While we were eating, Grandfather Abdul said: “You can stay here at night, but it’s best if you go somewhere else during the day. I’ll ask Ali to drive you somewhere.”
“But Ali works nights. Doesn’t he need to sleep during the day?”
“It’s fine. He won’t be getting much work while this is going on. I’ll just tell him to take a few days off.”
When I went downstairs, Luna was already home and washing rice for dinner. She stir-fried some meat and vegetables, then suddenly turned and pointed the wooden spatula at me.
“Where on earth have you been?’ she yelled. “I was so worried about you!”
I told her that I had gone to see Grandfather Abdul, and quickly filled her in on what Uncle Tan had told me at the nail salon and what happened to the Nigerian couple next door. She stopped cooking and turned off the stove.
“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” she said. “This has been happening for years. My mother went through the same thing before I was born, and I dealt with it once as well. What do you think? That Immigration is going to come bust down our doors and search through every flat and check everyone’s papers?”
“Luna, I need to pack a few things. You can tell them my clothes are yours. I’ll leave some toiletries and a change of clothes in Grandfather Abdul’s flat.”
Early the next morning, while Luna was still asleep, I packed a small bag and went upstairs to Grandfather Abdul’s flat. He told me Ali would be there soon to pick me up, but I was still nervous; so he called Ali to make sure he was on the way. It turned out he wasn’t even awake yet. Grandfather Abdul shouted at him.
“What are you still doing in bed? I just spoke to you about this last night! Get over here now!”
After he hung up, he paced around the flat with his hands clasped behind his back and kept returning to the window to look down at the street.
“He needs to get here before the Border Agency opens …”
Nearly an hour went by before Ali came thumping up the stairs and banged on the door.
“Why are you so late?” Grandfather Abdul said. “Do you want her to get arrested?”
Ali didn’t seem to have grasped the situation. He grumbled sullenly: “It took a while to get my friend to loan me his car. Doesn’t she need a car if she’s moving flats?”
“When did I say she’s moving flats? I asked you to take some time off of work and take care of Bari for a few days!”
Ali caught my eye and grinned, his white teeth showing. Once we were out of the house and in the car, I felt more relaxed. I figured the Nigerian woman had also left home early to hide out at her housekeeping job. Grandfather Abdul said he’d warned the Filipino man, who worked as a hospital janitor. In any case, he had no desire to see any of his neighbours arrested or deported. He also didn’t want Mr Azad, the landlord, to blame him when there was less rent to collect that month. The car that Ali had borrowed was a banger: the door was crushed in, and the bumper was nearly falling off.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I figure we’ll go to my flat first,” Ali said as he slowly made his way out of my neighbourhood.
He probably didn’t know the whole story, but I assumed that Grandfather Abdul had told him that I didn’t have a work permit and was in danger of being deported.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “The minicab company I work for is also crawling with illegal immigrants. Some of them don’t even have driver’s licences.”
I didn’t say anything at first, just sat there sullenly in the passenger’s seat and muttered to myself: “Why do we have to have borders, anyway?”
Ali lived in Shepherd’s Bush, in West London, a neighbourhood filled with people of different races, much like where I lived. It wasn’t far from Holland Park, where Lady Emily lived. A single street separated the two neighbourhoods, yet they were completely different. The road split off into five directions, and was centred around an ugly, garbage-strewn park with patches of dirt showing through the grass. It reminded me of an unwashed puppy. Narrow alleys led back between the shop buildings along a curving market street. Ali’s flat was located down one of the alleys, in a three-storey building with an unlit entrance.
It wasn’t much, just a railroad flat the size of a small studio divided into two rooms. The front room had a double sink and a beat-up table with rickety legs and four chairs, and the back room had a bed pushed up against the wall. I don’t know where he’d found it, but a metal chest of drawers, like something you’d see in an office, stood at the foot of the bed. I started to ask Ali why he didn’t just live with his grandfather, but held back. Most young people probably wouldn’t feel comfortable living with someone so much older.
That day Ali and I got to know each other a little better. I told him how I’d wound up in London, including how my family got split up, how I crossed the Tumen River and what had happened in China. Ali said he’d heard similar stories from his father and grandfather. Because he was born in Britain, he’d never seen where they were from. He had trouble pronouncing the name of their hometown.
“Srinagar. Have you heard of it?”
“No, never. Have you heard of Chongjin?”
“Chee-ung …?”
We spent the day in his room, and that evening Ali dropped me off at the flat while he went to work. When I walked in, Grandfather Abdul told me that a man and woman from the UK Border Agency had come by. They didn’t search every flat, but they did ask him question after question about each of the residents. He showed them the tenant list and gave them everyone’s name and occupation. Regarding the young Filipino man, he told them he was a previous tenant who had since moved. He said he didn’t know where he was now. As for my flat, he told them Luna lived alone. In fact, Luna had rented the flat first; all she and I did was split the rent after I moved in. There was never any reason for my name to be added to the tenant list. They said they were going to inspect the Nigerian couple’s flat, but Grandfather Abdul got up the nerve to stop them.
“I told them I could not unlock the door without the tenants’ permission. I said if there were charges against them, then they could come back with a court warrant. As it is, they might still come back. It’ll take a few more days to settle this.”
Grandfather Abdul offered me some chapatti and lamb. I tried to turn it down, but then offered instead to come back early the next evening and fix him a tasty dinner in exchange.
“So,” he said, as he sat down across from me. “Is Ali taking good care of you?”
“Yes. But I don’t understand why he lives alone.”
Grandfather Abdul laughed out loud.
“Neither do I! When I was his age, we all lived with extended family. After moving here, it took me several years to get used to living alone. It was very hard on me when Ali’s father married and got a job in Leeds. I was working in London, so I couldn’t move there with them.”
Grandfather Abdul had worked in a hotel before he retired. He lived in the building for free in exchange for looking after Mr Azad’s rental property. He told me the landlord worked in a bank and owned five such buildings.
“Poor Ali,” Grandfather Abdul said. “He grew up sharing a room with several others. That’s probably why he wants to live alone for now.” (Ali had told me bashfully that he had six brothers and sisters, so I understood at once what Grandfather Abdul meant.)
I spent the next three days hanging out in Ali’s flat. I was following Grandfather Abdul’s advice to lay low until the weekend. Luna relayed Uncle Tan’s messages to me. Nothing had gone wrong at the salon, but I would need to keep my distance until the weekend. Then it would be okay for me to come back to work the following Tuesday. Luna also told me that Auntie Sarah had called several times: Lady Emily was looking for me.