The Invisible Crowd

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‘I know. Every time I tried it said number is not in use. Can you ask if she has changed phone?’

‘Oh. I don’t know – the person who gave it to me moved away. I can ask around to see if somebody else knows but…’

‘Okay, thank you but do not worry yourself too much. I have found a place to live for now. And I can send you some money soon.’

‘Thank you, brother! We are really struggling. So how was the journey?’

‘After Libya? Long story. The boat was bad but the main thing is it didn’t sink. I had to pick vegetables in Italy for a while, and then I had to pretend to be a cabbage to get to France, and we got arrested there but—’

‘Arrested? Oh no – did you go to prison again? Are they looking for you?’

‘No no, do not worry, they did not keep us for long – some guys helped us to escape – it was easy,’ he lied. ‘When they got us to UK we had to work for them for some time to pay them back, so that’s why I haven’t called. But everything is fine now.’ As a little boy, when he used to sit with Melat under the mango tree in the garden doing homework and sharing secrets, he had assumed she would always be there to confide in, to dispense big-sisterly advice. Now it felt like he was the one who had to keep things from her, to protect her.

‘Oh brother, I am so glad,’ she said.

‘Why did I have to call you at Uncle Solomon’s?’ he asked. ‘Is your phone broken?’

‘Our line is cut off – we cannot pay our bills, even though I am braiding women’s hair at our house every spare hour God sends, and mending clothes and sewing for people. And getting hardly any sleep trying to keep the house clean and cooking, caring for Sheshy and Grandmother; even with Lemlem helping me, it is hard, I am always tired… Things are really difficult here, Yonas. It is not just the tax and bills, we have no money for meat or vegetables, and I don’t know how I am going to pay for Lemlem’s school fees next term, never mind the new shoes she needs – the old ones are hurting her feet and have holes in. She knows not to complain, but she keeps asking when you can fly us all over.’

Yonas laughed bitterly. ‘I would love, more than anything, to bring all of you here, but you need to tell the little one not to get her hopes up…’

‘I know, I know,’ Melat said. The sound cut off for a minute, but then her voice returned in a whisper. ‘Listen, I’m scared, Yonas. If the tax men come again, they won’t let me off so lightly. They kept telling me you know where he is, come on, admit it, you know where he is. They had guns and they kept putting their hands on them.’

Yonas could hear her voice wavering, and he winced. He knew what could happen to deserters’ families… but orphaned families? Children whose parents had fought for liberation, who were national heroes? Whose brothers were maimed fighting in the border war? All that might as well have been for nothing now. To the authorities he was a traitor and a deserter and, thanks to him, Melat was tarred with the same brush.

‘What else did they say?’ he asked. He felt like punching the window and shattering it. ‘Did they threaten you with prison?’

‘They had guns for a reason.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘Like I told you – I knew nothing. I made them come and see Sheshy, told them I was caring for a martyr.’

Yonas sighed. It could so easily have been him in a wheelchair. ‘How is he?’

‘Miserable. Only thing that makes him smile is playing chess with this friend of his who lost an arm. They play every week.’

Even after all these years it was still hard to imagine Sheshy twinless, having to make friends on his own who would accept him in a wheelchair. Instinctively, Yonas still thought of Sheshy and Tekle as a duo, a pair of cute but irritating toddlers, always together, always scheming and giggling, who pushed over his wooden block towers and tried to copy everything he did, but whom he’d have done anything to defend, even though they would always love each other more than him. ‘Can I speak to him?’ he asked.

‘He’s asleep.’

‘Oh. Well, when he wakes up, tell him… he is brave. Braver than his big brother.’

‘Right.’ Melat’s voice sounded tart, cynical, as if she were thinking: Yes, well, it’s true.

‘Now I am working, we can save up for his prosthetics, Yonas added.’

‘Okay.’

There was a long pause. ‘And how is Grandmother?’

‘Worse.’ Melat puffed out a long breath. ‘She’s gone downhill. I mean, she can barely remember who came to visit five minutes ago and she’s got so cranky and frail…’

Grandmother had been fine before Yonas left, asking him to find her glasses and forgetting what she’d just been about to do, and complaining of the odd ache and pain, that was all. She used to be a strong woman, with a steely voice, hard to deal with sometimes, but she would do anything for the family, and adored Melat. Many older women would have disowned a pregnant unmarried granddaughter, but Grandmother had lied gallantly to the whole community, making out that Melat had a fiancé who was killed in battle. And it was Grandmother who had stepped in to help when Melat went through that crazy phase, leaving her tiny baby screeching in one room, and hitting herself on the forehead in another, swearing, saying that she couldn’t look at her any more, that all she saw was him, that her life was ruined, that she wanted to throw the baby out of the window. Yonas had panicked, and tried to shout some sense into his sister, but Grandmother had kept cool, just told Melat calmly to rest, to sleep, and to let her tend to Lemlem for a while, even in the night-time. Gradually the darkness in Melat’s eyes had faded, and she even started to take delight in Lemlem’s smiles, her kamikaze crawling.

‘I wish I could help you more,’ Yonas said. ‘At least some money will come soon. Right now I’m staying with some guys and we are doing things like cleaning mostly, and the money we are earning does not get me far – you would not believe what things cost here! But I will find a better job and place to live soon, and then I can send more…’ He tried to assert this confidently, but heard his voice falter and changed the subject. ‘And what about Lemlem?’

Melat laughed finally, and it was like music. ‘Well, she’s the ray of light. Her schooling is terrible, you know, education here has dive-bombed and most of her classmates can barely read, but at least thanks to Father I know enough to teach her at home. We’re lucky to have his books. She is reading English now, all by herself, she can sit for hours…’

‘Amazing! I wish I could see her.’

‘She misses you. Oh Yonas, I can’t bear the thought of my baby getting conscripted…’

‘Melat, don’t even think about that yet – it’s more than a decade until Lemlem turns seventeen. Things will change.’

‘Mmm. I hope so. Now, tell me about Gebre,’ Melat said. ‘How is he?’

‘Oh, he made it to the UK with me… he’s doing all right, I think.’

‘You think?’

‘He isn’t with me just now – he will be joining soon.’

‘How come? From where?’

He could hear the accusation in Melat’s voice as well as surprise. He couldn’t remember his childhood before Gebre was in it, and Melat probably couldn’t either. ‘He… found different work outside London. He wanted to stay and do that for a bit longer. Look, I’m about to run out of credit, but can I just say hello to Lemlem?’ There was a pause, but he heard Melat call her name, then a fast, drumming sound.

‘Uncle Yonas!’ cried a tiny voice. ‘I can read English now so Mama says I can come and stay with you and go to school in London!’

After hanging up, Yonas stood still for a moment, imagining them all at home, how they’d be chewing over the conversation later. Would he ever get to see them again? How would he forgive himself if the tax men came and beat Melat, or sent her to prison, all because of him?

The graffiti around the phone box walls read:

Emma n Ben 4ever

Live 4 the moment

Get Out this is my urinal

He pulled out Bin Man Joe’s number and typed into the keypad. The ring trilled over and over, like a robotic bird. Just like Auntie, he was never going to answer – perhaps it was a fake number – but then:

‘Hello?’

‘Oh, hello!’ Yonas replied. ‘This is… You took me to the station.’

‘Oh, you! Well, I never…’

‘I just want to say thank you. I thought you would like to know that I found a place to live and a job.’

‘Right! Well, that’s fantastic – good on you.’

‘Also I am calling because… I need to ask you for help one more time. Not for me, but for my friend. He might find you in the same place. I want him to know that he can come to join me.’

Silence.

‘I don’t have a phone yet, but there is a shopkeeper near where I’m living, he knows how to find me, so if you can pass the address to my friend – his name is Gebre – he can find me that way. I can give it to you now, if you have a pen…’

More silence. But Yonas could still hear breathing.

‘It is only one more person’, he added, ‘and Gebre – he is a good guy. A really good guy. He is like my brother. I will be so happy if he can join me in London, and I can help him to get on his feet.’

‘All right then,’ Bin Man Joe said eventually, sounding unconvinced. ‘I’ll grab a pen. But I can’t guarantee nowt, all right? Haven’t seen any sign of any other chums of yours or nowt like that at all, so…’

From the scratchy sound over the line, he did seem to be writing down the address, but his goodbye after that was swift and gruff. Yonas couldn’t help wondering if he’d only agreed to write down the address in order to get him off the phone, and had no intention of passing on any message, or giving any more random lifts to stinking, scared, illegal men. But at least he’d tried.

He walked home, hands in his pockets, staring at the tessellating pavement slabs. Would Gebre ever leave the factory? Would Osman ever be well enough? He should report Aziz to the police, now, today, for their own good… But then, Gebre was right: there was no obvious way to do that anonymously and not get arrested. And even if he managed it, Gebre had chosen to stay there, of his own free will, so what gave Yonas the right to expose him?

As he got settled in the warehouse, and came to know the others living there, he concluded he’d been incredibly lucky that it was Emil he’d bumped into and got as his mentor. The Russian guys were grumpy alcoholics who never washed their sheets, the Ivorian and Nigerian guys boasted and bickered, the Indian guys sneered and kept to themselves. Emil loathed the warehouse as much as any of them, but he was always on the lookout for something to laugh about, like the woman in a legal office who kept a vibrator in her desk drawer tucked under a book about the morality of law, and the overweight guy leaving the gym as they were starting their clean and wolfing two chocolate bars in the space of thirty seconds, then phoning his girlfriend and saying he was just going to grab a salad after his workout and then he’d be home, and the bus driver who kept overtaking other buses as if he were a bitter Formula One reject.

Yonas was glad, though, that Emil’s joker mask had slipped on that first day, when he divulged his secret. Although he wanted it kept quiet in the warehouse, Emil genuinely seemed to anticipate a future in which he would live here openly as a gay man. And why not, if it was legal? Yonas had responded with assiduous nonchalance, as if people he’d just met came out to him all the time, while silently marvelling and wishing he could introduce Emil to Gebre straight away – but, he hoped, it wouldn’t be long until his friend arrived.

The novelty of riding on a comfortable bus soon wore off, and the freedom to choose meals became less miraculous when all Yonas could afford or be bothered with was cheap pasta interspersed with greasy McDonald’s, and when his days were defined by endless bottles of bleach and sprays and mops and dirty coffee cups and toilets and loo roll holders. He didn’t mind the tediousness of the work particularly – it beat the factory, and at least it was paid – but he minded how short a distance the money could stretch. The amount he had left over at the end of a week to wire home to Melat was pitiful, and the prospect of saving enough to pay for a place to live, with a bedroom to himself, a kitchen with more than one hotplate and a bathroom between twenty guys, and clothes that suited him better than the two clown-like outfits he’d got from the charity shop, never mind obtaining a visa, all seemed as remote as a trip to the moon. He couldn’t risk part-time work, but he kept looking out for other full-time options, asking people in small cafés or restaurants about jobs. He got mildly excited about the prospect of teaching English in the dodgy language school above a corner shop, where they didn’t seem bothered about visas, but even the few employers like that who offered him something there couldn’t pay enough for him to rent a room, eat and send any money home.