by Jason Donald
A block slams to the ground in a plume of dust. The two of them stand for a moment watching the metal arm claw at what used to be a bathroom.
Why do they do this? says Dalila.
She watches Ma’aza gaze up at the building and then along the road.
I believe it is like this, says Ma’aza, they don’t hate us, but they don’t want to see us. Like those two old donkeys in the Post Office.
Dalila lets out a snigger. I didn’t think you noticed them.
Ma’aza shakes her head, smiling. I meet their kind so many times. They pretend we are not here. I believe this. We are like rubbish to them, something they don’t want to see. So they hide us away in these dirty towers or detention centres. Maybe they threaten us or ignore us, hoping we will go away. But we stay. We are the rubbish that walks. We stand in their queues, sit on their buses and live on their streets. They cannot hide us.
They come to an enormous warehouse. The letters ASDA are lit up in green across the entrance and Dalila squints up, wondering what the word means. Inside, it’s a wonderland of colour and movement. Fresh flowers decorate the entrance. The kinds of flowers her mother used to pick in those toxic polytunnels.
Flowers – same.
Beyond the flowers is a display of the most beautiful fruits and vegetables. Apples with skins as glossy as magazine pages. Straight carrots with the leaves trimmed off, each one as perfect as a drawing in a children’s book. Potatoes without any grit, washed and ready for the pot. The smallest watermelons she has ever seen. Very long bananas, yellow, and cut from the stalk. Gorgeous polished violet aubergines.
Fruit and vegetables – different.
She picks up an avocado, but it’s hard and not yet ripe. She brings a small apricot to her nose but the smell is faint and it’s tight and unripe. The green grapes look full of juice. Seedless grapes they are called. But she’s sure it can’t be true. How can a fruit be seedless? Where would it come from if it were seedless? How could you plant more? The seeds must be soft. It must feel as though there are no seeds in your mouth.
Radio music plays gently across the heads of the shoppers and echoes up against the high metal roof. Above her, there is no ceiling. Broad ventilation pipes and thin wires weave between the rafters. Dust lies undisturbed along the cables. Extractor fans turn slowly behind their grills.
Ma’aza rakes her fingers across corn cobs. She palms one and puts it into a clear plastic bag. She adds four more. The bag goes into her basket and she moves on up the aisle.
You have the money from the Post Office? asks Ma’aza.
Me, I have it, Dalila answers.
They give you this once a week, says Ma’aza. You think it’s a lot, I know, but everything in the UK is too expensive. You must be careful. Every week I pay maybe twenty pounds for food, five or ten pounds for phone cards, five pounds for toothpaste or shampoo. The rest I use for the bus, sometimes clothes. But if we live together we must put fifteen each for food and share everything. Also, soap and toilet paper, we can share these things. It’s better like this.
Dalila nods. She agrees with herself to try this arrangement for a week. It could tighten things between them. They could live like a family, sharing. And if it doesn’t work out, she’ll shop by herself next week. She digs into her pocket and hands over fifteen pounds to Ma’aza.
They walk past fridges with pink meat, sliced and wrapped. Fat bloated chickens, plucked with the heads and feet already removed. Pizzas, covered in plastic, stacked like records in a music shop. Tubs of ready-made salad. Pasta and tuna swimming in mayonnaise. Couscous and diced red peppers. Then a fish stall with white and pink flesh resting on a bed of crushed ice. Prawns and crabs. Dalila looks for tilapia but they don’t seem to stock it. They wander down an aisle entirely devoted to brightly packaged breakfast cereals, the kind only found in high-end hotels. Red signs highlight the items on sale and Dalila converts the price into Kenyan shillings and it all seems very expensive. They follow the smell of bread and find boxed cakes wishing anonymous children a Happy Birthday. Loaves of freshly baked bread are set out by a baker in a white hat.
They buy none of this food.
Instead, Ma’aza buys the cheapest sliced white bread. Tea bags. Coffee beans. UHT milk. A bag of polenta. Popcorn kernels. Six eggs. A bag of frozen white fish cutlets. And three dented, and therefore discounted, tins of soup.
We need sugar, says Ma’aza. Go to find sugar, but look for this style, she says, holding up the box of Asda’s own-brand tea bags. Look for these markings, these are the cheaper ones.
Dalila sets out to explore the supermarket. A family walks by, the father with a trimmed black beard, the mother in a hijab. She sees an African woman too and her heart leaps as she wants to go to her and ask her many questions, but the woman is reading the label on a jar and so Dalila doesn’t interrupt.
Towards the back of the shop she finds DVDs and CDs and flat-screen TVs and cameras. The very latest technology, but, curiously, no one around to guard it. It’s just out. People can touch it. A child sits cross-legged on the floor watching a nature programme about a kingfisher. Dalila stands behind the child and watches the wall of screens. Many of them are even bigger than the TV in her uncle’s house. Some are as big as the TV she glimpsed in Mama Anne’s flat.
On the screens, the kingfisher hovers above the water, its wings a blur.
Mama Anne. Anne Nafula Abasi. That was the name she memorised. It was in her instructions, the ones provided by Charles Okema, who got them from Eddie. She wonders about Eddie. She never met him, but Charles knew him and said he was a good contact. That’s the word he used. Contact. If her uncle finds out that she is in Glasgow, he might talk to Eddie, he might make Eddie talk. She thinks harder about Eddie and about the kind of man he might be. Eddie would probably give her uncle the same details that were in her instructions. And if her uncle threatened Eddie and charged him with finding his niece, Eddie would call Mama Anne and tell her to go to Glasgow. How long was the drive up from London? Seven hours? Mama Anne is tough, but old. Would she really come all that way by bus, just to convince me to come back to London? It doesn’t seem likely. Anne is a Mama, she would send someone. Someone tough, loyal. Someone remorseless, who could drag me, thrashing and biting, back to London.
All breath leaves her body as she makes these calculations. She can’t seem to keep her balance and Dalila slowly kneels down next to the little boy, hoping she doesn’t throw up.
As early as tomorrow morning Markus could be here, in Glasgow, looking for her.
In super slow motion the bird dives straight down, plummeting underwater, the same bird on every screen. Silver bubbles glide across its feathers as the beak opens, silent and gasping.
She turns over in bed and pulls the pillow close to her chest. The dream she left was angry and argumentative, about something that mattered, and the mood from that dream lingers with more clarity than the content. Her sinuses are blocked and aching, the insides of her eyelids are itchy and soon she is in another dream where she is standing alone on a cold street wearing a very smart suit. She has an early appointment with her case owner, but she feels guilty for being in such an angry argument earlier. In the meeting she talks with her case owner very politely, very formally. They sit on two chairs not quite facing each other like visiting dignitaries on the news. There are many photographers and journalists present to record the event. During the meeting, Ms Colgan accidentally drops a pen. Still seated, Dalila stoops to pick it up and while bent down she reaches out and touches Ms Colgan’s black lacquered shoe. She cups the shoe and foot in both hands. One journalist whispers to another and there is a frenzied flash of cameras.
The post arrives mid-morning. Dalila sifts through the letters and finds one addressed to her. She takes it to her bedroom and sits cross-legged on the bed as she opens it.
It’s a Statement of Evidence Form. In the Explanatory Notes it states that this form is the basis of her application for asylum in the UK, and it notes, cordial
ly enough, that the form has been provided to her free of charge.
She turns over one leaf after another. The form is over twenty pages long, with large empty panels for her to write down her story and explain why she is here and why she can’t be at home.
Starting on the first page, she begins filling in her family name, her first names, her date of birth, nationality, current address in the UK and how she entered the country. She writes neatly, printing everything in block capital letters as instructed.
Part B is Family Details. She skips over Spouse and Children and under Parents fills in her father’s Name, Date of Birth, Nationality but her pen halts over Present Address.
Present Address?
The box can only be left blank, profoundly blank. Why did she fill in her father’s other details? She stares at the word for his name. The room begins to feel bigger, as if the bed and wardrobe are moving away and she is alone, kneeling on a vast carpet and that old realisation comes slamming back to her, freshly felt.
She no longer has a family.
All these boxes have to remain blank, because the details of her kin, which she protects and carries inside her, are inconsequential.
She hurriedly flips through the pages to Part C. The Basis of Your Claim. And quickly reads what she has to do next. It is mandatory to complete Part C1. She has to use this part of the form to tell the Secretary of State why she qualifies for asylum in the UK. Then she should complete one or more of the following sections according to the basis of her claim.
Dalila taps the pen against her bottom lip and bites down on it. She studies which sections she should complete as the basis of her claim.
Part C2 Your Race, Ethnic Origin or Nationality
Part C3 Your Religion
Part C4 Your Political Opinions
Part C5 Any other reason including possible membership of a particular social group
She reads the list again, hoping her eye has missed something. That which threatened her life, which tormented her, which she was forced to flee, fits none of these categories. Her uncle wasn’t motivated by any of this. He did what he did because he could. He simply used her because she is a girl.
She turns to Part C1. Persecution, Harassment and Harm. The first question asks her to please explain why she is applying for asylum in the UK, describing any specific events that happened to her, and, where possible, giving dates on which each event occurred.
The memories of what happened crouch raw and angry inside her. Everything is there. All of it. Especially the floor tiles in her uncle’s house. The pattern, she can see it. Squares next to squares, in rows upon rows. She feels the coolness of them under her bare feet and the coldness of those tiles at night when she slept on that floor, with only her bicep as a pillow. The face of her uncle comes to her, his smiling mouth up against her neck, her cheek, his tongue forced into her mouth.
Dalila puts the pen down and stares up at the light bulb as if it might burn the images from her head.
She goes to the bathroom and brushes her teeth.
In the mirror she notes that she is, in fact, quite calm. The memories aren’t the problem, not today. She feels them flash up and settle down. Her frustration comes from trying to see all these images as one story, to step back and give it coherence.
She rinses her mouth and thinks about college. When piecing a story together, you jot down notes. That is what they taught her, that is what journalists do. She goes to the kitchen, gets a pencil and returns to the form. Her pencil hovers above the page as she tries to think how it all started. She writes notes, at first just single words and then a few phrases. The more the words appear on the paper, the more defined her story becomes.
She writes of her family home in Nakuru where she lived with her father, mother and brother. She writes their names for they share her story. Even though she briefly told her story in Croydon, she wants their names noted on this official record. She explains, once again, that her family are from the Kikuyu tribe, and the Kikuyu people are business people. Her father’s business was matatus. It was a strong business and her father owned many vans and employed many drivers and they transported customers to Nairobi and Thika. Her father shared the business with his brother, her uncle, Kennedy Kimotho Mwathi. As the business grew her father ran things from Nakuru while her uncle was based in Nairobi. Together they had plans to expand their business to new routes, including Mombasa, Lamu and even into Uganda.
After the elections, there were many protests throughout Kenya. Protestors were targeting the Kikuyus, sometimes killing them. She makes it clear that her father was not political. He talked about cars and Chelsea Football Club, but never about politics. He didn’t care about that.
One night a gang came to her parents’ home. She doesn’t know the details of that encounter but the results were deadly. They killed everyone in the house, her father, her mother and her brother. As God would have it, she was in Nairobi, at college, studying for her exams. Had she been home that night, there is no doubt they would have killed her too.
The police said that her family’s murder was collateral damage from the political violence that was engulfing the nation. They never found the perpetrators.
She writes more, explaining how she believes the gang who murdered her family were not politically motivated but actually worked for her uncle. She was told this by a man named Charles Okema who works very closely with her uncle. He said her uncle killed her father, masking it as part of the political riots, in order to take over his brother’s side of the business.
After the funeral, her uncle was in charge of everything. A vast matatu business that reached across the country and employed many, many people. He became a very powerful man.
Her uncle also took her.
She tells how he came to fetch her from her college dorm and brought her to his house. She didn’t know her uncle very well. He didn’t visit much when she was young. She was so upset after her family’s murder she went with her uncle. He was the only family she had left. He told her to stay in his house for her protection. He even forbade her to attend her family’s funeral. Later, she was forbidden to leave. She stayed in that house for ten months, forced to cook and clean and made to sleep on the kitchen floor. It was like a prison.
Dalila stares at her handwriting, at the pencil hovering centimetres above the page. There is more to tell. More, that she has never told anyone. Things that she struggles to write or to say. She dares not go into those memories lest they overwhelm her, and yet, without venturing into those painful places she cannot frame the story that will protect her.
Just write it, she whispers to herself. Just put what he did in one sentence.
After a few months in that house, she writes, my uncle pushed me to the floor and raped me.
She dares not lift the pencil and quickly writes the next sentence.
He raped me many times. One day I fought against him. I threw things at him and bit him on the hand. When he saw the blood he grew very angry. He took off his belt and beat me. The buckle caught my shoulder and cut across my collarbone. The bleeding didn’t stop the whole night but he never called a doctor. I still have the scar from that night.
Dalila lifts the pencil and chews the end. Without pausing to read or correct the previous paragraph, she continues. My uncle has many advisors. I saw many people come into the house, businessmen, matatu drivers, even policemen. They all came to meet with my uncle. He is a big man with a big business and big men always have competitors. One day they brought in a boy, only about fourteen years old. They said this boy had betrayed my uncle. My uncle was so, so angry he beat the boy, he hit him with his fists and when the boy fell to the ground he kicked him. This boy cried for his mother but my uncle only kicked and kicked until the boy was dead. Many people saw this. I watched from behind the door and with my own eyes I saw him kill this boy. I knew then that my life was in danger. My uncle would kill me too, because of what I saw that day.
The next question on the for
m asks, If you claim to have suffered ill-treatment, who was responsible for the treatment? Give the name of any group or organisation involved.
She writes only the name of her uncle. Kennedy Kimotho Mwathi.
Question 3. Why do you believe that this treatment occurred?
Why.
Why did this happen? This question has sat in her heart for months, wet and heavy as river mud threatening to pull her down if she ever steps into it. On distant days, when she feels disconnected enough from life that she can pretend to be objective, she can almost understand why her uncle had her family killed. Greed. Power. These things are real. They are in everyone. They make weak people do tragic things. But why would he keep her? Why torture her instead of simply ending her life? Why would an uncle rape his own niece? What reason can ever be applied to such actions? Those urges churn up from the swamp in men’s minds. And on those horrible nights when he came to her, she never ventured into the dark deltas of male desire looking for nuggets of reason.
She touches pencil to paper and writes, I don’t know why this happened.
Question 4 asks, Did you report any of the incidents which you have just described to the police or other authorities? If not, why not?
Dalila explains again that she was kept prisoner in the house, unable to leave, seldom speaking to anyone. But even if she could have gone to the police, she would not have. She saw policemen come to the house and discuss things with her uncle. She believes he is paying them. Also, she knows from her journalistic studies that the police are compromised. When women go to the station to report a sexual crime the police don’t give them a proper Occurrence Book Number and log the complaint correctly. Instead, they just call a family member and tell them they have their daughter or niece at the station.
The next relevant question asks her to give full details of the specific events which made her finally decide to leave her country.
After my uncle killed that boy, writes Dalila, I knew I must get away. One of my uncle’s advisors, a man by the name of Charles Okema, also watched that boy die. The next morning before sunrise, Charles came to me. He said he knew about my family and what my uncle was doing to me. He said he could help me to escape.