Kandahar Cockney: A Tale of Two Worlds

– 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 the carpet onto the back of the bike.

– Will you be all right?

– I will be fine, James Bond.

– You shouldn’t worry about Hamid smoking spliff…chars. You’re in London now. A lot of people smoke chars in London.

– In Afghanistan also, said Mir contemptuously. But I do not. It is werry bad to smoke chars. It is against Islam.

As we spoke a Pakistani family had advanced down the pavement towards us, the father loping along in a brown shalwar qamiz, the red and gold folds of the mother’s sari flapping, three querulous children in tow. We stepped aside to let them pass. Mir eyed the Pakistani, and the Pakistani eyed him back. Something flashed between them, a sort of ethnic face-off, but it was Mir who looked away first. He giggled when he saw that I’d noticed.

– Hohh, he said wonderingly, when the family were out of earshot. The Pakis are ewerywhere!

– It’s a big city. A lot of people live here, including a lot of Pakis.

– It is exactly like Islamabad, he said, shaking his head. Is all of London like this?

– Not all of London, no. You’ll see.

We looked up and down Mafeking Avenue. Never mind the liberal principles of multiculturalism: to this Afghan newcomer, his place in E6’s social pecking order looked depressingly familiar.

– You’ll see what London is like. I’ll show you. You must come and visit me.

– I’ll come soon, James Bond.

I looked back at the house and saw Hamid through the window. He was holding the bottle of beer and studying the label with such a proprietary air that I knew at once that he intended to drink it. I caught his eye and wagged my finger jokily, letting him know that I knew what he was thinking, but there was no smile, no discernible sign that we had just spent over an hour together or that anything had passed between us. Too bad, I thought to myself. Mir is in London now, and there’s nothing you can do about it. There was no knowing where all this would lead or end, but at that moment it didn’t matter. Mir’s optimism was infectious. I winked at him and he smiled back like the sun.

2 June–December 1998 (#ulink_fde4185f-4e04-583f-9dc9-5c59f4f72a53)

Aaron Stein’s office in Islington was on the front line of the immigration war. From three rooms in a rundown house off Upper Street he waged a heroic and almost single-handed battle against the massed forces of the Home Office, which constantly threatened to overwhelm his position. Rows of wonky filing cabinets burst with case histories, correspondence with officialdom, notices of changes to the law. The precarious stacks of papers on his desk added to the impression of a hard-pressed general in a well sandbagged bunker. In the Stygian corridor, made gloomier by the grime on the frosted glass above the door onto the street, the traffic of applicants for asylum never stopped. It was interesting to try to guess their nationalities – Kurds, Iraqis, Tamils, Albanians. During office hours the door was left on the latch so they could come and go, for as an underpaid legal aid lawyer Aaron could not afford the luxury of a receptionist. It felt a long way from the Inns of Court in central London, with their oak-panelled and book-lined chambers, their aura of history and learning and respectful hush. Aaron Stein’s legal practice operated in a permanent state of near chaos.

We squeezed past other asylum seekers who waited patiently in the corridor or on the narrow staircase like medieval supplicants. There was a queue to use a payphone on which someone was jabbering in a subcontinental tongue. Aaron, one telephone jammed to his ear, another ringing unanswered somewhere beneath the awesome clutter of his desk, beckoned us in with a perfunctory wave.

– The name is Chandrasekaran, he was saying. All one word. First name Bari, not Chandra. That’s B,A,R,I…No, B. B for Bravo…

He spoke with a slight but unmistakably Semitic sibilance. There was a recognisable archetype here, a north London Jewish lawyer fighting for international justice in an underfunded garret of an office, principled, romantic, determinedly left wing. He looked younger than he had sounded on the telephone, only a little older than I was, although behind his John Lennon glasses his eyes were supremely tired. The telephone conversation went on and on. Some vital application form had been lost in the Home Office system. The consequence for Bari Chandrasekaran, who appeared to have been filed away as Chandra Sekaran, would be a significant delay in his asylum decision. Aaron was arguing the unfairness of this, but it seemed there was nothing the Home Office could do. Bari Chandrasekaran, properly logged and registered, would have to go to the back of the queue and start again.

– Three months, said Aaron flatly, putting down the phone at last. Another three months, she says. At least.

He looked up for the first time and took us in with a quick, joyless little smile.

– The system is utterly screwed, he observed. They never get the names right, never. Now, what can I do you two for?

I realised that he had no idea who we were, and reminded him of the letter I had sent the previous week, outlining what had happened to Mir in Afghanistan and the case for his political asylum. Aaron looked uncertain at first, but then it came back to him. He fished in a pile of papers and emerged with my letter with a speed that suggested there was at least some reason in the madness of his desk.

– I remember of course, he nodded, rereading the letter. It’s quite a story. Quite a story.

Hamid the former tour guide had been correct in his assertion that Exceptional Leave to Remain was virtually automatic for Afghans. In fact it was so automatic that a significant number of asylum seekers from other countries had taken to destroying their identity papers and claiming Afghan nationality. There was a particular problem with applicants from Iran and Pakistan, Aaron explained. Twenty years of war had driven some three million people across Afghanistan’s borders into these neighbouring countries, where many had settled and intermingled. Pashtu is the majority language of Afghanistan and is widely spoken in north-west Pakistan. Dari is the secondary language, and is a dialect of Persian. It was therefore a simple matter for Pakistanis and Iranians to dress up as Afghans and hoodwink unwary immigration officers at Britain’s ports. Disentangling the true asylum seeker from the false was one of the greatest challenges the system faced. Some Afghan refugees claimed that fully a quarter of their purported number in Britain, possibly tens of thousands of people, were fakes.

Aaron couldn’t see any problem in Mir’s case, which he said was open and shut. Sponsorship from two credible Western journalists was unusual, and would almost certainly be decisive in countering any challenge from the Home Office. In short, he would be delighted to take us on. He thought we should apply for ILR, Indefinite Leave to Remain, right away. He wanted more detail, and began to ask questions. When, precisely, had Mir become aware that his life was in danger? As a Pashtun, how dangerous had life been in the Northern Alliance town of Mazar before the arrival of the Taliban? Mir’s father was a Sharia judge: did he also play a role in the political life of Mazar, and what was his relationship with the Hazara Shi’ite community? None of this was easy to answer, and Mir responded hesitantly. I tried to help him along, but Aaron swiftly raised his hand.

– No, no, no. I appreciate your intentions, Mr Fergusson, I really do, but this is official testimony and I’d like to hear it from Mirwais himself, if you don’t mind.

Mir began again. Aaron scribbled notes on the back of my letter, but I could see he was having trouble concentrating. The phone rang again and he took the call. Then he was forced to break off to deal with a query from an assistant.

Mir spoke badly. Mazari politics were labyrinthine, difficult enough to explain even for a native English-speaker, and he went into much more detail than necessary. It was all taking far too long. Aaron furrowed his brow but the effort was clearly too much, and little by little his expression glazed over.

– All right, he sighed eventually, putting down his pen. I’ve heard enough. It won’t matter in the end anyway. They’ll definitely grant ILR.

I stole a look at his notes. Mir had been speaking for fifteen minutes, yet Aaron had barely covered half a page.

Aaron explained what would happen next. He would write to the Home Office and the Home Office would issue a case number. They could demand a hearing, but it was more likely in his opinion that they would simply upgrade Mir to full refugee status by return of post. The Home Office was supposed to adjudicate within three months, but the backlog of cases had grown so huge that it was unable to cope – which was why the Home Secretary was in the process of trying to reform the system with a new Immigration and Asylum Act.

– I predict disaster, said Aaron, with the undisguised relish of the vindicated critic. But he added that it was a good time to claim asylum. The backlog was a political embarrassment, and the government was desperate to get the numbers down for appearance’s sake. Due process was going by the board.

Mir sat mute throughout this discussion. Back out in the street, it soon became clear that he had understood little of it, but he didn’t seem to care. Britain, he said simply, was a good country. If Allah willed it then the system would work fine. Nevertheless, I could see that there was something on his mind.

– This man, he said by and by. Do you think he is a good man?

– I think he’s excellent.

– But where is he from?

– You mean his name?

– Jewish? said Mir. I thought so.

There was a pause.

– Is that a problem?