Ellen Wiles - The Invisible Crowd

Back in Romania I used to play violin. Like all time when I was kid, and then I play in wedding band and earn my living for some time – it’s not much money, but I loved it. So I brought violin to UK, but I never play it. But then one day in warehouse when everyone’s out and it’s just me and Professor Jojo, he finds violin at back of big cupboard, and ask about it. I told him it’s mine but I not play any more. He ask me please to play for him, and I say no, no, but he keep pressing. And I’m like, okay, fine, so I pick it up, thinking I can just scratch some tune and put it back. But then I play this song my grandmother teach me, and it is first time touching violin since I left my country, and since I saw her – and oh my God, this feeling just hit me. I’m not expecting it, you know? And fat stupid tears just start falling out of my eyes, like river, so fast I cannot even play, and I’m like, what is wrong with me! I put violin away, and I cannot believe I’m crying in front of another guy, but Professor tell me wait, don’t stop, play more, and I tell him no, but I end up admit to him about my grandmother and how she disowned me when I came out to her, and how she die a year later, and how I feel so bad about letting her down. So bad , like maybe it was me breaking her heart and killing her, and how that was when I decide to get out of my country and come to UK.

Professor just listen. Then he tell me his mother used to sing, and he and his sister played an instrument called car or something like that, and he really miss music from home. He say, if I have violin here and I can play, I should do it, and keep my culture alive inside of me. He say my grandmother would want me to. But I tell him no no no – you know, I’m not into it any more.

But when I find out one of my new friends has got band that’s like Eastern European folk but with urban twist, it sounded cool, and I remember what Professor said, so I ask if I can try out, just jamming with them one time, and now I play with them regularly! It’s, like, music you go crazy for, and we perform wearing wigs and traditional dresses. It’s hilarious. I love it.

So, anyway it was one of my friends from the band who offer me place to live in house after the warehouse got raided – like, proper house in Brixton that look on outside like kind of house with normal family living there, except inside there’s six gays squatting. And then through another friend from that group I get proper job wrapping sandwiches for supermarket. Pay every week, better money – everything coming together. Best of all, I can stop pretending to be alpha guy – so I shave my hair at bottom and up one side, bleach the ends and get some piercing, and finally I can walk out on street and feel like me. Like the me I was supposed to be.

So anyway, I hope Professor’s not gonna get deported. How his chances looking like? And how about one more coffee? We had late gig last night.

MIGRANTS CLASH: FRENCH COPS USE TEAR GAS IN RUNNING BATTLES WITH HUNDREDS OF MIGRANTS TRYING TO CLAMBER ON LORRIES BOUND FOR BRITAIN

‘Brother! Is it really you?’

The sound of Melat’s voice for the first time, after so long, made Yonas’s throat swell so that he couldn’t reply straight away, and he had to lean back against the phone box wall. Part of him had been convinced that he wouldn’t get through, that something terrible would have happened, that the police would have come, she’d have been beaten, worse…

‘Hey, are you still there?’ she asked.

‘Yes, yes!’ Yonas laughed, imagining her face in the contour of his reflection in the scratched Perspex window. ‘Sorry – I was just… Never mind. So, I made it to London! How are you all? I have been so worried – they haven’t come to intimidate you again, have they?’

‘Not the police, thank God, but the tax men came, demanding their two per cent. I fended them off this time, and obviously I am still here, but they kept asking me again where you were, kept telling me I must know, I must be getting money from you… they searched your room again and took everything they didn’t take last time. Of course I told them I didn’t know anything, I insisted I wasn’t getting anything from you, and said I feared you were dead, which was true – I even showed them what we had in our kitchen cupboards, just flour for injera and lentils, but they didn’t care, and if it wasn’t for Sheshy in his wheelchair, I think they’d have arrested me. But anyway, we’re okay. Now you – where have you been all this time? Are you with Auntie?’

‘No – I was about to say. That number you gave me did not work.’

‘What?’

‘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.