The Invisible Crowd

by Ellen Wiles

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Nina laughed. She took his arm and tugged it gently. He followed her along a path into the woods behind. Knotted tree trunks drew criss-cross stripes across the ground. Birdsong tinkled like bells. He liked the way that the trees here were all wild and bent and curled like old people dancing. They emerged into an open space, and Nina beckoned him to sit with her on a bench with a view of a green valley rising up to a hill, topped by a village and crowned with a church spire. Emil had told him houses near Hampstead Heath cost millions.

  ‘If you read the papers,’ Yonas said, ‘you probably think that all the big houses around here are full of asylum seekers lying on velvet sofas, watching giant-screen TVs, sniffing expensive drugs or plotting robberies.’ This made Nina laugh. ‘Actually, I have got a bag full of headlines like that,’ Yonas added. ‘I rip them out and keep them.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Something to think about. I guess some day I thought I might use them for something.’

  ‘Maybe we could use them to make art!’ Nina said. ‘Come to my studio again one day. We could paste them onto a board with images, make a collage…’

  ‘Gebre would like that,’ he said, and felt the loss again sharply, in the pit of his stomach.

  ‘Oh Yonas. You must be missing him so badly. Maybe we could make it a tribute to him?’

  ‘That is a nice idea.’

  ‘What kind of thing would you like to make? And actually, if you could write or create or do anything you like here, after you get leave to remain, what would it be?’

  ‘If,’ he said.

  ‘Okay, if.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘when I arrived, I thought the biggest challenge would be to earn just enough money to survive and send some home to Melat. But if I got to choose… You really want to know?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘Well… I would still want to let people know about the situation of my country, just like I tried to do from inside. Especially about all the journalists and writers who are still in prison. So I would write some more articles. I read about an organization that campaigns for writers, so maybe I could talk to them.’

  ‘That is a great idea.’

  ‘And I would like to write something for Gebre. Maybe just a story of his life. I am not sure. Actually, years ago, back home, I started to write a novel. But I got stuck. It was more difficult than I expected. It was no good at all! I threw it all away. But after I began lessons with your mother here, I started thinking, maybe I can try to write a book again. Fiction, or non-fiction, I am not sure. Another idea I had was that I could maybe open an Eritrean restaurant or café and display art in there, music, even put on small plays or poetry nights, with Eritrean artists. Crazy, right?’

  ‘It sounds brilliant!’

  ‘I could serve asylum seekers cheap meals, like, twice a week, even free or in exchange for time helping out. But you need money to start up something like that.’

  ‘You can get small business loans. I could help you apply for funding. People would donate. And what about plays? Could Melat find any of your old scripts, do you think?’

  ‘No! They raided my room at home, and probably most published copies were destroyed. I doubt that audiences here would appreciate plays about Eritrean liberation fighters anyway. But I have never actually seen a play in a theatre here so…’

  ‘Well, that’s easy, we’ll go to the theatre one day soon! I’ll look at the listings.’

  Putting these vague, secret, half-baked aspirations into words, and hearing Nina respond as if they were all possible – simple to achieve, even – made Yonas feel like perhaps they were. If only he were lucky enough to get leave to remain. Without papers, his hands were as tied as ever. But there were some things he could get going with. ‘Of course I am going to look after Osman now,’ he added. ‘I want to make sure he gets a good place to live and studies hard and does well in the UK. And for him, and also for me, I am going to try to connect with more people from the Eritrean community here. I avoided doing that for a long time, but I miss my culture too much.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘One day, all being well, I would like to bring my family over, if the situation in my country does not improve,’ he said. ‘And start a family of my own… But that is all just dreaming.’

  ‘No harm in dreaming.’ Nina smiled, then shook her head.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing much. Well, I was just thinking how someone I know, another friend (who’s also friends with Quentin so probably on his side), said to me the other day that I should be wary of spending so much time and energy helping you out because you’d just cause me huge amounts of stress and money and you were probably teeing things up for a marriage visa! I told her she had the wrong end of the stick. That it was more likely to be the other way round.’

  Yonas wasn’t sure he was understanding her properly.

  ‘Oh look, I shouldn’t even have mentioned it,’ she said. ‘I just hope you can make some or all those things happen.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, embarrassed, and got up, a bit too quickly. ‘Shall we go back?’

  Nina got up too and took his hand. It was nice to feel her palm against his, steady, despite the syncopated rhythm of their strides.

  By the time they approached the road to the station, it was already dusk. In Asmara, three hours later, it would be almost bedtime. Yonas resolved to phone Melat in the morning. He had left it far too long without calling. She would be cross, and he would have to apologize. But then he would tell her he’d got her letter, that it could well make all the difference, that she might have saved him. He might not tell her that he nearly didn’t receive it – that he had nearly made himself disappear. And he would have to break the news to her about Gebre. That would be hard. She would probably cry. He would probably cry. Would he tell her about their mad escape attempt? He owed her the truth. Truth that wouldn’t unnecessarily hurt her, anyway. He would definitely tell her that his lawyer was going to claim against the detention centre, to seek justice for Gebre’s death. And of course he could now tell her the good news about the factory raid! She would be so happy to hear that Osman was safe, even though she had never met him. And he should tell her about Nina, too. He had hardly told her anything about Nina yet.

  He looked over. ‘Actually,’ he said to Nina, ‘when I was up in the north, I started to write a little bit. I even finished something short, but I am not sure if it is any good.’

  ‘Would you let me read it?’

  He pulled out his notebook, and handed it over.

  Chapter 32: Jude

  HOW TEN HUMAN RIGHTS CASES CLOG UP OUR COURTS EVERY DAY

  ‘Mr Kelati, would you like to swear on a holy book or take the oath?’ the judge asks.

  YK chooses the oath, and swears solemnly to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, sounding as if he means it. He looks so calm up there, tall and slim and as striking as a Giacometti, that you relax, a little – but you’re still gripping the lectern hard. There is so much more evidence for this fresh claim hearing than there was for the no-show appeal a year ago – the letters Melat sent confirming his internet use as well as their persecution by the authorities because of his escape, the police evidence of the fish factory raid, the letter from the human rights organization that published his reports and others he emailed – but still. You never know. The pressure of standing up to give evidence at a hearing with such weighty consequences can inject poisonous stress into even the most measured person. Plus, this is Judge Gratchet. Bad luck! your old pupil supervisor said, when you told him. She’s basically the Home Office mascot. Her jowls do actually remind you of the Churchill bulldog.

  ‘May I have permission to do a brief examination in chief,’ you ask the judge, as a courtesy, turning the pages of your blue notebook to the list of questions you intend to kick off with.

  ‘You may not,’ she snaps. ‘It should all be in the witness statement.’ Y
K flashes a quick glance in your direction – you had assured him that you would get to examine him first – but as you cringe, nod at the judge and sit down again, his face remains as unreadable as the Mona Lisa’s.

  He should have been the anxious one this morning, but he’d almost seemed to be the one putting you at ease. You’d been so psyched about meeting him today, after all this time, anticipating and imagining, and after his non-appearance last time made you go to pieces, that you had to restrain yourself from reaching out to kiss him on both cheeks, and make an effort to remain professional. But he seemed to have no trouble. And, once you sat down in conference to discuss the proceedings, you found that he was polite, quietly spoken and reassuringly articulate, even in English. You cross your fingers behind your back.

  ‘Mr Kelati,’ the judge says, ‘Mr Eastly may have some questions for you.’

  Your opponent, a Home Office Presenting Officer called Gavin Eastly, jumps to his feet, almost slobbering with excitement, but props himself on the lectern on one elbow, in a faux-casual pose he might adopt to initiate a flirtatious chat with an unobtainable woman over a pint. From his balloon paunch you’d say he spends a lot of time drinking pints. You feel like maliciously sticking a pin in it to see if it pops. You knew you couldn’t stand the guy when the first thing he said to you outside the consultation room this morning was: ‘So, Miss Munroe,’ (it’s Ms), ‘I see you’re only just out of pupillage. Is this your very first appeal?’ He smirked, revealing a whole extra chin, before handing you his skeleton argument and a pile of comparable cases, as if you’d have time to read them in the five minutes before the hearing started. ‘Uphill struggle for you here,’ he said. ‘But you’ll soon learn when to advise those instructing you to back down in these kinds of cases.’ At least I’m a proper barrister, not a HOPO, you’d felt like retorting. Guys like that weren’t worth wasting energy over – but he’d still managed to get you rattled. Was your case really that bad?

  ‘Mr Kelati,’ Gavin Eastly says, ‘you entered this country illegally and you proceeded to work here without a visa for nearly a year before seeking asylum.’

  ‘Yes, but I was trafficked here, and forced to work—’

  ‘Well, hang on a minute, you say you first worked in a shellfish factory run by a man named Mr Aziz Hussain, whom you describe as a gangmaster.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who was never found there, or anywhere.’

  ‘Maybe not, but he ran it. The police found his documents—’

  ‘You worked there for four months.’

  ‘Just under that, yes.’

  ‘Without a visa.’

  ‘We had no papers at all, it was impossible to—’

  ‘And there was nothing stopping you leaving the factory, was there? No handcuffs, no locked doors, no wall.’

  ‘Aziz told us—’

  ‘Mr Kelati, the question is, there was no physical barrier of any kind stopping you from leaving, was there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So when you claim that you were engaged in forced labour, that’s incorrect, isn’t it? You’re not forced to do something if you’re free to leave.’

  ‘But Aziz had a gun—’

  ‘Now, now, Mr Kelati, you have made much of this gun in your new witness statement, but you failed to mention it in your original statement.’

  This was true – you couldn’t believe Veata had left it out before.

  ‘I did tell my caseworker,’ YK said.

  ‘Hold on. Now, you signed your first witness statement, didn’t you, Mr Kelati? Signed to affirm that it was true.’

  ‘Yes. It was.’

  ‘But you omitted to mention a gun. Now, if you had known of a gun or perceived it as a genuine threat, Mr Kelati, you would have mentioned it originally, wouldn’t you? It would have been a very important thing to mention.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘So I suggest to you that there was no gun either in your mind or on the premises before you decided to move on, Mr Kelati. So surely, as a man who claims to be educated to university level, you must have received some cash payment for your work there, or you would not have stayed in the job voluntarily for so long.’

  ‘We were not even paid one pound. Aziz told us we were in debt for being smuggled, and if we left before it was paid his men would get us, or the police would lock us up, and we would be too late to claim asylum, and he tortured the workers, it is in the fresh evidence…’ YK is rushing, now, speaking too fast.

  Don’t panic, you whisper.

  ‘Let us leave evidential burdens to the lawyers, shall we, Mr Kelati?’ Gavin Eastly says, pulling his signature smirk as he glances at the judge. ‘You are making several assertions here. You assert that Mr Hussain was a trafficker, but you’ve provided no evidence that he was involved in your journey here, or that any debts were owed by you to him for services related to that journey – apart from the shared assumption of your fellow worker, Osman Zekarias.’

  ‘Objection,’ you pipe up. ‘There is evidence that the workers at the factory were trafficked and not paid: if I may refer you, Madam, to the police statement at Tab 3 of the bundle…’

  ‘Well…’ Gavin Eastly says, reddening a little, ‘you certainly did work illegally for cash for nearly a year after that, before you finally did decide to claim asylum, didn’t you? And somehow you knew it wasn’t too late then.’

  ‘Because they advised me. The Refugee Legal Centre.’

  ‘Advice you could have obtained earlier. Advice that illegal friends of yours must surely have discussed.’

  ‘I was scared of being deported.’

  ‘Mr Kelati, I put it to you that you delayed seeking asylum for so long because you knew you didn’t have a case for it.’

  ‘Objection – speculation!’ you butt in, more squeakily than you mean to.

  ‘Yes. Could you move onto another line of questioning, Mr Eastly,’ the judge says, irritably, you are pleased to note.

  ‘Indeed, madam…’

  Gavin Eastly starts asking about YK’s illegal work in Molly Muldoon’s house. You suspected he’d make that connection with the story in the papers, even though neither of them was named – he probably just wants the gossip to spread around his HOPO buddies. Seems pointless, as they will both flatly deny it, just as Quentin Lambourne did. But the possibility will still be raised in the judge’s mind, and that must be Gavin Eastly’s purpose. The other witnesses are sitting outside the hearing room still, waiting to give their evidence, and you wonder what Quentin Lambourne – Quentin Lambourne MP now – thinks about his wife coming along here. They’ve separated, apparently, so perhaps he doesn’t know or care. It was interesting to put another face to a name, this morning, meeting Nina. She’s kind of pretty, in a skinny, angular way, more so than in the pictures you’d seen of her with her husband, and her red hair is even more striking, almost unnaturally so; you suspect she’s dyed it to conceal greys. She’s quirkily dressed, with a vintage cardigan, but she looks almost childish, she’s such a featherweight. You had your eyes peeled for chemistry between her and YK this morning in conference, and she was certainly gazing at him a lot. You couldn’t be sure – nothing was overt. But now you’re the one speculating…

  ‘Now, back in Eritrea, you claim to have been persecuted,’ Gavin Eastly says.

  ‘Yes, I was put in prison because they found out that I was writing critical things about the regime, and I was tortured, but I escaped—’

  ‘Now hang on a second. You have said that you were a political prisoner and you escaped. But you don’t have any evidence of that either, do you?’ Gavin Eastly is clearly preparing himself to suggest next that your client’s whole story of making his way across a thorny desert and a militarized border is inherently improbable…

  But then Veata taps you on the shoulder, and passes you a note.

  AZIZ HAS BEEN FOUND!

  You re-read it. You turn around to check she’s serious. She brandishes her Blackberry at you, which
seems to have an email on it. The font is too small… Suicide? You could not have made this up.

  You get to your feet, heart thumping. ‘Madam, I apologize for the interruption, but I must request a short adjournment. I have just been informed by my instructing solicitor that…’ You look over at YK, and it crosses your mind that he should hear this privately first, but you need to explain to the judge now and you want it to make an impact. ‘Aziz Hussain has just been found,’ you say, leaving a short pause afterwards, in which everything in the room goes deadly silent, before adding, with appropriate emphasis: ‘Our contact informs us that all signs point to him having shot himself shortly before the police arrived. I submit that evidence in connection with the incident is reasonably likely to be relevant to this case, madam, and propose to seek further information about it accordingly, for the benefit of the tribunal.’

  YK is staring at me as if I’d just pulled Aziz’s corpse out of my suitcase and started waltzing with it.

  ‘Madam I submit that it is for too late to introduce this information and I cannot see how it is in any way relevant,’ Gavin Eastly pipes up, unconvincingly, while turning purple around the edges. ‘The mental state of a former employer of the appellant has no bearing on—’

  ‘Adjournment granted,’ the judge barks, ignoring him. ‘Tribunal rise.’

  Outside the tribunal, you invite YK and the witnesses to come to the conference room, while Veata scurries off to make more calls. You all gather around the table.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Nina asks.

  When you tell her, she and Molly gasp in unison, then Nina leans over to put her arm around YK. And, from the way she looks at him – well, then you just know.