The Invisible Crowd

by Ellen Wiles

  PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATE CLAIMING TO BE TOUGH ON IMMIGRATION IS HAPPY FOR FAMILY TO EMPLOY ILLEGAL HOUSEKEEPER

  When his eyes flicked down to the text beneath:

  Conservative parliamentary candidate Quentin Lambourne, who has been calling for a clampdown on illegal immigration, has chosen not to mention that his mother-in-law is employing an illegal immigrant…

  He bit his lip, and re-read the entire article three times until he was certain it was real and undeniably about him. But, housekeeper? Had one of Molly’s neighbours seen him going in, got the wrong idea and told the press? There was only about £1 worth of credit left on the phone by that point, but he decided to use it to call Nina. There was no way she could know about this, he thought, but he had to check before seeing her. He dialled, and kept his voice low, so the people in the seats around him wouldn’t hear.

  ‘Hello?’ Nina answered. She had such a sweet, clear voice.

  ‘Nina, I need to tell you urgently, I have just found a newspaper—’ he began.

  ‘Oh, I’m so, so sorry about that,’ she jumped in. ‘I was going to tell you when I saw you at the Tate. Shall we discuss it when we get there? I know the journalist, she’s a friend of mine, but I—’

  He pressed the red button to cut her off, hurt and panic surging in his belly, and pressed the bell to get off the bus at the next stop.

  She knew! he said to himself, incredulous, stamping down onto the pavement and pacing furiously back in the direction he’d just come from – a totally wasted bus fare. She must have told her friend about him working for Molly. Who else could be behind it? But why on earth would Nina have sucked him into her life, only to spit him out like that? Because he meant nothing to her, that was why. He was just a distraction from her cheating husband, and now a convenient way to get back at him.

  A text came through from Nina: Please let me explain. He switched his phone off.

  ‘Veata will be ready for you shortly,’ the receptionist told him. ‘Can I get you some water?’

  He shook his head. ‘No thank you.’ He was starting to feel nervous about the substance of this conversation now, as much as its potential consequences. The lawyer would be intimidatingly brusque, like all lawyers were. He’d be expected to talk in detail to a total stranger about the very worst things that had happened to him, to lay out on the table all the memories he’d been determinedly suppressing for so long, the blackest, festering memories that rotted in a place deep inside him, and threatened to infect his whole mind and body like gangrene if he let them out. And what if the lawyer didn’t even believe him? He should never have come here. He should have disappeared as soon as he saw that article, away from the police trail, and started afresh with a job somewhere else, a new city, somewhere among a group of friendly Eritreans…

  But no. He had to think further ahead. This was his best chance for a visa. For a future where he could work here legally. For Lemlem’s future. And coming to see a lawyer, announcing that he wanted to make a claim and starting on the track to being legal – even just saying his real name out loud again after he’d got used to being Joe or Professor for so long – had felt surprisingly good. On the other hand, by coming here he could have just pulled the trigger to start his own race towards deportation. And, perhaps, a descent into madness. He’d tried so hard to keep everything – his past, his parents, Melat, Sarama – locked away, so he could keep focused on the future, on survival. No one he’d met so far in the UK knew anything like his whole story. Was he really ready to bare his soul to a random British lawyer now? He wished Gebre were here to talk it all through. But if this meeting went well, he could make the whole process much easier for his friend once he did arrive.

  The strip lights on the ceiling glared, making the woman sitting in the opposite corner look haggard, emphasizing the pitted pallor of her cheeks. She wore a black headscarf, and she might be Iranian, Yonas thought, but he wasn’t sure. He wondered what had caused her to leave her country.

  He ran his palm over the tiny, hard bump of the little wooden rooster in his pocket, and remembered all those hours spent in his grandfather’s workshop in Asmara as a little boy, especially once his parents began to be out more often, at secret meetings, when bad things were escalating around them that he didn’t fully understand yet. That workshop was a haven. He had felt soothed by its sweet, woody smell, the peace of it, and the way lumps of wood could transform into smooth-edged stools, chairs, tables and shelves. Objects that were so solid, and had such an integral function once in use, it seemed as if they had always been there, in that form. His grandfather had tried to get him into carpentry too, but he didn’t have the talent or motivation – he preferred to watch, or read on a chair in the corner or work on his scribbles. Grandfather kept up that workshop all through the war, even when Yonas’s father took the family off to join the fighters. He must have been intimidated by the Ethiopians, but he wasn’t a talker at the best of times, so kept it to himself. Nobody made better furniture, and Yonas supposed it was that skill that had saved his grandfather; even the Ethiopians needed chairs.

  It wasn’t long after independence when a fever confined his grandfather to bed for three weeks. He had tried to return to the workshop, but his knobbly fingers trembled like long grass, and he didn’t have the strength to finish the cupboard he’d been working on. Sheshy and Tekle were always supposed to take over the carpentry business eventually, but now of course there was only one of them, and, stuck in his wheelchair, Sheshy flatly refused even to go inside the workshop. Yonas saw the pain in his grandfather’s eyes, as he tried and failed to persuade his youngest grandson that it would help him to occupy his hands, that he could always get people in to help with the more physical work – but Sheshy just shook his head, stubborn. Yonas knew it was because he couldn’t bear to be there without Tekle. He considered offering to do it himself, and even attempted to complete the commissioned cupboard under Grandfather’s direction, sitting up with a file and sandpaper all night working on it – but under the bright morning sunlight the scalloped edging looked uneven and lumpen, like a toddler’s handiwork. After Grandfather passed away in his sleep, Grandmother silently posted a FOR SALE sign up, and the workshop was promptly sold, together with all the tools and pieces inside.

  ‘Hello there!’

  Yonas looked up, shocked for a second to find himself back in a legal office, in the UK.

  ‘Mr Kelati, isn’t it? Lovely to meet you! My name is Veata. I’m your caseworker.’

  He got up, and she shook his hand. She was petite with Asian features – not how he’d imagined a British lawyer to look – and she seemed friendly. Not at all intimidating.

  ‘Would you like to follow me?’

  They walked along a corridor, and Yonas’s heart started to thump as he tried to predict what questions she would ask and how he would answer, tried to practise hurriedly in his head, to work out which words would be best for describing military service, or trekking through the desert, or prison… This made him feel dizzy, so that when they arrived at an office and she showed him the table at which he was to sit, he almost fell into the chair.

  ‘Are you okay there, Mr Kelati?’

  ‘Yes, sorry, I just…’

  ‘Let me get you a drink of water.’ She went out again and returned quickly, with a glass of water in hand, which he sipped gratefully as she opened her laptop. ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘My computer is out of battery. Sorry, but I’d like to take notes on it while we speak. Would you mind bearing with me again please, while I go and get a cable?’

  She went back down the corridor. Alone once more, he worried: had he done the right thing, giving the receptionist not only his name but the squat address, when they weren’t really supposed to be there?

  Jean, who was the one who’d originally found the squat, insisted it was totally legal. ‘It’s the law,’ he said confidently; he didn’t seem to know which law, but Yonas didn’t press him. From the outside the house looked quite smart – old, brick
-built, Victorian maybe, with curlicue carvings under the roofs, until you came closer and saw that several roof tiles were broken and the window sills were all rotting. Inside, the place had been stripped bare, exposed plank floors were covered with bits of sheet or patchy cracked lino, the only furniture was rescued from skips and wires stuck out of damp walls like patchy stubble, but it was still a house intended for human habitation, on a respectful residential street. And it was Yonas’s real address now. If he was going to go down this legal track, he wanted to do it honestly, from start to finish. There was no alternative anyway; he couldn’t very well give them Molly’s address, not now. Molly wouldn’t even want to talk to him again, never mind allow post to be sent to her. She was probably furious with herself for allowing Yonas – or Joe, as she still believed his name was – ever to cross her threshold. Probably regretted ever volunteering to teach people like him. He was sure that she, like Quentin, was now pretending that article was a complete fabrication. He hoped so. He would hate for Molly to get fined on his account.

  Veata returned, plugged in her laptop, and settled in her seat, smiling. ‘So, to begin with—’

  Yonas interjected. ‘I want to just check – is this interview confidential? If I decide not to claim, or…’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I can guarantee that. You are completely safe talking to me.’

  ‘Okay. Because I want to say that I have been working without a visa, first in a factory, then doing cleaning, and now I’m holding up a sign on the street pointing people to a Chicken Cottage – high-prestige jobs…’ She laughed in surprise, apparently taken aback that he had cracked a joke – which was probably not appropriate, he reflected. ‘So I would just like to know, if I claim asylum now and they find out I have been working, can I be punished?’

  ‘No, no, don’t worry about that,’ she said. ‘It won’t exactly help your claim, but it won’t invalidate it either. You’re certainly not the first. But once you do proceed, you won’t be able to continue working for money – are you aware of that?’

  ‘No work at all? Okay. So, how long will the claim take? I heard it can be years.’

  ‘It can take some time, I’m afraid. You would be unlucky if it took years, but it’s possible.’

  He nodded. ‘And what about if you were forced to work? Does that help?’

  ‘If you were trafficked, you mean?’

  Yonas paused. Wasn’t trafficking something to do with sex workers? ‘For some time I was forced to work in a factory because they said we had to repay them for our journey…’

  ‘Ah, that does sound like trafficking,’ the lawyer said, ‘so yes, it’s definitely relevant.’

  ‘And can I also ask you,’ he said, ‘if the police find out about that factory, will they punish the workers who are still there?’ He thought of Gebre, sitting there, patiently shelling shrimps – how terrible it would be if he got thrown into a prison here because of his friend’s big mouth.

  ‘You think that operation is still going on?’ the lawyer asked. ‘Well, it’s very unlikely they’ll be punished, as such, if it’s an abusive situation as you say.’

  Yonas nodded slowly. Abusive, she’d termed it, and she didn’t even know the half of it. He pictured Osman’s red, devil eyes… Should he tell her about Gebre?

  But Veata was talking. ‘Sorry?’ he asked.

  ‘I was just saying, could you perhaps start by telling me a bit about growing up? Like, where you were born, and what your childhood was like?’

  That sounded easy. But then, when Yonas thought back to his childhood, he seemed to float on his back into a calm lake surrounded by images like leaves on the surface: the house with its high ceilings and green tiled floors; the kitchen exuding delicious smells; the paintings and masks and books; the mango tree out the back where he used to sit for hours to read in the shade while the hens clucked; the brash splashes of pink and purple bougainvillea over the side wall; the iridescent sunlight pouring through the bedroom window onto Tekle and Sheshy’s identical sleeping faces; his father’s happy cackle from his wicker armchair; Melat practising her dancing up and down the hallway… And then the way the knowledge crept in. The conversations overheard. The gun-toting police in the street shouting abusive words at women that he didn’t even understand. The way they were forced to speak Amharic at school. That evening his father came back with a purple welt on his face and an anger burning in his eyes. That awareness that nothing was safe, even inside the apparent sanctity of their home, because they were Eritreans, and Ethiopian forces were in control.

  ‘Everything okay?’ the lawyer asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking what to begin with…’

  ‘Take your time, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘But do try just to tell me even a few basic things if you can, like where you lived, and your family. Do you have any brothers and sisters?’

  Yonas opened his mouth. He could do this. He had already talked quite a lot, in snippets to Emil, Molly and Nina, about his writing, his parents, his siblings; but now that he had to tell a lawyer everything, in detail, for the record, he couldn’t help visualizing Tekle’s carcass decaying under the ground, revealing his small, child’s bones, or Sheshy, now a twinless man, sitting in his wheelchair next to an empty chessboard, or Melat, bathing their arthritic, grumbling grandmother, fearing another knock at the door… He took a deep breath. ‘I have two siblings who are living,’ he said. ‘One brother was killed with my parents in the war. Our family left Asmara to fight with the EPLF – I’m not sure how much you know…’

  ‘Yes, I’ve represented a few Eritreans, so I’m familiar with the basic history,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your loss.’

  Yonas’s throat swelled, but he had to keep his emotions in check.

  ‘So, how did they die?’ the lawyer asked softly.

  Yonas opened his mouth to answer. Could he compress their death into a sentence? How much of their story did this lawyer actually need for his asylum claim anyway? What did she want from him?

  ‘Please take your time,’ the lawyer said.

  ‘Okay. So…’ He took a deep breath. ‘They were killed towards the end of the war – the liberation struggle. Their group was shot at by MiGs when they were travelling back from a show; my father led the Cultural Troupe. My mother sang.’

  Her singing voice was probably Yonas’s earliest memory, and it was the soundtrack to waking up in the Asmara house; he would come downstairs yawning, listening to it expand like a flower opening until he got into the kitchen and saw her standing by the stove making breakfast and coffee, swaying to her own rhythm.

  ‘And where were you?’

  ‘I was at the revolutionary school. Behind the front line.’

  He remembered arriving there, at dawn, after the family had journeyed through the night from Asmara, leaving their grandparents behind, how his father had kept them buoyant by telling them story after story about brave Eritrean soldiers and glorious victories. Even when they discovered how basic the tents were, and that there was no building as such for the revolutionary school his father had raved about, no running water, and hardly any books, Yonas still felt excited – this was what being a freedom fighter for real was all about! Gebre, who’d come with them, didn’t agree. He didn’t complain, but went very quiet, and spent his spare time mooching around, drawing on rocks with pebbles or charcoal. Still suffering from the shock of his father’s disappearance, Yonas knew, the last place he wanted to be now was in a war zone, even though the whole point of the war was to avenge people like his father.

  All the children were kept busy, though. Most of their days were spent sitting cross-legged in front of the blackboard, doing lessons, and reciting revolutionary poems and songs. In the afternoons, when the heat was less fierce, they would do military exercises, and Yonas couldn’t help a tingle of excitement at the feeling of holding a gun, that power between his fingers. Melat took to it too, and was soon the belle of the school. She used to accompany
their songs on their mother’s krar, and had a knack for writing songs of her own. Sheshy and Tekle kept to themselves, even more than they used to, and developed a secret language of their own that acted like an invisible wall fending off the world.

  But once the novelty wore off, Yonas soon missed all the books he had at home, and grew bored with the usual teacher. Many of the other children couldn’t even write. One slow afternoon he came up with a brainwave: like his father, he could put on a show himself about the Eritrean cause! Once he got the go-ahead, he ran straight to find Gebre, who was glumly drawing stick men flying out of explosions. Good news! You can be a set designer!

  ‘So, what did you do when your parents and brother died?’

  Yonas felt an echo in his body of the memory of hearing that news: a shudder down through his spine, a loosening of his bowels and a heaviness that came with the new understanding of what mortality really meant: that his parents and Tekle were nothing but fragile animals, just like he, Melat, Gebre and Sheshy were, and that any one of them could be extinguished for ever at any moment.

  But he was supposed to be telling the lawyer about what happened. He had to focus on the facts. What did you do? she’d asked.

  ‘I stayed with the fighters – with my sister and Gebre,’ he said. ‘My little brother, Sheshy, was taken to the underground hospital, and they thought he would die but he came through okay, just without his legs. So then they sent him back to Asmara, to be with my grandparents.’ They had all wanted to go with Sheshy, but had been told firmly that their parents would have wanted them to stay. ‘Around that time, the fighting got more intense,’ Yonas said. ‘I was sure we would all die also, very soon.’

  He remembered the commander announcing one night that Eritrean People’s Liberation Front companies were going to have to start retreating. ‘This is it,’ Gebre had said darkly. ‘This is the point when we find out we are about to lose the war.’ But, miraculously, a few weeks later they were informed that the EPLF were advancing again; the tide was turning.