Refugee Boy

by Benjamin Zephaniah

  Alem sat down and began to open the letter. It was an awkward letter to open. It was one of those extra-light airmail letters that fold in such a way that the letter itself becomes the envelope.

  ‘I’ve a letter opener,’ Mr Fitzgerald said, turning to leave the room.

  ‘Actually,’ Mariam interrupted swiftly, ‘I think it may be best if you read the letter alone, Alem.’

  Alem stopped. The room went silent as he looked around for a reaction.

  ‘Go to your room if you like, it’s probably best if you read it in your own space,’ Mrs Fitzgerald said.

  Alem headed upstairs and Mrs Fitzgerald began to pour Mariam more tea. ‘How would his father know how to contact him?’ she enquired.

  ‘The Refugee Council is well known around the world, and many people know that if someone is in Britain and they are in the process of seeking refugee status, we can usually track them down.’

  ‘Tell me something,’ Mr Fitzgerald said, eager to learn, ‘are there British refugees in other countries?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Mariam replied. ‘You would be surprised how many British refugees there are in places like Brazil and Mexico. They’re usually whistle blowers but there are very old political refugees from the time of World War II still living in Russia and Cuba.’

  For the next fifteen minutes they drank more tea and talked about Cuba. Then it occurred to Mariam that they had heard nothing from Alem, so she expressed her concern to Mrs Fitzgerald, who went up to his room and stood outside the door.

  ‘Alem?’ she said, but there was no reply. ‘Alem, are you all right?’

  There was still no reply. She knocked on the door and raised her voice. ‘Alem, is anything the matter?’

  Mariam heard the calls and went and stood at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Is everything all right, Mrs Fitzgerald?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied, ‘Alem’s not answering me. Alem,’ she continued, ‘Alem, can I come in?’

  At last Alem replied. His voice was quiet, conveying no obvious emotion. ‘No, please don’t come in. I’m OK – I shall come down soon. Please leave me alone for a while, I will be down soon.’

  ‘As you say,’ said Mrs Fitzgerald, and she made her way downstairs.

  Back in the living room Mrs Fitzgerald told Mariam what Alem had said and then offered her another cup of tea.

  Nobody knew what to think or do. The tea ritual was now useful because it meant that something was happening in the room. Then as they drank, they heard Alem making his way slowly down the stairs. He entered the room expressionless. He sat back in the seat where he sat previously and threw the letter on the coffee table in the centre of the room. It slid across the table and ended up tucked under the saucer of Mariam’s cup.

  ‘Read it, Mariam, and then tell me what I should do,’ Alem said.

  Mariam picked up the letter, unfolded it and read it silently to herself. The only sound that could be heard was the sound of rush-hour traffic and barking dogs in the distance.

  My dearest son,

  I do hope this letter finds you soon and that you are as well as can be. War is such a terrible thing, my son, I hope you never witness it again. Darkness is upon our land; it seems that every man that is alive is limping and that there are bloodstains on the dresses of all our women. Today I found the arm of a man lying at the side of a street. No body, just one arm. And I found myself asking trivial questions like, ‘Is this an Ethiopian or an Eritrean arm?’ Could you believe it? I was asking this question, I, the great Pan-Africanist. War is eating away at our souls, young man, it is terrible.

  Sadly I must tell you that I have bad news. From the day I returned here I have been searching but I cannot find your mother. She left your auntie’s house in Asmara to go visit your grandmother in Badme. Some people tell me she has been seen in Ethiopia, some say she is in Eritrea, but I have tried everywhere I can think of and I can’t find her. When I came back I found that your auntie’s house had been looted and burnt but your auntie got out in time. She is with your grandmother now. It has been very hard for me. I have hardly slept since I came back here. I did not want to give you such news but what can I do? You must know the truth, son. I can’t find your mother. I ask myself, what kind of a place do I live in if I can’t find your mother, my wife and ourlove? But I can casually find the arm of someone I don’t know just lying in the streets.

  The organisation of EAST has fallen apart and now there is not a single organisation working for peace in the region. It seems that our people are so busy dealing with war that there is no time to deal in peace. Our Eritrean office has been raided and our Ethiopian office has been raided too. It is so sad that our only surviving branch is in London.

  I hope you understand why we had to leave you in England for a while. I have so much work to do, and I will not stop until I find your mother. Be strong, young man. Learn more English and remember to love your neighbour. I will write you another letter soon.

  Your loving father

  Mariam carefully folded the letter. ‘Your father said be strong and that’s exactly what you must be,’ she said, placing the letter on the table.

  The front door opened. It was Ruth returning from work. ‘Hello, I’m home,’ she shouted, running upstairs to play some CDs.

  Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald sat awkwardly looking at each other, trying not to catch the eyes of Mariam or Alem. As always, the first to speak up was Mrs Fitzgerald.

  ‘So what is it? Can we help?’

  ‘Alem will explain when he is ready,’ Mariam said.

  ‘I am ready,’ Alem said. ‘You can read the letter,’ he said, looking at Mrs Fitzgerald.

  Mrs Fitzgerald began to feel it was unwise to push for too much information. She decided to back off. ‘It’s all right, tell us about it later.’

  But Alem could see no reason why it had to be left until later. He leaned forward, picked up the letter and handed it to Mrs Fitzgerald. As he leaned back, he announced, ‘My mother is gone.’

  The Fitzgeralds simultaneously broke out into speech.

  ‘What do you mean she’s gone? There must be some mistake,’ said Mrs Fitzgerald.

  ‘Gone where?’ asked Mr Fitzgerald.

  Alem fixed his gaze on the coffee table. ‘Nobody knows. She might be kidnapped, or soldiers could have made her into a slave.’

  ‘Oh, god, oh, my god! That’s a terrible thought,’ said Mr Fitzgerald, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

  Mariam raised her voice, making sure everyone else heard her. ‘No, Alem, that is not what the letter says, and you must not assume such things.’

  ‘So where is my mother?’ Alem asked, looking straight into Mariam’s eyes. ‘These are the kinds of things that soldiers do.’

  ‘We don’t know what’s happened,’ Mariam replied, raising her shoulders and stretching the upturned palms of her hands towards Alem as if to invite suggestions. ‘But because your father has had problems finding her, you don’t have to assume the worst. He may have found her even before this letter arrived. He will write again soon and, who knows, your next letter may be written by her, we just don’t know.’

  Alem stood up. ‘I must go to my room.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Alem,’ Mariam said, trying to reassure him.

  Alem’s mood remained unchanged. He still showed little emotion. Nobody had seen him as cold as this before. Once more he looked directly into the eyes of Mariam as he spoke.

  ‘You are an African, Mariam, you know Eritrea, you know Ethiopia, and you also know that where we come from, when a woman disappears, anything is possible. They are burning down houses, they are bombing schools, there are pieces of people’s bodies lying in the streets; this is war, and war is bad wherever it is. But the war that is happening in Eritrea and Ethiopia is so cruel. It is like a family at war, it is neighbour killing neighbour. We are killing ourselves as if we never want to see ourselves again, and when you hate yourself this much, anything is possible.’

  The Fitzgeralds saw Ma
riam shudder from the truth and drop her head in silence.

  Mrs Fitzgerald stood up, put the letter on the table, rubbed her hands together and said, ‘I think I’ll go and make some fresh tea.’

  Chapter 10

  ˜ What the Papers Say ˜

  Alem hated the idea of becoming some kind of problem to the Fitzgerald family, so he did his best not to inconvenience them in any way and he tried to continue life as normal. Even on the very evening that he received the news about his mother’s disappearance, he still ate his evening meal with them and he remained his well-mannered self. Still he was convinced that his mother was being used as some kind of slave or being kept prisoner. For a moment he wondered who could be responsible, but that mattered very little to him; they were Africans, they were human beings.

  He read the letter countless times that night, trying to pluck clues from every line. If the house has been burnt and looted, where was my father living? And why did my father not put a return address on the letter?

  EAST stood for the East African Solidarity Trust, an organisation dedicated to unifying the various tribes of the region. Alem’s parents were both involved with it, but Alem had had no idea that they had an office in London. Now he wondered where that office was.

  Although he had only managed to sleep for a couple of hours, the next morning Alem was awake early. He found a copy of Great Expectations on his bookshelf and he read the first chapter before he went down to breakfast.

  Ruth played her music as always but Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald had been very quiet the night before and they were the same the next morning. It bothered Alem, he felt that he had caused the atmosphere of the household to change, but he knew that there was nothing much that he could do. The night before, the Fitzgeralds had had a quiet family meeting while Alem was in his room. Ruth was a reluctant participant in the meeting – she would have much preferred to be somewhere else. She was warned by her mother to be more considerate to Alem. Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald had decided that they had to go as softly as they could with him, avoiding references to his homeland and giving him as much space as he needed. But what Alem wanted was normality. When Mrs Fitzgerald told Alem that it wouldn’t be taken badly if he missed school, Alem insisted on going.

  So a determined Alem attended school for the second time. While he was at school, Mrs Fitzgerald rang Sheila the social worker to explain what had happened. Sheila already knew about the letter, Mariam had got to her first, but like the Fitzgeralds she was surprised that Alem had gone to school that day. Sheila’s instinct was to pay the family a visit but having heard about Alem’s reaction to the letter, she thought it best to leave him alone for a little while longer. Mrs Fitzgerald thought that in many respects Alem was handling the situation quite well. He did not shout, he hadn’t torn anything up, he hadn’t kicked anything down. His self-control impressed Mrs Fitzgerald but it worried Sheila.

  ‘He’s carrying unopened baggage,’ she said in a caring-social-worker kind of way. ‘Soon he will have to open the baggage and deal with the contents.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mrs Fitzgerald asked, dropping her voice as if Alem could hear from school.

  ‘He’s like a time bomb waiting to go off.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Mrs Fitzgerald asked, wondering whether Sheila had lost her own baggage altogether.

  ‘Yes, he’s bottling it all up, and one day he may explode emotionally. He can cope with the stuff in his cup now, but one day his cup will runneth over.’

  ‘Oh,’ Mrs Fitzgerald said, a little puzzled by Sheila’s use of metaphors. ‘So when do you think his cup will runneth over? I mean, do you think he will explode this week?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Sheila replied, ‘it could be tomorrow, it could be the next day, it could be next year, we just don’t know. Some children keep things bottled up all their lives until they are fully grown adults before they deal with it.’

  Meanwhile in school Alem was looking, listening and learning. Alongside the exercise books that he was accumulating for the lessons, he had an extra notebook where he wrote down words or phrases that he didn’t understand. He would try to understand everything. At dinnertime he met up with Robert again. Robert offered him another cigarette and Alem refused. But he also began to speak to other pupils; struggling to remember the strange names of both the pupils and the teachers, every time he heard a new name he repeated it to himself a few times. Sometimes he would repeat the name until he was out of the person’s sight, then he would write it down in his notebook.

  Alem smiled very little on his second day at school. He tried not to draw any attention to himself and to be as polite and well behaved as he possibly could. Robert noticed his seriousness. At the school gates, just before departing for their homes, Robert tried to find out what was on Alem’s mind.

  ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like the school or what?’ he asked playfully.

  ‘I like the school very much,’ Alem replied. ‘It is very good, it is full with possibilities. I think the facilities are good, the building is structurally sound, and I think that the students here have a great opportunity to advance, physically, intellectually and socially.’

  ‘Hold on, guy! It may be good but it’s not that good,’ Robert said, even more playful. ‘We got some OK teachers and some OK girls and then there’s me, but that don’t make it like some kinda posh university or something. A couple of years ago, when I first came here, we were at the bottom of the league table.’

  Alem was thrown into confusion. He wasn’t sure if he should be taking Robert seriously, but he felt that there was some truth in what he was saying.

  ‘What is a league table?’ Alem asked.

  ‘The league table is like a football league. The best schools in the country are on the top and the worst are on the bottom; we were way down near the bottom.’

  ‘What, you have to play all the other schools in the country in some kind of competition?’ Alem asked, still confused.

  ‘No, inspectors come round and give us marks or something like that. I don’t know, they test the teachers or something. Anyway, don’t worry. Once we were somewhere near the bottom, now we’re in the middle, maybe even going up, but we ain’t all that good. Where do you live anyway?’

  ‘Meanly Road,’ Alem replied.

  ‘Meanly Road,’ Robert replied, ‘I know that road. Maybe over the weekend we could play football. Do you play football?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You don’t play football? It’s easy. You just kick the ball, do a bit of dribbling and try and get it in the net.’

  ‘I know how to play it, but the question you asked was do I play it – and I don’t.’

  ‘So what are you, a professor or something? OK, can you play Rip Speed?’

  ‘What is Rip Speed?’

  ‘It’s a computer game, a car-chase game?’

  ‘No,’ Alem replied. ‘But I can play Euro Racer, that’s a car game.’

  ‘OK, now we’re talking – do you like girls then?’ Robert asked in a bid to take the conversation to another level.

  ‘I have nothing against them,’ Alem replied diplomatically.

  ‘I don’t believe you, guy. So what do you do in your spare time?’ he asked in a last effort to see if they had anything in common.

  ‘I read,’ said Alem.

  ‘You read?’ Robert said in a mild state of shock. ‘Reading is what you do in school, reading is what you do when you’re told to. So what do you do when you are not reading, then?’

  ‘I think,’ Alem replied.

  ‘See you later,’ Robert said, shaking his head as he began to walk away.

  For the next couple of days life at home and at school went on without any major incidents. In the house the letter from Alem’s father was not mentioned but it was obvious that it was on everybody’s mind. Ruth worked and played and managed to tolerate Alem without being openly hostile to him. Mr Fitzgerald continued to watch over his fish in the garden. Mrs Fitzgerald continued to
imitate her mother’s attempts to maintain a perfectly clean house, where all the meals were on time and the toilet paper never ran out in the holder.

  At school Alem had made another friend. His name was Ray Buckley, but his friends called him Buck. Buck was in the same year group as Alem but in a different class. He was tall and slim and looked a bit like a young Mick Jagger. Buck spent most of his spare time playing his guitar. He came from a well-to-do family that had lived in the area for as far back as they could trace, but all he wanted to do was leave the area. He had long slim fingers that looked as if they were designed for the job of playing the guitar, and he had a great love of singer-songwriters, most of whom were no longer walking the earth: John Lennon, Bob Marley and Kurt Cobain were among his favourites. Other kids at school thought that he looked older than his age because of his constant worrying about the state of the world, but he had a kind of wisdom about him which attracted Alem. He smiled very little and was generally thought of as a bit depressive.

  Generally speaking Alem liked the quieter kids at school. He couldn’t understand why kids who had the opportunity of going to school would want to go into a classroom and make a lot of noise and not learn. Least of all could he understand why some kids would play truant when they had the privilege of going to school. School was preparation for the future, as far as Alem was concerned, and he had no intention of going into the future unprepared.

  By the end of the week Alem felt that he had done well and he was already looking forward to the next week. He had offers from Robert and Buck to hang out over the weekend but he declined them all. His plan was to go home and finish Great Expectations so that he could be more involved in his English class.

  On Friday when he arrived home Mrs Fitzgerald opened the door as always, but Alem could sense that something was not right. She smiled as she said ‘Hello’ but it wasn’t the warm, maternal smile that usually greeted him. Alem wanted to get straight down to it.

  ‘What is the problem, Mrs Fitzgerald?’ he asked.