The Invisible Crowd

by Ellen Wiles

  I’m like: ‘Mmm, sounds nice! Wanna make it for me?’

  And he say okay, he will try to make one of each kind of dinner, one for British Christmas and one for Eritrea Christmas, if he can get others to chip in money. I’m thinking the guys will just laugh at him, but they pretty much all up for it! They each give him, like, four quid or something.

  So, on Christmas Day we all get up to eat toast for breakfast, then sit around on cushions and mattresses and get drunk, smoke, start to watch stuff on morning TV, like It’s a Wonderful Life, and some film about snowman. Professor is sitting at table, chopping parsnips and potatoes – he got extra paper plates and cutlery so we can all eat at same time, and they are towered up on table next to him, all ready, and he’s got stuffing and cranberry sauce, and we’re all thinking, Yeahhhh, feast time soon, and getting hungry, you know…

  And then there’s this BANG! Like proper explosion. Like bomb. And everyone’s like, What the fuck? Is this terrorist attack? Some guys scream, and we all look around, and Professor Jojo has fallen on floor on his back, and there’s flames coming out of microwave, like, big flames! Oh my God, such a stink, of like burning plastic, and raw meat splattered everywhere like some crazy baby thrown its purée around… I grab fire blanket, and we throw on water and put out fire, then we asking if Professor is okay, and what happen? He gets up slowly and says he’s okay, but he look shocked.

  So I say to him again, like: ‘What happen?’

  And he goes: ‘I don’t know, I just put chicken in to cook…’

  And then Histoire is like: ‘Ow long for?’

  And he goes: ‘Just one hour!’

  And Histoire’s like: ‘Fucking idiot, look what you ’av done,’ – all angry. But I’m thinking, oh my God – putting chicken in microwave for one hour!!! Like, of course it’s gonna explode, and maybe blow up whole building, and this guy probably never even used microwave before in his whole life, and it is kind of amazing all of us not covered in chicken guts and on fire ourselves, this is like most hilarious thing ever happen in warehouse, maybe even in my whole life, and I start laughing and laughing, like I’m crying, and other guys all start laughing too, even Histoire, and even Professor Jojo. We tell him don’t worry, we don’t need no microwave, we can live on McDonald’s for a while! And Uncle will probably buy us new one anyway if we say it broke. Plus we can still eat rest of Christmas food, like stuffing and potatoes – by some miracle most of it is not covered in raw chicken. And actually it taste not bad. We give Professor big round of applause, then eat in front of Queen doing her boring speech, then fill up on mince pies, and life seems pretty good. For a day.

  So, when Eritrea Christmas come around, Professor is still gonna go ahead with cooking special meal like they have back there, but he refuse to take money from guys this time round, even though we try to give to him – I think he’s feeling bad about explosion even though it was just mistake. He fry up sausages for us, and make popcorn in a pan and strong coffee, and he keep on saying sorry it is instant coffee, but we don’t care. He stew up apples with cinnamon to serve with sausages, and we all sit together again to eat – this is second time in two weeks, and I mean, most of guys in warehouse are bastards so far as I’m concern, and I never thought I’d be sitting to eat with them – but it did feel kind of nice, almost like family, just for couple of hours. Everyone does a big ‘cheers’ with drinks for chef.

  But after, when Professor is washing up, I go to help him out, and he’s kind of quiet. I ask what’s wrong, and he says nothing, just thinking about family, what they’re doing, if they’ve had Christmas meal already. I can tell he’s homesick. All of us are, even if we hate our homeland, even if we never ever wanna go back. It’s still home, you know? So anyway, I just got phone as present from sisters (Uncle banned phones in there but I had mine hidden), so I offer Professor to call home on it if he wants, so he not have to go out to phone box to speak to his sister like usual. He’s super-grateful.

  So he takes it to corridor, and when I go to take rubbish out, I hear him talking. It’s not like I expected, a Happy Christmas everyone! type of conversation – he saying he promise he’ll send money soon. After, I ask if everything’s okay. He tell me things are hard for his sister, cos she could get arrested any time, because of him. I’m like, woah, you like gangsta or something? And he’s like, no, it’s just he wrote article saying everyone shouldn’t all have to do military service their whole life, and because of that, they put him in jail, and when he escaped, they came to his house and threaten his sister and took all his shit. I’m like, oh. That is bad. And then he say his sister got a little daughter and no husband, and she’s got to look after their brother who got his legs blown off, and grandmother who can’t remember what she did ten minutes ago, and they all rely on him for money cos their parents are dead, and now government is after them for extra tax money, just cos he left! He got all worked up talking about it, then suddenly he stop and ask if we can talk about something else. So we did. But I remember it, and I had proper respect for Professor after that. Like, my life was lush compared to his, but he never complain like me, he just tell me about it that one time, and then just cos I ask about it. I reckon if I was him, with all that going on, I would be in some kind of big black depression, you know, drinking vodka with Russian guys every night and crying like baby.

  So anyway, yeah, few months in, we good friends, and one day I look at Professor Jojo coming out of shower, and remember day one when he’s stick thin and stinking, and I’m thinking, Wow, you got muscles now! I don’t say nothing, but I’m like: I knew you would be hot. And one night soon after that, Alfonso (who thinks he’s Leonardo DiCaprio), he take Professor out to pull women. But Professor never come back after and go on about how he got laid, even though I know the girls went mad for him, cos Udaze said. He just said it was okay, but he can’t believe how one drink in pub cost more than ten cans from supermarket, and he not get how people expect you to buy rounds for everybody, so that was last time he doing that. I told him he don’t need to meet no girls in pub anyway, right, he’s already married – to books!

  Actually, one day I feel bored and I start looking into one of his books, and thinking, hmm, like maybe I need to make more effort with education, all that shit. But a few pages of English and my head hurt! So I put it down, switch on TV. I’m more, like, people kind of guy. For me life is for living.

  And then I’m like: wait, but if life is for living, how am I still here in this warehouse after six months? I tell myself, okay Emil, you gonna focus now. You need get out of here and live in proper apartment or house or something, so you can come out to people you living with, like this whole London thing supposed to be about. No way you can save enough money or meet new people with this shit pay.

  So, that night I take all my savings and I’m like, right this is it, I don’t have any family to support like Professor, so I’m gonna take risk: I’m gonna go to G.A.Y. – you know, like biggest gay club in town – and I’m gonna party like it’s last night on earth and meet people who got better places to live and can help make my life different, somehow. I mean, it’s big gamble, I know. But I’m like, fuck it, I’m gonna do this one big night, for me, just how I want it, this one time, and it’s gonna be amazing. So I go there, and oh my God. SO much fun. I dance like crazy, I pull a couple of guys and I go back with one of them to his flat and, wow, I’m like, life is good right now, even if it’s shit again tomorrow.

  But it actually works out! So, not too long after, one of my new friends tell me he play in this band and that’s how I got to join... actually, I probably would not even be doing that if Professor Jojo hadn’t come along. Let me explain.

  Back in Romania I used to play violin. Like all time when I was kid, and then I play in wedding band and earn my living for some time – it’s not much money, but I loved it. So I brought violin to UK, but I never play it. But then one day in warehouse when everyone’s out and it’s just me and Professor Jojo, he finds violin at back o
f big cupboard, and ask about it. I told him it’s mine but I not play any more. He ask me please to play for him, and I say no, no, but he keep pressing. And I’m like, okay, fine, so I pick it up, thinking I can just scratch some tune and put it back. But then I play this song my grandmother teach me, and it is first time touching violin since I left my country, and since I saw her – and oh my God, this feeling just hit me. I’m not expecting it, you know? And fat stupid tears just start falling out of my eyes, like river, so fast I cannot even play, and I’m like, what is wrong with me! I put violin away, and I cannot believe I’m crying in front of another guy, but Professor tell me wait, don’t stop, play more, and I tell him no, but I end up admit to him about my grandmother and how she disowned me when I came out to her, and how she die a year later, and how I feel so bad about letting her down. So bad, like maybe it was me breaking her heart and killing her, and how that was when I decide to get out of my country and come to UK.

  Professor just listen. Then he tell me his mother used to sing, and he and his sister played an instrument called car or something like that, and he really miss music from home. He say, if I have violin here and I can play, I should do it, and keep my culture alive inside of me. He say my grandmother would want me to. But I tell him no no no – you know, I’m not into it any more.

  But when I find out one of my new friends has got band that’s like Eastern European folk but with urban twist, it sounded cool, and I remember what Professor said, so I ask if I can try out, just jamming with them one time, and now I play with them regularly! It’s, like, music you go crazy for, and we perform wearing wigs and traditional dresses. It’s hilarious. I love it.

  So, anyway it was one of my friends from the band who offer me place to live in house after the warehouse got raided – like, proper house in Brixton that look on outside like kind of house with normal family living there, except inside there’s six gays squatting. And then through another friend from that group I get proper job wrapping sandwiches for supermarket. Pay every week, better money – everything coming together. Best of all, I can stop pretending to be alpha guy – so I shave my hair at bottom and up one side, bleach the ends and get some piercing, and finally I can walk out on street and feel like me. Like the me I was supposed to be.

  So anyway, I hope Professor’s not gonna get deported. How his chances looking like? And how about one more coffee? We had late gig last night.

  Chapter 8: Yonas

  MIGRANTS CLASH: FRENCH COPS USE TEAR GAS IN RUNNING BATTLES WITH HUNDREDS OF MIGRANTS TRYING TO CLAMBER ON LORRIES BOUND FOR BRITAIN

  ‘Brother! Is it really you?’

  The sound of Melat’s voice for the first time, after so long, made Yonas’s throat swell so that he couldn’t reply straight away, and he had to lean back against the phone box wall. Part of him had been convinced that he wouldn’t get through, that something terrible would have happened, that the police would have come, she’d have been beaten, worse…

  ‘Hey, are you still there?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, yes!’ Yonas laughed, imagining her face in the contour of his reflection in the scratched Perspex window. ‘Sorry – I was just… Never mind. So, I made it to London! How are you all? I have been so worried – they haven’t come to intimidate you again, have they?’

  ‘Not the police, thank God, but the tax men came, demanding their two per cent. I fended them off this time, and obviously I am still here, but they kept asking me again where you were, kept telling me I must know, I must be getting money from you… they searched your room again and took everything they didn’t take last time. Of course I told them I didn’t know anything, I insisted I wasn’t getting anything from you, and said I feared you were dead, which was true – I even showed them what we had in our kitchen cupboards, just flour for injera and lentils, but they didn’t care, and if it wasn’t for Sheshy in his wheelchair, I think they’d have arrested me. But anyway, we’re okay. Now you – where have you been all this time? Are you with Auntie?’

  ‘No – I was about to say. That number you gave me did not work.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know. Every time I tried it said number is not in use. Can you ask if she has changed phone?’

  ‘Oh. I don’t know – the person who gave it to me moved away. I can ask around to see if somebody else knows but…’

  ‘Okay, thank you but do not worry yourself too much. I have found a place to live for now. And I can send you some money soon.’

  ‘Thank you, brother! We are really struggling. So how was the journey?’

  ‘After Libya? Long story. The boat was bad but the main thing is it didn’t sink. I had to pick vegetables in Italy for a while, and then I had to pretend to be a cabbage to get to France, and we got arrested there but—’

  ‘Arrested? Oh no – did you go to prison again? Are they looking for you?’

  ‘No no, do not worry, they did not keep us for long – some guys helped us to escape – it was easy,’ he lied. ‘When they got us to UK we had to work for them for some time to pay them back, so that’s why I haven’t called. But everything is fine now.’ As a little boy, when he used to sit with Melat under the mango tree in the garden doing homework and sharing secrets, he had assumed she would always be there to confide in, to dispense big-sisterly advice. Now it felt like he was the one who had to keep things from her, to protect her.

  ‘Oh brother, I am so glad,’ she said.

  ‘Why did I have to call you at Uncle Solomon’s?’ he asked. ‘Is your phone broken?’

  ‘Our line is cut off – we cannot pay our bills, even though I am braiding women’s hair at our house every spare hour God sends, and mending clothes and sewing for people. And getting hardly any sleep trying to keep the house clean and cooking, caring for Sheshy and Grandmother; even with Lemlem helping me, it is hard, I am always tired… Things are really difficult here, Yonas. It is not just the tax and bills, we have no money for meat or vegetables, and I don’t know how I am going to pay for Lemlem’s school fees next term, never mind the new shoes she needs – the old ones are hurting her feet and have holes in. She knows not to complain, but she keeps asking when you can fly us all over.’

  Yonas laughed bitterly. ‘I would love, more than anything, to bring all of you here, but you need to tell the little one not to get her hopes up…’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Melat said. The sound cut off for a minute, but then her voice returned in a whisper. ‘Listen, I’m scared, Yonas. If the tax men come again, they won’t let me off so lightly. They kept telling me you know where he is, come on, admit it, you know where he is. They had guns and they kept putting their hands on them.’

  Yonas could hear her voice wavering, and he winced. He knew what could happen to deserters’ families… but orphaned families? Children whose parents had fought for liberation, who were national heroes? Whose brothers were maimed fighting in the border war? All that might as well have been for nothing now. To the authorities he was a traitor and a deserter and, thanks to him, Melat was tarred with the same brush.

  ‘What else did they say?’ he asked. He felt like punching the window and shattering it. ‘Did they threaten you with prison?’

  ‘They had guns for a reason.’

  ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘Like I told you – I knew nothing. I made them come and see Sheshy, told them I was caring for a martyr.’

  Yonas sighed. It could so easily have been him in a wheelchair. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Miserable. Only thing that makes him smile is playing chess with this friend of his who lost an arm. They play every week.’

  Even after all these years it was still hard to imagine Sheshy twinless, having to make friends on his own who would accept him in a wheelchair. Instinctively, Yonas still thought of Sheshy and Tekle as a duo, a pair of cute but irritating toddlers, always together, always scheming and giggling, who pushed over his wooden block towers and tried to copy everything he did, but whom he’d have done anything to defend, e
ven though they would always love each other more than him. ‘Can I speak to him?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s asleep.’

  ‘Oh. Well, when he wakes up, tell him… he is brave. Braver than his big brother.’

  ‘Right.’ Melat’s voice sounded tart, cynical, as if she were thinking: Yes, well, it’s true.

  ‘Now I am working, we can save up for his prosthetics, Yonas added.’

  ‘Okay.’

  There was a long pause. ‘And how is Grandmother?’

  ‘Worse.’ Melat puffed out a long breath. ‘She’s gone downhill. I mean, she can barely remember who came to visit five minutes ago and she’s got so cranky and frail…’

  Grandmother had been fine before Yonas left, asking him to find her glasses and forgetting what she’d just been about to do, and complaining of the odd ache and pain, that was all. She used to be a strong woman, with a steely voice, hard to deal with sometimes, but she would do anything for the family, and adored Melat. Many older women would have disowned a pregnant unmarried granddaughter, but Grandmother had lied gallantly to the whole community, making out that Melat had a fiancé who was killed in battle. And it was Grandmother who had stepped in to help when Melat went through that crazy phase, leaving her tiny baby screeching in one room, and hitting herself on the forehead in another, swearing, saying that she couldn’t look at her any more, that all she saw was him, that her life was ruined, that she wanted to throw the baby out of the window. Yonas had panicked, and tried to shout some sense into his sister, but Grandmother had kept cool, just told Melat calmly to rest, to sleep, and to let her tend to Lemlem for a while, even in the night-time. Gradually the darkness in Melat’s eyes had faded, and she even started to take delight in Lemlem’s smiles, her kamikaze crawling.

  ‘I wish I could help you more,’ Yonas said. ‘At least some money will come soon. Right now I’m staying with some guys and we are doing things like cleaning mostly, and the money we are earning does not get me far – you would not believe what things cost here! But I will find a better job and place to live soon, and then I can send more…’ He tried to assert this confidently, but heard his voice falter and changed the subject. ‘And what about Lemlem?’