The Invisible Crowd

by Ellen Wiles

  He went up to a couple of people, asking them if they had a coin for him to make a local phone call, but they just shook their heads and said ‘sorry’, as if the thing they were really sorry about was that their walk had been interrupted. He gave up, and walked slowly around, scanning the ground for dropped change, wondering if he would have to ask somebody to borrow their mobile phone or sit down and cup his hands, until, behind a kiosk selling newspapers and sweets, he spotted a silver glint. He squatted down. It was a small, angular, silver coin – twenty pence! He brushed off the dirt, examined the image of the Queen, who looked surprisingly pretty and young, and then looked around for a phone box.

  When he found one, he was so anxious to get the coin in the slot that it sprang out and bounced on the floor, nearly rolling out of the booth. He rescued it, put it in with more care, and dialled the number. Auntie, it is me, Yonas! I am here! How do I find you? A quiet stuttering on the line, as he waited for the ring, but instead there sounded three notes rising in pitch, then again, then again. ‘This number is not recognized,’ a curt woman’s voice informed him. He must have mistyped. He tried again, more carefully, concentrating on every button. The same three notes. ‘This number is not recognized…’ He let it repeat a few times, then dropped the receiver so it hung from its cable, groaned low and long, and sank down to his knees on the grubby floor. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them, and fixated on the abandoned Coke can and globs of old chewing gum stuck in the corner. Had he memorized Auntie’s number wrongly? Surely not – he’d checked, and repeated it, so many times. Had he written it down wrong? Again, impossible – the line was crackly, but he’d had Melat repeat it twice. So had she been given the wrong number? Or had Auntie left the place where she was living? He would have to ask Melat when he had enough money for a long-distance call. If only he had an address for Auntie. What was he supposed to do now?

  He stood up, pocketed the coin, and looked out at all the people passing by, each intent on a mission to get from A to B, to meet friends, family, to do business. If only he had someone to seek out in London, just one face that would light up in recognition and welcome and congratulate him for making it. But he had to deal with the situation he was in. The sensible thing would be to focus on finding some random Eritreans who could help him find a foothold. He’d heard that a couple of old army friends from back home were in the UK, but he had no idea where, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to see them anyway. Amanuel, that distant cousin he’d met once, was supposed to be in Scotland…

  Scanning the crowds for an approachable face, he spotted a woman who looked like she just might be Eritrean, with a curly cloud of black hair tied up. He remembered Melat styling hers just like that once.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘can I ask where you are from?’

  ‘Er, London,’ the woman said, looking faintly disgusted.

  ‘Oh right. I thought—’

  ‘Sorry, I’m running late.’

  Yonas leaned against a wall. If he did spot an Eritrean who had time to talk to him, would he actually want to join an Eritrean diaspora community? He would inevitably be drawn into ferocious debates about the President and the current situation, and he’d be expected to go to church, and they’d quiz him on his past and he’d have to churn up experiences he didn’t want to share, not yet, maybe not ever, if he was going to keep going and stay positive. What he really wanted was a fresh start in this city, to make new friends here, British friends, generous people like Bin Man Joe who liked singing along to Bob Dylan, who didn’t have a clue about Eritrea and didn’t even want to know what side he was on, who could help him reinvent himself and show him the best way to live well in the UK and feel like a native. But what would his strategy be for doing that, and for finding work and a place to sleep? He couldn’t just linger here. He decided to walk while he thought, absorb the scenery, and keep an eye open for opportunities. Something would occur to him.

  He picked up his bag, then strode out along the street. Caught up in the flow of people, like a leaf coasting along the surface of a river, he felt a surge of excitement. He was finally here, in London – and he was free! Freer than he’d ever been, without any commitments, tasks or other people to be responsible for – except Melat and the family back home, of course. His feet were pressing on London’s pavements, his eyes feasting on London’s oversized office blocks and London’s shiny shops, his ears were filling with the vibrations of London’s traffic, his mouth and lungs saturated by London’s bitter air, and he was now one of the masses of London people, who were all so different, not just racially, but in how they dressed: he had expected reams of smart suits, but there was a woman with a purple coat and a rucksack covered in spikes, and there was an Asian girl with a red streak in her hair and a tattoo sprawling down her neck, and there was a man with a thick, black, rectangular beard and skintight jeans that made him look top-heavy.

  He noticed that there seemed to be an unwritten agreement to avoid smiles, or any kind of eye contact with other pedestrians except when absolutely necessary. Was it just his stinky self? But no – even when people stepped aside to let others pass, he noticed, they never seemed to look at each other either. Probably because they were all in such a rush, which made sense in somewhere as busy as London; but he wondered if there was any street in this city comparable to Asmara’s tree-lined Independence Avenue, where people would just wander along slowly, hand in hand with friends, sit outside espresso bars, watch the world go by, exchange greetings.

  He stopped short in front of large metal sign outside an office block that read:

  theguardian

  The Observer

  Was this really the headquarters of the famous newspaper? How fortuitous that he’d just happened to walk past it! Was it a sign? He paused, and imagined himself dressed in a pristine suit with a crisp shirt, briefcase in hand, getting ready to walk into the building. I’ m here for an interview, he’d tell the receptionist assuredly. Yes, for the columnist job. A woman came out of the building, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, pulling her mobile phone out of her pocket, making a call as she passed him. Did she work in there, dressed like that? Was that normal here? What did he know? What would he ever know about the world of journalists in this city? Another woman came out, and gave him a long look – which prompted him to carry on walking. He couldn’t be caught loitering outside somewhere important like that. Realistically, he would probably never get to walk inside such an office except to clean it.

  Cleaning toilets for small change donations in a run-down shopping mall or something: that was the kind of ambition he knew he should content himself with, at least at the beginning. But how would he even land a job like that, with no connections? Should he find a run-down shopping centre, wait nearby in a discreet spot until it closed and cleaners arrived, then dash over and enquire about work? But there didn’t seem to be any shopping centres around here, or anything particularly run-down. Perhaps he’d be better off away from the city centre and its elite workplaces, where police would no doubt be hyper-alert to scruffy, reeking black men…

  The name Canning Town popped into his head. Bin Man Joe had said his brother lived there, that it was in the east of London. It was a bit random, but why not? The brother had moved there not long ago and found work, so why shouldn’t he? He looked around for someone to ask directions. A black lady with a wide smile was leaning against a wall, chatting on her phone, and cackling every so often with an infectious wheeze. He waited until she’d hung up, then approached her. ‘Excuse me. I’m trying to find Canning Town.’

  She frowned. ‘Canning Town? What’s that on – Jubilee, I think.’ Yonas wondered whether the meaning of this should be obvious. ‘Take the un-der-ground train,’ she said, splitting the syllables as if he were deaf. ‘Farringdon’s just over there. Good luck!’ She walked off briskly, as if she didn’t want to be seen with him for another second.

  Inside this station entrance, Yonas came up against a row of waist-high electronic g
ates. He looked up to see CCTV cameras perched like hawks. He would have to walk. Not the end of the world; he could tell from the sun which way was east.

  Shortly, the afternoon dimmed, dusk intensified, doubt and hunger set in. Having strayed from the main roads, Yonas found himself wandering a network of residential streets. The houses around him were tall and elegant and forbidding, and long windows wore neat flower boxes underneath like military moustaches. A glow from a basement drew him over. Peering down, he saw a cream-coloured kitchen, spacious and clean, with wide counters. On one of them sat a fruit bowl, piled with apples, bananas and oranges and – yes – a mango. Yonas was tempted to force open the window, leap down, grab it and bite right into it. He could just make out the smell of something deliciously savoury. Curved lamps in corners cast a warm glow. When he crouched, he could see a candlelit table at the back, around which two parents and three children were eating spaghetti and laughing. He pictured his mother staggering to the table with a huge, steaming pot for her rambunctious brood and it struck him anew that he would not only never see her again, he would probably never see any of them again, and he would be lucky if he ended up with any kind of family of his own. Even with a table of his own.

  He continued along more residential streets, past some apartment blocks and up some dead-end roads, until he was so tired his bones ached. He spotted a wide doorstep, big enough for a curled-up body. Nobody was around. He sat down, hooked his feet up beside him, eased down into a foetal position, and nestled his head in the crook of his arm, feeling like he had just climbed into a cold stone coffin. He pulled his wooden rooster out of his pocket. Just me and you, little friend, he whispered, stroking it with the top of his fingertip – the few millimetres between the nail and the scarring. He thought about what would happen if he died here. Nobody would have a funeral for him. What did the UK authorities do with random African bodies found on the streets? Burn them? He imagined being stuffed in a bin bag, then deposited on a pile of other vagrants, and tossed into a vast, bright, smoky fire, crackling and fizzling with amber, gold, orange, red, his trousers catching, the flames licking eagerly up his legs, but it didn’t feel hot, oddly, it somehow felt cold, numbing, stiffening…

  He sat up, panicking, then rubbed his eyes. Daylight! He must have been asleep for hours. He was chilly, but intact. And alone. Utterly alone. No Gebre to consult with about what to do next. He watched the scattered white clouds drift for a minute or two across a faintly blue sky, imagining them floating gently over the ocean towards Eritrea. Then he got up jerkily, and staggered towards the sound of traffic.

  Back on a main road, car horns blared like a tin pan band. His mouth was sour – all he wanted right now was a drink of water and a pee. He managed to blag some tap water from a small café, and the girl behind the counter reluctantly allowed him to use their toilet. The warm water from the tap on his hands and face felt delightful, the hand drier even better. Could he get away with a full body wash? Someone would inevitably knock on the door again. He wiped his armpits cursorily, and slipped back out.

  By midday he found himself amid a glass forest. Here were the smart suits he’d been expecting to see everywhere in this city, the immaculate hair-dos, and each person he passed was talking on a phone, texting or listening to something through headphones. He passed a particularly well-tailored suit, whose owner’s face was so glum that Yonas was tempted to stop him and ask: What could possibly be so bad in your life? Do you want to swap? He imagined the man walking through his front door back home, no doubt in a splendid Victorian house, hanging up that fine jacket as if it were an invisibility cloak, then hearing his children rush down the stairs shouting Daddy! Daddy! Would he finally crack a smile then?

  A trio walked past eating what looked like lumps of rice wrapped in black paper out of cardboard trays. One of the women was whining: ‘He didn’t even offer to pay. I was like, hello, I’m a feminist and stuff but, like, I still want my first date paid for.’ The other woman cooed sympathetically, and one chucked her box in the bin with at least half the contents left in it. Yonas walked over to the bin, eager, mouth watering for whatever the food was – but he couldn’t bring himself to dig in. Not yet. And not here. It was too conspicuous.

  He decided to carry on, but regretted that decision as his hunger deepened. Crowded though the pavement was, he noticed people were staring at him, and giving him as wide a berth as possible. He was tempted to walk into one of the shops displaying geometrically ironed shirts and trousers, take a few sets into a changing room to try on, leave his rancid overalls on the floor and walk out again.

  His energy was plummeting now. He passed the open door of a corner shop, lined with brightly wrapped chocolate bars, and paused, salivating. Could he slip one in his pocket without being noticed? But the shop owner, an Indian man, gave him a hard stare, and he retreated. He was just turning another corner and summoning up the will to dig in a bin after all, when he spotted a man serving hot food from a cart to a queue of people. Several were already standing around eating it off paper plates… it looked like rice and curry. And then he noticed what seemed too good to be true: people were accepting it without giving the server any money! He sidled up to a man who’d just started tucking into his plateful to ask if he really just took it without paying.

  ‘Mate, you’d better believe it.’ He laughed, spraying out a couple of bits of rice. ‘Those Hare Krishna dudes.’

  ‘Krishna?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a kind of religion where you have to give food away for free. Some people call them crazy bastards but hey, I’m not about to sniff at a complimentary lunch. Even if it is veggie.’

  ‘You have to be a believer?’

  ‘Na, mate, anyone can just take the nosh and those dudes are happy.’

  As Yonas queued, saliva now exploding inside his cheeks at such a rate it was hard to swallow, he imagined the clamour there would be if a free food cart were to materialize at home. People would probably stay away, thinking it was a government trap. Finally his own plate was piled up, and he started shovelling food into his mouth. It was so good to eat! His tongue was immediately scalded, but he gobbled on regardless, almost ecstatic at the spices, the vegetables! Maybe this was the turning point. If he could pick up free meals as tasty as this on the street, life in the UK would be a breeze.

  After a second helping, he headed eastwards again, re-energized. The city around him became multidimensional and multi-layered as he started connecting everything he saw with sparks of memory, films, BBC news clips, old magazines, his father’s books. He noticed how many of the shiny shopfronts at ground-floor level were sitting at the feet of grand historic buildings, and how they were interspersed haphazardly among modern, linear blocks, and how all of them were in such good condition, none of them crumbling or dripping with telephone wires, and how every so often there would be little grassy parks and trees spreading nature through the city like a sprinkling of herbs on a salad. Passing one of these parks, he paused to watch a guy with a paunch being egged on by someone who looked like a personal trainer as he skipped furiously and kept tripping over his rope. A short distance away there was a wheelchair and a woman with a prosthetic leg next to it, doing press-ups. If only Sheshy could get a prosthetic in that league; it looked futuristic compared to the ones the martyrs got back home.

  He was about to cross at a junction when he saw a van pull up with a huge black advert plastered on its side:

  In the UK illegally?

  GO HOME OR FACE ARREST

  Text HOME to 78080

  And in a square box in the top corner of the van, like an official passport stamp, it said:

  106

  ARRESTS

  LAST WEEK

  IN YOUR AREA

  His stomach clenched, and he stopped dead still. He couldn’t see in the windows, couldn’t tell whether or not the driver had clocked him. He glanced down at his scruffy clothes, his shabby shoes, touched his matted hair, and nearly laughed at himself for not being more
conscious of how obviously illegal he looked. He might as well be waving a flag saying Arrest me! What should he do? Was there someone in that van poised to jump out and make the 107th arrest? He couldn’t cross the road right in front of it. Not now. But then if he turned and ran it would look suspicious… He crouched and pretended to do up his shoelace, making himself as small as possible. Time crawled, except for the demonic pounding of his heart. But after what can only have been a few seconds, the lights changed and the van pulled off.

  Slowly, creakily, Yonas got up, and carried on walking, feeling as stilted as an old man. He was an idiot to think it might be easy just to wander around and make a life in London, like moulding a new version of himself out of a fresh piece of clay. How could he avoid getting arrested just for looking like this, never mind find work and somewhere to live? Maybe Gebre was right about waiting longer at the factory for fake papers… But he was here now. He had to keep going, and find somewhere to have a wash and get fresh clothes. But then he halted again, as he saw, walking towards him, a broad-shouldered white man dressed all in black wearing sunglasses… Oh God, it was… no, it wasn’t, was it? Of course it wasn’t. Yonas sighed shakily, and walked on.

  Finally, he came upon a sign for Canning Town. From the name he had expected a small suburb full of pretty houses lined up neatly like tin cans in a supermarket, and he’d half-convinced himself he’d bump into a man who would look like the double of Bin Man Joe, just strolling along with his family, shielding his eyes with one hand as he looked around for his new Eritrean nephew. Instead, Yonas found himself on a highway under a huge concrete road underpass, roaring with cars, and after that, in the middle of an industrial estate. It didn’t seem as if anybody lived here at all. There was just factory building after factory building. What a stupid decision to come here just because of Bin Man Joe, when he could have gone somewhere like Arsenal, or Chelsea, or, more practically, sought out an Eritrean church… But then he spotted a human being. A man, youngish, maybe about his age, wearing overalls. Yonas was just wondering whether to approach him, when the man saw him, and crossed the road towards him, walking fast. Yonas’s heart raced – why was he being approached? Was he about to get arrested? Mugged? If so, his total lack of valuable belongings would either leave him unscathed or infuriate his attacker…