Ellen Wiles - The Invisible Crowd

ELLEN WILESwas born in 1981 and grew up in Reading. After doing a music degree at Oxford, she did a Master’s in Human Rights Law, and then became a barrister at a London chambers, disappearing off periodically to work, including on The Bushmen Project in Botswana and with Karenni refugees in a camp in Thailand. After scribbling fiction on the side for a while, she did a Master’s in Creative Writing, and eventually quit the law. She is the author of Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar Under Censorship and in Transition (Columbia University Press, 2015), which includes interviews with Burmese writers and new literary translations. She is currently doing a PhD in Literary Anthropology, researching live literature, and directs an experimental live literature project. She lives in London with her husband and two small children.

Someone has flung rainbow pepper on the air.

The hummingbirds are migrating, each alone:

Blossomcrown, Coppery Thorntail and Flame-Rumped Sapphire.

RUTH PADEL, THE MARA CROSSING

All across the country, people said that

it wasn’t that they didn’t like immigrants.

ALI SMITH, AUTUMN

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About the Author ELLEN WILES was born in 1981 and grew up in Reading. After doing a music degree at Oxford, she did a Master’s in Human Rights Law, and then became a barrister at a London chambers, disappearing off periodically to work, including on The Bushmen Project in Botswana and with Karenni refugees in a camp in Thailand. After scribbling fiction on the side for a while, she did a Master’s in Creative Writing, and eventually quit the law. She is the author of Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar Under Censorship and in Transition (Columbia University Press, 2015), which includes interviews with Burmese writers and new literary translations. She is currently doing a PhD in Literary Anthropology, researching live literature, and directs an experimental live literature project. She lives in London with her husband and two small children.

Title Page

Prologue Prologue We’re clinging to each other, fistfuls of flesh and bone, and battering rams are smashing over our heads leaving us stingy-eyed, breathless, a woman and her child are clinging to one of my legs each, everyone is clinging to someone or something, and I almost envy the two tiny babies slung tight to their mothers who don’t have a clue what this chaos is about, who don’t understand the enormity of this terror, because there are way too many of us piled in here, we’ve created a death trap for each other, we know this, but we need each other too, we’re all we’ve got left, and this might be the last group of faces I’ll ever see, and I’ve never seen a group of faces so petrified, and I’ve seen a lot of petrified faces, and there’s another one approaching, oh God, it’s coming, it’s coming, and we’re rising, rising up – up and up and up – and this wave is taller than the tallest cliff and my stomach clenches and our boat is vertical now and I’m clinging on with all my strength and we’re going to flip backwards and this is the end… but then we dip forward, just a little… and then we’re nearly horizontal again – we’re floating on nothingness, we’re flying – and then we SLAP down on the water, and my brain explodes through my skull and the water is roaring and children are shrieking and women are wailing and men are sobbing, and I look beyond the boat and there’s still nothing but this vast purple-grey sky bleeding into a desert of wetness you can’t drink, with a furious monster thrashing underneath the surface, waiting to devour us, and why couldn’t it have chosen a group of people who’ve had an easier life? – and now the child who’s got hold of my leg has vomited in my lap but it doesn’t matter, because we’re rising again, oh God, we’re rising, up and up and up and up…

Chapter 1: Jude

Chapter 2: Yonas

Chapter 3: Joe

Chapter 4: Yonas

Chapter 5: Quentin

Chapter 6: Yonas

Chapter 7: Emil

Chapter 8: Yonas

Chapter 9: Jude

Chapter 10: Molly

Chapter 11: Yonas

Chapter 12: Meg

Chapter 13: Yonas

Chapter 14: Veata

Chapter 15: Yonas

Chapter 16: Jude

Chapter 17: Gavin

Chapter 18: Yonas

Chapter 19: Tesfay

Chapter 20: Yonas

Chapter 21: Nina

Chapter 22: Yonas

Chapter 23: Gebre

Chapter 24: Yonas

Chapter 25: Clara

Chapter 26: Yonas

Chapter 27: Martina

Chapter 28: Yonas

Chapter 29: Jude

Chapter 30: Melat

Chapter 31: Yonas

Chapter 32: Jude

Epilogue

Afterword

Acknowledgements

References

Copyright

We’re clinging to each other, fistfuls of flesh and bone, and battering rams are smashing over our heads leaving us stingy-eyed, breathless, a woman and her child are clinging to one of my legs each, everyone is clinging to someone or something, and I almost envy the two tiny babies slung tight to their mothers who don’t have a clue what this chaos is about, who don’t understand the enormity of this terror, because there are way too many of us piled in here, we’ve created a death trap for each other, we know this, but we need each other too, we’re all we’ve got left, and this might be the last group of faces I’ll ever see, and I’ve never seen a group of faces so petrified, and I’ve seen a lot of petrified faces, and there’s another one approaching, oh God, it’s coming, it’s coming, and we’re rising, rising up – up and up and up – and this wave is taller than the tallest cliff and my stomach clenches and our boat is vertical now and I’m clinging on with all my strength and we’re going to flip backwards and this is the end… but then we dip forward, just a little… and then we’re nearly horizontal again – we’re floating on nothingness, we’re flying – and then we SLAP down on the water, and my brain explodes through my skull and the water is roaring and children are shrieking and women are wailing and men are sobbing, and I look beyond the boat and there’s still nothing but this vast purple-grey sky bleeding into a desert of wetness you can’t drink, with a furious monster thrashing underneath the surface, waiting to devour us, and why couldn’t it have chosen a group of people who’ve had an easier life? – and now the child who’s got hold of my leg has vomited in my lap but it doesn’t matter, because we’re rising again, oh God, we’re rising, up and up and up and up…

WELCOME TO HEAVEN, HOW ABOUT A CUP OF TEA?

The cold facts about immigration – why so many asylum seekers head for Britain.

YK (Eritrea) v Home Office. That’s all you have so far. It’s 8 p.m. already, and you’re supposed to submit the skeleton argument tomorrow. You were all set to leave chambers at 6 p.m., for once, when your clerk phoned. You so nearly didn’t pick up, but the receiver tugged at your hand like a magnet.

‘Brief’s just come in for you, counsel’s sick – skelly’s due in the morning, papers being biked over now, all right?’ he barked.

It wasn’t really meant to be a question. But you still could have said no. You had the right to say no. You should have said no. But if you want to get decent work at the Bar you have start out as a Yes person, and as your old supervisor kept telling you, he got his breakthrough case by stepping in at the last minute. You trill your fingernails on the desk.