by Clare Bayley
AGENT. Eurotunnel is fast and safe. Believe me. I have a good reputation.
So. He opens the back. And then you are in England. You all get out, and you split up. Understand? You don’t all go together.
If you are going to claim political asylum, first person you see, you say you are a refugee.
AHMAD. I’m not a refugee! I’m a businessman!
AGENT. You want to run a business?
You got one million pounds?
You haven’t? No?
Then you’re illegal immigrant. That’s their rules. So if you’re illegal immigrant, you get out of truck, and you hide.
If they catch you, they will ask you lot of questions. Who brought you, how you come, where you stop along the way . . . Now. Why they need to know that?
Think.
Why they want to know all that?
So they can stop more people like you getting here. You going to make it more difficult for people like you? No. So. You don’t tell them nothing. You can’t remember. Ten days ago, you were at home. Now, you are here. That’s all you know. Non-stop travel. Is that true?
So. You know my name?
No.
You know what I look like?
No. Because now I’m gone, and you never saw me in the first place.
ASHA. What if they come in looking and we are not in England yet?
AGENT. This is why you paid me. No one will come in looking before England. OK. I go now.
ASHA stops him.
ASHA. Where is Mariam? Please, sir, can you tell me what happened to her?
AGENT. Don’t worry about her now. You going to get your new life now.
He exits.
AHMAD. I don’t trust that man, but I wish he was coming with us all the way. What’s happening out there? Are we on the train already?
JEMAL. It’s time to get our stories straight, now. He’s right, it’s very important. What we say makes a big difference.
FATIMA. You stop telling us what we got to do! You just the same as us, so you say. So you don’t tell us what to do.
JEMAL. No. I’m not the same as you. You haven’t spent three months living in a cardboard box in Calais, outside the terminus. I have. There are hundreds of people like us out there, living rough, hiding from the police. Every night they try and get on a train or a truck to get across the sea. That was me. I’m not going back to that again.
ASHA. You were here already?
JEMAL. We must lie. But it must be good lying. Clever lying. Not stupid lying.
ASHA. I don’t understand. You lived in England. Why can’t you go back?
JEMAL. They turned down my application. After all those years, living in England, going to school there, then they said go back to Turkey. Turkey is safe now for Kurds. Turkey is almost Europe now.
A few months after they sent me back, they changed the law. If it had been a few months later, I could be a British citizen now. If my girlfriend was British then I’d have a chance. But she isn’t.
ASHA. Why don’t you tell the British that your baby is there? They are kind people. They will allow you.
JEMAL. My baby was born when I was in detention. They didn’t care.
They don’t want us in their country! It doesn’t matter what our story is. They use the law to trick us.
I failed before. But this time I’m going to get back into that country any way I can. I know how to, you see?
I’m going to say I’m from Iraq. I’ve come all the way from Baghdad, non-stop travel. Clever lying, you see.
I’ll keep trying until I get there.
FATIMA. I’m not going back. Where are they going to send me? There’s no government there. Only war. They can’t send me back to the camp.
JEMAL. That’s why they want to know how we got here. If you tell them the truck stopped in Italy, they’ll send you back to Italy.
ASHA. We can’t go back. I don’t want to go back!
JEMAL. Have you still got your letter? Keep hold of your letter.
FATIMA. What is this letter?
JEMAL. Don’t worry. We will be OK.
Think how strong we have been, just to get here! And now we have to be clever.
AHMAD. It’s the same in everything in life. The clever ones succeed, the others fail.
ASHA. People will always trick and lie and fight. That’s why we are here.
JEMAL. Some people are good. Some people are bad. But governments are bad in any place you go to.
The truck stops again. A few jolts.
JEMAL. Shhhh. Maybe they’re putting us in the train now. Keep quiet.
ASHA. How long is the tunnel?
JEMAL. It takes about forty minutes.
ASHA. Forty minutes and then we are in England?
JEMAL. Forty minutes. You’d better get smartened up for your job interview.
ASHA. You don’t believe me that I’m going to meet the Queen.
The container jolts some more. They wait.
AHMAD. We must be on the train now. Do you think we’re on the train?
They wait. Silence.
FATIMA. I think we are on the train now. Soon we will be in England.
Silence.
ASHA. I can’t feel us moving.
FATIMA. Soon our journey will be over.
AHMAD. Are we moving?
ASHA. Are we there?
Do you think we have arrived?
Nobody answers.
Slow fade.
The End.
CLARE BAYLEY
The Container was first produced in 2007 in Edinburgh, where it won a Fringe First and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression award. Other work includes The Shift, Blavatsky (Young Vic); The Enchantment, an English version of the play by Victoria Benedictsson (National Theatre, Cottesloe 2007); At Sea (Hotbed Festival, Cambridge 2009); The Woman Who Swallowed a Pin (Southwark Playhouse, 2000); The Protectors (Trafalgar Studios, 2015).
Radio includes: Heathrow (for the Urban Scrawl series, on theatrevoice.com 2009); The Secret Place (BBC Radio 4 2008); The Bringer of Sweets.
A Nick Hern Book
The Container first published in Great Britain in 2007 as a paperback original by Nick Hern Books Limited, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP
Reprinted in this revised edition in 2009 in association with the Young Vic Theatre, London
This ebook first published in 2015
The Container copyright © 2007, 2009 Clare Bayley
Clare Bayley has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover image designed by Intro (www.introwebsite.com)
Typeset by Country Setting, Kingsdown, Kent CT14 8ES
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84842 073 1 (print edition)
ISBN 978 1 78001 679 5 (ebook edition)
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