Have you seen the paper today?

As I walk towards the Unity Office in the spring sunshine I see my friend waiting for her husband to return from reporting in at the Home Office as he must do every week. I stop and we chat about the meal we shared last week – delicious. She is waiting outside the Unity office because inside it is busy. There is a new man from Eritrea registering, two children running in and out playing and one woman is back again so we can help chase up her landlord, Angel (a private company which charges large rents to the Home Office making a profit from people seeking asylum who have no choice but to live in the flats offerred). Her washing machine still isn’t plumbed in and she has to share the flat with people she doesn’t know and she doesn’t have a lock on her room. Can we help get it sorted?

Someone passes me the paper. A picture from the protest outside the Home Office yesterday is on the front page. Someone else calls. Can I phone the police and arrange to go and collect the banners that they confiscated at the protest.

My friend’s husband, also my friend returns. He waves at a man across the road, says , “he’s from Chad, he’s been here 9 years. Last year he started having to report at the home office every week.”

Someone full of vigour comes in, puts on music and starts tidying up and cleaning.

I go outside and a man in the street shouts to me “Your protests won’t come to anything you know. Send the blacks back.” I feel cold and hope that my new friend inside hasn’t heard.

A man comes in asking if there is any news. He has a strong Glasawegian accent. He starts chatting. He has been here ten years. Last year he had to start reporting at the Home Office and he had his right to work taken away from him.

|A woman comes in a lot calmer than usual. She explains, she has started taking a tranquiliser before she comes to the Home Office to settle her nerves because she can’t take the stress of it.

There is a name that isn’t crossed off the list meaning that he hasn’t returned from the Home Office and has possibly been detained. I phone his friend. At first he doesn’t understand what I am staying, then he gets it. “I’ll contact him and get straight back to you”. He calls back in seconds, the man is safe, just didn’t put a line through his name when he returned. My embarassment at having needlessly called evaporates when he says “thank you, thank you for all your help.”

A woman leaves her little girl who plays silently on the plastic rocking horse and with the red toy bus. Everyone who comes in smiles at her but she hardly acknowledges them and just carries on playing.

Unity t-shirts for sale

I walk into Unity in the cold and think about one of my friends who must report at the Home Office today. I think that maybe I am too late to see him but as I near the door to the Unity centre he turns the corner. He says he was thinking of me too, wondering if we would meet today. Then he asks me if I have seen the paper. The man who set himself alight in the court died in hospital. He was claiming asylum here but it looked likely he would be forced to reeturn from where he fled. Yes, I had seen it. Terrible.

I ask him where his wife is. She comes and waits in the Unity office every week when he comes to sign. She sits and waits for him to come back. She told me once of a time he took 3 hours to come back and how frantic she was. He turns and points to where she is waiting with friends. I turn and wave and they come over. We hug and chat and just stand still.

In the office, someone is designing a Unity t-shirt. There is a lot of communication with the press about a dawn raid that happenned this week. A family lots of people know, it sparked an angry protest at the home office building. The man handcuffed in front of his children, the youngest child, born here. They are now in a detention centre fighting being taken from this country back to from where they fled.

A woman comes in and crosses her name off the list marking her safe return from the Home Office. She makes the mark so heavily she makes a hole in the paper.

Families come and leave their children at Unity while they go to sign. For a while there are bus races up and down the floor and a smell of lollipops. One girl sits quietly in her pushchair looking around.

A woman comes back from the home office and stands, asking about the news, commenting on the situations, looking sad and proud and serious and gentle. She touches my arm and leaves.

I make phonecalls chasing up house repairs and lost parcels for people. A man comes in and asks what’s going on. He only met people from his country in the home office today, where are all the people from the other countries? He is panicing, thinks there is a big round up going on. I know of no such thing, we have had the usual mix of people in the office. I try to reassure him.

Another man is anxious because it was quicker than usual to sign. The queue wasn’t so big. What does this mean? Does this mean there is more danger, less. Every small thing has huge weight.

A woman upset because some of the officials she has to deal with were saying they had to look at he case again and she may lose her apartment. She is breathing so fast she can hardly speak. It turns out the people that spokke to her have no power in this area and were just frightening her. We try to refocus her mind on preparing for her birthday party.

There is an email printout in the office that the home Office gave one family by mistake. It detailed when they were to be detained, needless to say they didn’t turn up that day.

3 women come in. The brother of one of them was due to be flown back yesterday. The removal officers tried to sedate him with drugs but he wouldn’t drink the juice they had hidden it in. He got on the plane and stood up and told the other people on the plane what was going on. He made such a fus that the pilot wouldn’t fly with him and he was taken off the plane, hit by the guards and literally thrown back in the van.

My friend and her 4 children have to sign this afternoon and I am waiting for them. She is very nervous because before she only had to sign by herself and now they have asked her to bring all her children. It is a rush after school. She appears with her eldest son. I am relieved. She is too. Her daughter has exams and so she is excused from signing for a few months but the others still have to go. It takes the pressure off a little as it is less likely she will be detained without all her children. But she’s still not sleeping. Her son tells me some of the things that are wrong while she quietly cries and worries about all the people seeking asylum who have killed themselves rather than face return. Then she pulls herself in, tells another woman, we give each other hope, and leaves the office.