’

  Mr Dishman pushes the saucer with biscuits across the little table. He has insisted, since Alghali’s first visit, that he should bring nothing but his classwork. As always, Alghali declines the biscuits. He does not want to be a bother.

  ‘You are quiet today.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Alghali takes the exercise book and hands it over.

  ‘What is next week’s homework? Perhaps I don’t stay too long today.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want to disturb you.’

  When they talk about their week, it is apparent how similar the surfaces of their lives have become. Nothing happens other than in the past. Or in the future, for Alghali. The distant future that could come tomorrow, that could come months down the line.

  Or never.

  The emptiness waiting produces is best filled with structure and discipline. This is Mr Dishman’s belief. Alghali does not disagree.

  At the weekend, Nabil teased him about his time with the pensioner. The old man wasn’t the problem, but his attitude.

  ‘Why put yourself through it?’

  ‘I want to learn.’

  ‘From him?’

  ‘From who else?’

  Alghali thinks about the present that stretches as endlessly as the plains at home. Although at home it is pleasant, broken by mountains and hills, by village life, by living in the bustling city, by family.

  Here the present stretches over trips to the library, free online courses to keep the mind engaged. Mr Dishman’s strictness is somewhat absurd, but it is an exchange. However little, something is kept alive.

  ‘You cannot disturb me when we have agreed for you to come.’

  Alghali doesn’t respond. Mr Dishman tries again.

  ‘What else happened?’

  ‘I went to the library.’

  ‘Today or yesterday?’

  They aren’t always this fragmented, Alghali’s answers. He often takes his time, but only to think about syntax and grammar. He comes prepared with things to talk about, anecdotes from his flatmates, other Sudanese men he hadn’t known before his arrival in Bolton.

  Alghali often tells Mr Dishman about Bolton, the streets he is discovering. Mr Dishman was born and raised here, but it is different, seeing your city through a stranger’s eyes. Sometimes Mr Dishman allows questions about his own life, after a successful class, and their conversation takes a different turn. On those rare occasions they acknowledge silently how confined their lives are. The few things that break the routine of nothingness. For Mr Dishman there is bridge, always on a Wednesday, always at Mrs Gray’s house. There are the carers, the food deliveries for the heavier groceries, the odd stroll to the park. Alghali att
ends English lessons, his real English lessons, also twice a week but shorter; there are his walks, talking with his flatmates and friends, and the occasional trip to the lawyer to enquire about his pending case.

  It was at one of his English lessons that they met. The teacher had distributed leaflets in the neighbourhood calling for people willing to help with conversational English classes.

  It has been months, the same routine. Never in Alghali’s life has he been this static.

  They don’t call it visits, although most of the time is spent talking about the now of Alghali’s life. Admittedly, his life is still more active than Mr Dishman’s. It does have friendships and laughter. It does have a connection to the future, whether here or not.

  ‘Are you unwell?’ Mr Dishman asks.

  Alghali looks at him. Mr Dishman has asked for details of his real life, the one underneath, the details that belong to the journey here, to the before. But Mr Dishman is never quite ready to really hear them.

  ‘I found out that a young friend died.’

  ‘Back home? In Sudan?’

  ‘No, in Calais. He was trying to make it over here.’