This Is Where I Am (24 page)

The shock gathered in me, swinging in bolts, in punching fists. Since the haphazard door, we had been light and evasive, saying little and laughing lots. Strung together in tender wires. I hadn’t realised her desperation to get out of here was even greater than my own.

I knelt beside her. ‘Azira, baby. Don’t.’ Holding each other hard, her face wet in my chest. Then Rebecca was pushing at my armpit, nuzzling to get in too.

‘Please.’

On my head, I felt the pressure of the lady’s hand. Her hand, my daughter’s hands, my wife’s hands. All pressing on to me, me, me. And a feeling like communion. ‘You are a Christian family. We will take you all.’

The atmosphere inside the Refugee Council is flat, yet buzzing. Sad gossip lingers behind hands, my roses wilting under the scrutiny of frowns and pursed-up lips. It feels like someone’s died. I can see Debs at one of the booths. She’s on the phone, but she waves me over. A fat woman in a mighty kaftan tucks her hands under the folds of her breasts and tuts.

Debs mouths:
Hiya
.

‘Hello.’

I take a seat. Today Debs is in a brown, short-sleeved dress, sprigged with little creamy flowers – ha! My flowers match her dress. I’m smiling at her with irrepressible pleasure, I know I am, and it feels too bright in this sombre room. But I can’t help it. She finishes her call.

‘These are for you.’

‘Thank you! For why?’ She sniffs them, her eyelids lapping shut. ‘Mmm. They’re gorgeous.’ Then she looks at me. ‘Och, Abdi, I told you, I’d nothing to do with you getting your new house. It was that Sergeant Heath.’

My smile widens. ‘I think you both helped. And I don’t think she would like the flowers.’

‘Nah. She’d probably eat them. And you. But we should send her a wee note anyway, eh? So, you all ready for the big day? And the painting party – we’ll do that the week before you move, OK?’

‘Debs – I have to move by this weekend.’

‘What? Why?’

‘They need the flat we are in now.’

‘You’re joking!’

People say that a lot here, usually after you’ve said nothing funny at all. And they often follow it up with ‘by the way’, which is
via
in Italian and makes no sense to me whatever.

‘No. It is no joke. It is real.’

‘Aye, well, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’ She tapped some keys on her computer. ‘
Shit
. Still nothing. Actually, you probably are better to grab it now. Quick as possible, after what we’ve heard this morning.’

‘What? What has happened?’ The knot in my tie seems to tighten, I am swallowing, swallowing. Of course I will not get this house. Of course I will not get this job.

Stupid refugee
.

Debs twists her chair away from her computer. The swing of her is assured. She looks as though she fits here. Behind her looms a stack of files, which she begins to dig through. ‘Sorry, Abdi, I need to . . . Ah.’ She pulls a sheet of paper from the file. ‘Sorry. Yes. Well, the UK Border Agency and Glasgow Cooncil’ve had a major fall-out over who pays what to who. They’ve just terminated their accommodation contract with the city. Boom. Just like that. We’re waiting for them to put some kind of a statement up on their website, but everyone’s going crazy. Hundreds of folk are going to have to move, this place’ll probably shut.’

‘Shut?’

‘Well, if Glasgow isn’t housing asylum seekers any more, there’ll be no need for the Refugee Council, will there? At least, not here.’

Flashing pictures of gates, of clanging, dull barred doors. Of Debs being lost in a sea of struggling faces. To her, all is casual speculation. The Refugee Council will close and she’ll go back to her smart house and her memories, her visit to the poor complete. She dipped her toe in, did her best. Do I sense relief in there with the smooth movements? Shaking us off like troublesome drops of water. But what about
me
? What about me?

‘Hello there.’ The wide-hipped kaftan woman shimmies into Deborah’s space. ‘Debs, check your PC again. One of the news agencies is running a story. Try PA first.’ She bares enormous white teeth at me, leaning forward until I can see the twin peaks of her cleavage. ‘And who is this
fine
-looking gentleman?’

‘Gamu, this is Abdi.’

‘Ho, so
this
is Abdi. You kept
him
well-hidden, girl.’ She offers me a fat, firm hand. ‘Hello, Abdi. And you bring flowers too? Now don’t waste your time with her, my love. Come talk to me. I‘ll sort all your problems.’

‘No, no problems,’ I smile back. ‘Only good things today.’

‘Yeah? Well, that
is
a nice thing to hear, my love. Especially today. You keep your good things close, OK?’ And she gives me a huge long wink, in case I’m too slow to sense the dripping innuendo.

I wink back. ‘I will.’

Debs is very quiet. She can’t be jealous, surely? I smooth out my tie, look over to see what she’s doing. She’s frowning at her computer. ‘Here, look, Abdi. See for yourself.
Jesus
. Thank goodness you’ve got that flat. They did confirm it, yes? You’ve definitely got the letter?’

‘Yes.’ I squint to read the screen.

‘I mean, it shouldn’t affect you at all. It’s the asylum seekers that’re going to suffer.’

Together, we read the news website.

Over a thousand asylum seekers in Glasgow will have to be rehoused after the government terminated its contract to provide them with accommodation.

The UK Border Agency has failed to reach an agreement with Glasgow City Council over charges for asylum seeker accommodation, which it states are already the ‘highest in the UK outside London’.

According to the Scottish Refugee Council, concerned asylum seekers have been ‘pouring’ into their offices for help. A spokesman for the charity said: ‘Many of these people have fled traumatic situations involving persecution, torture and violence and have already faced a great deal of uncertainty while waiting for the outcome of their asylum claim.’

Glasgow Council has been providing housing and support services for asylum seekers for 10 years. An insider commented: ‘It’s a matter of great regret that UKBA has terminated its contract for the council to receive asylum seekers.’

A spokesperson for the UKBA said, in the face of current cuts to government budgets, it could not continue to pay Glasgow Council’s high charges: ‘We will work with other providers to ensure all asylum seekers currently housed under contract with Glasgow Council continue to be properly accommodated while their asylum claims are considered and their appeals to the courts are concluded.’

Charity groups have expressed doubt that other housing providers in the city will be able to offer enough accommodation, and speculation is now rife that Glasgow’s asylum population may be dispersed across the UK with only a few days’ notice.

Readers’ comments (1)
There are to many on the waiting lists to house people coming in from abroad like this. There are to many local authoritys homes tied up in this way. There are plenty of cheap providers – let them do it.                        Anonymous

‘Och, don’t look at that rubbish. They can’t even spell.’

Debs tries to pull the screen away from me, but I hold it steady until I’m finished reading.

‘Do you think these people know who we are? What we come from?’ My head is getting heavy. A thickness building in my nose; it’s the flowers. ‘Is there a way to talk to them? I would like to talk to them. Ask if they had to flee their nice houses and jobs, snatch up their children and run from men with guns, run from their own government who beats and robs their people, where it is they would go. What it is they would hope for.’

Debs is shrugging her jacket on. ‘Och, Abdi. Folk who make comments like that can’t empathise. All they know is what they read in the tabloids – which would make you a mad pirate as well as a job-and-house-stealing mugger of old ladies. But,’ as she stands up, she gently tugs my tie, ‘a very smart one, too, I must say. Now, are we going for lunch or what? And by the way, if you’re all dressed up because we’re off somewhere posh, you can forget about paying for it, OK?’

‘Why? Will we run away instead?’

For a long blank second, Debs looks horrified, until I add: ‘When they bring the bill?’

‘Ha, ha, very funny.’

I’d said in my text I’d take Debs for lunch. That is what friends do. I hear them on the television, there is even a programme called
Friends
, and, always, always, they are meeting for coffee or lunch. Problem is, I don’t eat lunch. And I don’t know where to go. So I asked my friend Geordie. Geordie is a cultured man.

‘You like poetry, Abdi?’

‘You know I do.’

‘And you like the oldness of this city, the history? Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you are no longer good Muslim, so the alcohol won’t matter?’ He had waggled lush eyebrows above his spectacles.

‘No. I am a fallen man,’ I laughed, although I’ve never tasted alcohol. But I suppose the potential’s there. Geordie closed the book he’d been reading. We were in the library, of course. Rebecca was enjoying Story Corner, I could see her listening intently as the librarian read to a cluster of children. Occasionally, her mouth would form circles and slants. Practising. I’m still not sure where it is Geordie lives. He sighed portentously. Took off his glasses, dabbed his moustache. ‘Yesterday, Abdi, a man handed me a lucky ticket. He was tourist. American. It was for open-top bus trip round the town. Very good, he said. Very, very good. And he was finished with it, and would I like it? Is not like half-eaten fish supper, you know? Half-used bus ticket is OK, so I said yes. Up on the bus I go. Oh, Abdi, it was mar-vel-oos. You should take the little one, you see the city most different. They give you little plugs, too, for your ears, and a commentary in several languages. And, fortuitously for you, we pass the very place. Ancient hostelry, nestled on the banks of the mighty Clyde, and home to folk club and poets’ retreat.’

‘Sounds good. And do they have lunch?’

‘Oh yes. Very very best of Scottish cuisine.’

And it’s in the city centre too. We checked it on Mr Google. So
that
is where we are going. Debs and I walk into the sunshine. She’s left her flowers out of water, on her desk, but I don’t mind. I am bursting, bursting to say about my job, but walking, I can’t keep sight of her face. It bobs and weaves below me. We go through streets teeming with people, most of them eating from paper bags, walk past Central Station, with its big grand hotel rising over it. A curious statue of a man in a face-mask stands outside the door. A miner? A fireman? He is big and sturdy and blank.

‘Where is it we’re going?’

‘The Scotia Bar,’ I say proudly.

‘Really?’

‘Yes? Why? Is that not good? Geordie said it was a very good place –’

‘Geordie? Our Geordie? Iraqi Geordie?’

‘
Yes
.’ I sound defensive.

‘I wouldn’t have thought an old man’s pub would be his kind of place.’

‘Old man’s pub? It is a folk club and poets’ retreat.’

‘Oh, OK.’

‘Do you not like it, Deborah?’

‘Well, I don’t think I’ve ever actually been. It’s the one in Stockwell Street? With the black and white beams?’

‘It is.’ I have seen the picture on Google. I will recognise it, I’m sure.

We pass the department store where we bought Rebecca’s wellington boots, carry on down Glassford Street and into Stockwell Street. Wait for a gap in the buses, then cross the road, the bulky glass dome of St Enoch’s shopping centre to the right of us. Ahead, a lone black-grey spire reaches up to the sky. It seems to jut straight through the roof of a lower, paler building which is adorned with curlicues of fish and coiled serpents. The steeple is like a tree growing through a crack. An optical illusion, surely. I would ask, but it’s been some time since either of us spoke, and with each quiet step we take, it’s harder to start a conversation. One more crossing, and we are outside the Scotia Bar. It’s further than I realised, and I worry that Debs will be late getting back to the Council. She must mean to go back – she left her roses there.

In front of us, the slow brown water of the Clyde slips by. There was a ford here, once, so Geordie says. Medieval Glaswegians would wade, or paddle coracles, to move from north to south. Now, many iron and marble bridges traverse the river. Turn your head left, turn right, and all you see are spans of bridges, some squat, some graceful. There is one stringed swinging beauty over there that looks to me like a harp. Only people walk on it. Most of the bridges are thunderous with traffic or trains. What would my mother have thought of these speeding, roaring hulks that eat you up and carry you off? I’d never have got her inside one, that’s for sure.
It is an evil jinn, child. Do not trust the evil jinn!

We stand outside the bar. The walls are rugged dirty-white, panelled with black strips. Each panel outside bears a painted board, with the legends: