The Invisible Crowd

by Ellen Wiles

  ‘This is good, isn’t it?’ Nina asks him. ‘I mean, suicide is tantamount to a confession.’

  YK gives her a one-sided smile, but doesn’t look quite so thrilled.

  ‘Understandably that news was a huge shock,’ you say. ‘But I think—’

  ‘I wanted him to die,’ YK bursts out, ‘but I didn’t want him to kill himself. Especially after… I just thought there would be… justice.’ He looks down at his lap for a moment. Then up again, and puts his palms firmly on the table. ‘I wanted to watch him admit what he did to Osman and to all of us, and explain… I wanted…’ This is the first time today that he has seemed hesitant, lost for words. He retracts his palms, clasps his hands.

  ‘Closure?’ you ask, thinking, as it pops out of your mouth, what an inane word that is. ‘Of course you did.’

  Veata comes back into the room. ‘So,’ she says, ‘it seems that Aziz was found working as part of a different operation, connected with the same smuggler chain, but involving the “protection” of women working in prostitution above a massage parlour. An informant came forward and the police raided the place, but it seems Aziz had been tipped off and killed himself rather than handing himself in. I just can’t believe the timing.’

  ‘I know. Thanks.’ You look over at Yonas. ‘Well, I could ask the judge to adjourn until the investigation is complete so that we can take the evidence into account. She might refuse. Or we could elect to continue and hope she draws the appropriate inferences, and makes the right decision on the basis of the body of evidence we already have…’

  Yonas looks at the table, thinking it over. Nina puts her hand on his arm. ‘You want to maximize your chances, don’t you?’ she asks him.

  He nods at her slowly, but then looks back to me and says, ‘Maybe. But I also want this to be decided. It has gone on too long now, and I think we have enough evidence. Especially with the documents my sister sent. And Osman with us, able to give his evidence in such good English.’ You watch Osman smile delightedly, and stare down at his lap. ‘And I think the judge is on our side,’ YK adds.

  You are taken aback by his confidence. But as it happens, you agree. Judge Gratchet has been impatient with Gavin Eastly so far, though you wonder now whether to mention to YK how notoriously pro-government she is reputed to be in these cases, so perhaps it’s all an act. But what would that achieve? He seems so sure about his case, now. As he should be. Yes: YK should win this appeal hands down, even with a fraction of the evidence you have now. Especially thanks to the documents his sister sent through. You wish you could fly her over to witness his victory, and get her leave to remain too. ‘Let’s carry on, then,’ you say, re-enthused, looking at Veata for confirmation.

  Veata nods and smiles slightly. She’s such a petite lady, and so polite, compared to most of your instructing solicitors, but somehow closed, private, remote. You wonder, briefly, how she came to be doing this work.

  Back in the tribunal, you pass on the information about Aziz and propose proceeding. The judge agrees, and Gavin Eastly resumes his cross-examination.

  In bullish fashion, he does his best to paint YK as a devious interloper – but you’re not overawed by Gavin Eastly any more. And you don’t think YK is either. He isn’t rushing his answers now. He’s speaking fluently but at a measured pace, replete with self-assurance, making it harder for Gavin Eastly to interrupt convincingly, or maintain the pace of his previous quick-fire attack.

  And when you get to re-examine YK, you feel a calm confidence float up in your chest as you ask him clarifying questions. The bizarre timing of the news about Aziz arriving during this hearing a year after the factory raid might make it too late to count for much as evidence, but it does feel like a sign, a good omen, an early vindication of sorts that seems to give every word you utter a renewed boost of validity. And Yonas’s answers seem to sing back to you across the tribunal now, in harmony with what you want to hear, never scrambled, never going off on tangents, never extending unnecessarily. The two of you are perfectly in sync, at this moment, just as you were when you first arrived in different corners of the world. And it’s a foreign sensation, this smooth control you seem to have gained over the hearing; it feels a bit like the time you and Max landed a jammy new Mercedes on your first holiday together to France due to an error on the hire company’s part, when the only car you’d ever driven before was your old, beaten-up Mini with its spongy gears and grunting engine.

  Judge Grachet listens to both sets of closing submissions, then pauses to finish some scribbles. Every muscle in your body clenches. Then she looks up.

  ‘I am going to reserve judgment,’ she announces tartly.

  You let out a sigh, which you hope she didn’t hear. It’s obviously disappointing not to hear her declare your victory immediately and unreservedly, and proclaim how uniquely deserving YK is as a candidate for leave to remain in this country and what excellent representation he’s had – but at least she’s not making a quick decision to boot him out. It’s probably a good sign that she needs more time, isn’t it?

  ‘Tribunal rise,’ the clerk crows. You mirror the judge as she stands, then watch her take her leave. You can’t help tingling with optimism, and find you have to stifle a smile.

  Outside the hearing room, Emil is ecstatic, clapping like you’ve already won, but YK laughs at him, saying you’ll all have to wait and see. He’s right, of course. You thank all the witnesses. YK shakes your hand and tells you how grateful he is, which means more than you could possibly express at this moment, and you wonder if this is the last time you’ll ever see him.

  ‘Pleasure,’ you say. ‘Also – happy birthday for next week!’

  ‘Oh! Thank you,’ he says, surprised.

  ‘I only noticed because it’ll be mine the same day. We’re even the same age, as it happens.’

  ‘Really?’

  And now you’ve said it, and seen the look on his face, you realize it sounds like you’ve stalked him, or made it up. But it’s only because you saw you shared a birthday that you started imagining switching places, that you got so caught up in his case. Still, you briefly imagine receiving a formal letter saying: Dear Ms Munroe, The Secretary of State finds your assertion that you and the appellant share a birthday to lack credibility… ‘Let’s hope we have good news by then, so we can doubly celebrate,’ you tell him.

  ‘Yes, let us hope!’ he says.

  You want to ask him to keep in touch, to see if he’d like to meet for a coffee, to let you know where he is by next year’s birthday, to say you’d like to send him a card… You want at least to say something about how his case has affected you, to tell him that you’ve since thought about his life so hard that you’ve imagined details like his favourite dish, the music his parents listened to, the objects he carries around in his pockets… But you just smile, wish him the best of luck, and watch them turn and walk away: Nina, threading her arm through his, and Molly, placing her hand on his back from other side, then falling into step with Emil and Osman.

  You lose sight of them, but stay staring down the corridor for a few more moments, before you notice that Veata has appeared next to you, and is looking at you oddly. You grin at her, collecting yourself, as if you’d just been spaced out for a second, and have a short wrap-up chat about the case. After you’ve thanked each other, you walk back to the robing room alone.

  You feel bereft at parting with YK, even though you’ve only just met. Exhaustion descends like a thick curtain. Your limbs are leaden, and you want to curl up on the floor… but Gavin Eastly would inevitably come in and mock you. You sigh, pull out your phone, switch it on, and find a text from Max that he must have sent this morning.

  Good luck smooch. And one from Alec, whose entire face is smeared with yoghurt xxx

  Yuck! you imagine saying with maximum disgust, to your son’s hilarity. You should head home and make it in time for bedtime, for once. And then, once Alec is asleep, you should crack open a bottle of wine and fess up to Max that you’
ve been having an elaborate fantasy about a client; but that it’s not how it sounds – that it’s made you realize what’s important: home, family, love…

  He’d probably think you were being flippant, or having an overemotional case come-down. But you could insist you meant it. And maybe he’s been wishing for ages that you’d not only be around occasionally, but would express some genuine affection. Yes, you will try to tell Max from the heart what he means to you. And then break it to him that you’re not quite ready to quit being a barrister after all.

  All you need now is a quick sugar hit to summon up the energy to pack up your stuff and head home via chambers, so you reach into your handbag for your emergency Snickers, and pull out…

  A postcard. Where did this come from? The picture is of the Queen’s Royal Guards marching outside Buckingham Palace in their furry hats. Is this a joke?

  Thank you for fighting to save a bear

  from extinction.

  Yours,

  Yonas Kelati

  Epilogue

  The morning sun bathes my skin, bee-eaters chirp in the bushes, and our hens cluck lazily from the shade. ‘Come on, Yonas, or we’ll be late for school,’ my mother calls from the kitchen.

  ‘Okay,’ I yell back, and head over to our mango tree to look for some fallen fruit that she can chop up for breakfast, just like any other day. But it’s not just any other day. For the past year, which feels like for ever, I have been walking with my mother and sister to school filled with envy, wishing I could go in too, sit by Melat at a desk, learn what she’s learning. We used to be as good as each other at reading, but now she shows off with her writing, all neat with perfectly curly letters. When I tried to copy, it looked like a cockroach had lurched across the page, so I gave up and pretended I didn’t care. Being the younger one is so unfair! But now I’m going to catch her. By the end of the first term I’ll be able to write any word in the whole dictionary.

  A fallen mango glistens in the grass, perfectly fat, and I pick it up to confirm the soft give of its skin, then place it in my basket. I head on to the hens’ coop and open the door at the top, provoking the usual flustered clucking. Russom is looking at me silently with a beady eye, reminding me to say hello to him too. I feel around the hens’ fussing, feathered bodies, and… yes! An egg, perfectly smooth and warm. Two eggs. Three! This is a great sign for my first day. I place them gently in my basket next to the mango, and walk back towards the house, diverting around the pile of bricks…

  But my foot catches – oh, no, no, no – I fly through the air, then smack down onto my knees, putting out my hands to protect my face and jarring my wrists, while the basket continues floating on in space, spraying out the three precious eggs and the mango which seem to hover, intact and tantalizing, before smashing to the ground.

  My knees sting. I sit up to inspect them. Blood and dirt mingled together, flaps of skin hanging off. I start to cry. My mother is going to be cross. She was already cross that I got up late, and now I’ve ruined everyone’s breakfast. So much for my first day of school.

  ‘Well then, little man.’ It’s my grandfather. He’s standing over me, eyebrows tangled in a frown. I look up at him, miserable.

  ‘I smashed three eggs,’ I confess, quaking – as if it wasn’t obvious. Grandfather swears that eggs from happy hens are the key to good health, and built our poultry palace himself from cut-off bits of timber, complete with special walkways and nesting corners.

  ‘Never mind about that.’ He chuckles. ‘Give me your hand.’ He pulls me to my feet. ‘Let’s have a look at those knees. Hmm, in the wars, just like our country. Well, there’ll be more scratches along the way, but you’ll come out all right. You’re a lucky one, you know.’ I look at him, confused, as I scrub away my tears with a filthy hand. How am I lucky when I’ve just fallen over on my first day and ruined my knees and smashed all the fresh eggs? But my grandfather is smiling. ‘And just so you remember that, I’ve got something for you.’ He holds out a clenched fist.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s something you can carry in your pocket, to keep you safe.’ I reach out for it. ‘Wait,’ he says gruffly. Reluctantly, I retract my arm. ‘It will also remind you, like Russom over there each dawn, that you need to get up on time and work hard if you want to do well. Always strive for what you wish for, and never give up. Got that?’

  I nod eagerly. I can’t imagine what he could have in there. A watch, maybe? ‘Can I see now?’ I ask. He lets me peel back his fingers, one by one. In his deeply creased palm lies a tiny wooden rooster with a perfectly curved tail, smooth ridges for feathers, and black pinpoint eyes that Grandfather must have burned on with a hot wire. Nobody else at school will have anything like this. ‘Cockadoodledoo!’ I call out gleefully, for a moment forgetting all about my mangled knees. Carefully, as if it were a real live chick, I take it.

  Afterword

  Like Jude, I used to be a barrister specializing in human rights. Early on, before the current refugee crisis exploded, I worked on an Eritrean asylum appeal. Reading the legal documents and precedent cases made a huge impression on me; I knew nothing about Eritrea and its extraordinary history before, and I was fascinated by the journeys and experiences of the appellants. I was particularly struck with how inherently dramatic their stories were in ‘plot’ terms, and yet how much individual experience must have been lost in translation to arrive at the dry, legal language in my papers. I also felt angered by the gulf between the factual realities of the lives I was reading about and the sensationalist tabloid headlines about asylum seekers. It reminded me of the potent power of language to distort and exclude – and yet how language can have at least as much power to forge empathy and bridge gulfs of experience or narrative, particularly in fiction. So I looked around for novels that were telling these sorts of stories, but at that time there didn’t seem to be many. I decided to experiment with writing one myself.

  It wasn’t just about a message, though. No good novel is. Story is always queen. And I wanted to write fiction anyway. One of my earliest memories is cowriting a fairy tale with my dad on his old Amstrad word processor with its bright green Courier font, and I already had a few failed novel attempts in the desk drawer, but this was the first one that compelled me to keep going until the end. So, while I hope people read The Invisible Crowd as a contribution to the growing body of stories about refugee, asylum and migrant experiences, which are sorely needed in these times, most of all I hope they will enjoy it as a yarn about humans.

  Acknowledgements

  This book simmered sporadically over the course of nearly a decade around barrister work, adventures in Myanmar, a PhD, an experimental live literature project, and two beautiful, bombastic babies. It owes its finished form to a multitude of sources, places and people.

  For those interested in finding out more about Eritrea, key sources include articles by exiled journalists Abraham T. Zere, Eyob Ghilazgy and other writers whose work can be found on the PEN Eritrea website; Christine Matzke’s research on Eritrean theatre culture, and Three Eritrean Plays by Musgun Zerai, Isaias Tsegay, Solomon Dirar edited by Jane Plastow; Ghirmai Negash’s work on Tigrinya literature and the fiction of Beyene Heile in particular; Lesley Gottesman’s work on literacy in Eritrea; wider-ranging histories and non-fiction accounts of Eritrea, including Michela Wrong’s powerful book I Didn’t Do it for You, Martin Plaut’s Understanding Eritrea, Edward Denison and Edward Plaice’s Eritrea: The Bradt Travel Guide and writings on Asmara’s architecture, and Alemseged Tesfai’s work on Eritrean history. Novels about Eritrea include Thomas Keneally’s Towards Asmara set during the liberation struggle and Nadifa Mohamed’s Black Mamba Boy about her father’s journey to the UK. Michela Wrong’s Borderlines is a novel set around a border dispute between fictional countries that are strikingly comparable to Eritrea and Ethiopia. Notable memoirs about Eritrea are Hannah Pool’s My Fathers’ Daughter, Justin Hill’s Ciao Asmara, and Senait Mehari’s controversial Heart of Fire. Text
s on the asylum experiences of Eritreans in the UK include Rachel Warner’s Voices from Eritrea, as well as online articles published by the Refugee Council, AVID (Association of Visitors to Immigration Detainees) and others. For those keen to read more fiction about refugee, asylum seeker and immigrant experiences, some that I have enjoyed are Viet Than Nguyen’s collection The Refugees and Jamaica Kincaird’s Lucy, Caryl Phillips’s A Distant Shore, Lloyd Jones’s Hand Me Down World, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, NoViolet Bulaweyo’s We Need New Names, Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand, Dave Eggers’ What Is the What, Benjamin Zephaniah’s Refugee Boy, Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English, Rose Tremain’s The Road Home and Sunjeev Sahota’s The Year of the Runaways. Warsan Shire’s moving poem ‘Home’ deserves a special mention for its poignant plea for understanding the reasons why people leave theirs. Thank you to the family of Amanuel Asrat and for granting me permission to include in the novel part of the text of Asrat’s powerful poem ‘The Scourge of War’, translated by Tedros Abraham. One of the most rich, beautiful and humane books I have come across on migration is Ruth Padel’s The Mara Crossing: Poems and Prose on Migration.

  I have spoken to many Eritreans about their experiences of seeking asylum in the UK, most of whom do not wish to be named, but all of whom I am incredibly grateful to. In particular, Eyob Ghilazgy and Abraham T. Zere were both very generous with their time in talking about their experiences as exiled journalists, and one member of an Eritrean church in London, who knows who he is, spoke to me at great length with insight and sensitivity about his and his community’s experiences. Volunteering with asylum seekers and refugees at the Refugee Council and at an immigration removal centre in the UK has been profoundly moving and illuminating. There are just so many heartrending and astonishing stories out there to be told and to be listened to. If more of them were, then surely more voices would be raised in protest, and oppressive policies like the indefinite detention of asylum seekers in the UK and cuts to legal aid would change. Organizations like Counterpoints Arts, PositiveNegatives and Refugee Tales are now working hard to convey these messages through the arts, and The Refugee Council, Refugees at Home and numerous other organizations do fantastic work to ensure that communication leads to action. There are always many sides to a story, and thank you also to the Home Office interviewer who took the time to tell me his.