End of October 2006

End of October 2006

I arrive in the morning for a full day at Unity. I am given a file to look at. It is the file of a family who were taken from their home yesterday morning at dawn. They were taken in a van to Dungavel detention centre. I phone Dungavel to find out the name and number of their lawyer. We want to find out what the lawyer is doing to stop them being put on the flight they are registered for on Friday. Is there anything we can do to help keep them here?

It is the day that an old friend of mine comes to sign. I have known him for more than 3 years. We chat and laugh about good times past. We sit in silence thinking about the hard times. Once he left I looked through the filing cabinets and got to know the paper work of the office a bit better.

A lady comes and stands for a while. “She always looks upset but she never wants to talk”, says another.

A man comes in obviously in pain. He perches on the arm of the sofa, he’s been to the refugee council and the home office already today. Now he is with us. He wants to go to the hospital. I will take him. While waiting for the taxi someone else fills me in a bit – he’s not been here very long, maybe a month, he is destitute, he has no family.

He struggles to the car and we get to accident and emergency. He slumps on the chairs, lying down as soon as we get there. I prise the piece of paper out from his hand. It is a letter which is the only documentation he has. I go the counter and wait for the boy in front of me to reschedule his appointment for the check up on his broken arm. Accident and emergency, shares a reception with orthopaedic outpatients.

Once alerted to his presence a nurse comes out immediately and takes him through a set of double doors. When roused he can walk but as soon as he is left alone he slumps, eyes closed. I wait behind and give what details I know, his name , the date of birth given on the piece of paper I took. Then I am soon called through as well. They ask me if I know what is wrong, I say I don’t know. He only has a little English and they are having trouble communicating, they call for an interpreter. The nurse says there is nothing immediate and urgent, his heart and blood pressure and whatever else they are able to check are fine. He complains of pain down his right side. But that’s not what I notice most. I notice just how tired he is. On the bed he is slightly curled. There is a blanket folded loosely over his legs. I unfold it and tuck it round him placing some under his head which is resting on the metal side to the bed. And he is shivering. His whole body is shivering, spasming, quaking. Waves and waves of it coming and going. I stand with him, I put my hand on his head. He doesn’t even seem to notice me. I sit beside him for a time. The tremors, on and on. I witness and I am with.

A doctor comes in, introduces himself and goes to examine the man. Every time he pokes at the man’s right side, the man curls up and pushes the doctor away. This annoys the doctor. I had moved the back of the bed down so that the man could be more comfortable and rest but for examination the doctor needed it back up. He asks the man quickly in loud English to move up the bed. Then he says,

“Are you gonna behave? Are ye gonnae act proper? Sit up on the bed! I can’t examine you properly like that!”

I immediately feel my feet sink into the ground to give me the strength to stay tall. How dare he talk to this man like that. He knows nothing about him. The doctor asks him again more slowly. I help the man move up the bed.

“You see he’s doing it now”, he says as an aside to me, colluding in our knowingness about the uncooperative patient. I’m having none of it. I continue to make the man as comfortable as I can.

A second doctor comes in. They are both bemused. As the man lies between us trembling they tell me how nothing medical is wrong with him. Oh but something is so wrong. They ask me what I know. I suspect he has been through trauma, to me what he is going through looks like the release of shock. I know he has been sleeping in the station too, has nowhere to go.

The interpreter joins us in the cublicle, a stocky man with grey hair. We learn some more. The man is from Darfur in Sudan. His parents were murdered before his eyes, he has been beaten (mainly on his right side and about the head). He wants to get well. He is not htinking of doing himself harm.

“There is nothing wrong with him that would cause him pain”, the second doctor says, “unless it is in his head.”

Or in his heart I think. The pain of it. The second doctor is trying to help.

“Surely the organisation that deals with asylum matters has a responsibility to....”

I just look straight at him.

“Surely they do,” I say.

The man is back up , the doctors give him a box of paracetemol.

And as we are leaving the second doctor says,

“isn’t there somewhere you could take him to, where he could maybe get some counselling or something.”

I think down the line of priorities and that step seems a long way off even if it were available. I don’t answer and just look at him again. As we are walking away the first doctor, the one who asked him to move up the bed catches my arm so that I am spun round to face him.

“Thank you”, he says with a sincerety that shocks me. I am not sure what I have done. Taken a difficult situation off their hands? I know there is nothing they can do for the man.

We go to the city centre by taxi, under the clyde and along the expressway. At the refugee council the man goes to take the five pounds he has from his pocket to pay for theh taxi. No. I cover it. The waiting room is full of toys on the floor. And the cheery radio station is on loud. Happy pop tunes. Some other people waiting. One woman comes to see us, she takes us down a corridor to the interview rooms. They are all full. We stand in the corridor for a while and then we are shown back to the waiting area. The man has stopped shivering, he complains about his back. He crouches in on himself whenever he is left.

This time a man with a shirt and tie takes us through to another room. He talks quickly, he has an accent my ears are not tuned to. I am having difficulty keeping up with what he is saying. I know there is no hope for the man to be catching it all. Have you applied for asylum, which forms have you filled in, have you been screened, what did the police say, when was that? A colleague is called for interpretation over the phone.

This goes on for a while. I am bored, I don’t like small offices. I am wondering what is going to happen. I want to make sure the man has somewhere to go, at least for tonight but what if we can’t sort it out, what will I do? I have planned to see friends tonight, would I just leave him to go back to sleep in the station nothing resolved, but I said I’d cook for my friends and that is... I can see the refugee council worker looking at the clock a lot too. Wondering when he can get home. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s just that, well, you know, we have our lives to life. I couldn’t take him home, I don’t know him, he might be dangerous. I want to get away, to leave this situation, the care of the man, in somebody else’s hands.

What has been established is that the man has been in the country for a couple of months and he is known to the immigration authorities. He has the piece of paper that he was clutching with his registration number. And he had to report to the Home Office building in Brand Street today, which he did. But despite all that he is not fully in the system. He needs to be “screened”. This doesn’t happen in Glasgow except in exceptional circumstances (8 month pregnant women for example) because the staff in Glasgow are trained more for removals. There are more screening staff based in Liverpool. The man will have to go to Liverpool, but he is reluctant. He doesn’t want to but he is not given a choice about it. We leave the refugee council. The man has been given £15 cash for food and a ticket for the 11pm bus to Liverpool. He didn’t want to go tonight, he wanted to leave it a day to go and see the people he had met at the mosque. But the ticket had already been printed, he has 6 hours more in Glasgow. He accepts.

As we leave the office he turns to me and speaks directly for the first time.

“Anna, why they go send me away.”

My heart melts, I feel like for the first time I know who he is and that he is communicating with me. He says,

“Thank you, thank you so much, God bless you.”

I am moved. I deeply regret the thoughts of flight that I had had in the office and am so glad that I have seen this through. The man has come alive for me. He tells me how he hasn’t seen his wife and 2 children for 2 years and he is looking for them. He thinks they are in Glasgow, “How do you know?” he just taps his head. Hence the reluctance to go to Liverpool. And the fear, the strongest words yet,

“They no send me back to Sudan, I will be killed, I no go back.”

He says he will come back to Glasgow the next day, I know that this is deeply unlikely if not impossible but say nothing. I take the name of his wife and children and promise to keep a record of this at Unity. I give him the phone number and tell him to call. Keep in touch, let us know how he is getting on.

We walk into town together. He is going to the mosque to say goodbye to the people he has met there. I am going to the train station to catch a train and go and see my friends. I wonder how we will part. He breaks away first, he has things to do. We take each others right hand. We touch right cheek to right cheek. We touch left cheek to left cheek. We let go our hands. I watch him walk under the arch of central station.