Versione Italiana | Nota biografica | Versione lettura |
I remember what you told me when you put me on top of a camel to begin my journey from Eritrea to an unknown destination in the western world. You said, “Kareem, you will be in a safe haven. Safe from this haunting death. The Europeans are good people. They will look after you, send you to school, buy you clothes and food, until the day comes when you will look after yourself. In Europe, you will not hear the sound of bombs. Only the sound of music.”
The morning of that day was beautiful. It was the time when everything was quiet. There was only silence and a blue sky, no Ethiopian bomber planes circling in the sky and no machine guns spreading bullets everywhere.
I woke up at 6am, washed my face, took a bucket and rode my donkey to get water from the river that was two hours away.
Alem was a beautiful donkey. She was as black as me, like roasted coffee beans. My face was long and thin just like Alem’s, and my teeth stuck out like hers. She never threw me off her back and I never hit her or dug my heels into her. We were a perfect match.
On our way to the river, Alem was tossing up the stones with her hooves. I was enjoying the silence and the fresh air. I was just glad to have survived the night’s bombardment.
Then I heard you calling me. “Kareem, stop. Stop.”
Out of nowhere a man appeared behind you. My first thought was that you were going to marry him. I would have understood. Since father died in the war with Ethiopia, you have found it difficult to look after me. You sold tea and coffee at your little stall in the market. But as you earned so little, I had to fetch water to sell to our neighbours.
“I need the donkey. You go back home,” you said.
“But Mother, I must sell some water today,” I said.
“Just listen to what I am asking you to do, son,” you said
You rode the donkey and went off with the man.
You came back in the evening, when the sun disappeared leaving behind darkness, moon and stars. You didn’t say a word. You just lit the oil lamp, took your prayer rug and started praying.
I watched you as you went on kneeling, and reciting some verses from the Qur’an. You weren’t your normal self. Usually you didn’t pray at this time. Instead this was the time when you told me stories until I fell asleep. I was surprised. I wondered if you were thinking of leaving me and running away with that man I saw in the morning. I wanted to cry.
You almost wailed your prayer: “Please ya Allah keep my son safe. Please grant him safety. I beg you ya Allah.”
I asked myself why you were so worried about me. Was something bad about to happen?
Then you stood up, moved towards me, and dragged me from my bed.
In complete silence you dressed me in my black trousers, a white T-shirt, and sandals. Then you dragged me out of our hut.
“Where are we going?” I asked you.
“The time has come,” you said.
“Time for what?”
“To leave.”
“Why are we leaving?”
“I am not leaving,” you said. “You are leaving on your own.”
“But Mum,” I cried, “I don’t want to leave without you.” I screamed loudly so that our neighbours could hear and help me but nothing happened.
“You will be fine,” you said as you led me towards the hills and the bushes.
I begged you again, “But I don’t want to be without you, Mum.”
You said nothing. Your silence hurt me more than the mosquito bites that were stinging my arms and face.
Then you spoke, “You will go to Europe. It is a safe place. The man you saw earlier this morning told me. He sent his son there and he is doing well.”
“Where is Europe?”
“I don’t know, but it is far from here.”
“Mum, why don’t you come with me?”
“I don’t have money for both of us,” you said. “I can’t bear the thought of seeing you die like the others. I have seen what these bombs do to children. I won’t cover your grave with mud. I’d rather see you leave me in one piece.”
“But Mum, I am happy here with you. I’m not scared. How can you let me go?”
You were silent.
The smugglers were waiting for us. They were surrounded by oil lamps. I had never seen so many lamps. It was as if the stars had come down from the sky.
The men stood next to their camels, ready for the journey. You handed me to one of them. He said, “Allah is my witness that I will deliver your son to the businessman in Khartoum who will send him to a European country. He is good.”
“I will miss you so much, my son,” you said. You gave me one last hug and helped me get on the camel. “Promise me you will look after yourself.”
“I will,” I said.
“Promise you will always remember me?”
“I will,” I said
“And make sure you study hard and make me proud.”
“I will.”
The camel man suddenly shouted, “Woman, we don’t have much time. The fighter planes will be coming, we must hurry.”
I was in the saddle of the camel looking at your face. I saw you crying. I managed to touch your cheek.
Then the camels started to move. “Son?” you cried out as you ran behind the camel. “Son?”
The camels crossed the border into Sudan safely. My guide helped me catch a bus to Khartoum. At the bus station, I met the man who would send me to Europe.
“I am Ali,” he said greeting me warmly.
For days he kept talking about his skills at faking passports and visas, and how he controls the gateway to the safe world of Europe. Then one day he said to me, “I have everything ready for you to go to London.”
I didn’t know where London was, but I arrived at its airport late one evening.
It took a few minutes for me to be transported by bus from the plane to immigration control with the rest of the passengers. I found myself joining a queue in front of a man sitting on a high chair behind high table. He was checking passports. He looked stern. No smile, not a single expression on his face. I started shaking badly. I quietly recited verses from the Qur’an to calm me down. I prayed: “Please God turn this man‘s heart into a gentle and caring heart like my mother’s.”
But somehow the worry kept mounting. I wanted to cry aloud and tell everyone that I didn’t want to come here, that it was my mother who had sent me here, and that I have a fake passport, fake tourist visa, and fake age.
This reminded me to act how Ali told me to. “You must stand up tall and make yourself like an adult. If you don’t, they will find out your real age and send you back. Behave like a man, just like it says in your new passport.”
I stretched my neck, so that I looked taller; narrowed my eyes; I tensed my jaw to give me a serious look; and I held my passport in my right hand with the elbow stretched out – just like the Ethiopian soldiers hold their guns.
Then it was my turn to give my passport to the man. He was checking it carefully, more than he did with the others. He took a long time. I wished you’d never sent me here. Bad thoughts about you entered my mind. For the first time in my life, I mumbled, “I hate my mother.”
The man interrupted my thoughts and he spoke in English, which I didn’t understand. I took my note and handed it to him. It was given to me by Ali. It said, “I don’t speak English. I speak Tigrinya, the language of Eritrea. I am a tourist. I am staying in this Hotel – 32-34 Bloomsbury Street, Bayswater.”
The man said something. I understood from the gesture of his hand – his index and thumb fingers rubbing each other slowly – that he was asking about how I would finance my stay. I handed him another note. It said, “I have £500 for two weeks stay.”
I was waved through.
“God,” I thought as I walked away from the immigration control, “I am actually in London. I am safe.”
I stepped outside the lounge and searched for Ali’s partner. He knew my flight schedule and was picking me up at the airport.
“It won’t be difficult to recognise my partner,” Ali had told me. “He is my brother and he looks like me.”
At once I saw the man. He looked so much like Ali, I thought they must be twins.
“I am Mustafa,” the man said as soon as I approached him. “Everything is arranged. Tonight you will sleep at my place. Tomorrow I will take you to the Home Office and you will ask for asylum. OK?”
“OK.”
Even though it was quiet and safe, the first night in London was harder than sleeping in our hut under the noisy Ethiopian planes.
I started thinking of you. I couldn’t sleep. How could I, knowing that a bomb could have finally found you? We had a saying in our village: “A time comes when even a blind man will hit his target.”
I heard the sound of rain falling in the street. I opened the window and stared across the quiet street.
There were plenty of parked cars and trees on each side of the road. The autumn wind kept bringing leaves down to the ground. The street was like a Persian rug, painted by yellow, red and orange leaves. Then suddenly a cat appeared from under a parked car. It was meowing. And just like me, it was young, lost, and alone.
Then I missed you even more. I wanted to run to the Home Office and tell them to deport me. I wanted to be with you and my donkey Alem. But then I remembered the promise I made to you. So I began to memorise the story that I was going to tell the Home Office people the next morning.
“The most important thing to remember is to say your age,” said Mustafa. “Tell them the age in the passport and not your real age. OK? Don’t worry about the rest of the story. Just tell the truth. Your country is at war. That’s enough for you to seek asylum.”
At the Home Office, we joined a very long queue. There were all sorts of people queuing. We all stood holding our documents. I saw a lot of people concentrating hard and mumbling words. They were memorising the stories they were going to tell the Home Office people. I started to go over my story once again.
The queue was moving very slowly. It took almost half a day before it was my turn to face the man behind the window. I told him my story in Tigrinya and Mustafa translated. I was hesitating a lot. But Mustafa kept a straight face throughout my session. The Home Office man wrote my story down. I was given a paper confirming that I was an asylum seeker in this country. But I was told that I would have to wait for a decision.
I felt happy that I had not been harmed by the Home Office. But my happiness was cut short when Mustafa took me straight to a charity that gives houses and support to people like me and left me there.
“My job is done. This is not the government. So don’t be scared. These people are very helpful,” he said.
“Are we going to meet again?” I asked him. He was the only person I knew in this country.
“There are translators here who speak Tigrinya. An advisor will see you shortly. My job is finished,” he said and he patted me on my afro-hair before leaving.
The advisor, who sat behind a desk, introduced herself as Diane. Her words were translated to me by the Eritrean man who sat beside her. His name was Eyob.
Diane found me a room in a place called Mile End.
The room I was given was on the ground floor. The other four men in the house were in their late 30s and white. They were Eastern European refugees. They looked very upset when they saw me. So I locked my door and stayed there all day.
Days went by and I had no one to talk to. It was as if I was in a jail and the four men were the guards. I couldn’t watch TV because they were in the living room all day doing nothing but watching TV, eating and sometimes sleeping there too.
One evening they went out and I thought I’d have my dinner in the kitchen: cornflakes with milk. It was all I was eating day and night, until I taught myself how to cook. But as soon as I started eating, two of them came back and came straight to the kitchen.
They opened the fridge and started drinking alcohol. You had told me it was forbidden in our religion to drink or even touch alcohol. I hated its smell. One of them started shouting at me in his language. He had long hair and had drawings over his left arm, like henna drawings. But his drawing was not made of lines. It was a picture of a violent dragon.
He touched my hair with his right index finger. Both men started laughing. I decided to go to my room with my food. But one of them took my bowl and poured a bit of alcohol in it.
I ran to my room and locked my door.
“How could this happen to me?” I asked myself. “Only three weeks ago, I was with my mother. There was war and I could have died, but I had my mother beside me. I had her love and care.”
I cried myself to sleep.
Next morning I woke up smiling. I’d had had a beautiful dream.
I was running from the Ethiopian fighter planes. You suddenly appeared from nowhere and hugged me tightly. Then the fighter planes turned into butterflies with beautiful colours, and humming wings. Then you kissed me and told me that you were with me in spirit and that I should do what I promised you. Then I too turned into a butterfly. And as I flew away from you, you blew me kisses and told me we would meet again soon.
The dream made me feel good. “This time,” I thought to myself, “I will make my journey on my own.”
I packed my bag and headed to the charity organisation.
“Are you OK?” Eyob asked me.
“I want to tell you and Diane a secret,” I said. “But can I trust her?”
“Diane has worked with refugees for over 30 years,” he replied, “she even worked with Eritrean refugees living in refugee camps in Sudan. She took care of me when I came here 7 years ago. Without her help, I wouldn’t be where I am today. So yes, you can trust her.”
Then he added: “Kareem, what is it you want to tell Diane?”
“It is about my age,” I said.
“What about your age?”
“I am….” Then I stopped.
“Kareem, did you change your age?”
I said nothing.
He added: “When I came to this country, I lied about my age too. My businessman thought that increasing my age would get me through the immigration control at the airport as I was travelling on my own. But if you tell the government you are an adult, they will think of you as one. They will put you in adult accommodation. You will go to college and not to school. If you tell us your real age, we will send you to a place where you will live and go to school with other children, where someone will teach you how to wash and cook.”
I looked at Diane to see if she was as nice as he was saying. I searched her face, and it reminded me of yours. Her face was a white, but both your faces had the same expression. She had a gentle face that had wrinkles of wisdom below the eyes. Her big eyes made me comfortable every time she looked at me. Her smile was just like yours: a smile that melted away your worries and made you feel happy.
“Trust me,” she said, in broken Tigrinya.
I stared at her speechless. Eyob was laughing. “Yes, she knows a bit of Tigrinya too.”
“I am not seventeen like it says in my Home Office paper. I am 14 years old next week,” I said, and I started to cry uncontrollably.
Now I am here in a house for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. I feel better, although I still miss you deeply. Last night I talked to Diane about this. She said I could write you a letter – but I had found a better idea. I decided to write you a letter each time I begin to fulfil one of the promises I made to you when I began my journey on the camel.
This morning I have started studying at a school. The whole class today was an English lesson. It is 9pm now, and I thought I would write and tell you that I am working hard and that when I finish my English course, I will go to secondary school, then to college and then to university. After that I will work and then bring you here with my money.
That is why it can only be up from here for me. So please keep safe and alive until that day.