Ellen Wiles - The Invisible Crowd

Back home, Alec will be listening to his final story before lights out. You’re a terrible mother! You should be the one reading him Burglar Bill . He’ll move onto books without pictures soon, and before you know it he’ll be off to uni. You should be spending this precious time cultivating his language development, guiding him through important moral lessons like if you burgle tins of beans and bedpans from people’s houses you have to give them back, or just feeling the warmth of his little body snuggled against yours… But unless you have a career you can’t even pay for the nursery fees you need so that you can have a career… oh, wait…

Anyhow, your papers will arrive any minute. You’ll do the speediest prep possible, enough to wing it, then you’ll jump on the Tube, and in half an hour you’ll be back in your kitchen, making a cup of peppermint tea, then sitting on the edge of Alec’s bed, touching your lips softly onto his apricot cheek, watching his silhouette gently rise and fall with his breath, letting yourself indulge in a moment of utter peace. And then you’ll crash. Meanwhile…

You write the initials YK in your blue notebook, italicize them, doodle some flowers around them, and fill out the acronym in your head: Yoghurty Koala. Yielding Kipper. Yesterday’s Kleenex . Your friends are probably all out having fun right now, on a night out at that new Brazilian place you had to pull out of last time because you were working, or seeing whatever the new film of the moment is… you’re so out of the loop. None of them have procreated yet, or become obsessed with a futile desire to change the world. As a result, all of them appear to have managed to achieve a sane work–life balance involving that mystical thing called down time. You wouldn’t change Alec for the world, of course. But why were you so obsessed by getting into human rights law? Why? The fees have got so low for publicly funded work that you won’t make enough from this case to cover the weekly food shop. Come on, YK. Yowling Kitten. Yachting King. Yossarian Killer.

Your clerk finally lumbers in with two large boxes and dumps them on your desk. ‘Enjoy. I’m off home,’ he says, as if you’d be thrilled. This will take hours just to skim-read. You’re tempted to throw them out of the window and jump after them – or at least just disappear from chambers for a while. You’re so drained, and all you’ve got is a Snickers for dinner, and you’re becoming a stranger to your little boy, not to mention his daddy, and right now you feel less like a human rights warrior and more like a masochist… You manage enough grace to say ‘bye’ but your clerk is already out of the door. His feet thump down the stairs, two at a time. You pull out the first file, and just after you extricate it from the box, it bursts. White sheets drift over your desk and across the floor like snow.

Max would love you to quit the Bar! He says it’s not worth the stress. If you did quit you could start your own business, like screen-printing pretty muslin cloths, that idea you had when Alec was a baby – there’s clearly a market among new mums who want to look artsy while mopping up sick – or maybe just trade barrister for barista, and get a no-stress nine to five in a hipster coffee shop. You’d probably make more money, in the short term anyway, and the pay would be regular. Or else, you and Max could shove all your stuff into storage and migrate somewhere exotic like Zanzibar, teach English, and sip coconut water as Alec splashes through turquoise waves and rides on dolphins.

You pull down a new ring binder from the cupboard, gather up the papers, stick them back in again, in order, which eats up at least fifteen minutes, then start to flick through. So, YK is a male… arrived from Eritrea a year ago… university… government job… writer… conscript… prison break… desert… boat… cabbage truck… and you share a birthday! Seriously, 2 March 1975 – what are the chances? Could he have been born at 8.20 a.m. as well? For your last birthday, Alec made his first ever card for you – a portrait of Mummy in crayon that looked like a warped tomato on stilts with spaghetti on top – and while you were blowing out the candles on Max’s home-baked chocolate and raspberry cake, YK was probably… being smuggled through France? Cakeless and cardless, at any rate.

You go through his witness statement again, more slowly, and find you’re gnawing your knuckles. This isn’t a case you should be skim-reading. The reason you wanted to do this job is because people like YK have had the worst luck thrown their way, and all they get in return for escaping to a supposed safe place is a sea of newspaper headlines branding them liars, scroungers and criminals. At a moment as crucial as a tribunal hearing they need someone who will not only expend time and effort to put their case, but will actually care: that’s you. That’s why you’re still here, when you could be reading Burglar Bill or ordering a caipirinha (probably not simultaneously). But, first things first, where is Eritrea exactly? Might be nice at least to locate it within the continent before you attempt to persuade a judge not to send someone back there.

The internet informs you that it’s a moon-shaped sliver of coastline in East Africa, with mountains inland and coral reefs along the coast. Should be lush. But apparently it’s an ‘open prison’. Ethiopia is its next-door neighbour but also its worst enemy since they split up… after a thirty-year-long war. And then another war over the border… So in 1990, when you were on a camping holiday with your parents in the Lakes, pretending you were a Swallows and Amazons character, YK was stuck behind a front line. And in 1998, when you were doing your law conversion course and trying to get your head around trusts and torts, he was being conscripted. In 2001, when you were starting pupillage in the beautiful surrounds of Temple, his government announced the end of the free press. And in 2003, when you were stressing about leaving your beautiful baby boy in nursery so you could go back to your sought-after job after your maternity leave, he was being tortured in an underground oven.

After a bit more research, you find yourself clicking into a few diaspora blogs, expecting a barrage of outrage against the government, but while you do find a lot of that, you find a lot of defenders as well. It’s like going down a rabbit hole into a world of patriotic passions, fierce emotions and vicious insults. But you’ve got to crawl out: you’re seriously pressed for time now. You need to focus on the law, the expert reports, the evidence. You unwrap your Snickers, take a large bite, and read on.

If what he says is true, YK has lived a more terrifying life than you can contemplate enduring and remaining sane. But as you read his rejection letter from the Home Office, go through his witness statement again and note down questions you want to ask, a cynical voice in your head can’t help asking: how much is he exaggerating? He claims he was imprisoned for writing articles criticizing the regime… but would he really have dared to do something that risky in a country that repressive? There’s less press freedom there than in North Korea. And then to stage a prison break near a militarized border – is that even possible? It’s ironic that the more oppressive the country, the harder it is to make any stories of resistance sound credible in a tribunal, when, if they were true, the case for asylum would be all the stronger. YK has also got zero hard evidence from Eritrea to back up what he says, which of course makes sense if he had to flee, but never helps with credibility. Also, could his journey really have been that hair-raising? And why didn’t he just seek asylum here sooner? Plus, you bet in person his English will be rubbish and he won’t remember what his solicitor put in his statement and he’ll come across as stilted and awkward and the judge will make him squirm.