‘We’re getting on the ferry.’
‘Shhhh. We’re not there yet.’
I said nothing. I barely dared breathe. The lorry went quiet as the driver turned off the engine, and for the next forty-five minutes the seven of us sat in absolute silence.
‘Are we moving?’ someone hissed.
I held my breath and concentrated. It was there – a discernible sway, a gentle rocking motion.
We were on our way to England.
I tried not to think of the deep black water sliding beneath us. This was a massive ferry – the biggest ship I had ever seen, let alone been on. I felt a little safer. These were professional sailors, not people-smugglers with a leaking tub overflowing with pathetic, desperate men.
We began to relax and talk freely.
‘Thanks be to God that he didn’t turn the refrigerator on.’
It was getting warm and stuffy in there, but at least it was tolerable. If he had turned it on, we could have frozen to death. There were many stories in the Jungle of people who had done so. That’s why getting on to this lorry had been such a risk.
Just a few hours earlier I had been ready to die. I couldn’t take it any more. I was going to make it, or they’d find my blue corpse curled up on top of the banana boxes. Either way, I would be out of that living hell they called the Jungle in the port of Calais.
‘Yeah,’ someone replied. ‘I really don’t want to die, huddled shivering in your stinking arms.’
We all laughed at that – migrant humour is dark. But without it we’d all have gone mad long ago.
‘Hey,’ came a voice from the blackness. ‘George Bush, Tony Blair and Hamid Karzai are all in hell.’
‘Is this a joke, or are you trying to cheer me up?’
We were really in a good mood now. It didn’t quite feel real, and until I was safe and knew what my situation in England was, I couldn’t relax. But at least, after months of trial and misery, I was on my way to Britain.
‘Bush says to Satan, “Hey, Satan, I need to make a phone call to Dick Cheney, to check how the war is going.” Satan replies, “Sure, George – that’ll be a billion dollars, please.” Bush isn’t happy, but he pays the money and makes the call. Tony Blair then goes up to Satan. “Hey, Satan, I need to call the Queen in London – just to check on the war.” Satan says, “Sure, Tony – no problem. That’ll be a billion dollars please.” Tony doesn’t want to pay either, but what choice does he have? Finally, our glorious President Hamid Karzai goes up to Satan. “Hey, Satan, I need to call Kabul to check on how the invasion is going.” Satan says, “No problem, Hamid. That’ll be fifty cents, please.” When Hamid goes to use the phone, George Bush and Tony Blair rush up to Satan: “Satan, Satan – why did you charge us a billion dollars, and Karzai only fifty cents? It’s not fair.” Satan turns to George and Tony: “Look, guys, it’s totally fair. You’re phoning Washington and London – that is long distance. Hamid’s is only a local call.”
I laughed and laughed. We all did. It felt good. My face itched a lot in the still air of the truck, as the burns were far from healed. I took my cream from my bag and smeared it on. It offered some relief.
After an hour or so, the lorry burst into life. The ferry engine changed note.
‘We’re in England.’
We started to talk more loudly then, because we had made it. It didn’t matter if we got caught – we were there.
We’d been driving for an hour when a fight broke out. Several of the guys were arguing about whether we should try to open the door from the inside when the lorry stopped, or try to get the attention of the driver now by making a lot of noise by banging or trying to move the boxes around. The men knew they had to run for it as soon as they could, because otherwise they would be arrested and deported.
I was tired of running. I just wanted to wait until the doors were opened by the driver. I was so exhausted and sick I couldn’t run anywhere. I didn’t know if I’d be allowed to stay or not allowed to stay. I also feared I might be arrested and thrown in jail as I had been elsewhere.
I didn’t think the UK would be like Iran, Bulgaria or even France. I knew there wouldn’t be policemen with horsewhips or kidnappers waiting, so how bad could anything else be?
The others weren’t happy, though.
‘What do you care, kid? You’ll be fine. Don’t be selfish. You know they will take care of you. But what about us?’
‘You run. I will stay here. I don’t care,’ I said.
In the end, we agreed to try knocking but the driver couldn’t hear us. Eventually, when he stopped at his destination, he opened the door. The others were poised and ready to jump but the driver saw us, a look of total surprise on his face. But despite his shock he was fast, and slammed the doors shut before anybody could get out.
‘No,’ someone cried.
I had had my first glimpse of England, but now I was locked up in the dark again. We were scared. We didn’t know what was going to happen now.
After a quarter of an hour, the doors swung wide open. Four police in blue uniforms stood there.
They ordered us out. I blinked in the bright daylight after so long in the truck. It all looked depressingly familiar. It was yet another warehouse complex, with parking for dozens of trucks.
I smelled British air for the first time in my life. It didn’t smell of perfume or fish and chips or roast beef – as had been the joke among the Jungle migrants. But it wasn’t bad, either. Maybe it smelled of freedom. The weather was good – surprisingly sunny for November, and much warmer than the day I had left France. Like everybody, I had heard it was always raining in England.
We stood in a huddle as the police questioned the driver. I think he was Dutch. They wanted to see his licence and they seemed to think he must have known we were in there. He was sweating and nervous.
I felt bad for him and wanted to tell the police he didn’t know we were in his lorry, but I kept quiet. Eventually they loaded us into a police van and took us to a police station near Dartford, in Kent.
There were Pashtu translators there, to help the police with the questioning. We were under arrest, they explained. I had my fingerprints taken. I’d been arrested before, but never so politely – they explained that I was being arrested and told me what my rights were; they said I could stay silent and I didn’t have to say anything unless I wanted to. It was as though they were asking my permission.
I hated the police by now, after all my experiences; but this felt different. I was scared of what would happen to me but I had stopped being afraid. I had seen it all, suffered it all already. What would these well-mannered English police do to me that the Iranian, Turkish, Bulgarian or French police had not done already?
I told them my age. ‘Thirteen.’
They laughed at me. They laughed at me with humiliating, bitter, cynical laughter.
They did not believe me, even after the translator repeated the question several times.
After interrogation, they put us in small cells for twenty-four hours. It was the longest twenty-four hours ever. I was thinking, ‘OK, I am in England – but what now? What if they deport me? Have I made it this far only to go all the way back to the start?’
Before, I hadn’t thought that they would; now I wasn’t sure. Being locked up felt like France, like Calais, back in the same police station. The food was horrible, and my anxieties came flooding back.
The following day they put us into a minibus. They didn’t tell us where we were going. Everything was unclear again. I began to really think the worst when I realized they were taking us back to Dover. I could see ferries like the one I had just crossed on, cutting their way through grey wintry waves towards the distant French shoreline.
We were led into a building with the sign ‘Immigration Removal Centre’ over its main door – one of the men I was with explained to me what this meant. I wa
s sure they would send us all back to France, or even Afghanistan – that made me scared like never before. I did not want to go that way. Going back now would be worse than death.
‘Please, God. No,’ I prayed.
At the vast migrant centre we were put in a featureless waiting room. It felt familiar, like so many places I’d seen before, filled as usual with all the faces of the world. We started talking to people, trying to get information about what was happening. Some were there to sign paperwork before being deported. They were fingerprinted as they left, looking dejected and broken. Many of the others had just been arrested like us.
The atmosphere was distressing. Some people were crying. Others were just sitting huddled, their arms wrapped around themselves, as they rocked back and forth.
To have come all this way and to have fallen and failed at the last hurdle was just too much.
I shared their feelings – I was filled with dread. Clearly, England wasn’t the welcoming place I’d been led to believe it was.
I was taken alone into a room and questioned by two immigration officers. With a translator, they interrogated me for hours. They kept asking about my face and why it was so badly burned. They insisted on looking at my tube of burn cream, and wanted to know exactly what it was. I was sent to see a doctor, who examined my face, and the suspect cream.
I talked to many different people, all government officials, and all through a translator. They all asked the same thing: ‘Why did you come? How did you get here? When did you arrive?’
All day I was there. They asked detailed questions about my family and if I wanted to claim asylum. I told them I had left because my life had been at risk, so yes, I wanted to claim asylum.
It was the first time on my whole journey I had been asked about asylum.
It was strange. The question itself didn’t feel comforting – not like I thought it might have. I had expected it to be like being handed a prize at the end of a race, but it didn’t feel like that. I was in pain, I was tired and I was bewildered. I knew the process had to be done, but I was too traumatized to answer their questions properly. I had been awake for days and I hadn’t had any food for the same length of time.
At least the immigration officials, when I told them my age, just wrote it down and didn’t laugh in my face, the way the police had. I asked one man about my brother and whether they could find him for me. He did laugh at that, and told me there were 65,000,000 people in the country – so, no, they couldn’t just find him. He didn’t even write down his name.
That made me angry. I had seen some people being collected by relatives, so I knew that it must be possible to try to find people. Why could they not at least attempt to find Hazrat for me?
I seemed to spend hours in that waiting room. There was a coffee machine in one corner that squirted black liquid into little brown plastic cups. It was hot, there was plenty of sugar, and it was completely free. I must have had eight cups and it made my head feel a bit funny. But it still didn’t make up for the lack of food – I was starving, and no one had offered me anything to eat.
Eventually, someone came to tell me that I was being assigned a social worker, and registered as an asylum seeker. I felt some relief – at least I wasn’t being sent home straight away. An official gave me my ID card showing my name and date of birth, and a document showing my illegal entry status in Britain. I was told I had to return to the centre regularly and report in.
Seeing my picture on that ID was strange. There was little sign of the fresh-faced boy I had been just over one year before. My face was scarred and pock-marked, and I was thin and drawn.
But I was proud – I had done it. I was here, and they weren’t sending me back – at least, not yet.
Later the same afternoon, a social worker took me to a hotel. I didn’t see the others from the banana truck again. I still don’t know what happened to them. The hotel was an old Victorian sea-front building. It was nice, clean. The hotel manager showed me to a small single room and told me to take a shower. I didn’t need to be asked twice.
As I walked down the hall towards the communal bathroom, carrying a towel, I spotted a pair of shoes neatly placed outside a door. When you’ve used someone’s feet for a pillow, you don’t forget their shoes.
My friend Qumandan was there. I had last seen him when he and Jan had gone to try and board a truck the night I had been too tired, and never come back.
I banged on the door. His face broke into a familiar smile the moment it swung open. We hugged. It was so good to see him – and in England too. He told me Jan had been separated from him in the migrant centre, and he didn’t know what the authorities had done with him.
That evening, in the hotel, we had long, hot showers and then a big supper of chilli con carne and rice. I slept like a log that night.
In the morning, I felt as though I had been born again.
‘Let’s go and see England,’ Qumandan said, wiping the debris of his breakfast from his mouth with a paper napkin, like a proper English gentleman.
We walked into Dover town centre, following the sea front. The clean sea air felt great on my face – cooling, healing.
We climbed up the chalky cliffs towards the black stone castle that sits high above the town. From our vantage point I could see dozens of ships crisscrossing the English Channel.
It was very strange to see Calais on the horizon and know how much pain there was over there, in the Jungle. It was getting dark now, and I knew that not so far away, thousands of men, women and children would be getting ready to begin their futile, nightly task of trying to cross this unimpressive stretch of water. A shower, clean clothes, freedom and a place to stay. That was all I had, and I felt like a king. Why couldn’t everyone have access to something so simple? Why were human beings given as little value as the fleas that bred in the makeshift tents that I had, less than forty-eight hours ago, called home?
Mentally, though, I was still a mess. I still felt completely alone and depressed. I needed my family – I needed to find Hazrat. There was only one way I knew how to do that.
And so, once again, I ran away.
I changed the last of my money – about 100 euros – into British pounds. I found my way to Dover train station and bought a ticket for London. I didn’t know where Hazrat was, but I needed to start my search somewhere.
As the train pulled out I felt quietly confident. I had managed to work my way around Rome, Athens and Paris and find people I had a connection to. London couldn’t be any different.
When I got to London Bridge station, I had second thoughts. London seemed so impersonal, so big and confusing. But I applied the formula I had used in every other European city I’d passed through: I walked the streets around the station and searched out Afghans, and asked them if they had seen Hazrat Passarlay. They all said the same thing – go to social services.
This made me realize how stupid I had been. There was a system here – I needed to learn how it worked. Walking the streets talking to Afghans was fine when I was trying to locate an agent or a smuggler, but here there was a different way of doing things.
It was time to return to Dover.
When I got back to my hotel, the manager was furious. Understandably.
The next day, a social worker came to see me. She was Eastern European. I hoped the fact that she was a migrant too might make her sympathetic to my situation.
I only knew a few phrases in English, basic questions such as ‘What is your name?’ – the French police had generally spoken in English to me when they arrested me and I found the language much easier to pick up than Greek, Italian or French. But her English was not much better than mine. I also found her very aggressive and abrupt. She refused to believe I was thirteen, and without proper evidence there was little I could do to persuade her otherwise. She looked at me as though I was something distasteful stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
She told me she was from Kent Social Services, and that I needed to be interviewed so they could decide what to do with me. I would also be required to undertake an age-assessment test.
I spent the next few days waiting and worrying, spending time with Qumandan. Each day at the hotel people were interviewed, and often taken away afterwards. Qumandan told me that some went to Appledore, a special unit for migrants deemed to be young enough to be registered as unaccompanied children; other people were put in touch with relatives and allowed to go and stay with them. I wondered what would happen to me.
I was still terrified that I would be deported, and wondered every day what Hazrat was doing.
On the day of the age assessment, my social worker came to collect me. She took me to an office at Kent Social Services. I sat around a table with five different people – some were from social services, some were from Kent County Council, and one was a Pashtu-speaking translator.
They interrogated me for hours. None of them smiled. It was worse than the immigration centre.
Some questions were complete nonsense to me, such as asking me to name streets in Afghanistan. It was almost as if they didn’t believe I was Afghan. They asked me the name of the main square in Jalalabad, and I gave them the answers they wanted.
Then the translator explained to me that they felt I was too clever and smart to be thirteen years old – as if correctly answering their stupid questions was evidence of my adulthood.
At the end of the meeting I was sent to a waiting room. After a long while, they called me back. A man with a face that looked as worn and grey as his suit, one of the council people, spoke, and the translator outlined what he was saying.
‘Based on this interview, we come to the conclusion that you are sixteen and a half years of age. Therefore your date of birth is the first of May 1991.’
This was crazy, beyond the realms of make-believe. After all I had been though – the cruelty, mistreatment and abuse – to be assigned a new birth date by a committee stranger was more than I could take.
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