The Invisible Crowd

by Ellen Wiles

  So, my clients and my kids, they are what keeps me going – but it is not easy. I am never going to feel truly settled in the UK. For my girls, it is home. They speak just like British girls. Chanthy doesn’t remember anything at all about what happened in Cambodia, and Devi’s memory is hazy, and I am glad about that, although I wish they had more memories of their father. But even my memories of him are fading now. It is hard to work out what is real and what is not. So imagine how hard it is for my clients who are expected to remember everything perfectly over and over again!

  So, Yonas Kelati told me about his childhood. It was hard for him from early on, as it is with most of my Eritrean clients. His family were part of the liberation struggle, and when he was sixteen his parents and a younger brother were all killed, and his other brother and sister were badly harmed. Terrible things for a young boy to experience. But he spoke about it fluently in English, and calmly, most of the time. Somebody who has not spent so much time as I have engaged in conversations like that might have witnessed the interview and thought it was not very emotional for him to recount such events. But he was just working hard to keep it together. He almost gave way at one point, when he was talking about his sister’s rape, and a few minutes later, telling me that his girlfriend got killed in the border war seemed to be too much for him, and he walked out. I didn’t go after him. Usually, clients just need a bit of time on their own, to collect themselves, to process their emotions in private.

  I remember well my own first attempt to talk about what happened to me. It all came out in a jumble, and what my mouth was emitting didn’t reflect my real feelings and thoughts at all, and I started to cry and cry. It felt like I was trying to pass my caseworker a black and white photograph that was vital evidence for my case, but I was spilling water all over it, blurring the image, and just as he was trying to take hold of it, it was falling apart into soggy lumps of papier mâché.

  It is not just the stress and pressure of talking to a lawyer when there is so much at stake – it is memory. The way memory can be hidden inside you, it can change and transform into a beast and then come out to bite you. For me, I remember, the worst times were so frightening to confront in words that for a long time I could not articulate them at all, but still they started to dominate my thoughts. All I wanted to do was shove them down in a box and close the lid, and to remember the happy times instead, but I couldn’t do that either. So even though I was quite educated, I just could not tell my story in the logical, chronological way that I knew the lawyers needed. I did my best. But I remember being given a copy of the witness statement that had been written up and edited for me – like this was supposed to be the definitive version of my story, made up of the right words, and the right facts, in the right order – but it wasn’t mine, it didn’t feel like mine. But it was what it was. And I read it over so many times, that after a while it threatened to become my memory, and I had to work hard to fill in the gaps.

  I mean, my statement said that we were chased from our home in the city when I was pregnant, because I had an administration job and Kamol was a lawyer – but it didn’t say how they told me, sneering, you’ve had it too easy. My statement said that they put me to work in the countryside in fields for hours every day – but it didn’t explain that I had never done that kind of labouring work before and that I was vomiting daily from pregnancy and that, even one week before Chanthy was due to arrive, I was still out there, picking and cutting, feeling like I would die. My statement said that we had to drink water that other workers had used to wash the filth off themselves – but it didn’t say that Kamol used to feed me his own meals so that the baby and I could survive. My statement said my husband died from the exertion and hunger – but it didn’t say this happened just two weeks after Chanthy was born, or how I shook him, pumped his chest, or how I was so very sad, not just because I lost him, but because I felt like it was my fault.

  My statement said that I fled when the bombs fell on my village – but it didn’t describe properly how the bombs were spraying around us, everywhere, as far as we could see, killing all the fish in the river, or how we used to grab the fish with our hands to feast on even while the river was filling up with human bodies. My statement said that my small children and I were ambushed and chased by Khmer bandits when we tried to leave – but it didn’t mention the piles of corpses we had to walk past, cooking in the sun, letting out a terrible smell, flies clustering over them and swarming around my girls’ eyes.

  Now, so many years later, in this cool, comfortable and strange world of London, there is no longer any pressure on me to make anybody believe my story. But I have given myself the responsibility of making other people’s stories believed, and that responsibility weighs on me. I have strategies. When I wake each morning, I always start off by thinking at least one positive thought. I read about this in a self-help book I found in the library. Be Happy! I think it was called… Usually my positive thought is about how my girls are doing. Devi is doing her A levels this year and Chanthy is doing GCSEs, and they are bright, conscientious girls, so I feel hopeful that they will be successful and happy. But Devi wants to be a vet, so she really needs good grades and she will be disappointed if she doesn’t get them, and that makes me anxious. And sometimes it is hard not to think about my own lost dreams for my future with Kamol and get sucked underwater… but then there is always work to focus on. Unlike me, my clients are still stuck in the middle of that terrible uncertainty over whether they are allowed to put down roots here, so I can’t get too sad about my own problems.

  Ah, I remember when I first got leave to remain – I was so happy! I thought my life would finally be easy. But it was harder than I expected to find a job. After a few months all I could get was packing meat in a supermarket. But I worked hard at my English every night when the girls were in bed. I thought, maybe, if I really try, I can get to be a lawyer like my Kamol. So I stuck to that ambition like a snail to the ground. And then I got a scholarship for university, and after eight more years I did it. I know Kamol would be proud. But nowadays, he would also tell me to slow down. I take on too many cases. Partly it is pressure from the management. But partly I cannot say no. Every client could be me, and I think of all of them like my family.

  Which is tough, when many of them get so sad that they want to end their lives. It happens a lot. I have to be a counsellor then, like the Samaritans. I always try to be calm and caring, but often the clients tell me angrily that I cannot understand their pain. I remind them that I was once an asylum seeker too, which does usually get through to them on some level, and they start to trust me more. But I still fear for them, because I know what they are likely to have in store.

  I was happy that Yonas Kelati reappeared in my office to continue our conversation – I was beginning to worry he might have left the centre. He said he was sorry for walking out, but I told him: ‘Don’t worry at all, you were doing really well.’

  I asked him some easier questions, so he could get back into talking, then led gradually into his military service, the articles he wrote and his imprisonment. When I asked how he was treated in prison, I knew it would be grim, because all Eritrean prisons are torture houses if my clients are anything to go by… But after he told me a few of the things that went on, he turned, slowly lifted up his shirt, and showed me a shiny mesh of scars the size of a tea tray across his entire back, most from whipping, but also these huge splodgy scars like paint, which he said he got from being tied up and left in the sun with sugar and oil on his back. ‘The helicopter, they call it. I have seen similar wounds many times, but they can still make me shiver, and this scarring was especially bad. I told him gently that I was sure his scars would assist him as evidence. He said he had scars on his fingertips too, and showed me. Again, that is common among my clients who are smuggled: their agents tell them they have to burn off their prints if they don’t want their identity registered before they make it to their destination country.

  Yonas Kelati to
ld me how he had to do forced labour in a factory for a while, before he came to London. That was good. For his claim, I mean. The fact that he worked illegally after that isn’t so good. But at the end of the day, I felt he’d be a convincing witness: he was obviously intelligent, and he spoke clearly – in between the pauses – but I certainly believed him.

  After the interview about the merits of his claim, I asked if he needed emergency accommodation while waiting for his asylum support decision. He said he was okay for the moment, which was a relief. Because the situation was getting really bad for emergency accommodation. I’d literally just found out that one of my clients, a pregnant woman, had been put in a hotel in Crystal Palace, which sounded nice enough on its website, but turned out to be housing 350 asylum seekers in forty-five filthy rooms, and my client had to share a room with nine other women, with just one en-suite toilet and no shower, and they all had to share the one bathroom on the floor with three other jam-packed rooms-worth of people, men and women, which meant my client had to resort a few times to vomiting her morning sickness directly out of the bedroom window. And there were mice running around, and the place was so dirty that she was getting palpitations of anxiety about the health of her unborn baby… But I didn’t mention any of that to Yonas Kelati. ‘So,’ I told him, ‘I can apply for weekly asylum support on your behalf, which would be £35 a week in vouchers – no cash.’

  ‘No cash at all?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘But can I exchange a voucher for cash?’

  ‘Not legally, no.’

  ‘I cannot work to get any cash at all?’

  ‘Absolutely not, I’m afraid. No asylum seekers are allowed to work for money, whether you’re deemed eligible for support or not.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘But £35 per week is even less than I earned in that warehouse. And how can I help to support my sister if I only have vouchers?’

  ‘I am afraid you’ll just have to wait until you get leave to remain,’ I said.

  ‘Right.’ He sounded calm enough, but one of those long pauses followed, and I could tell he was working hard not to express his frustration at me, which I appreciated. ‘Can I use the vouchers in all shops?’ he asked.

  ‘Only in certain big supermarkets,’ I told him. ‘You will be given a list of places in the area around where you’re accommodated.’

  ‘And where would I be accommodated?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid you’d have no choice about that,’ I said. ‘You’d have to take whatever accommodation you’re allocated. You would have to share with others, and it might well mean being dispersed to somewhere outside London, maybe even to Scotland.’ His face fell at this. ‘However,’ I added, ‘I should warn you anyway that you might not be deemed eligible for support in any case, because the authorities could take the view that you didn’t claim as soon as reasonably practicable when you arrived.’

  I watched him work this out, then smile wryly. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘So they could tell me: you cannot work for money, but even so we will not give you any support, and also we cannot even say how long we will take to process your claim.’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  He laughed then, a bitter little laugh, and looked straight into my eyes. ‘I want to know one thing from you, honestly, please,’ he said. ‘What are my chances? Not just of getting the support, but of my claim? Of getting ILR?’

  ‘Well…’ I took a deep breath. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that about 90 per cent of applicants were refused after their first Home Office interview, and the majority who go on to appeal were refused again. ‘The basic test is that the person has a “well-founded fear” that they will be persecuted if they go back home,’ I explained. ‘So, you’ve clearly been tortured, you say as a political prisoner, which you’ve clearly explained, and you had to flee the country. So long as the Home Office accepts this and finds that you’d be considered a traitor or a deserter on return, they should grant you leave to remain. But nothing is guaranteed. As I said, they won’t like the fact that you claimed late, once you were free to go to the police, and they might also draw inferences from the fact that you still haven’t reported the factory.’

  ‘But why does it even matter if I have worked here illegally, if, like you said, the decision is supposed to be about what happened to me in Eritrea?’

  ‘Good question. It’s about credibility. To prove someone has a well-founded fear of persecution, they test all aspects of that person’s story. They can use pretty much anything to do that.’

  ‘But how do they tell what is credible?’ he asked. ‘I mean, I have no evidence for most things I’ve told you.’

  ‘You have your scars, and you have your words,’ I told him. But he was right. The evidence deficit is why credibility is such a nightmare in these cases. They turn on the believability of the person’s testimony, but like I said, so many of my clients have difficulty expressing themselves well, and talking about their experiences. And of course translation makes all that worse. But you know, some are so traumatized they find it hard to talk at all, or they get memory blanks, or they just get things mixed up in their heads, and many are not educated or even literate in their own languages, and some are just so scared of being sent back that they start improvising extra facts when they don’t really need to and get themselves into an unnecessary tangle. Of course there must be some who lie about their whole claim deliberately. But I’ve never had a client whom I’ve suspected of that. Perhaps I’m soft-hearted. But I don’t think I’m naïve. ‘They will look for inconsistencies—’ I told him, but he interrupted.

  ‘So, do you think I have a good chance, or not?’ he asked again.

  ‘I would say you have a reasonable chance, compared to most,’ I told him, and I saw his face relax a little. ‘Provided you stick to the rules,’ I added. ‘But I strongly recommend you go to the police about the trafficking, because if they find evidence of the factory to back up what you’re saying, that will really help. Also you still need to tell the Home Office your story, remember, and they are a very different kettle of fish to me.’

  He nodded, and thanked me for my help, then left.

  I really hoped he would get a reasonable immigration officer. I liked him, and could tell how much it had taken for him to talk to me. As soon as he left, I got down to transcribing the recording and making notes of our conversation; if he didn’t get the kind of respect he deserved from the Home Office, he could at least get it from me.

  Fortunately, he was granted asylum support, within two weeks, and he didn’t get dispersed far – only to Enfield. He asked me how he was expected to get there from Brixton once he’d got the keys, as it was a long way to walk, and he pointed out that he couldn’t easily carry his stuff all that way or afford to take the bus. So I offered to meet him at the office to sign the forms, then go with him on the Tube and train to the new flat and pay his fares. But it turned out to be a good twenty-five-minute walk even from the station, and I was exhausted when we arrived.

  The flat was down a narrow, quiet residential street, on the top floor of a house. We opened the door to a whiff of damp. I called out, ‘Hello!’ and heard murmurings. We went through to a low-ceilinged kitchen, where two Iraqi men and three Afghani men were sitting around a small table, listening to Arabic radio. They didn’t appear to speak any English, beyond smiling ‘hellos’, and ‘welcomes’. While they were polite enough to stand up, shake our hands, and point to the bedroom that Yonas Kelati would be sleeping in, they immediately returned to their listening. There appeared to be two other bedrooms there, and no living room.

  Yonas’s bedroom was very long and narrow, like a small train carriage, with a brown, thin carpet, frayed at the edges, and mustard-yellow walls. The only furniture inside was a child-size bunk bed, a metal clothes rail on wheels with several trousers and shirts hanging from it, and two plastic bucket chairs under the window. The lower bunk must have belonged to one of the other guys, and was alread
y made up with leopard-skin bedding, and the upper bunk was empty, with no linen or duvets except a Postman Pat duvet cover folded on one of the chairs. ‘Well, your new flatmates seem friendly, and I’ve seen worse places,’ I told Yonas brightly. ‘The area seems really nice and quiet, doesn’t it? Hardly any traffic noise in here! And at least you’ll still have friends in the same city…’ Though of course, it occurred to me, it was about a five-hour walk for him to get back to where he’d been living down in Brixton, and I didn’t even know whether the people he’d been living with were good friends or not.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said simply, and waved me off, standing there alone by the little bunk bed, his head almost touching the ceiling, his arm span probably as wide as the room.

  Chapter 15: Yonas

  FORMER ASYLUM SEEKER LIVING FOR FREE IN £1.2M TAXPAYER-FUNDED MANSION IS CHARGED WITH BENEFIT FRAUD

  After Veata left, Yonas hovered at the kitchen door, but his new flatmates were still sitting there in silence, drinking tea and listening to Arabic radio around the table. They didn’t look up at him or acknowledge his presence. It was as if they were posing for a portrait photograph, and had deliberately etched the brown stains onto the swirly yellow wallpaper backdrop. If only he had a camera, he thought, he could snap the scene and show Nina – ask her if she reckoned he could submit it for that annual exhibition they went to. . . . But he would have to stop thinking about Nina. He wondered if he should ask to join the guys, but there were no more chairs in the kitchen, and it was so small he doubted he could squeeze another in – even a stool. He wondered which of these men he was going to be sharing a room with. He fancied a cup of tea, but didn’t want to ask for some from their pot if they weren’t going to offer it. Feeling a wave of claustrophobia, he decided he would go straight out to find the nearest big supermarket on the list where he could trade in a portion of his first voucher, buy some nice food, and come back to cook all six of them a meal. That would surely break the ice.