The Times Companion to 2017

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The Times Companion to 2017 Page 28

by Ian Brunskill


  The island is brutally self-policed, with established codes of behaviour that, if transgressed, lead to expulsion. The promise of survival that comes from securing the best sexual partner means that betrayal is endemic and ruthless. What is depicted as “romance” is really about enduring in an essentially hostile island environment.

  On Love Island, as in most insular communities, procreation is the most urgent human need. The men preen and posture but the women perform the selection, securing a mate and seeing off rivals through sexual display, usually in the swimming pool.

  Much time is spent grooming. Individuals able to beautify others (hairdressers, personal trainers, etc) fulfil the role of shamans, and thus get more sexual partners. Anyone with artistic skill is revered as a magician. In the current series this is Marcel, who was in the hip-hop group Blazin’ Squad, and will therefore win the show.

  These are all characteristics of primitive, insulated, preliterate societies.

  The inhabitants of Love Island have developed no tools because they don’t need to do anything, except lie around primping and pairing off, or “cracking on”. The same is true of the Sentinelese: with an easy diet of coconuts, wild plants and fish, their most advanced utensil is a harpoon.

  Every attempt to contact the Sentinelese has failed. In 1880 a British expedition kidnapped a family and took them to Port Blair in the Andaman islands, where the adults immediately died. The last attempt to land was in 1974, when anthropologists brought gifts of aluminium pots, a live pig and a miniature plastic car. The Sentinelese responded with a hail of arrows.

  Two Indian fishermen, illegally catching mud crabs, drifted ashore in 2006 and were killed. The Indian coastguard helicopter sent in to retrieve the bodies was driven off by accurate archery.

  The Sentinelese may number as few as 40 or as many as 500. They may be left-handed. They want to be left alone, and so they should be, to live their unique way of life in complete isolation.

  The world was once full of individuated cultures; the Sentinelese are one of the few preserved indigenous island societies, a small surviving jewel of distinctive human evolution.

  Viewers of Love Island — two million and rising — may have noticed the islanders’ mounting hostility towards the outside world. A fitting finale would be to close the door and let them continue the “frenzied dance of desire”, in their private language, physically perfect and perfectly alone on their island.

  SMALL ACTS OF KINDNESS THAT CAN SAVE A LIFE

  Libby Purves

  JULY 3 2017

  WE HAVE ALL known the experience. Our train stops, the delay lengthens until a careful announcement is made. Not signalling, not breakdown, weather, livestock or even the slightly comedic “passenger causing a disturbance”. Instead the irritable murmuring is stilled by the words “a person hit by a train”. It may be an accident, but probably isn’t. Even the barest scrap of decency forces us to stop grumbling, acknowledge a human death and recognise the shock and misery. Somewhere ahead the British Transport Police are taking evidence, phoning a specialist funeral company, inspecting the train, caring for a devastated driver. So we sit quietly and say a silent prayer.

  We won’t learn more because careful restrictions surround reporting. Until a distant inquest the words “incident not being treated as suspicious” will cover it. But we know that last year there were 237 railway suicides, confirmed or suspected. The Underground sees them too, and research suggests that victims are disproportionately young. A few are psychiatric patients. On the Tube the announcement normally says “a person on the tracks”, and it is a relief (as the other day at the Elephant) when it turns out to be just a retrievable wandering drunk. More often it is stark tragedy. We hear “lines are now reopened”, but somewhere a skein of lives has been instantly devastated.

  But here is a small, significant piece of good news. Despite the turbulence of news and economic stringency, rail suicides are down to the lowest level since 2010. This is partly because of physical measures such as fences and lighting, but also because large numbers of Network Rail staff and Transport Police officers are taking a Samaritans’ prevention course. Already 15,000 have been taught to spot the signs, make an approach, know what to say and what to avoid saying. Last year there was a sharp increase in “potentially life-saving interventions”. On average, four times every day a staff member was stepping in to talk to someone apparently at risk.

  One man observed that after initial cynicism about the course — born of seeing many an awful aftermath — he was more confident when the moment came. Another said “it’s quite a scary situation to be in” as he brought himself to approach a lone woman sitting on a bench, head in hands. He learnt that she, a mother of three, had indeed planned to jump.

  Suicide is always a mystery: profoundly individual in its violent denial of every creature’s self-preservation instinct. There is nothing simple or universal about it. I have thought a lot on the subject these 11 years, having lost that way not only friends and acquaintances but a son. I talk with many other parents and family survivors: most recently I helped the Clark family to launch the InFinnity Project, promoting art therapy in memory of Finn Clark, a brilliant illustrator who took his life at 25. I said there that “all good art is like a hand held out by a stranger, showing that you are never quite alone”. It had resonated with the reactions we get from young men in particular who read my son Nicholas Heiney’s poetry and sea-logs. Even when the artist is lost, that sense of a comradely hand can help.

  I still, with sadness, suspect that there are suicides that can’t be prevented: maybe when your very brain turns on you in rising psychosis it becomes too urgent a relief to resist. Many show evidence of careful, calm, determined planning. Yet there is equal evidence that others — overwhelmed by grief, betrayal, loneliness, and a deceptive conviction of failure and helplessness — take the violent moment, often using high buildings or railway tracks. And, time after time, accounts suggest that a stranger’s warmth might call them back. So the fact that ordinary rail staff are being encouraged and helped to provide it is wonderful. Specialist police teams worldwide have long done this: one US trainer’s site says: “Repeat simple phrases like, ‘You are not alone. We are going to get through this together.’ Don’t interrupt, criticise or judge. Ask their name. Just get a promise of one more day. Some of these people have never reached out for help.”

  Even people who know themselves loved by their families are sometimes called back by a stranger: maybe we need that uncomplicated, basic sense of unity with all mankind. Accounts down the years of this extremity are unutterably moving in their clumsy, loving determination.

  In the London Marathon Jonny Benjamin and Neil Laybourn ran together, nine years after they met on Waterloo Bridge where Benjamin was planning to jump. Laybourn, unsure but determined, weighed in half-panicked, repeating, “It will get better mate, you will get better.” When the other man said something about no one caring he babbled “I promise, I care … please don’t jump, please.” Benjamin says that “it burst the bubble of that world I was in. I felt faith.” They found one another years later and remain friends.

  It provokes reflection on that power of a stranger’s caring even in less dramatic moments, or earlier in the cycle of despair. Distrustful, reserved, we tend to stay bowed over phones and tablets, digitally immersed in the affairs of absent people. In public spaces it grows ever easier to think that nobody would pick up even our most unmistakable animal signals of distress. And in this so-called “connected” age it is also harder to make that first move towards an unhappy stranger. But a gentle “You OK?” can change a moment. And sometimes a life.

  PEOPLE THOUGHT I WAS MAD TO OFFER MY SPARE ROOM TO A HOMELESS STRANGER

  Alexandra Frean

  JULY 4 2017

  May 17, 2017

  “Dad wants to know why I didn’t stop you,” my brother says, amused. Chatting to my parents on the phone earlier, I had casually dropped into the conversation that Youssef,
an Eritrean refugee I had never met, was coming to stay in my spare room. They asked me what I knew about him. Not much: he’s 27 and has been in the UK since last year, I’m the third family to host him, he likes football, he’s Muslim. That’s it. But how did I know I would be safe, they want to know. Now my brother is asking the same question.

  In fact, it’s a question a lot of friends have asked. A week earlier Refugees at Home, a charity that matches homeless refugees with volunteer hosts, sent a representative to my home to check me out and make sure my two-bedroom central London flat was suitable. He explained that most people in Youssef’s situation had faced unimaginable hardships to get here and were strongly motivated to do whatever it takes to make a good life for themselves and not jeopardise anything. Ultimately, he said, it’s a leap of faith. You just have to trust him. I liked his candour.

  May 18

  The idea of having a refugee to stay now seems perfectly sane to me. Refugees at Home was formed in October 2015 after a summer of heart-wrenching news stories about refugees being drowned in the Mediterranean or stifled in lorries. I am moved by this, but this is not what inspires me. I have already worked with refugees in the US, where I lived until last year and where I volunteered to teach English to a family of Iraqi refugees. I also taught literacy to immigrant healthcare workers (mostly orderlies and cleaners), who would take a one-hour bus ride after exhausting eight-hour shifts to study with me and still find the energy to joke about my English accent. I would leave feeling happy that I had done something worthwhile. Honestly, that feeling is hard to beat.

  May 19

  I survey my flat before Youssef’s arrival. I wonder what this young Muslim man will think of moving into a home with a 55-year-old godless, independent, wine-drinking Englishwoman. What will it be like sleeping with just a paper-thin wall between us and having use of a shared bathroom? I rearrange the furniture so that our beds are against opposite walls, as far as they can be from each other. I drink what’s left of the wine and chuck out some dubious-looking half-empty bottles of spirits. I order fruit, vegetables and hummus on Tesco.com, and stuff the non-halal meat in my fridge into the bottom of the freezer.

  May 20

  I have spoken to the lovely lady who is at present hosting Youssef. She tells me he is a delight, but very reserved. “What do you know about his life? How did he get here?” I ask. She says she didn’t like to ask.

  May 21

  Youssef arrives, carrying all his possessions in a very small bag. I spread out a map of the world on the dining table and point first to Eritrea and then to London. “Please,” I say, “tell me your story.”

  I have done my homework. A United Nations report from 2016 concluded that Eritreans have been subjected to “gross violations of human rights” for 25 years. Many Eritreans are forced into indefinite military service and subjected to horrific abuses. This is why so many people like Youssef brave one of the world’s most dangerous migrant routes, across the Sahara and the Mediterranean to Europe, to escape. Suddenly, this project takes a new dimension.

  In faltering English Youssef tells me about his journey, walking 550 miles from Eritrea to Khartoum and then to Egypt. Eleven terrifying days at sea, landing eventually in Italy. From there to Calais and then, finally to the UK, where he reported himself to the police on arrival. Despite all he has been through, he never criticises the Eritrean regime. He still has family there.

  Over dinner we look at photographs of his six siblings on his phone and talk about his family. My sons are both abroad at college. I FaceTime them and introduce Youssef to them — at this point I am still nervous about having him in my house. I want him to realise that if anything happens to me, there will be people — two lovely young men like him — who would miss me.

  May 23

  I awake to news of a terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert and freeze when I hear the word “Manchester” (I had expected to hear some foreign place name). I explain to Youssef what has happened. He knows where Manchester is. It turns out that he has a pretty good knowledge of English geography based on a lifelong love of Premier League football. I worry about racist reprisal attacks and feel he should be prepared. “Do you know what racism is?” I ask stupidly. “Yes, I do,” he replies with feeling. “I’m sorry,” I say. “How many dead?” he asks.

  May 26

  Five days in and we are getting used to each other. Youssef studies English at college two days a week. He hopes to get a job soon and, when his English is better, to study to become an electrician. I can’t walk around naked any more and I no longer hang up my underwear to dry in the living room, but neither is really a hardship. He is slightly confused about whether to call me Alex or Alexa, since I am always addressing my Amazon Echo speaker as Alexa.

  May 27

  I’m off to the Hay-on-Wye literary festival for the weekend and put Youssef in charge of the cats. He seems delighted to have some small thing he can do for me. The cats can’t believe their luck at having an additional human around. He has even won over the standoffish ginger tabby. Without being asked, Youssef carries my suitcase downstairs. This has become a pattern. He observes all the time, to find small acts of kindness he can perform. He empties the dishwasher and sweeps the floor unbidden and makes me cups of tea. He replaces the milk before we run out. Sensing that I am a bit of a neat freak, he keeps his room immaculately clean and tidy.

  May 30

  I return from Wales. The cats are totally under Youssef’s spell.

  June 3

  Something is not right. I arrive home late in a cab after a night out. There are police everywhere. I put on flat shoes, grab a notebook and head out again. An officer turns me back at the end of my street. Another yells: “Take cover, go back.” “I’m a reporter,” I say, “I need to get through.” But they turn me back again. I watch news of the London Bridge terrorist attack on Twitter. I’m not entirely sober and realise there’s not much I can do. I lie in bed listening to police helicopters circling all night and waiting for Youssef to come home. The next morning he tells me he had been seeing friends and arrived back in the neighbourhood at about midnight. By then our street, a stone’s throw away from the attacks, was sealed off. He had no idea what was going on. The police made him wait three hours before letting him through the cordon to the flat. I tell him what happened. “How many dead?” he asks. I’m sick of having this conversation with him.

  June 7

  “You haven’t thought this through, have you?” I’m having lunch with my friend James and talking about the other big project in my life: my decision to start dating. “How can you bring a man home with Youssef there?” James wants to know. It’s five years since my husband died, suddenly, of a heart attack, and I don’t like being alone. I think I am ready now to start seeing someone. But James is right, I don’t feel I could bring anyone home with Youssef there. I still have no idea what he thinks of the fact that I am out most nights with friends and family and often don’t come home till late. Does he ever compare me with his own mother and wonder what kind of crazy world he has ended up in?

  June 8

  At an election night party, my fellow diners tell me how “brave” I am. It’s a common reaction. I tell them I got lucky with Youssef; he’s quiet, considerate and respectful and helps around the house. He doesn’t have a single annoying habit. He’s figured out my routines and we’ve settled into a quiet companionship. There’s often no need to talk. On evenings when we are both home, we sit in the living room — him working on his English homework, me watching Netflix — goodness knows what he makes of Lilyhammer or Backstrom, the two rather offbeat series I’ve been watching (I’ve been careful not to watch anything with too much sex — that would feel weird).

  June 17

  Youssef’s arrival at my home followed a very dark time in my life. In February, on the fifth anniversary of my husband’s death, I fell off an emotional cliff. It felt like I was going backwards. At the insistence of my sister, I agreed to see a therap
ist. Annette is wise and is wonderful at helping me to navigate my way back up to the surface. By the time Youssef arrives I am already much better. I tell her that having him in my home has contributed enormously to my recovery and she smiles knowingly. A couple of weeks ago she asked me: “How do you want to use the rest of your life?” It was an interesting way of looking at things and now I think I know part of the answer.

  June 18

  A friend from Pakistan tells me that with Youssef I am not just helping one person, I am helping a whole family, possibly a village. It’s touching, but I feel an immense burden of responsibility.

  June 22

  “How are you going to transfer money to your family back home?” I ask Youssef. “Western Union?” He smiles at me indulgently. I’ve learnt in the past month that he is both smart and funny and he tolerates my, at times, uninformed questions with good humour. There is no functioning Western Union in Eritrea, he says. He will have to rely on informal ways of sending money home through London’s Eritrean community. “But then you’d have to check it arrived there,” I say. He looks at me kindly, as if I’m an idiot. “Yes,” he says.

  July 2

  I am returning from a weekend on the Continent, but my flight is delayed by the knock-on effects of an interfering drone at Gatwick. It’s late. A text from Youssef asks what time I will be home. It’s the kind of thing my boys might do if I don’t turn up and it’s a sign, I think, of how far we have come in a few weeks.

  July 3

  My dilemma is what to do when my sons come home from college in mid-July. I tell Youssef he’ll have to move out, but can come back in September. He is trying to find a room to rent, but first needs a job. I realise now how much support he’s going to need long-term and, having got to know him, I’m happy to help in whatever way I can because I’ve been a winner in this relationship too. It feels like the very least I can do.

 

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