This Is Where I Am
Read This Is Where I Am Online
Authors: Karen Campbell
For Abdul and Farida
Contents
Part One
Scottish Refugee Council
Scotland has a fine tradition of welcoming and assimilating incomers; indeed the very name ‘Scotland’ is believed to derive from the Scoti, an Irish tribe who themselves may have originated in Egypt. And, for generations, waves of immigrants have continued to enrich and strengthen the nation. The Scottish Refugee Council is an independent charity dedicated to providing support and information to people seeking refuge in Scotland today.
Staffed by a team of employees and volunteers, the charity moved to its current Glasgow offices in 1999, when Glasgow City Council became the first UK local authority to sign up to the Home Office Dispersal Scheme. This saw a massive and immediate increase in the SRC’s client base, with around 150 requests for help each day.
Working hard to raise awareness of refugee issues and to influence policy in both Scotland and the UK, the SRC offers a one-stop advice centre to refugees and people seeking asylum, carries out research, training and community-based programmes, and campaigns for fair treatment. Since its inception, the charity has provided support to refugees from countries such as Uganda, Vietnam, Chile, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Rwanda, amongst many, many others.
Entry to the SRC offices is free.
*
So. How do these things start? I’m sitting in the waiting room, thighs damp, with my tights sticking to me, wiping my palms on my unfamiliar skirt. It’s been years since I’ve had to dress so smartly, and it feels strange, constricting after a decade of soft jersey leggings and loose tops where the stains don’t show.
Come on, come on
is hissing in my head, willing them to come and get me, or me to get up and leave. I don’t think the room’s particularly hot; it’s me. Me and my unpredictable plumbing and my panic flaring.
Would you look at that sweaty woman? Someone should tell her: the health centre is next door.
I’m too young for hot flushes. I am. But youth is relative; I’m double the age of the other two with me, and I know they’re both thinking add-on-ten again. The odd time I’ve had to give my age, you see people do a double-take. Even the doctor.
You’re . . . forty-four?
Said doubtfully, before writing me another prescription for pills I doubt I’ll take. I’ve got plenty.
What am I doing here? This isn’t me; I live flat and bland. And I must have decided this would be fine, that I would remain that way. It was safer. It was tea after shock, the calm after the storm, the exhausted, whimpery quiver after tears. Damp circles are spreading in my armpits, seeping into silk. Surreptitiously, I check for stains; am confronted with the flush of my sad wee chest. My sister’s jacket-collar falls in embroidered points, hiding the worst of it. I should have taken the thing off as soon as I came in. Now, I’m stuck wearing it for the duration. What if they offer to take my coat? Have I brought any perfume? A dull ache tells me I’m grinding my teeth again. I relax my jaw, creaking it from side to side to loosen gristle hinges. The girl opposite looks slightly alarmed. I pretend to cough instead.
That’s what truly started it, I think; the beginning. Or the end. My teeth. Made me get out of bed and go in search of Panadol and be so unbearably . . . awake. I promise it was Panadol. I still have a cupboard full of the heavy-duty stuff: Co-dydramol, Tramadol – I think there’s even a little liquid morphine left. But I keep them just in case. In case one day I really need them all, at once, down in one, laid out in my best nightie with my head reaching out to . . .
Well.
A bee swirls into the waiting room. The girl across from me draws her arms and legs inwards, but her eyes dart frantically as the bee tours the room. As she’s also been sipping from a bottle of organic lemonade . . . well, of course it makes a bee-line for her. Ha! Now who’s making funny faces?
Compared to the open-plan chaos outside, we three are in a quiet enclave. Occasionally, you hear a raised voice or a baby crying, but, tucked in this little anteroom, we are insulated. Apart. We do not need, and are not yet useful.
I’m aware of the young guy over to the left of me swaying his neck. It is a cobra-dance, he means to make eye contact. Make me speak.
‘Worse than a job interview, this.’ His chin comes up in a collusive, backward nod, inviting me to agree.
‘Mmhm.’
‘I mean, if they knock you back . . . no that they will, but if they
do
. . . It’s a bit like a blind date, this.’
Bee-girl tuts, which makes me go immediately on his side.
‘I know what you mean.’
‘I’ve no really done much volunteering before. You?’
‘Not really.’
He nods again, I smile. Resume my mental wanderings.
‘I mean, I help with my wee brother’s football team and that.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Yeah. There’s quite a few wee asylum kiddies at the school. Ach, you feel heart sorry for them, don’t you? Plus . . . I know I shouldny say. But I thought it might help me get work. Paid work, you know?’
Bee-girl snorts. Small noises, some slurping and a mobile face have been her only contributions, but already I dislike her. I imagine her living in an earnest bedsit, eating only wholemeal bread and mung beans.
‘So, what got you into this?’ He directs this, pointedly, at me.
Och, just the usual. Drugs. That and cruising for young boys.
Imagine if I actually said that? If I told him how I’d passed this lad, he must have still been in his teens, with a sign that said
Hungry and Homles
. It was written on the inside of a KFC carton, and that intrigued me. I don’t know how it is with other people, but sometimes I walk past these folk; sometimes I give them money. It’s a terrible thing to admit, but I activate my internal judge. You know, do they have a sad-eyed dog, do they look like a drug addict, do they shake their wee cup with menaces? Do they smile, are their eyes downcast, their clothes clean, tattered? Do they sit respectfully at the side of the pavement or sprawl grubbily in some poor soul’s doorway? If they are one of those gypsy-looking women from Eastern Europe then I think:
No
. You didn’t flee oppression. You’re just here on the make. But if they’re a thin, haunted African boy who cannot spell and can offer only a shame-filled glance, well, you stop, don’t you? Only this time, I spoke too. Actually asked him his name. Why? To make the exchange less clinical, perhaps? To make up for all the times I do walk past? Because the sky was a clear pale blue and the days were shifting oh, I don’t know, I just did, I just said it.
He had raised his hand a little higher.
‘I’m Deborah,’ I persisted. ‘What’s your name?’
He’d nudged the KFC box with his foot. It was clever, because the writing was on the inside of the lid and the box itself was where he would receive his money. But it was unclever too, because then, when you notice that, you immediately think,
oh so he can afford KFC, can he? Well, he canny be that destitute
.
I put my hands on my knees and scrunched down low, so our eyes were virtually level. He refused to meet my gaze. Gently – I promise, it was incredibly gently – I shifted one hand to rest on his shoulder and my God, it was as if I’d stabbed him, or he thought my hand was made of fire. He juddered and cowered; one fluid movement with several parts which resulted in the upper half of his body shutting like a penknife, keeling over away from me. As if I was the dirty one. I let his shoulder alone. ‘There’s no need to be like that.’ Then I straightened up. ‘I was only trying to be friendly. You know? I didn’t have to stop.’
His neck drooped to the ground. Dark, like planed oak like a dark-shaped tree branch angled on the road like wood only wood like we didn’t have to stop.
Oh. The bee is pirouetting. I focus on it twirling like a November leaf. In the background, in our waiting room, the guy on my left is waiting for his reply.
‘You just want to help, don’t you?’ I say vaguely.
This satisfies him, I think. How long did I leave him hanging? Time has taken a very amorphous quality – and language, and sense actually. I have difficulty concentrating now. I digress. A lot. It’s as if my thoughts are a dandelion clock. I see one, and I chase after it, and then another one birls by and they’re so tiny and meandering they can’t really amount to a whole. So I try not to assimilate them. I just follow them, whichever one catches my eye.
And I
did
want to help that boy with the KFC box. But I continued haranguing him; it had become a point of honour. ‘I mean, we’re both human beings, aren’t we? What’s so wrong in asking for your name?’
I’d taken my purse from my handbag. ‘I was going to give you money anyway, it’s not a test. I just thought it would be nice to –’
He must have registered some kind of irritation in my tone – I don’t think there was – I felt more embarrassed than anything to be honest – but he, too, straightened up. With his eyes held firmly down, he placed one palm flat on the pavement and – whoosh – up he came. I got a bit of a fright, the quickness of him when he had been so hunched and slothful. I backed away, conscious I was looking behind me and to either side. The street was terribly empty, which is just as well, because, the next second, he took my hand. His mournful face turned in the direction of the alley that ran between the two tenements behind us. And then it wasn’t ‘just as well’ at all.
He’s going to drag me in there
. There was no one I could call out to, there was only the man in the paper shop the next block along. Would he hear me if I screamed but I couldn’t. I couldn’t make any noise, couldn’t move. And the boy stood too, suddenly docile again. Head down, still holding my hand. His other hand, the thumb of his other hand was hooked inside the waistband of his dirty jeans and in one vile and clarifying moment I knew what he thought I wanted.
It was daylight in a broad, suburban street.
I was old enough to be his mother
.
