As the plane flitted across the dawn skies, I gazed at what I presumed had to be London. I could see lights twinkling below, but they were muffled by what looked like cloud low on the ground. We landed so smoothly I hardly felt a bump. How could it do that, I wondered, when it had just fallen out of the sky? I grabbed my handbag and got up to follow my agent out of the aircraft. We joined a crowd of people surging into the building and followed a series of corridors that took us to a line of booths.
We stopped. There were two lines. One was for those carrying purple passports, the other for everyone else. Most of the people with the purple passports were khawajat—so I presumed this was the line for the British. I was surprised when my agent joined that line. Together we inched forward until we were at the desk. The official reached out and took two passports from my agent. He pushed them into some sort of machine, gazed at it for a few seconds, glanced at my agent and me, and then waved us through.
I couldn’t believe it. How had my agent managed it? How had he got us into England using the “British” line? We had no luggage to collect, so quick as he could my agent led me through the terminal and into the cold outside. A weak sun was trying to trickle though, but the terminal building was shrouded in the thick fog that I’d seen from the airplane. Beads of moisture covered everything: car windows, people’s clothing, even their hair. And it was freezing cold.
I pulled my cloak from my bag and tugged it around my shoulders. Still I was cold. We joined a line, and a black vehicle stopped in front of us. It had a yellow light on top, which illuminated the English word: taxi. My English was pretty basic. It consisted of what I had learned at school, refreshed now and then by watching English TV programs. I recognized the word “taxi” from some of those. My agent spoke to the driver through his open window, and then motioned for me to get in.
“Right, my job’s done,” he announced. “This man will take you to the safe place. I’ve paid him, so he’ll deliver you. I’m done. Goodbye.”
With that he turned and was gone. The taxi pulled away from the airport. I tried to relax: At least it was warm in there. I glanced around me at the city. It looked right; it looked like the pictures of London that I had seen in my schoolbooks. But I didn’t trust my agent one bit. The taxi driver was a white man and he had seemed friendly enough. I leaned forward and tapped the glass.
“Is this London?” I asked. “Is this really London?”
He glanced at me in his mirror. “It is love. It’s rainy, foggy old London town. A real dump, innit?”
We drove for an age, on and on through this sprawling city. I couldn’t believe that a city could be so large. There were so many houses and cars and people and the tower blocks did go high into the sky, just as our schoolbooks had shown us. Eventually, the taxi driver pulled over on the side of the road. He pointed at two men in dark uniforms.
“Police. Tell’em you need asylum love, okay? Asylum.”
“Aslum,” I tried saying the word. “Aslum. What does it mean?”
“Don’t worry about it, love. Just say it and that’s enough. Now off you go. Chop-chop.”
I dodged across the busy road and approached the two policemen. But I was worried. My experiences with the police in Sudan had hardly been pleasant ones.
“Good morning. Aslum,” I said, nervously. “Do you know aslum?”
The nearest policeman smiled. “New here are you, love? Here for the first time?”
I nodded. “I came from the airport.”
“You’re seeking asylum, is it?”
“Yes. Asylum.”
“All right, follow me.”
He led me over to a gray concrete tower. There were two lines of people outside, and he showed me to one of them. There were people of all differing nationalities, speaking many different languages. At school the English teacher had told us that in London you would find all the nationalities on earth. She hadn’t been joking. It was early still, but already the lines were long. Many of the people had suitcases with them.
A black man smiled at me from his place in the line. “Somalia?”
I shook my head. “Sudan.”
I scrabbled in my bag for my shawl. It was so cold that I had started to shiver. A white man was checking people in at the door of the building. He was middle-aged and he had a kindly face. He came across to me.
“Where from?” he asked. “Sudan? Darfur?”
I nodded. “Darfur.”
He smiled sympathetically. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head. “Freezing.”
“I thought as much.” He took off his big black jacket and handed it to me. “Here—try this on for size. Go on—wrap yourself up. I’m used to the cold.”
I smiled shyly. “Thank you. Very kind . . .”
“Come on, let’s get you inside before you catch your death.” He took me to the front of the line, gave me a little ticket, and showed me to a side room.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll find people to see you. Wait here, okay?”
I nodded again. I was feeling happier already. This man had been so kind to me. I curled up in the chair and tried to get warm. I started to feel sleepy. Two Indian-looking ladies came in and asked me if I was hungry. I was too shy and embarrassed to say yes, so I said that I was just tired. They told me to wait until the number on my ticket was called.
I dozed fitfully. But suddenly I was wide awake. There was screaming coming from the main hall. I peeped out through the glass door. I spotted the Somali man who had greeted me in the line with a policeman on either side of him. As I watched they started to drag him out of the building.
“No, my brothers! No!” the Somali man cried. “Don’t kill me! Don’t take me away! Don’t take me!”
I was shocked and confused. I wondered what he had done to be dragged away like that. Three hours later my number came up on the screen. I was shown to a window. I sat down against the glass. Next to me was an Arabic-looking lady. She introduced herself, telling me that she was my interpreter. I should speak to the man behind the glass and answer all of his questions.
A young white man arrived on the other side. He had a very strange appearance. He was a little fattish, and his hair was pushed up into jagged spikes. I had never seen anything like it before. Why did this man make himself look like Shaitan—like Satan—I wondered? Beneath his spiky hair he didn’t seem to have a very friendly face, either.
“Answer only what I ask,” the spiky man announced. “And tell the truth. If you tell us any lies, we’ll punish you by putting you in prison. D’you understand?”
I nodded. “Yes.” I was worried again now.
“What is your name?”
I told him.
“How did you come here?”
I told him about my two flights.
“What was the name of the airline?”
I told him that I didn’t know.
“Of course you know the name of the airline,” he objected. “What was it?”
“I was with an agent. He brought me. I’ve no idea . . .”
“Come on! You’re trying to say you didn’t see the name on the airplane? Or inside it?”
I nodded. “Yes. I didn’t see it.”
“I don’t believe you! I don’t believe you for one moment!”
I glanced at the Arabic interpreter lady in bewilderment. “Why is he getting so angry? Why would I lie about something like that?”
“What’s she saying?” he demanded, from behind the glass.
“She’s just checking that she understands the question,” the Arabic lady lied. “Look, he’s getting upset, so try to remember. Is there anything you can remember about the inside of the airplane? Letters? Numbers? Pictures? Anything?”
I thought for a second. There had been some letters on the breakfast things, but it was the last thing on my mind.
I shook my head. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”
I saw the spiky man’s face redden. He glanced at his watch. He
was taking a tea break, he declared, and when he came back he wanted some answers. My interpreter told me that she had to go, as it was the end of her shift. I sat and waited. A replacement interpreter arrived. She told me that she was called Alicia, and that she came from Lebanon. The spiky man returned, and I was relieved to see that he had calmed down a little.
“So, let’s cover some basics. Where exactly are you from?”
I told him the name of my village and the big towns that were near it. He was looking at a map. He asked me for the names of my schools, and I told him.
“Why have you come to the United Kingdom?” he asked.
“There is war in my area. I had a problem with the government. They wanted to kill me. My village was attacked and my family too. I had to flee the country.”
“Are you married?” he asked. “Any children?”
“I am married. But we have no children yet.”
“Where is your marriage certificate?”
“I don’t know. It may have been with my father, but he was killed.”
“Look, are you married or not?” The angry scowl was back again. “There’s no marriage without a certificate.”
“Yes, I am married.”
“Well, you can’t prove you’re married without a certificate. Where is your husband?”
“I think he’s here in England. But I’m not sure.”
The spiky man stared at me in disbelief. “Okay, so let’s get this straight. You claim to be married, but there’s no certificate. You claim to have a husband, but you don’t know where he is. He might be in England or he might not. Is that it?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
“Was it your husband who paid the agent to bring you here?”
“No. I sold the family gold to pay the agent. Even my grandma’s rings.”
“Yeah. Right.” He rolled his eyes. “So where is your husband? Which European country is he in?”
“I told you, I don’t know. He’s probably in England, but I don’t know.”
“How can you not know which country your husband is in? It’s impossible.”
I kept silent. I was trying to be helpful. I was telling the truth. What more did he want of me? He asked me for Sharif’s full name, and for the date and place of his birth. Then he glanced at me.
“So, is he your only husband; are there any more?”
“Why is he asking me such a question?” I demanded of the interpreter. “Do women have many husbands here in England?”
She shrugged. “Sorry. They’re always like this.”
“Well ask him from me how many wives he has? None, I bet. Who would want to marry such a horrible man?”
The interpreter tried not to laugh. “What’s she saying?” the spiky man demanded. “What’s she saying?”
“She’s saying that she only has the one husband,” the interpreter lied. “Just the one.”
The spiky man sent me off to the “next stage.” I sat to have my fingerprints taken. Then I was photographed and given a card, which was my photo ID. I was returned to the same booth, and now there was a third interpreter. This time it was an old black man with pepper gray hair. He was dressed smartly with a jacket and tie, and he had a warm, kindly expression. I could tell immediately that he was Sudanese.
As we waited for the spiky man to reappear he told me that he was from Kordofan, the area that I had walked through on my escape from Darfur. He even had a daughter studying at the same university that I had attended. The spiky man returned but he seemed in a hurry now. I guessed he was keen to get home. He gave me the name of a place where I could stay for the night and handed me a map.
“It’s marked on the map. See? If you get lost, ask. Someone will show you the way.”
I stared at the map in confusion. Of course, we didn’t have maps back in the village, and I had no idea how to use one.
“But I don’t know anywhere in this big city. How can I find my way?”
“I told you—just use the map and ask. Go on! Go and find your own way.”
“But if you came to my country and I told you to find your way across Khartoum, you’d be lost. It’s the same here with me.”
The spiky man sighed. “Look, its late. We’re about to close. You’re no longer my responsibility. I told you—you need to get on your way.”
The interpreter placed a restraining hand on my arm. “Don’t worry. Wait for me outside. I’ll help you.”
It was nine o’clock by the time we left. The old man led me on a short walk to another building.
“These people will organize somewhere for you to stay,” he told me, as he ushered me inside. “I came here as an asylum seeker, so I know what it’s like . . .”
I smiled at him. “Thank you. You’ve been so kind.”
“Here,” he said, handing me a £10 note. “Take it. It’s not much, but I can’t afford much. It’s something, at least . . .”
That night I was sent to an asylum hostel, in Croydon. I was put in a room with two other women—one from Eritrea and another from Burkina Faso. The Eritrean woman was heavily pregnant, and so she took the lower bunk and I took the one above. There was a horrible air of desperation about the asylum hostel. I could sense the pain, the dislocation, and the burning frustration that was squeezed between its walls. I lay awake that night thinking of home, and about the love and warmth of my family, and I started to cry.
My first impressions of the asylum hostel were entirely correct: It was a place of real desperation. I quickly learned the rules. Every morning we had to sign a book to show that we were there. Then we had to line up for a breakfast of tea and bread. Apart from our small room, there was a canteen that smelled of frying fat, and a reception area with two TV sets in it. There was little to do, and the only way to pass the time was to sleep.
If you failed to sign the register once, you were warned. Twice, and they would threaten to throw you out. At least that was the theory. In practice, it didn’t work that way at all. There was an Iraqi writer in the hostel whose entire family had been murdered. He was still obsessed with writing, and every morning he’d get up early and go and sign the entire register. He’d even make beautiful copies of people’s signatures. He had lost his mind, but he was harmless—and we didn’t object to him signing the register!
My Eritrean roommate, Sarah, quickly took me under her wing. There was a war in her country, and women were being forced to fight. She had left behind four children and a husband when she had fled the country. I couldn’t believe it when she told me that she had been living at the hostel for almost a year. The Home Office had lost her file, and so she had been forced to make a whole new asylum claim. She had been there for so long that she was an expert on the place, and all the new arrivals came to her for advice.
When I couldn’t work the laundry machines Sarah showed me how to put my clothes in, and how to dry them afterward. I had little desire to eat, so I skipped most meals and stayed in my room. But Sarah tried to persuade me to eat something. I didn’t want to mix with the others much, because so many seemed to have lost themselves. Even after everything that I had been through, I still had my sense of self, my pride in my identity. But there were people there who would fight with each other for no reason, or break down in the corridors rolling around and screaming.
Whatever horrors those people had suffered in their home countries, it had broken them. There was one Iraqi woman who had been forced to abandon her ten-year-old daughter. Every time she thought about it she would break down in a fit of hysterics. She spent whole nights screaming and wailing, and her cries would echo down the corridors. It was so hortrible. Lying there unable to sleep and hearing her screams was enough to drive anyone mad. I knew that she had suffered. I could see it in her eyes. But so had we all.
Every day it seemed that the hostel staff would have to call the police to restrain someone, or take them away. Everyone had their problems, and no one was alone in their suffering. I knew that these people had been through hell, but I
didn’t want to be like them. I didn’t want to end up like that, to be one of them. Having survived the hell of Darfur, and my flight from those who hunted me, I didn’t want this to be the place that finished me.
But I wasn’t coping so well. With no exercise and little food I became ill. Yet my sickness was as much in my head and my heart, as it was in my body. I was depressed. I was deeply depressed and lonely as I had never been before. My family members were either dead or scattered far and wide. My village was gone. My tribe was being wiped off the face of the earth. What was there left to live for?
I stayed in the hostel for two months, yet it felt like a lifetime. I kept wondering why had I come? For this? For this terrible limbo, this madhouse, this nothingness? Perhaps I should have taken my chances in Sudan? Here I was alive. I had saved my life. But other than that what did I have to live for? I knew that I had to get out of this place. I just had to.
Sarah alerted the hostel staff to my ill health and they sent me to see a local GP. He was a middle-aged Englishman, and he listened to me with real sympathy. As a fellow doctor I felt I could trust him, and because of his age he was something of a father figure. I told him everything. I told him about my frustration and my darkness. I was a medical doctor, just like him. I wanted to do something, to contribute, to feel that I had a reason for living. I didn’t want to sit around doing nothing in that hostel of despair.
The GP was very understanding, but there was only so much he could do. He gave me some antidepressants and sent me to the hospital. After all that I had been through he wanted me to have a full medical checkup, and he wanted me to eat properly and get well. It turned out that I had a raging ear infection, from where the soldiers in Mazkhabad had beaten me around the head. And there were other things wrong with me too.
I stayed in that hospital for three weeks, and I grew strong again. But eventually they had no excuse to keep me any longer, and I had to return to the asylum hostel. I hated being back there. Sarah, my Eritrean friend, told me that if I really wanted to get out of that place I would need a solicitor. I asked why. I had done nothing wrong. Why did I need a lawyer? My lawyer would argue my case with the Home Office, Sarah explained, which should move things along more quickly.
Tears of the Desert Page 31