escape the civil war that was raging, the stories we heard about the soldiers attacking towns and villages to the north, the things they were doing. I took all the money we had saved up and I bought transport for my elderly parents and me. First we went on a ship to Sicily, landing the day before Christmas Eve. The place was chaos. Others were trying to head north into mainland Europe, catching lifts from lorry drivers, or stowing away in transport containers when they could access them.
My parents were not able to do that. My mother was sick already at that time, coughing blood and very weak. My father had very bad arthritis and found it difficult to walk. We still had money and it felt dangerous for me to have it, so I bought airline tickets for us all and two days into the New Year we landed in London.
The airport closed after we landed, due to bad weather. We were taken to an asylum centre somewhere outside of the city. My mother was taken to hospital and she died the next day. She had pneumonia and they were too late giving her the drugs which might have helped her live.
My father tried to carry on without her, but could not. He died within the month, a ‘myocardial infarction’, according to the death certificate. But really he had no reason to live without her. He had no will left, no strength. And so he left me, too.
That is the story of how I came to be in this country. At home, I was a primary school teacher and a well qualified member of society. Here, I was nothing. I earned money waiting at tables in London, helping in the kitchen. I worked for a while in one of the London hotels. Anything I could to pay the rent on the bedsit I shared with three other girls from Eastern Europe, all of them refugees like me from the civil wars and ethnic cleansing. They all had stories to tell about things they had seen, what they had been through to get out. All three of them had suffered more than I had.
I saved up what I could and eventually I had enough money to do a course that qualified me to be a teaching assistant in the UK. I looked for work up and down the country and eventually I got a job at a primary school in Briarstone.
I had never heard of Briarstone before, even though it was nearer to London than most of the other jobs I applied for. The school was a small one, friendly, and the staff were kind – but I had nothing in common with any of them. They did not know me and there was no point in telling them what had happened to me in the last few years.
I don’t know what started the problem. I was at the school for a long time. I saw the children progress from tiny little children in reception class to the verge of puberty, and then all their younger siblings as they grew up too.
I think it might be that I had been tired for so long, fought for so long to just keep going. I found myself finally at the end, and I was so tired I closed my eyes every night and it was a struggle to open them again the next morning. I think if I had ever found someone, a friend, or a lover – someone to be with, a reason to be happy – then perhaps I would have stayed alive. There was just nothing left. No strength, no courage, no energy. And in cases like that, the only solution is to lie quietly and wait.
Eileen
there was no act of violence perpetrated against me no Act of Violence no actofviolence no Act. No violence they said they would come for me one day and they did they told me what to say when to say it what to do when to do it
it was not violence it did not hurt
it was a choice I made a choice my own free will my own destiny the distance between us like spaces like the void in my heart the voices in my heart the depths of my soul the depths of my despair
you can take this away this pain this grief you can take it from me and make it disappear