Tag: immigration

This is the voice of the voiceless (Divided Kingdom)

From Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant
Migrants walk to cross the border into Croatia, near the town of Sid in Serbia

I’m not political. I know enough to know I know too little. And besides, politics is often about winning arguments and proving your point, and I have neither skill nor interest in those two things. But there is something stirring inside me, a voice low but firm. It is unsettled and it’s unsettling. It wants to be heard. It is the voice of the EU exile, the resident-turned-immigrant overnight. It is the voice of those who found out yesterday how quickly a right can be overturned; that a right can be taken for granted but it can equally be taken away. It is the voice of all of us who learned yesterday what politics actually means. And it is turning us political.

We are privileged, and we cannot conceive of a world where our right to live the lives we’ve built, where we’ve built them, could be challenged or taken away. But that is the world we live in, and it happens every day. Those refugees washing up on our borders and terrifying us: what do we think happened to them? They had lives, too, that they took for granted, in places they called home. They had rights that were snatched away. And here they are now, at our borders: unwanted, and wanting nothing but to be where they feel that they belong. These things happen, all over this world we live in, but not here. Not to us.

I don’t want this happening to me, either, and I’m not advocating for cynicism or what goes around comes around, though it does. I’m not saying that it serves us right or that we deserved it, this blow to our naïve arrogance, or that it’s a lesson we needed to learn, though perhaps it is. I don’t believe in carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders just so we know how heavy it is. I don’t believe in cross-generational karma or history dictating the present, or inheriting the sins of the past. I’ve done nothing wrong and whatever’s coming around I did not bring onto myself. I am only guilty of taking for granted a right that was granted to me, at one time. I don’t want this happening to me, or you, or anyone, here or in any place. But times change and rights are revoked, and it’s happening: here, now, to us. We are exiled in the land of limbo, with the lives we’ve built in bundles on our backs, travelling in a direction entirely uncharted and we don’t know, when we reach the borders, what we will find.

It doesn’t serve us right and it isn’t fair and we don’t deserve it, but it’s humbling and, perhaps, a little humility is something we need. Along with the shock and the hurt and the indignation that we’re feeling, justifiably, and the strength we’ll need to muster to see us through. Along with the hope that we’ll need to summon if we don’t want to remain voiceless, because it’s only hopeful voices, now, that have a chance of breaking through boundaries, of crossing the borders and being heard. That is our task, now; that is our responsibility: to find that hopeful voice, and let it be heard. Dignified but humble; understanding, at last, that we are not immune. That we are not too privileged to find ourselves outside; to be turned from us to them.

It isn’t fair, because we have been voiceless. Because the citizens of the UK were granted a voice but we were not. Those of us who’ve built our lives upon a right granted in this country, but when that right was challenged, we had no voice. All those who spent the day in a daze yesterday, with heads lowered and heavy hearts. Silent, or only muttering the same stock phrases; who, in many cases, could manage nothing more eloquent than what the fuck.
    It’s isn’t fair, because our British counterparts, the citizens of the UK who’ve built their lives in our countries, were given a voice. They had the chance to protect those lives. They had the right, but we did not. It isn’t fair but it is politics, and that it just the way it works. And this is not against those who rightfully voted, our British counterparts and the citizens of the UK. I want to thank you, the 48% who voted for unity, for yourselves and for all of us, and even those who, infuriatingly, voted to Leave and then changed your minds. I want to thank you for lending us your voice when we were voiceless, and for speaking up for us when we were rendered mute with shock. You have done more for breaking the boundaries between us and them than you imagine, and you must not be ashamed for the choices of the other 52%. Don’t carry that weight on your shoulders; it’s too heavy, and it isn’t yours to bear.

There is something stirring, a voice that had been muted, and it is turning us political. But this is bigger than politics and numbers and the laws that grant and revoke our rights. This is about people, and the voices we use to talk to each other, so that we can be understood. Anger, hurt, indignation are all justified, but we’ve heard those voices before and they never take us very far. This is history in the making; this is when we choose what we bring on to ourselves. If those tightening borders can serve to bring us closer rather than driving us apart, together, we have a voice. Bigger than any number a referendum can throw up. The voice of people, regardless of where they were born or what rights they were granted by the paperwork they carry. Low but firm, dignified but humble, and hopeful: that is the voice that needs to be heard. Positive. Not political, but human. This is what needs to be understood: we don’t want to prove a point or win an argument. We just want to live our lives in the place where we built them, and not carry them in bundles on our backs, camping out at the borders, unwanted, and wanting nothing but to be in the place that we call home.

This is the third of five essays written in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum in June 2016. The first four were published as Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant. Click here to download the Kindle version of the book for free on Amazon – or read part one, part two, part four, and part five here.

And before anyone else rushes to point this out: no, I no longer live in the UK. And yes, in a way, Brexit won. It drove me out. I left London, the place that I’d called home for 20 years, and moved to an island in Greece. But not without sadness, not without regret, not without looking back. I look back all the time because, no, I still haven’t given up on the United Kingdom that I love. And yes, in a way, I still identify as a Londoner. And I’m lucky in that I had other options, but I’d still like the option to come back.

Photo credit: Refugees walk to cross the border into Croatia, October 2015 © Antonio Bronic / Reuters

Divided Kingdom (The day after)

From Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant

divided-kindom

Brexit gave me a very romantic moment this morning. The birds chirped and the bees buzzed and the sun shone upon me as I picked up my phone and proposed to M by text message. ‘You might have to marry me’, I said. He’s not a sentimental man, but I’m sure there were tears in his eyes when he read it. This is a joke I’m making, on this day when there is nothing to laugh about. Ha ha.

I’m crying as I write this.

All my life, I’ve stood on the funny side of things and found something to laugh about. And I have laughed today, but bitterly. There is a bitter taste in my mouth. Bile. Hatred. Division. I’ve laughed, because you don’t just break the habit of a lifetime from one day to the next, but things are being broken all over the place. And today, I don’t know where I stand.

It’s not about the breaking up of a union that, despite the best intentions that I’m sure were present, somewhere, at its inception, was arguably ill-conceived in the first place. What’s broken is this human race, that looks around and sees only difference, that looks around and fails to recognise itself in the humanity of others, that sees otherness wherever it looks. Humanity: the great equaliser, but it’s the lowest common denominator that’s at play today, and it is fear. In all of our equations, X equals humanity divided by fear. We’re broken, and our edges are jagged; we don’t remember how we fit together. We don’t remember that we ever did. From one day to the next, we forget.

It’s too soon to write this. I don’t know how I feel. Something has happened and I want to talk about it, but there really isn’t much to say. Something has happened, yet nothing has happened yet everything has changed yet everything looks the same. The birds are chirping and the bees are buzzing and the sun is shining upon us all, and I cannot connect this feeling inside, the cold dread, the fight-or-flight tingle in my limbs, the bile rising up and turning my jokes bitter, to what I see when look around. I see myself as other, as others now see me; I recognise nothing at all.

I’m crying as I write this, but you don’t break the habit of a lifetime from one day to the next, and I’ve made jokes today. Like, I’ll be a new Anne Frank and hide in an attic and write my memoirs, ha ha. But it’s a bitter laugh, and powerless: it doesn’t connect. How could it, when connection is to recognise ourselves in others, and we have failed to even recognise ourselves? When the immigrants of yesterday are the xenophobes of today and they see neither irony nor danger in this, and memory only serves as ammunition, to justify the bitterness and the jagged edges we’re pointing at each other, something is broken. It shouldn’t surprise me, that I feel disconnected, but I was surprised by the news this morning, and I no longer know where I stand.

Divided Kingdom, you are broken, and you have broken my heart. And I know how little this matters. I know it matters almost not at all. But today, to me and to another 3 million residents of a land that’s shifting beneath our feet, of a kingdom divided, it matters. From one day to the next you have turned us into other and, no matter where each of us stands, there is no funny side to this. Just sides and jagged edges and that dreadful, chilling tingle in our limbs.

Fear is the great equaliser. That’s what the X seventeen million people drew onto their ballot papers and divided a nation equals; that’s what they chose. But what we fail to see is that we are all afraid. And if we recognised ourselves in the fear of others, perhaps we’d remember how little there is to be afraid of, after all. Perhaps we’d remember that we all fit together, and that division has never conquered anything for long. Perhaps we’d see that there has only ever been one side, and it’s the one where we can laugh at ourselves. And not allow the bile to turn us bitter. Despite the Xs that divide us, we still have that choice.

This is the second of five essays written in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum in June 2016. The first four were published as Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant. Click here to download the Kindle version of the book for free on Amazon – or read part one, part three, part four, and part five here.

And before anyone else rushes to point this out: no, I no longer live in the UK. And yes, in a way, Brexit won. It drove me out. I left London, the place that I’d called home for 20 years, and moved to an island in Greece. But not without sadness, not without regret, not without looking back. I look back all the time because, no, I still haven’t given up on the United Kingdom that I love. And yes, in a way, I still identify as a Londoner. And I’m lucky in that I had other options, but I’d still like the option to come back.

If I’m allowed to stay (Divided Kingdom)

From Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant

uk border

I am not an immigrant tonight. Tonight, I am a resident of the United Kingdom. But tomorrow: what?

I moved from Athens to London in 1996, at age 18. This September, if I’m allowed to stay, I’ll celebrate twenty years in the UK.

If I’m allowed to stay. Can you imagine? Twenty years: that’s more than half my lifetime. That’s my entire experience as an adult; that’s pretty much everything I know about the world, everything I’ve learned about how to conduct myself in it, everything I’ve become. When I come to Greece, I don’t quite know how to make myself fit in. I am awkward, I am strange, I am, somehow, a little displaced. I don’t know how to ask for the things I need; I use English words where the Greek ones elude me. I apologise too much, and hold doors open for people who storm through them, casting me hurried looks of confusion or contempt. I have trouble crossing roads because the cars keep coming at me from the wrong side, and they don’t seem to obey the rules of traffic that I’m used to. I don’t belong here. My passport may be Greek, but I’ve been marked for Britain. I am a Londoner. I’ve never been an immigrant, so far.

To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never stolen anyone’s job. I’ve never accepted lower than average wages, making it impossible for the British jobseekers to compete with my rock-bottom immigrant standards. I came from a country that considered itself prosperous; I came to go to university, not to survive. I didn’t come for better; I came for good. If anything, my standards were unrealistically high.
    In the early days, in the late nineties when barwork was still cool, my colleagues behind the bar were all British, every single one of them, and we all interviewed for our positions. We were all on minimum wage and we all spent most of our earnings on beer and dancing and late-night kebabs.
    And later, when the EU opened its doors to many more nations, the ratio of foreign to native workers in the hospitality world settled at around 50/50, perhaps even tipping to 60/40 in favour of the foreigners, but it wasn’t because the latter were being chosen over their British counterparts. It was because the British weren’t applying. I know, because I was the one going through the CVs. Having gone off and done other jobs and got myself a Masters in Creative Writing, I wandered back into barwork in the mid- to late-noughties. My own generation had long moved on by now, and the kids, it seems, were no longer interested in serving drinks. I don’t know where they went or what they were doing, but they certainly weren’t queuing up for jobs in pubs and being rejected in favour of cheap Polish (and Greek) labour. Perhaps they were signing on: they were, after all, entitled to benefits; we were not. Because – in case you wondered – no: you don’t just stroll past the borders and sign on, and then sit back and drink cider out of a plastic bottle and have lots of foreign babies to drain the country’s resources. They don’t let you do that. Funnily enough. You have to earn it.

In twenty years, I’ve never signed on. In twenty years, I’ve never applied for or received any benefits. In the twenty years that I’ve been making National Insurance contributions, both through PAYE and voluntarily, through self-employment, I have probably received statutory sick pay twice. In twenty years, I’ve visited NHS hospitals three times, and my GP perhaps ten, mostly to renew my prescription for the contraceptive pill (not a single foreign baby in sight). I’ve had one filling part-subsidised by the NHS. I’ve paid several thousand pounds in taxes. I’ve paid several thousand pounds more in rent to British taxpayers.

I think, on balance, I’ve probably put more into this country, financially, than I’ve taken out. I think, on balance, I haven’t drained this country’s resources all that much. I have earned my benefits, but I have never abused them. And I’ve chosen this country, I’ve adopted it as my own and Britain, in turn, has never treated me like an immigrant. So far. This Great Britain, made up of immigrants and thriving on the multitude of cultures that it’s embraced. Gradually, yes, and with difficulty at first, but bravely and wholeheartedly, for the most part, with the openness that makes this Britain great.

And yet, tomorrow: what? Will I become in immigrant, at last, in this country that made me who I am? Will Britain make me an immigrant, at last, twenty years on?

I think I’d like to celebrate my twenty-year anniversary in the pub. I don’t go to pubs that often anymore, but it seems appropriate. I’ll drink a pint of lager with my friends and later, perhaps, we’ll go dancing. We might even have a kebab on the way home, but a nice one, and we’ll sit down to eat it, with cutlery. Our standards are still quite high.

I think I’d like to do that, if I’m allowed to stay.

This is the first of five essays written in the immediate aftermath of the EU referendum in June 2016. The first four were published as Divided Kingdom: How Brexit made me an immigrant. Click here to download the Kindle version of the book for free on Amazon – or read part two, part three, part four, and part five here.

And before anyone else rushes to point this out: no, I no longer live in the UK. And yes, in a way, Brexit won. It drove me out. I left London, the place that I’d called home for 20 years, and moved to an island in Greece. But not without sadness, not without regret, not without looking back. I look back all the time because, no, I still haven’t given up on the United Kingdom that I love. And yes, in a way, I still identify as a Londoner. And I’m lucky in that I had other options, but I’d still like the option to come back.

I’m scared, but not of your dog

Are you scared? Would you readily admit you’re scared? Openly? Or hesitatingly, in a quiet voice, half-hoping no one heard? Would you confide in someone, eyes down and face turned away, your mouth forming the words – I’m scared?
    I don’t. I don’t say it. I don’t let the words take shape, because once they do they come alive. I muzzle them, I muffle them, I drown them out with other words like faith, because faith smoothes the edges of fear enough so it doesn’t take that shape that keeps me up at night. But I’m awake at night anyway, because I’m scared.
    The fear is Britain-shaped. It’s a fear-shaped Britain. It traces the borders of an island kingdom that was once my home. Borders that were, then, nothing but lines on a map, the broken lines of a gentle guide, with spaces in between so you could come and go; borders that are now lines drawn against me, telling me that my place is not within. Wherever my place is, elsewhere, it’s not within. The broken lines that now mean “cut here”.
    A cut, that’s what is feels like. Being cut away, cut off, cut loose.

My friends in London, on the inside, when they ask, they say When are you coming home? I’ve been away because the guidelines said I could, the gentle borders told me I could come and go. But now there’s hardness and what scares me is I don’t know what I will find when I return. What boundary lines, what barbed wires, what broken things. Like Odysseus returning to Ithaca: that island doesn’t know me. Like Odysseus washing up finally on the shores of home, without a trace of triumph, no fanfare, no confetti, no loving wife to make the shape of welcome with her open arms. Only a loyal dog to wag his tired tail in recognition. But what dog will greet me upon my return? If it’s the British bulldog, that’s a guard dog, not a pet. It’s not the bouncy puppy that you adopted as your own, the one you fed treats all these years and trusted not to bear its teeth, the one that grew to know you. It’s a snarling beast grown fat on hatred and fear, whipped into a frenzy and straining against the boundaries that it was reared to protect, and it’s been groomed to go for the heart. It will rip your throat out but first it will break your heart.
    Home is where the heart is, but where is the heart in all of this? Broken, like the lines we’ve crossed. The lines that once connected the dots; the lines that now divide. Cut here.

And me and you are all of us who are scared, we’re just dots. Cast adrift, unable to connect and make a shape. What shape would we make if we connected? Would it look like Britain, or would it form another picture entirely? How hard would its edges be, how flexible its boundaries? Would it be a shape that soothes or feeds the fear? Would it contain us? Would it define us? Would it set us free?

That island doesn’t know me, but I thought I knew. I thought I knew my place and that puppy that I trusted not to hurt me when I held my hand out for its paw. What good is faith when it turns against you, snarling, and rips your home to shreds? But no, fuck you: you might turn me out, but you won’t turn me faithless. I’m scared, but not of your dog. I won’t drift away, unconnected, to elsewhere, to anywhere but within, just because of the lines you’ve crossed. I know I can find my island again. I can find my way back. And I don’t need no fanfare, no confetti, no recognition, no brass band to welcome me home; I just need you not to break it while I’m away, and the space to come and go.

Draw your lines where they matter. Give that dog another bone to chew on. And fucking say it, that you’re scared, let your mouth form the words, let them come to life and dance – I’m scared – but don’t let the fear shape you. Don’t let that be the shape that defines us all. Connect the fucking dots.

Divided Kingdom: how Brexit made me an immigrant / free e-book

Four essays on the result of the UK referendum on EU membership and its implications for UK citizens and EU nationals alike, from the point of view of a UK resident turned immigrant overnight. The e-book is available to everyone for free; just send me an email and let me know whether you’d like a pdf or mobi version (for Kindle), or get in touch through my facebook page. Also available on Amazon.

Are you from Bradford?

are-you-from-bradford-common-people

This is an excerpt from my upcoming novel Common People. Set in London in the late 90s, it explores issues of immigration, culture shock, racism, diversity and adaptation through the eyes of Eleni, a recent Greek immigrant struggling to find her identity in the UK. I thought, in the current climate, it was appropriate: none of this is new.

That day, I was accused of being from Bradford. I didn’t know it was an accusation until Luke interfered. He bounded up behind me, out of nowhere, and said: ‘Oi!’
     I was on the twelve to six shift, which was, as usual, a quiet one; on Sundays, people preferred other pubs, bigger ones that served food. I’d spent the hours between twelve and four perched on a stool at the end of the bar, smoking and looking through a copy of The Mirror that somebody had left behind. Luke was in the office, doing paperwork; he came up every now and again, to check on me. Pete and John were there, of the regulars, and two couples, who drank pitchers of Vodka and Red Bull, and laughed loudly. I was glad when the two men arrived. The one who spoke was short, pale, shaped like a beer barrel; he was young, despite his lack of hair. He’d asked his question in a knowing way, with a hint of mocking aggression.
     Judging from Luke’s reaction, I assumed Bradford must be something like Bristol, and I looked about my person for treacherous body parts, sticking out where they shouldn’t. Nothing seemed out of place.
     ‘He was just asking,’ I said in the man’s defence.
     ‘No,’ said Luke, in a voice of stainless steel: polished and purposeful. ‘He. Wasn’t. Just. Asking.’ He directed this not to me, but to the man.
     I turned around, and was baffled by what I saw: not the Luke I expected, but someone else; a man, tall, and solid; not simply angry, but indignant. His arms were crossed over his chest, and the expression on his face was anything but accidental; in fact, it gave the impression of something meticulously planned. Of someone who knew what he was doing and, more, knew he wouldn’t fail. He was a warning.
     The man, however, wasn’t paying enough attention; he persisted. ‘She hasn’t answered my question,’ he said.
     I was about to speak when Luke cut in again. ‘The lady,’ he said, ‘will not be answering any of your questions.’ He moved closer, so close I could feel the heat of his body on my back. And then I recognised it, this behaviour. It was chivalry. It was a man protecting a woman; it was Luke protecting me.
     The second man picked up on it, too, though I didn’t know this at the time; most of what he said sounded, to me, like another language. ‘’E’s pissed off,’ was his contribution, ‘cause you’ve dissed ‘is bird.’
     The first man seemed to agree, and added his own wisdom: ‘He’s pissed off cause his bird’s a Paki.’
     ‘That’s enough,’ said Luke. ‘I want you to leave.’ With another step, he was next to me; he unfolded his right arm across my body and held it there, like a barrier. A shield. The sudden movement surprised the two men, who took a step back each, realising, as they did it, that they had lost. Which, as I learned much later, is exactly the point where things might get dangerous. But not this time.
     The first man made a final attempt to pull his pride out of the situation intact.
     ‘Oh yeah?’ he said, with malice. ‘And whatcha gonna do about it?’
     Luke didn’t speak; he stood where he was, very still, one arm stretched out in front of me, the other balanced on his hip, and stared at both men, hard.
     The second one was first to look down. ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘leave it. ‘E’s not worth it.’
     ‘Yeah,’ said his friend, seizing the opportunity. ‘His big man act don’t convince me. He’s a wuss.’
     ‘E’s a wanker, that’s what ‘e is.’
     And with that they left, but not before they spat – big fat lumps of phlegm – on the floor.
     It was a while before Luke moved. Eventually, he let both arms drop, and sighed so deeply his whole body shook with it. He poured himself a coke and I noticed his hands were trembling. I had an urge to hug him and run my hands over his hair and press my face into his chest and say soothing, muffled words, and cry; I kept myself busy with dirty glasses until it had passed, and then I spoke.
     ‘I’ll get the mop,’ I said.

Bradford, Luke explained later, was known for having a large population of Asians: people from India, from Pakistan, from Bangladesh. It was synonymous, he said, with being from one of those places. I thought about it for a while.
     ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But what does it have to do with me?’
     ‘He probably thought you were from there too.’
     ‘Bradford?’
     ‘No: India. Or Pakistan. Or someplace.’
     ‘Why?’
     ‘Maybe because of your colouring,’ Luke said. ‘Your skin, your hair. Your eyes.’
     A memory floated to the surface. ‘At school,’ I said, ‘they used to call me a gypsy. Because I was dark. It was meant as an insult, but I don’t know why. I always thought gypsies were very pretty. I used to say thank you.’
     Luke laughed. ‘That must have confused the hell out of them.’
     ‘I suppose it must have; I was too young to notice.’ I paused. ‘Is that what that guy meant by Paki? From Pakistan?’
     He nodded.
     ‘I don’t understand. What’s wrong with being from Pakistan?’
     ‘Nothing,’ said Luke, shaking his head.
     ‘But he said it in such a horrible way. With spite.’
     Luke sighed; he spoke calmly, but his voice shook a little. ‘That’s got nothing to do with Pakistanis. Or Indians, or anybody else. It’s nothing to do with you. It’s just because he’s ignorant.’
     I liked that word: ignorant; I knew it, but I’d never used it before. I tried it now: ‘Ignorant.’
     ‘Just like those kids in your school. Those people, they don’t know any better. It’s racism of the lowest form: they’re just parroting. They don’t even know why.’
     I took a moment to be impressed by what he’d said. ‘Next time, I’ll say thank you,’ I declared.
     ‘Good,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m sorry if I scared you before. Just didn’t think it was fair, you know… I won’t have anyone talking to my staff that way,’ he added, firmly.
     ‘I know. It’s OK.’
     A customer came in and nodded at me, yes please; I headed towards him.
     ‘Bubble,’ said Luke. I turned. ‘You’re right: gypsies are very pretty.’
     ‘Thank you.’

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