Kandahar Cockney: A Tale of Two Worlds. James Fergusson

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СКАЧАТЬ to weeds and was littered with household rubbish and the scurf of the street. Inside the door he flipped off his shoes with an ease that had long ago become automatic and that made me feel clumsy in my unAfghan lace-up boots. He called out for Hamid, who emerged from the back of the house and shook my hand solemnly in the traditional Pashtun way, bowing almost imperceptibly as he placed his right hand on his heart, muttering an inaudible welcome. He was thin and unhealthy-looking compared to Mir. His cheeks were pockmarked and he wore Western clothes, jeans and a cheap leather jacket. He was older than Mir, in his thirties perhaps, and he did not seem entirely pleased that I was there. But Mir ignored him and ushered me further into the house with something like pride. I was his VIP, the honoured guest, and he was as eager to please as ever.

      He led me up the narrow stairs, and I could see he had been at work. Beds had been carefully made. A mildewed bathroom had recently been doused in bleach. But no amount of tidying up could mask the pervading smell of damp, the threadbare carpets, the grubby wallpaper that bulged in places, a broken windowpane that had been replaced with cardboard. The place was as dire as I had expected. The tour was short, and finished in the front room. Cheap armchairs lined the walls, their springs and stuffing showing. A second-hand television burbled in the corner, the picture hopelessly fuzzy. A coffee table was loaded with little cut-glass bowls full of boiled sweets, pine-kernels and sugared mulberries, just like at home. Mir bustled out and reappeared carrying a large rolled-up carpet.

      – For you, he declared, spreading it out with a practised flourish. I could hardly believe he had brought it with him on the plane. But as he searched my face anxiously for a reaction, it was clear that this was more than just a gesture: it was an expression of family debt.

      – I spoke to my father, he explained. He said I should bring you this. Do you like it?

      It was impossible not to like it. The carpet was a beautiful thing, a rich black and orange asymmetric swirl, the patterns interspersed with figurative flowers and minarets, the ends finely tasselled. I thanked him formally and he nodded his satisfaction, serious for a moment. It was certain that this exchange would be relayed back to Mazar somehow.

      I had brought my own welcoming present, but hesitated now before presenting it because I realised it wasn’t really suitable. It was a single bottle of designer lager spontaneously bought in Oddbins called Freedom Beer. It was intended as a joke for the teetotal Mir, a symbol of the moral confusion and temptation that he would surely find in the West. He took it and placed it with solemn reverence in the centre of the mantelpiece. It was hard to tell what he really made of it. His face was a mask.

      Hamid came in and sat down in an armchair opposite, silently studying me. I had not been mistaken: he was uncomfortable with my presence here. And there was something more, a jaded, beaten quality in the way he walked and sat, a certain unhappiness in the set of his mouth and the deep lines on his forehead. The light in his eyes had been somehow deadened.

      – This is a nice house, I said to him. Is it yours?

      – It belongs to a friend, he replied evenly.

      – Hamid is a tour guide, said Mir brightly.

      – A tour guide? Really? You must know London well.

      Hamid looked at Mir and laughed hollowly.

      – Not is, he said. Was. Now I drive a van. I am a dispatch driver in London.

      – You were a tour guide in Mazar? What, before the war?

      It seemed unlikely: he was surely too young to have worked in Afghan tourism, an industry that had effectively died with the Russian invasion twenty years before.

      – Hamid’s father was a tour guide, Mir explained. It was his family’s business. Hamid was taught everything about Mazar history, but the tourists never came back.

      It was a sad example of an all too common story in Afghanistan, where war had spoiled the lives of so many people in surprising, incalculable ways. Hamid’s no doubt long apprenticeship had been utterly pointless.

      – When did you come here? Have you been in London for long?

      – Years, Hamid snorted, swatting angrily at an imaginary fly. He didn’t want to expand.

      – Hamid has a best friend here who was once a tour guide in Kabul, added Mir. His name is Isa.

      – Isa, Hamid snorted again. A stupid bastard.

      Mir looked momentarily put out by this, but recovered quickly.

      – Isa had a bakery in…another city here. With a Moroccan man. But the Moroccan man was bad and took all Isa’s money and went back to Rabat.

      Hamid silenced Mir with a hard look. There was obviously more to this story, and when Hamid went to the kitchen to fetch tea, Mir leaned forward and began speaking in a breathless stage whisper. It seemed that Isa had spent the previous night at Mafeking Avenue.

      – This Isa. He is very bad. James, he smokes a lot of chars! Hamid also. They are both…hash-heads. And Isa has a girlfriend. From Mexico!

      He began to speak more quickly, clasping my arm as something clattered in the kitchen.

      – Isa gambles. He lost £8000 in a gambling house. In one night!

      It seemed an impressive amount of money for an Afghan refugee to own, let alone lose. But Hamid returned before more information could be extracted and Mir recomposed himself, the conspiracy neatly concealed.

      The conversation turned to Mir’s bid for asylum, and Hamid at last became less reticent. He had been through all the hoops of the system himself and knew exactly what Mir now needed to do. He said that the granting of ELR – Exceptional Leave to Remain – was usually automatic for Afghans, and would almost certainly be so in Mir’s case. The trick would be to persuade the Home Office to upgrade Mir’s ELR to the full refugee status of ILR, Indefinite Leave to Remain. A case would have to be mounted, for which a solicitor would have to be found – a legal aid solicitor, of course. In the meantime Mir could stay with him for as long as he liked. He would show him how to sign on for unemployment benefit, maybe even help him find a job.

      – You will also help him, he added bluntly. You must write letters. You and the man from the BBC. Witness statements. Character testimonials.

      – How long will it take? How long did it take for you?

      – A long time. Years. And it is harder now. There are too many asylum seekers here. The Home Office doesn’t know what to do.

      – I’m sure we’ll manage, I said.

      – Insha’allab, grinned Mir.

      We talked on for an hour or so, drinking tea and nibbling nuts. We discussed the Afghan community in London, the finer points of the immigration system and the war at home. Things were not going well for the men of Mir’s family, who had been persecuted as I feared they would be by the Hazara Shi’ites in proxy revenge for his role in the death of the looter. Mir’s face fell for a moment as he described how his brothers had been imprisoned by the Hazaras, but he was too happy about being in London to allow himself to dwell on it, and quickly changed the subject.

      When the time came to go Mir followed me out to the street and helped me strap СКАЧАТЬ