Refugee Boy (3 page)

There was a knock on the door. Alem turned the television off with the remote control. ‘Hello,’ he said curiously.

‘Hello,’ came the reply, ‘it’s Mr Hardwick, the hotel manager. Can I come in and have a word?’

‘I don’t think you can come in now,’ Alem said nervously. ‘My father is not here, but he will be back soon. I think he has gone for food.’

Ignoring this, Mr Hardwick opened the door to see Alem sitting on the bed. ‘I need to speak to you,’ he said solemnly as he entered the room. He went and sat down on a chair and continued to speak. ‘Did you hear your father get up early this morning? It could have been while it was still dark – in the very early hours of the morning?’

‘No,’ Alem replied.

‘This is a tough one, lad, I don’t know how to say this but it seems that he did leave the hotel early this morning and he’s left us all in a very awkward position.’

Alem was very puzzled. ‘Awkward position?’

‘Yes, he left two letters, one for me and one for you,’ the manager said, reaching out and handing Alem a letter still sealed in its envelope. Alem opened it. It contained a photograph of Alem with his mother and father, and a handwritten letter. Alem read it silently as Mr Hardwick looked on.

My dearest son,

You have seen all the trouble that we have been going through back home. What is happening back there has nothing to do with us but we are stuck in the middle of it. You are the product of two countries, Ethiopia and Eritrea, and we love them both equally but they are pulling themselves and each other apart. We hope that it does not go on like this much longer but until the fighting stops and our persecution is over, your mother and I think that it would be best if you stay in England. Here they have organisations that will help you, compassionate people who understand why people have to seek refuge from war. We just cannot afford to risk another attack on you; we value your life more than anything.

Your mother and I will try to use our organisation to help bring about peace but if we fail and we see no hope, then we may be joining you soon. If things get better, you will be joining us soon, but you must understand that we don’t want to see you suffer any more, and we don’t want you to go through what we have been through.

We shall be writing to you soon, young man. Be strong, learn more English, and remember to love your neighbours because peace is better than war, wherever you live.

Your loving father

Alem held the letter and photo with both his hands on his lap and looked down in silence. Mr Hardwick looked around the room nervously, not sure how he should react. Then for a long moment they looked at each other before Mr Hardwick spoke. ‘I have to say, lad, this has never happened here before and I’m not sure what to do. As far as I’m concerned you can stay here for two more nights, your father has paid for your room and all your meals, but you can’t stay here for ever.’ He looked down at the letter in Alem’s hand, then at Alem himself, and spoke as if pleading. ‘Your father says you have no family here – is this true? Don’t you know anyone at all in England? Don’t you have any friends here?’

Alem didn’t speak; he just shook his head to every question.

‘OK, well, the first thing we can do is to get you some breakfast,’ Mr Hardwick said with a sigh of resignation.

Alem’s breakfast was brought to his room that morning but his other meals were taken in the dining room with the other hotel guests. He always sat alone by
the window, looking out at the little pond and watching the birds that would come to feed from the bird table.

That day Alem went for a short walk, which took him around the small grounds of Datchet, the parish church of St Mary the Virgin and the town centre. The town was as pretty as a postcard. At its centre on grassland between two roads he came upon a stone monument. He stood there to read the inscription, ignoring the cold wind that was making his eyes water. It had been erected by the inhabitants of Datchet to commemorate the Great War of 1914 to 1918. It spoke of the glorious forces and their allies by sea, on land and in the air who had fought against the combined forces of Germany, Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria. The monument simply reminded Alem of war. Nobody is glorious in war, he thought as he walked away to admire other more postive items from the past in an antique shop across the road.

Back at the hotel, Alem sat for a while in the garden and then went to his room to watch television and read the guidebook. The staff and guests at the hotel seemed friendly enough and he was keen to know why Mr Hardwick called him ‘lad’ but he didn’t have the nerve to ask. He would exchange a few words with people at mealtimes but apart from that he spoke very little, which made the day seem very long. Trying to learn as much as he could about
British culture from the television meant that his mind was kept occupied, but every time there was silence he began to think about how he had got where he was. When did his parents have these conversations where they decided to bring him to England? Was bringing him to England really the best thing to do? Did they really love him or was this a plan to get rid of him? Would they care so much about his upbringing, his health, his education and then dump him?

At one point Alem even began to believe that this was some kind of rite-of-passage thing, a test of manhood, an initiation test to see how he would cope with being alone and having to fend for himself. As he walked down the different hallways in the hotel, he began to try and peep into the other rooms to see if his father was hiding in one of them.

The next morning after breakfast Alem walked down the two miles of country roads to Windsor. He had read about the castle and thought that he might be able to see it, but when he reached the edge of the town he turned around and went back to the hotel. He was worried that he might lose his way in what looked from the outskirts like a much bigger town.

Back in his hotel room he sat on his bed watching middle-aged women having makeovers on breakfast television when there was a knock on the door. Alem
recognised the voice of Mr Hardwick.

‘All right, lad? Can we come in? I’m with a couple of nice young ladies who would like to have a word with you.’

He entered the room, followed by two women who both immediately locked their eyes on Alem.

‘This is the lad,’ Mr Hardwick said, looking at one of the women. ‘Alem’s been a wonderful lad, everybody likes him, no trouble at all – I wish there were more like him.’

Alem felt slightly uncomfortable. Everybody’s eyes were upon him, which made him feel a bit like an animal in a zoo. But when the woman spoke he felt different, much better.

‘Tena-yestelen, Alem.’

‘Tena-yestelen,’ Alem replied.

‘Ingilizinya tinnaggeralleh?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I speak English,’ Alem said as he breathed a sigh of relief.

She was Ethiopian, she looked like someone from the Oromo tribe, dark, round-faced and slim. But what did she want? Alem wondered. Was she a good guy or a bad guy?

‘My name is Mariam and this is Pamela. We come from an organisation called the Refugee Council. We heard that you were here and we have come to help you.’

Pamela was the taller of the two, white-skinned
with cheeks highlighted with red blusher and short jet-black hair. Alem knew very little about the tribes of England but he was curious about the tribe that Pamela belonged to. He had never seen a European with a silver stud in her chin and six earrings hanging from each ear before. Still she spoke plain English.

‘First of all we need to know that you’re OK, and then – well, then we have to try and do whatever you need. We are here for you.’

‘I think I’ll go now,’ Mr Hardwick said, turning and heading for the door. ‘You three take your time now. I’m downstairs if you need me.’

The moment Mr Hardwick left the room, the atmosphere changed. Mariam and Pamela sat on the two available chairs and Alem turned the television off with the remote control, which was still in his hand. Mariam’s eyes wandered around the room and took in the photo of Alem with his parents, which was propped against the bedside lamp next to his bed. ‘So what is it like here then?’

Alem leaned back and rested on his elbows, now feeling more at ease. ‘It’s OK. The people are nice but the food is very strange.’

‘What do you find strange about the food?’ Pamela asked.

‘Well, it’s not too bad but it’s very dry. I don’t understand why they made the food so dry, and then they gave me something called gravy to make
the food more wet.’

Mariam and Pamela laughed out loud. Alem smiled with them. Pamela hadn’t stopped laughing when she began speaking. ‘You see, this is meat-and-two-veg territory.’

Alem repeated puzzled, ‘Meat and two veg?’

‘Yeah,’ she continued, ‘meat and two veg; one piece of meat, that’s the centre of the meal – the centre of the universe – and a couple of vegetables thrown in for good luck. Oh yes, and a bit of gravy to help it go down.’

‘Does everyone around here eat meat and two veg?’ Alem asked, doubting the truth of what Pamela was saying.

‘Yes – well, not everybody but most people. We are only about thirty miles from London but you’ll find that London is a very different place,’ Pamela said as her voice began to settle.

‘I know, I went to London and it was very different. So much people, so many cars, so many big buildings and I only saw the parts where all the shops were.’

For the next ten minutes they let Alem talk to them about his impressions of London and how he had spent his evening in the West End with his father. Soon Mariam thought it was time for them to start talking to him.

‘As I said before, Alem, we’re from the Refugee Council. We know a little bit about how you came to
be here and it’s our job to make sure that you’re looked after. We are not the police, we are not from the government and we don’t have any special powers, but we are on your side.’

‘We work with many people in the same situation,’ Pamela interjected, ‘so you have nothing to worry about.’

Mariam took out her notebook and began to make notes. ‘We have to apply to what we call the Home Office for political-asylum. We need to get you this political asylum status so that you can stay in the country. Because we want to make sure that your wellbeing is protected and you get the best of what we have to offer, we have to ask you a few questions to start with. Now, if you’re having problems with English you can speak in Amharic if you like.’

‘I will try to speak in English,’ Alem replied.

‘OK,’ Mariam said while making notes in her book. ‘Can you tell us what happened before you came here? What made your father bring you here, and what was life like where you came from?’

‘Yes, I will try my best.’

My name is Alem Kelo. My age is fourteen. I am from Africa. I was born in an area called Badme. Some people think this area is a part of Eritrea and some people think that this area is a part of Ethiopia. My father taught me that it was a part of Africa and he said that there is no country in Africa that is bigger than Africa. In 1991 when the big war was over, I was five years old. My father and my mother and I went to live in Asmara. Asmara is a large city, the capital of Eritrea. My mother said we moved there so I could go to a good school and they could get better jobs. I did go to a good school there, it was a big school, a strong building. My mother and father did get good jobs; my mother worked in a court – she was the clerk – and my father worked in a post office. My father can speak six languages – Arabic, Afar, Tigrinya, Italian, English and Amharic. My mother can also speak these languages but I can only speak Amharic, Tigrinya and English. But I want to learn many more languages, and I want to make my English better. I did like Asmara, I had many friends there,
but when I was ten years old we all went to live in Harar. Harar is in Ethiopia, high in the hills, the sun shines bright there but it is very cool. I found a new school and I had a good friend there, his name is Dawit. My mother found a new job in the bank and my father was the manager of the biggest post office in the city. He was the most important person there, and if there were problems everyone would have to come to him. We were happy living there until war broke out again and we began to have problems. Some of the other children at school started to pick on me, not Dawit but some others, and then one day my mother came home and said that she had lost her job because nobody did want to work with her. She said that the manager said she was causing too much trouble, the Ethiopian workers said that they are at war with Eritrea, so they will not work with someone from Eritrea. She was very upset. And then some weeks later my father said the people at work said that he must leave my mother because she is Eritrean and she is the enemy. My father said no, and he kept on working there but I think it was very difficult for him. Sometimes he came home from work and he didn’t talk to us and I think this is because he was having problems at work. And then one night when we were asleep, the police broke down the door of our house and then they began to break up the house. They broke all the tables and chairs, and they told us to get
ready to leave in the morning because buses would be taking us back to Eritrea. My father told them that he was born in Ethiopia, so they said that if he loves Ethiopia he can stay but me and my mother must go. My father said that he loves Ethiopia, he loves Eritrea and he loves Africa. One policeman then asked my father who would he fight for, and my father said he would fight for peace, and then the policeman hit my father with his rifle and my mother started to cry. When the police left we stayed awake all night and in the morning we went into the streets and we could see lots of people in the streets, many of them crying and getting on to buses. My father went to talk to a man and the man said he does not talk to traitors and then the police said that we must get on the bus right away and go to Eritrea, and my father said no. Then one policeman pushed my mother on the floor and my father got angry and shouted at him and the policeman pointed the rifle in my father’s face and told him that we have fifteen minutes to go. So we went in our house and got as many things as we could, then we got on the bus and we went to Eritrea. The bus was full of Eritreans. When we went to Eritrea we stayed with my auntie. She is the sister of my mother. We had been there for about three months, then one day somebody was throwing some stones at my father when he was walking down the street. Then another day some women told my mother that she must leave
my father and find a husband from Eritrea. In school in Eritrea the children started picking on me again and calling me Ethiopian, and one day after school some very big boys all started to beat me up when I was playing sport. They were very big, almost twenty years old. They beat my face and my stomach and when I was on the ground they just kept kicking me very hard. One boy said he was going to kick all the Ethiopian blood out of me. After this my mother and father were always talking about what they could do. They said Eritrea and Ethiopia were at war and our family is both Eritrean and Ethiopian. My mother said that we tried to live in both places and we always have problems. Then one day – it was my birthday – my father said I should have a holiday. He said that a holiday would make me happy and I will forget the problems. My mother was trying to find a job, she said she would not come, so my father took me to Djibouti by bus and from there we flew to Addis Ababa and from there we flew to England. I was thinking that we came here for a holiday, so that I could practise my English and see the buildings, but my father left me here so that I will not die.