Divinity Road

by Martin Pevsner

  Six weeks of this purgatory. Every few days the guards would line us all up and read out lists of names of detainees to be deported. Sometimes, filled with the thought that I was following in your footsteps, I felt a fiery determination to fight on, to complete this journey regardless of where it eventually took me. At other times, when the task of locating you seemed altogether hopeless, I felt resigned to a return to Asmara and to the vengeance of that unforgiving family.

  Together with two fellow countrymen, I began to plan my escape, a hazardous breakout involving decoy fires and the scaling of a fence topped with razor wire.

  Fortunately, our getaway was actually far more straightforward. Like me, one of my co-conspirators had his remaining wealth – in his case, three gold rings – sewn into the seam of his shirt. Afraid of the risks involved in my escape plan, this man, an army deserter from Beylul named Hassan, simply approached the most corrupt-looking of the guards and offered him the rings for our freedom.

  The guard did not hesitate. The following Thursday he placed the three of us in a separate punishment cell for some invented infringement of rules and that night, after the other guards had collapsed into a drunken stupor, he unlocked the door, guessing that our escape would be covered up the following day by his shame-faced, hungover colleagues.

  The following weeks are hazy, days hiding out in orange groves, nights walking the highways, skirting the towns, scavenging just enough to stay alive. Hassan had the name of a contact in Benghazi who organised passage by boat to southern Italy and then sealed lorry runs to France and Britain, so it was to that city that we headed.

  One night, sleeping rough on the outskirts of Benghazi, Hassan and our other companion went to buy bread. Whether they were caught by the police or simply abandoned me, I never saw them again. I had the name of the contact and of a restaurant in the sprawling market, the Souq al-Jreed, and after a day of discreet enquiries, was finally introduced to the trafficker.

  I still had two thousand dollars left, and all of that went on my new identity papers and getaway. Though in hindsight it was money well spent, at the time it felt as if it was torture that I was buying.

  If the voyage on the fishing trawler was an awful three days of nausea and suffering, in comparison to the lorry journey that followed, it was a pleasure trip of sumptuous luxury. Locked in the back of the lorry along with twenty or so fellow Africans, I passed the endless hours in complete darkness, the air fetid with sweat and human waste, the continual motion and lack of light creating a sense of total disorientation. How many days and nights did the journey take? Which countries did we pass through? After a day or two I could barely differentiate between sleep and wakefulness, let alone answer such complex questions.

  But I was getting closer to you, my darling. So when the back of the lorry opened for the last time and we emerged, dazzled by the light and still nauseous from the Channel crossing, onto the potholed tarmac of a lorry park on the outskirts of some English coastal town, the loss of nerve I experienced was tempered by my belief in your proximity.

  I stood on that tarmac, rubbing my eyes and blinking in the sunlight, watching the other new arrivals slink off, some alone, others in twos and threes, all anxious to slip away and protect their new-found freedom.

  From talking to these fellow-travellers during the interminable journey, I had gathered two essential pieces of information regarding my status in this country: firstly, that if I did not apply for asylum with the authorities immediately on arrival, I would have no recourse to public funds, would not be allowed to seek legal employment and would therefore face homelessness and starvation; and secondly, that according to EU law, if the authorities could prove that I had arrived here from another ‘safe’ country – in my case France, I supposed – I could be deported to that country on the basis that I should have claimed asylum there.

  Standing on that tarmac, watching the last of my fellow-travellers disappear, I dithered, unable to square my fear of police, born out of my Sudanese and Libyan experiences, with the urge to throw myself at their mercy and set my application for asylum in motion. And of course I shilly-shallied to the end, finally handing myself in at a police station in Brighton, but only after four days of sleeping rough and aimless wandering. Cold, filthy, hungry, the loss of freedom seemed at the time a small price to pay for a hot meal and warm bed.

  And from there to here, my love, was but a short hop. The police could not locate a Tigrinya-speaking interpreter, and even with the half-hearted assistance of an Arabic-speaking one, the confusion caused by my language problems and my genuine ignorance of the route I had taken to Britain raised immediate suspicion. Two days after handing myself in, I found myself here at Glynbourne House. I feel suspended in time and space, my existence in limbo.

  And you, my love? Am I closing in on my beloved family, drawing ever nearer, tolerating these short-term inconveniences for the sake of our long-term future together? Or is this, as I sometimes fear during those bleak early hours before daybreak, just a long and lonely wild goose chase?

  Semira 1

  Dear Kassa

  Well, it must be after midnight. The heating is off and the flat is icy so I am wrapped up in two thick sweaters. Winter here is no joke, I can tell you. Nothing can prepare you for the numbing cold. Yanit has been asleep for hours. She is feeling anxious about her first day at school tomorrow and switching off is her way of coping, I suppose. She spent the evening immersed in a book, lost in its fictional world. It will be tough for her starting a new school mid-year, straight into a Year 4 classroom, but I have told her just to be herself, that friendships will come, insh’Allah.

  Abebe is in an easier position since he is starting in Year 1. As his teacher explained, there will be a number of other new children starting in his class tomorrow. Being that much younger, he feels none of Yanit’s anxieties, only excitement at the prospect of an end to these months of boredom and at the thought of all that school offers – games and playmates and organised entertainment. The buzz of expectation has kept him awake long past Yanit’s bedtime, but he too has finally succumbed.

  It is such a relief to finally have a place of our own. The flat, two bedrooms, kitchenette, lounge and bathroom, may not be a palace – compared to Africa, everything is cramped in this small, overcrowded island – and I know it is only temporary accommodation, but it certainly beats the madness of the hostel we stayed in when we first arrived here after our dispersal. Oh, Kassa, those were crazy times. Women and their children crammed together, everyone’s fuse shortened by exhaustion and despair, no outlet for the tension, no escape,

  Yes, this flat is only temporary, but who knows what that means in real terms, so I have decided to make the best of it and treat this corner of Bristol, a suburb they call Lawrence Weston, as my new home. I do what I can to lay down roots. I take Yanit and Abebe to the nearby parks and the local library. We do our shopping at the Ridingleaze row of stores or sometimes venture further afield, to the ugly Broadmead shopping mall to browse, or for the sake of our souls, to the vast grounds of Blaise Castle where we can spread our wings, fill our lungs, run and scream and fight and laugh.

  For all these months I have watched our lives unfold, a helpless observer. It is difficult to express how I have been feeling, Kassa, but close your eyes and imagine that Abebe and Yanit and I find ourselves lined up on a dry dusty plain, standing with our arms straight down by our sides like soldiers on parade. Imagine that we then realise that we are part of some giant children’s game, that we are the skittles and these infant monsters towering above us are about to launch colossal bowling balls at us, that we are paralysed, waiting to take the full impact of these missiles, that they will cannon against us, sending us spinning off in unforeseen directions and that there is nothing we can do to prevent this bombardment. Can you imagine that, Kassa? Well, that is how I have been feeling.

  So I yearn for permanency, for some stability in our liv
es and perhaps this letter, this words-on-paper process, is also part of my attempt to fix our existence, to make it more real.

  I hope too that you will appreciate this account of our lives since we separated, Kassa, you whose passion was always the story in all its forms – the yarn, the fairytale, the myth and legend – you whose nose was perpetually buried in one novel or another, whose notebooks were filled with your own creativity, plays and tales of domestic discord, family betrayal, political machinations, broken hearts and unfathomable courage. Perhaps you will read our story and it will inspire you.

  So where do I begin? Let us start here in Bristol and then go backwards. This city, I read from a local history book, my first borrowing from the library, has a population of over 400,000, was always a major urban centre, a wealthy commercial port, but only really made a name for itself with its involvement in the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century. During that period, I discover, more than 2,000 ships were fitted out here, responsible for the transport of over half a million slaves during those ghastly but profitable years.

  But let me take you back to our arrival, cold and wet and filthy, crawling out of that lorry somewhere south of London, our first contact with the authorities at the police station, the first days at the hostel. The initial shock at the women there, glazed and mute through surrender; or irritable, vicious-tongued, their tempers taut with tension, the slightest look or word a pretext for a venting of fury. And their children, feral with neglect, twitchy with boredom, sweeping through the rooms like packs of wild dogs.

  And back we continue, ever further. Back to the dark, vile journey across Europe that brought us here across the Channel, no idea of our precise itinerary, only vague snapshots of signposts and advertising hoardings spied during the snatched toilet breaks, clues indicating a route from Turkey that may have passed through Bulgaria, the Balkans, Germany and Belgium.

  And if we take one more rearward leap, we are again in the back of a lorry, dusty days and nights carrying us from Ethiopia through Sudan to Egypt. Weeks of waiting in Cairo, then up to Alexandria and the boat crossing to Turkey.

  And then, between these two hellish journeys, somewhere in Turkey there is a black hole so deep and dark that I cannot, will not, must not attempt to penetrate it. Not now, not ever.

  But that is not the only chapter of my story that I will not touch, my dear. The first chapter, our life at home, I must also by-pass. That whole world, my studies, my job, my marriage, my friends and, dare I say it, my family, the ups and downs, the mirth and misery, I roll it into a ball, box it up in a locked case, stow it under my bed. Besides, most of it you know already, of course. No, I will start my story in the here and now, the bright positive present.

  Bristol is a strange city, a gateway to the countryside, a split personality, half cosmopolitan and half peasant; half Old England, half ethnic melting pot. A walk through the town is like a stroll through modern British history, the words from my library book made real: I see maritime commerce in the floating harbour and the tobacco warehouses; I pass through breezeblock Broadmead rebuilt after the devastation of German bombing; I admire the engineering feat of Clifton Bridge, what my library book refers to as a proud legacy of the Industrial Revolution; I observe another legacy, this time of colonialism and Empire, in the ethnic diversity of the inner-city districts; and finally I am struck by the elegance of the mansions and palatial townhouses of Clifton, built with the blood of African slaves, men and women and children torn from their families, their communities, by circumstances beyond their control.

  I was with my solicitor today. With him, I walk a tightrope between truth and deception. My passport and our identity papers disappeared into the hands of the traffickers before we had even left Ethiopia. To give my real name, my authentic story, is to reveal myself to the world, open up the possibility of my discovery by that Asmara family and their boundless tentacles, to put Yanit and Abebe in danger. While our true identities stay hidden, we remain safe. Yet, as the solicitor told us when we were first interviewed after our arrival, any hope for our asylum case here rests on the plausibility of our story, and lies are always harder to maintain than the truth.

  I had given this a lot of thought during our journey and in the end I decided it would be too risky to reveal the blood feud story. Instead I have created a political prisoner for my husband’s persona, fabricated a history of persecution. Much of what I told them was true – Ethiopian woman weds Eritrean man, our marriage and move to Asmara, even his imprisonment, though his misdemeanour has become political. And historical events are on my side – growing government repression in Eritrea has made my story more believable.

  The case is backed up further by the interpreters and language experts assessing my linguistic competence in Amharic, Tigrinya, Arabic, as well as Yanit and Abebe’s language abilities. And of course when the children were interviewed separately, they could also confirm their father’s imprisonment, though they are vague about his so-called crime. You remember, don’t you, that they had been too young to understand what he had done? We had only told them that he was being jailed unjustly, hadn’t we?

  Our names, too, are another half-truth. I have reverted to my grandfather’s name here. You remember that it is our custom for children to take their father’s first name as surname when they are born? To avoid identification, I have given Yanit and Abebe my own family name as theirs. I have drilled them since our arrival, it is what they use at school, and they accept it without question.

  Today, the solicitor runs through the story again. There is still no court date, but I am told my presence is not required. Our future is decided in an unknown place by strangers who have never met me.

  A further task completed since our arrival in the UK was to seek help from the Red Cross and its international tracing service. At the interview I told the truth, the full story of our misfortune, all the details I could muster, nothing withheld except our real family names. Now there is nothing to do but wait and pray...

  It is late and I am tired. It is comforting to have re-established contact. I will let you know how Yanit and Abebe get on at school. It goes without saying that they miss you, just as I do. Give my love to Gadissa, you are both always in my thoughts.

  ***

  Dear Kassa

  Who am I trying to fool? I cannot remember all the details of my last letter, only the tone, a casual catching-up of news like two old classmates whose lives have meandered in opposite directions but who feel that their friendship is sufficiently significant to warrant these informal updates.

  I am sure this was a deliberate stance on my part, my darling, a desire born out of necessity, a survival instinct, an inability to face the true nature of our connection.

  Even now, you can see how I hide behind euphemism. Our ‘connection’? It is pathetic, I know, but for now that is all you are going to get. Indulge my tone, tolerate my voice, endure my trite twitterings, they are but the sweepings of my soul, seeping leaks from the hole blown through the centre of my heart. I am sorry, my sweet, but that is all I can manage for the moment

  So where was I? How to describe our life here? Transitory, I think, sums it up adequately. Last week I was a Lawrence Weston resident perched on the north-west edge of the city. Today I am an inner-city dweller, forced out of my temporary accommodation and scrambling to find a property to match my housing benefit allowance.

  With no time to pick and choose, I find myself jumping at the first opportunity, the downstairs flat of a converted terraced house near the local primary school in St Paul’s. The accommodation is OK, a little drab and damp. Unfortunately the couple upstairs seem at war with each other, with their children, with the world at large, so there are verbal fireworks every night, a constant background of angry conflict.

  It was hard for Yanit and Abebe to leave our life on the estate. He was enjoying the structure of the classroom and she had begun to make her first f
riends. I debated keeping them on at that school but getting them from St Pauls to Lawrence Weston every day using public transport was just too daunting so I signed them up for this local school, a stone’s throw from our front door.

  It is a nice surprise to see so many black faces around and it is a more vibrant environment than the estate. But I already have my reservations about this community. During daylight hours the streets and shops seem safe and the people friendly and open. I have already joined the Cheltenham Road library, have identified a favourite local grocer’s and a halal butcher.

  But when night falls I sense the danger. The street that leads me out of the neighbourhood, by day congested with pushchairs and schoolchildren, is lined after dark with girls plying their trade. Cars prowl and cruise, their boom-boom boom music mingling with the clamour of pavement squabbles and the wail of police sirens. We stay inside after sunset, ignore the couple upstairs with their endless quarrels and bury ourselves in television and books.

  A further development to report. At the children’s school I saw a flyer pinned to the notice board advertising government-run English classes. I plucked up the courage and went along to register, and here I am, back in the world of study, a part-time English language course, what they call ESOL, two mornings a week close to the city centre. And no sooner have I signed up than the teacher announces exams at the end of term! My poor old brain can barely keep up. I wish you were here to help me out, you were always so good at English, the teachers forever blowing your trumpet!

  No news on our court case.

  No news from the Red Cross.

  Our love to Gadissa. You are always in our hearts.

  ***