'YOUR HONOUR, I BEG YOUR PARDON, but this story of mine isn’t a fabrication. It is a truth that the evidence was missing while escaping. It is a story about me, my miserable life, my STOLEN YOUTH. Can I have your mercy?’ I begged.
Alas!
What is mercy without any evidence? Law wasn’t made to be won by compassion; only the evidence and bribes would victor a case. Neither which I had. Oh, what a stupid me, drenched in nothing but self-hatred and self-pity.
Don’t worry; it’s just me playing the past scenes from the court hearing in my head.
How do I describe it? My life has been on about it for years. From one solicitor to another solicitor who started everything optimistically, cleverly pointed out the good point to win my case and then in one snap, on one particular day, their mood changed and then the hide-and-seek began; these solicitors were scared to see me.
There were not only one, but a few official self-pity days where I poured all the sad moments in my life and cried about it for a few hours in the bathtub, or by watching sad movies so that no one knew that I was self-pity-crying myself like The Grinch does.
My mind flew back to April 2011, when I was first interviewed as an asylum seeker in Croydon. The Indian officers looked overly stressed. She kept asking some questions and every time I answered, she would tell me that I wasted her time or pretend that she didn’t hear me because my voice was not loud enough. I just sat silent like a repressed person; any unnecessary word come out of me would be another annoyance to her.
After some time, she asked, ‘You need a house, correct?’ Before I answered, she forwarded her head to me and said harshly, ‘But it won’t be a castle! If you’re looking for a castle, you won’t get any!’
‘No Ma’am, I wouldn’t dare to dream of such a thing,’ I replied.
‘No need to shout at me; who do you think you are?’ she just kept snapping at me over and over.
‘No Ma’am, I was not shouting; you told me before to speak louder so you can understand my English.’ I tried to explain, she responded with a sigh and the loud click-clack sounds she made from typing on her computer keyboard too fast really clarified her stress. Her ongoing cynicism and sarcasm while doing her job were supposed to drive anyone fleeing from their hell countries for help into a suicidal mood, but not me. I found it, well – not in disrespectful way – quite hilarious. She truly despised her job that she poured it on me.
As the interview was over, I sat in relief, but as I looked around and seen other refugees sat in despair, waiting for their turn to be interviewed, I started to hate every part of visions I seen; if I had a power to tell myself in the past that one day I would be here, I wonder how the little me would react. I hope I won’t feel bitter.
No kids grew to imagine themselves fleeing from their birth country one day, being forced to shift to another country and hence lived in limbo for years, holding a status as a refugee who the fortunate people would feel sorry for or enrage for due to being the burden. I didn’t flee because of the actual war, there was no war, bomb or explosion happened, although there was interference of black magic, death threats, and years of suffering done by the people who were the rivals of my parents and these old people decided to be my rivals as well. What happened to me wasn’t popularly and politically known, which is why the case is weak and generally uninteresting and prone to rejection.
Being a refugee for more than 10 years really taught me a lot that there’s a life on the other side, apart from the life I have always dreamed of; something about patience, humility and the persistence to never give up.
When people asked what’s my name and what is my status during any registration, I always answered that I am an ‘asylum seeker’. But quite a time, it was quite hilariously that not all the people understood the real meaning of ‘asylum seeker’, this is due to the word ‘asylum’ itself translated itself as ‘an institution for the care of people who are mentally ill’. Some people who are not so good in English would reply ‘which mental institute are you from?’ instead of ‘which country are you from?’
Being an asylum seeker, no one knew me before, how poor or rich I was, how high my education was, or how my life used to be. Some people put a same great amount of kindness and pity, but also a same great amount of dislike and avoidance. It doesn’t matter how the world see us; coming to a new country is the best decision for our safety. We are all starting off life from zero again, and from there, we’re building a better life in the better land, free from fear and the shackles of the past.
My life as an asylum seeker started out in London, this city was huge, by far it was the most hectic and breath-taking place I have ever been; people walked faster than I had imagined, that every snail-walkers would get hit easily by the person behind. Every place is crowded and rarely I found one side of the city that’s remained quiet unless it’s graveyard. But then again, I haven’t visited every place in London, so I could be wrong.
I could still recall waking up to the smell of the toast from the kitchen downstairs that my mom made, listening to the screaming voices of the Columbian football coaches calling their students’ names while playing football, every Saturday morning at Chestnuts Park behind the house. I also remembered the joy of talking a walk around Greenlane Area; The deliciously inviting smell of kebabs came from the various kebab shops, the voices of people groaning and yelling in the bus stop. Don’t mind all these imperfect descriptions, London held the most beautiful memories I ever had.
In August 2011, a few months after I claimed asylum, a riot broke out at Tottenham High Road, London, not quite far from where I lived; it lasted not only for one day, but many days in London and continued in a few other cities. One night before my birthday, I sat and read the announcement from the Facebook ‘Wood Green is on fire! Who else lives around here?’ I promptly and foolishly commented ‘me’ although I never lived there. Realizing that it was a mistake, I deleted the comment, but apparently some people already red my stupid comment. I checked my inbox and so many people had sent comforting messages and friend requests; one in particular I remembered was a 19-year-old Albanian refugee named JC whose housing situated close to where the fire was burning.
‘I live in Wood Green. Where in Wood Green do you live?’ he sent me a message.
I took a deep breath, looked ‘I mistakenly typed “me”, sorry, I do not live there but I know this area so well’ I replied, crossed my finger that he wouldn’t think I’m a liar.
‘Oh, I see. That’s okay. Lucky you!’ he replied, short pause then he typed ‘I live in Wood Green.’
‘Oh! I am so sorry! But what are you doing on Facebook? You should be saving yourself!’ I typed back.
He replied immediately, ‘I do not live in the shopping area. Those people are burning the shopping area.’
I felt relieved. ‘Let me know what happen, in case if something’s happened,’ I asked him, then accepted his friend request.
‘You’re worried about a stranger’s life,’ he teased me.
‘Well, every human’s life is valuable’ I typed back, but it sounded boring and preachy, so I kept it simple ‘Just keep me updated’ then I checked on his photos, looking like a young man a decade younger than me.
‘Okay, I’ll keep updating you about the situation here!’
‘How old are you? You’re not 13, right?’ I joked, he sent me a lot of laughing emojis, ‘No, I’m 19. What were you thinking of?’
I decided to spend whole night chatting with him till the riot stopped, it made me feel like I was there with him, sitting side by side, distracted him from his worry. JC was not a shy or introvert person, he talked about his life openly and without fear. Never in my life I met a person who had me chatted so much to the points where time’s forgotten and only our companionship was mattered. Some people told me that you can only make friends easily with the people of the same country, I have been feeling bullied sometimes with these words, but I knew that friendship knows no boundary. I was not wrong; you can click with anyone from any country. JC and I were two people from different countries, we used to be rich but we fled from our countries and became refugees, met online during the London Riot and found out that we had such an instant chemistry.
I am still infatuated to memory of the moment of finding him in the strangest way, our silly talks. I knew that there’s no moment that can happen twice, so I valued each and every part of it. It made me feel close to that sense like I belong to something; his friendship. One moment was made to perfect that it can’t be replaced.
A day before, I prayed to God for someone to come into my life and bring more meaning to my life. That day, I found him.
The chains of messages continued overnight till dawn when we fell asleep at the same time without logging off from our Facebook. No more worry, the riot stopped at dawn.
THE NEXT DAY WAS MY BIRTHDAY; there I was in the middle of Wood Green area, standing with my meticulous eyes in front of Lidl Supermarket, observing each broken and unbroken parts of it. It was apparent that the rioters had broken down the front door, and that some other parts were also open. But the crazy fact was, the store was still opened in order to provide people’s needs.
If Lidl was a human, who would still think of others after being broken and robbed? It reminded me of the importance of unselfishness and not giving up. One of so many lessons that touched me. I might be just a refugee, powerless, but it doesn’t mean that I have reason to not care to others.
My eyes roamed around; next to Lidl was a store called JD, it was quite in bad shape as well, due to its famous, desirable but unaffordable items, the rioters decided it was the first destination for looting. But—those weren’t the highlight of the nightmares; as I walked further, about three or four other shops in particular were fully went dark, burned. The windows of flats above the shops were gone, gobbled by the fire. The tenants must have had been forced to leave the building in tears as soon as the fire spread.
These tenants might not be the refugees, but the thought of seeing people being forced to leave their home reminded me of the lives of the refugees. When a home is no longer a home but a terror, when the home is burned, so is hope; all they could do was start over somewhere new where hope could flourish and blossom again and life might bring the happiness back again.
As I walked back home, I thought about a meaning of home. Everybody needs home; a place where they belong to. Everybody – and I’m not the exception. Refugees or non-refugees; we all needed to feel accepted, to be embraced and to feel comfortable in.
When things went wrong, and the road is closed, one chapter is done and another chapter begins. There’s always somewhere to start over, and to grow hope, even when everything had crashed and burned before.
Home is not decided by what’s written in a piece of paper; it doesn’t always lie in a place you were born, what’s in your blood or your race, or a place you wish to live. A home is a safe place where you are truly accepted, where you really belong to.
I did not ask for a castle, or a mansion… I only asked for a home where I feel safe and well-accepted. I looked up to where the sky was and made my first birthday wish to God.
‘Dear God, let England be the place I could call a home. A place that I belong to.’
What is mercy without any evidence? Law wasn’t made to be won by compassion; only the evidence and bribes would victor a case. Neither which I had. Oh, what a stupid me, drenched in nothing but self-hatred and self-pity.
Don’t worry; it’s just me playing the past scenes from the court hearing in my head.
How do I describe it? My life has been on about it for years. From one solicitor to another solicitor who started everything optimistically, cleverly pointed out the good point to win my case and then in one snap, on one particular day, their mood changed and then the hide-and-seek began; these solicitors were scared to see me.
There were not only one, but a few official self-pity days where I poured all the sad moments in my life and cried about it for a few hours in the bathtub, or by watching sad movies so that no one knew that I was self-pity-crying myself like The Grinch does.
My mind flew back to April 2011, when I was first interviewed as an asylum seeker in Croydon. The Indian officers looked overly stressed. She kept asking some questions and every time I answered, she would tell me that I wasted her time or pretend that she didn’t hear me because my voice was not loud enough. I just sat silent like a repressed person; any unnecessary word come out of me would be another annoyance to her.
After some time, she asked, ‘You need a house, correct?’ Before I answered, she forwarded her head to me and said harshly, ‘But it won’t be a castle! If you’re looking for a castle, you won’t get any!’
‘No Ma’am, I wouldn’t dare to dream of such a thing,’ I replied.
‘No need to shout at me; who do you think you are?’ she just kept snapping at me over and over.
‘No Ma’am, I was not shouting; you told me before to speak louder so you can understand my English.’ I tried to explain, she responded with a sigh and the loud click-clack sounds she made from typing on her computer keyboard too fast really clarified her stress. Her ongoing cynicism and sarcasm while doing her job were supposed to drive anyone fleeing from their hell countries for help into a suicidal mood, but not me. I found it, well – not in disrespectful way – quite hilarious. She truly despised her job that she poured it on me.
As the interview was over, I sat in relief, but as I looked around and seen other refugees sat in despair, waiting for their turn to be interviewed, I started to hate every part of visions I seen; if I had a power to tell myself in the past that one day I would be here, I wonder how the little me would react. I hope I won’t feel bitter.
No kids grew to imagine themselves fleeing from their birth country one day, being forced to shift to another country and hence lived in limbo for years, holding a status as a refugee who the fortunate people would feel sorry for or enrage for due to being the burden. I didn’t flee because of the actual war, there was no war, bomb or explosion happened, although there was interference of black magic, death threats, and years of suffering done by the people who were the rivals of my parents and these old people decided to be my rivals as well. What happened to me wasn’t popularly and politically known, which is why the case is weak and generally uninteresting and prone to rejection.
Being a refugee for more than 10 years really taught me a lot that there’s a life on the other side, apart from the life I have always dreamed of; something about patience, humility and the persistence to never give up.
When people asked what’s my name and what is my status during any registration, I always answered that I am an ‘asylum seeker’. But quite a time, it was quite hilariously that not all the people understood the real meaning of ‘asylum seeker’, this is due to the word ‘asylum’ itself translated itself as ‘an institution for the care of people who are mentally ill’. Some people who are not so good in English would reply ‘which mental institute are you from?’ instead of ‘which country are you from?’
Being an asylum seeker, no one knew me before, how poor or rich I was, how high my education was, or how my life used to be. Some people put a same great amount of kindness and pity, but also a same great amount of dislike and avoidance. It doesn’t matter how the world see us; coming to a new country is the best decision for our safety. We are all starting off life from zero again, and from there, we’re building a better life in the better land, free from fear and the shackles of the past.
My life as an asylum seeker started out in London, this city was huge, by far it was the most hectic and breath-taking place I have ever been; people walked faster than I had imagined, that every snail-walkers would get hit easily by the person behind. Every place is crowded and rarely I found one side of the city that’s remained quiet unless it’s graveyard. But then again, I haven’t visited every place in London, so I could be wrong.
I could still recall waking up to the smell of the toast from the kitchen downstairs that my mom made, listening to the screaming voices of the Columbian football coaches calling their students’ names while playing football, every Saturday morning at Chestnuts Park behind the house. I also remembered the joy of talking a walk around Greenlane Area; The deliciously inviting smell of kebabs came from the various kebab shops, the voices of people groaning and yelling in the bus stop. Don’t mind all these imperfect descriptions, London held the most beautiful memories I ever had.
In August 2011, a few months after I claimed asylum, a riot broke out at Tottenham High Road, London, not quite far from where I lived; it lasted not only for one day, but many days in London and continued in a few other cities. One night before my birthday, I sat and read the announcement from the Facebook ‘Wood Green is on fire! Who else lives around here?’ I promptly and foolishly commented ‘me’ although I never lived there. Realizing that it was a mistake, I deleted the comment, but apparently some people already red my stupid comment. I checked my inbox and so many people had sent comforting messages and friend requests; one in particular I remembered was a 19-year-old Albanian refugee named JC whose housing situated close to where the fire was burning.
‘I live in Wood Green. Where in Wood Green do you live?’ he sent me a message.
I took a deep breath, looked ‘I mistakenly typed “me”, sorry, I do not live there but I know this area so well’ I replied, crossed my finger that he wouldn’t think I’m a liar.
‘Oh, I see. That’s okay. Lucky you!’ he replied, short pause then he typed ‘I live in Wood Green.’
‘Oh! I am so sorry! But what are you doing on Facebook? You should be saving yourself!’ I typed back.
He replied immediately, ‘I do not live in the shopping area. Those people are burning the shopping area.’
I felt relieved. ‘Let me know what happen, in case if something’s happened,’ I asked him, then accepted his friend request.
‘You’re worried about a stranger’s life,’ he teased me.
‘Well, every human’s life is valuable’ I typed back, but it sounded boring and preachy, so I kept it simple ‘Just keep me updated’ then I checked on his photos, looking like a young man a decade younger than me.
‘Okay, I’ll keep updating you about the situation here!’
‘How old are you? You’re not 13, right?’ I joked, he sent me a lot of laughing emojis, ‘No, I’m 19. What were you thinking of?’
I decided to spend whole night chatting with him till the riot stopped, it made me feel like I was there with him, sitting side by side, distracted him from his worry. JC was not a shy or introvert person, he talked about his life openly and without fear. Never in my life I met a person who had me chatted so much to the points where time’s forgotten and only our companionship was mattered. Some people told me that you can only make friends easily with the people of the same country, I have been feeling bullied sometimes with these words, but I knew that friendship knows no boundary. I was not wrong; you can click with anyone from any country. JC and I were two people from different countries, we used to be rich but we fled from our countries and became refugees, met online during the London Riot and found out that we had such an instant chemistry.
I am still infatuated to memory of the moment of finding him in the strangest way, our silly talks. I knew that there’s no moment that can happen twice, so I valued each and every part of it. It made me feel close to that sense like I belong to something; his friendship. One moment was made to perfect that it can’t be replaced.
A day before, I prayed to God for someone to come into my life and bring more meaning to my life. That day, I found him.
The chains of messages continued overnight till dawn when we fell asleep at the same time without logging off from our Facebook. No more worry, the riot stopped at dawn.
THE NEXT DAY WAS MY BIRTHDAY; there I was in the middle of Wood Green area, standing with my meticulous eyes in front of Lidl Supermarket, observing each broken and unbroken parts of it. It was apparent that the rioters had broken down the front door, and that some other parts were also open. But the crazy fact was, the store was still opened in order to provide people’s needs.
If Lidl was a human, who would still think of others after being broken and robbed? It reminded me of the importance of unselfishness and not giving up. One of so many lessons that touched me. I might be just a refugee, powerless, but it doesn’t mean that I have reason to not care to others.
My eyes roamed around; next to Lidl was a store called JD, it was quite in bad shape as well, due to its famous, desirable but unaffordable items, the rioters decided it was the first destination for looting. But—those weren’t the highlight of the nightmares; as I walked further, about three or four other shops in particular were fully went dark, burned. The windows of flats above the shops were gone, gobbled by the fire. The tenants must have had been forced to leave the building in tears as soon as the fire spread.
These tenants might not be the refugees, but the thought of seeing people being forced to leave their home reminded me of the lives of the refugees. When a home is no longer a home but a terror, when the home is burned, so is hope; all they could do was start over somewhere new where hope could flourish and blossom again and life might bring the happiness back again.
As I walked back home, I thought about a meaning of home. Everybody needs home; a place where they belong to. Everybody – and I’m not the exception. Refugees or non-refugees; we all needed to feel accepted, to be embraced and to feel comfortable in.
When things went wrong, and the road is closed, one chapter is done and another chapter begins. There’s always somewhere to start over, and to grow hope, even when everything had crashed and burned before.
Home is not decided by what’s written in a piece of paper; it doesn’t always lie in a place you were born, what’s in your blood or your race, or a place you wish to live. A home is a safe place where you are truly accepted, where you really belong to.
I did not ask for a castle, or a mansion… I only asked for a home where I feel safe and well-accepted. I looked up to where the sky was and made my first birthday wish to God.
‘Dear God, let England be the place I could call a home. A place that I belong to.’
Carolina P is an author and an immigrant in the UK. A student of Foreign Languages at the Open University, Carolina has a passion for writing, music & photography. She has written some novellas, short stories and children stories. A Place to Belong is one of her works where she unveils her life as an asylum seeker in the UK.
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