Refugee

I stole the coat.

The phone was in the pocket along with a bar of chocolate that I ate immediately. I don't know why I took it - I've never stolen anything before, its not who I am.

Well, it's not who I was, but I suppose that one action could now define me, a sliding door moment in a life full of difficult choices. You get what you deserve in this life; thats what my father always told me.

2018

I felt that war had always been part of my life. My siblings and I (six of us in total) had lived with the scream of sirens and the deafening crash of bombs and destruction; had been given false hope so many times by brief peaceful interludes; and had become numbed by the regular and heartbreaking loss of family, friends and neighbours.

We had stubbornly stayed in our family home until the direct hit, and now there were just the two of us, my brother, the younger by a year, and I; no longer boys but not yet men, alone together in this mess.

We were reeling from the decimation; our home and belongings gone and the sudden loss of our parents, grandparents and sisters;

I was seventeen, my brother sixteen. We had no papers and so were nameless, and now homeless, so we began to walk. No discussion, we simply followed others, away from the rubble of our previous life in the knowledge that we couldn't stay.

The next three years were spent moving. Living hand to mouth, sleeping anywhere we could shelter, trying to avoid the crime and the gangs that were rife.

We travelled north, through Turkey, hitch-hiking whenever someone would pick us up; travelling in trailers with animals among the shit and hay.

We gained crossing to Greece by delivering a van, asking no questions and receiving no money. I didn't tell the man that I hadn't yet gained my driving licence, and he didn't ask.

North through Macedónia, Serbia and Hungary. Constantly moved on by the authorities.

In Austria we spent a glorious summer as farmhands. We worked hard and ate well. Slept on the soft hay in the barn and drank fresh warm milk each morning. But as the summer drew to a close, so did the work and all too soon we were on the move again.

We had made friends that summer, youngsters like ourselves, all just looking for a place where they could settle, gain honest work, maybe raise a family... they talked of a place called England.

We set our sights on England, travelling through Germany to France and then north towards the sea. We had been on the move for two years.

One evening, in late October, I had watched as a group of young men played football, posts fashioned from their jackets. They didn't see me take two of them.

The night was cold but we settled down for the night on two park benches.

We were chilled to the bone, but with the slight warmth afforded by the stolen jackets we eventually managed to doze off.

I was suddenly awoken by the shouts of my brother, and opened my eyes to find that a group of men had surrounded us. They were armed with crude weapons - sticks, rocks, iron bars; at least one had a knife, I saw the glint of the blade flash in the moonlight. They were closing in, shouting at us in French - we didn't understand their words but their meaning was clear - we weren't welcome and we weren't wanted.

A brutal ten minutes later, battered and bloodied; we were left for dead.

We awoke in a dark, dry room. Our wounds had been crudely cleaned and we were sharing a single filthy mattress. Over the next weeks we were given food and water, each time by somebody different. We came to understand that we were in some kind of refugee squat. There were many people there: some Syrians like us, others from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and other war-torn places around the world.

All were seeking safety, acceptance and peace but all were worn down by the journey, whilst simultaneously united by the desperation of their situations and by the hollows looks of distrust from strangers, wherever they went. It's not easy being an outcast

We heard about the boats from another Syrian. He was working - saving to pay for a crossing, it was expensive and dangerous, but it became our plan.

The squat was our home for another two years, as we worked for cash-in-hand, learning that there is always someone who will pay for cheap labour. The work was hard and the pay was poor, but we ate little and saved hard, washing in the bathrooms of our employers and taking clothes from donation banks.

2022

It was midnight.

We had been transported, blindfolded, to a small unlit cove on the northern coast of France.

There were about a hundred of us, far too many for the small rubber boat bobbing on the swell of the tide. My brother looked at me, sheer terror shining in his eyes. Neither of us could swim.

An hour later and the boat was far from shore, men perched and stacked like dominoes on the inflated tubes that formed the perimeter of the vessel, older men, youngsters and women were crammed onto the central plywood decking, a single outboard motor roaring at the stern manned by a silent Frenchman. There was a young woman with a nursing infant crouched beneath the engine weeping silent tears and clinging to her child.

The further we got from the shore, the rougher the sea became, with huge waves pitching the boat from side to side. We, on the edges, clung to each other, soon realising that our only chance of survival was to form a human chain and not let go, despite the salt in our eyes, the freezing water cascading over us and our churning stomachs.

Several times it seemed that we would capsize, and several people were indeed flung from the inadequate craft, disappearing into the night to be swallowed by the raging sea.

For hours - how many I couldn't say - we clung to life - to each other - and prayed that the rolling beast would calm, until eventually, to everyone's relief, land came into sight just as the sun was rising.

The land, the place that we had elevated to some sort of utopia, crept towards us in a ghostly mist. The engines were stilled and we were told to bail. This was as far as the boat would go and there was still a wide stretch of water ahead. I began to shake; my brother clung to me wailing like a child and pandemonium broke out as the panicked passengers realised that they may still fail in their quest, with land in sight.

The Frenchman was no longer silent, shouting and pushing people off his boat until all were in the water.

Many people drowned in those shallows, but somehow my brother and I managed to scramble to shore, desperation propelling us forward. There, and only there, on a pebbled beach, we became survivors.

We were picked up by the coastguard a few hours later, relieved to be taken somewhere dry and warm and given a hot drink.

In the interview room, I was asked questions I could not answer, and was eventually loaded onto a bus with other refugees - mainly men.

I will never forget the journey to the detention centre, the crowds of people with banners and placards lining the roads:

No room here!

Go back home!

Protect our country!

Stop the boats!

Abolish Asylum!

In the centre I sit and watch TV.

A woman is complaining venomously about immigration: "...well-dressed - young men - all have mobile phones - rapists - taking our jobs and homes..."

2025

I haven't seen my brother for three years, since the night we landed - for all I know he could be dead.

So now I have no home, no family, no future and no hope.

I do still have the jacket, and a mobile phone which I found in its pocket. It doesn't work - I don't know why I kept it - but I supppose it allows the locals to match me with the image they need to see, the bad person they believe I am.

I don't want to steal anybody else's house, job or wife, but I would like one of my own one day, I just hope that divine intervention will deem it what I deserve.