and each person he passed was talking on a phone, texting or listening to something through headphones. He passed a particularly well-tailored suit, whose owner’s face was so glum that Yonas was tempted to stop him and ask: What could possibly be so bad in your life? Do you want to swap? He imagined the man walking through his front door back home, no doubt in a splendid Victorian house, hanging up that fine jacket as if it were an invisibility cloak, then hearing his children rush down the stairs shouting Daddy! Daddy! Would he finally crack a smile then?
A trio walked past eating what looked like lumps of rice wrapped in black paper out of cardboard trays. One of the women was whining: ‘He didn’t even offer to pay. I was like, hello, I’m a feminist and stuff but, like, I still want my first date paid for.’ The other woman cooed sympathetically, and one chucked her box in the bin with at least half the contents left in it. Yonas walked over to the bin, eager, mouth watering for whatever the food was – but he couldn’t bring himself to dig in. Not yet. And not here. It was too conspicuous.
He decided to carry on, but regretted that decision as his hunger deepened. Crowded though the pavement was, he noticed people were staring at him, and giving him as wide a berth as possible. He was tempted to walk into one of the shops displaying geometrically ironed shirts and trousers, take a few sets into a changing room to try on, leave his rancid overalls on the floor and walk out again.
His energy was plummeting now. He passed the open door of a corner shop, lined with brightly wrapped chocolate bars, and paused, salivating. Could he slip one in his pocket without being noticed? But the shop owner, an Indian man, gave him a hard stare, and he retreated. He was just turning another corner and summoning up the will to dig in a bin after all, when he spotted a man serving hot food from a cart to a queue of people. Several were already standing around eating it off paper plates… it looked like rice and curry. And then he noticed what seemed too good to be true: people were accepting it without giving the server any money! He sidled up to a man who’d just started tucking into his plateful to ask if he really just took it without paying.
‘Mate, you’d better believe it.’ He laughed, spraying out a couple of bits of rice. ‘Those Hare Krishna dudes.’
‘Krishna?’
‘Yeah, it’s a kind of religion where you have to give food away for free. Some people call them crazy bastards but hey, I’m not about to sniff at a complimentary lunch. Even if it is veggie.’
‘You have to be a believer?’
‘Na, mate, anyone can just take the nosh and those dudes are happy.’
As Yonas queued, saliva now exploding inside his cheeks at such a rate it was hard to swallow, he imagined the clamour there would be if a free food cart were to materialize at home. People would probably stay away, thinking it was a government trap. Finally his own plate was piled up, and he started shovelling food into his mouth. It was so good to eat! His tongue was immediately scalded, but he gobbled on regardless, almost ecstatic at the spices, the vegetables! Maybe this was the turning point. If he could pick up free meals as tasty as this on the street, life in the UK would be a breeze.
After a second helping, he headed eastwards again, re-energized. The city around him became multidimensional and multi-layered as he started connecting everything he saw with sparks of memory, films, BBC news clips, old magazines, his father’s books. He noticed how many of the shiny shopfronts at ground-floor level were sitting at the feet of grand historic buildings, and how they were interspersed haphazardly among modern, linear blocks, and how all of them were in such good condition, none of them crumbling or dripping with telephone wires, and how every so often there would be little grassy parks and trees spreading nature through the city like a sprinkling of herbs on a salad. Passing one of these parks, he paused to watch a guy with a paunch being egged on by someone who looked like a personal trainer as he skipped furiously and kept tripping over his rope. A short distance away there was a wheelchair and a woman with a prosthetic leg next to it, doing press-ups. If only Sheshy could get a prosthetic in that league; it looked futuristic compared to the ones the martyrs got back home.
He was about to cross at a junction when he saw a van pull up with a huge black advert plastered on its side:
In the UK illegally?
GO HOME OR FACE ARREST
Text HOME to 78080
And in a square box in the top corner of the van, like an official passport stamp, it said:
106
ARRESTS
LAST WEEK
IN YOUR AREA
His stomach clenched, and he stopped dead still. He couldn’t see in the windows, couldn’t tell whether or not the driver had clocked him. He glanced down at his scruffy clothes, his shabby shoes, touched his matted hair, and nearly laughed at himself for not being more conscious of how obviously illegal he looked. He might as well be waving a flag saying Arrest me! What should he do? Was there someone in that van poised to jump out and make the 107th arrest? He couldn’t cross the road right in front of it. Not now. But then if he turned and ran it would look suspicious… He crouched and pretended to do up his shoelace, making himself as small as possible. Time crawled, except for the demonic pounding of his heart. But after what can only have been a few seconds, the lights changed and the van pulled off.
Slowly, creakily, Yonas got up, and carried on walking, feeling as stilted as an old man. He was an idiot to think it might be easy just to wander around and make a life in London, like moulding a new version of himself out of a fresh piece of clay. How could he avoid getting arrested just for looking like this, never mind find work and somewhere to live? Maybe Gebre was right about waiting longer at the factory for fake papers… But he was here now. He had to keep going, and find somewhere to have a wash and get fresh clothes. But then he halted again, as he saw, walking towards him, a broad-shouldered white man dressed all in black wearing sunglasses… Oh God, it was… no, it wasn’t, was it? Of course it wasn’t. Yonas sighed shakily, and walked on.
Finally, he came upon a sign for Canning Town. From the name he had expected a small suburb full of pretty houses lined up neatly like tin cans in a supermarket, and he’d half-convinced himself he’d bump into a man who would look like the double of Bin Man Joe, just strolling along with his family, shielding his eyes with one hand as he looked around for his new Eritrean nephew. Instead, Yonas found himself on a highway under a huge concrete road underpass, roaring with cars, and after that, in the middle of an industrial estate. It didn’t seem as if anybody lived here at all. There was just factory building after factory building. What a stupid decision to come here just because of Bin Man Joe, when he could have gone somewhere like Arsenal, or Chelsea, or, more practically, sought out an Eritrean church… But then he spotted a human being. A man, youngish, maybe about his age, wearing overalls. Yonas was just wondering whether to approach him, when the man saw him, and crossed the road towards him, walking fast. Yonas’s heart raced – why was he being approached? Was he about to get arrested? Mugged? If so, his total lack of valuable belongings would either leave him unscathed or infuriate his attacker…
They were now standing face to face on the pavement. There was nobody else around. ‘Hi,’ the man said, not exactly threateningly. If this was a mugging, it was a strange way to go about it. The man had messy black hair and creases around his eyes. ‘You are looking for work?’
Yonas laughed involuntarily. ‘How did you guess?’
‘Smells like you need somewhere for sleep too,’ the man said, and smiled back, revealing a gap between his front teeth.
Yonas nodded. ‘You know somewhere?’
‘I do. I am happy I found you. You stay, then I get commission, okay?’
‘Maybe, but I do not know yet what you are offering me.’
‘Good point. I take you to see Uncle. Follow me.’
Uncle? Friendly or