The Seasons of Trouble (48 page)

Lynx House had strict rules, but it was nothing like prison; inmates could wander in the city as long as they returned by early evening. On his walks around Cardiff, Sarva would call his parents from a telephone booth. Amma had had another hernia operation and was in and out of hospitals. She was relieved that he sounded upbeat and assured him that she prayed for him every day. His father came to the phone, too, these days, asking him to describe the roads, buildings and people of England. He advised Sarva to polish up his spoken English. Before his father hung up, Amma would grab the phone to issue her stock instructions: eat well and don’t call ‘that girl’.

Sarva did call Malar. Her parents were urging her to meet eligible boys and choose a husband. He tried desperately to dissuade her from giving in to the pressure. He sang paeans to the good life in the UK and the luxuries of the developed world, such as furnished houses, automatic doors and microwavable meals. Men opened doors for women, and she could wear stylish clothes without worrying about what society might think. ‘Imagine, you will be living in comfort here with me,’ he would say. They couldn’t speak long, so he took to plastering her Facebook wall with images of pink hearts, teddy bears and roses. He emailed her videos of love songs and pictures of himself in romantic poses. Prathipan said that love was Sarva’s full-time job.

SARVA WAS SOON
allocated independent accommodation in Swansea—with Pakistani and Prathipan, to his delight. They were to share the house till the agency reviewed their applications and called them for an interview. They were not permitted to accept paid work or leave town for more than five days at a time. Till their asylum application was reviewed, the National Asylum Support Service would pay their rent. Additionally, each received a cheque for £150 by mail every month, to be cashed at the post office. The arrangement sounded practically hedonistic to Sarva.

They moved in on 16 January 2013. Number 77 Prince of Wales Road was at the top of a street with an almost thirty-degree incline. It was supplied with a moody heater, a TV that never came on and
sofas whose cushions held the imprint of the previous tenants. In the kitchen, the vent above the stove was broken and the carpet reeked of mould. The two-storey cottage was perhaps only a few decades old, but it had suffered severely from the coming and going of its temporary inhabitants.

There were two great marvels in the house, however: glorious hot running water in the bathrooms and a separate room for every man. Sarva picked the single room on the ground floor, Prathipan the triangular one on the landing, and Pakistani the attic. Two Eritreans already occupied the master bedroom. One of them, a scraggly young man with a bouncy walk and goofy grin, introduced himself as Takloum. The other, whose name Sarva didn’t catch, became The Other Takloum.

Most of the houses in the vicinity were rented to the UK Border Agency for refugee occupancy, and the only remaining locals were working-class. The street was clean but bore tell-tale signs of neglect. The dustbins on the pavement bulged with overstuffed garbage bags, and the odd beer can rattled about. Mattresses, TVs and patio tables discarded on the pavement vanished in minutes. The street was bookended by a small car park and an abandoned cinema. The house was a fifteen-minute walk from the bus station and a ten-minute bus ride from the community centre for asylum seekers. Most grocery shops, phone booths, video arcades and hair salons in the area were run by immigrants. In this refugee cocoon, Sarva was not expected to speak English or to understand the currency. If he was lost, someone brown would appear on the street and help him out. He disappeared into the neighbourhood’s heterogeneity.

Before he left Lynx House, the Sinhalese couple had given Sarva the numbers of other Sri Lankans who had been sent to Swansea. After spending the first week scrubbing his house and familiarising himself with the town, Sarva called a young Tamil family that he knew lived nearby. They had moved to Swansea a few weeks earlier. Bagi Annan welcomed Sarva to the town and invited him to come over for lunch that very day, if he had the time. ‘I’ll tell my wife to make extra,’ he said. ‘It must have been a long time since you ate our food.’ It had been two years.

After shopping for everything from soap, bed sheets and towels to kitchen basics with their first benefit cheques of £90 each, Sarva, Prathipan and Pakistani walked to Bagi Annan’s house. His wife, Kajini, opened the door and her jaw dropped. ‘Oh,’ she said. It was clear she had expected only one guest. ‘Which one of you is Sarva?’

The lunch of sweet-and-sour fried brinjal and chicken biryani was the beginning of a friendship that became Sarva’s lifeline over the next few months, as he learnt to live without the certainty of sunlight. Kajini and Bagi Annan were asylum seekers, too, with the same limited means, but they opened their doors to him, soothing his restless spirit with their calm domesticity. They were from the Vanni, and their son, Niru, now four years old, had been delivered in the thick of war in a bunker half-filled with muddy water. Perhaps it was the circumstances of his birth, his age, or his resemblance to Sarva’s own nephew, but the doe-eyed boy brought Sarva the kind of solace even his mother’s voice no longer provided. Niru reciprocated, singling Sarva out as his favourite uncle, imitating his guffaw and calling him over when he wanted to play horse or tell him a secret. Sarva told Kajini she was the sister he had almost had. He occasionally cooked for her, in gratitude for all the meals she invited him to. She presented him with a picture of Lord Shiva and Parvati, which he hung in his room next to his Shiva calendar.

Once a week, when they had to sign in at the community office, they staged a relay. The unlimited day ticket on the bus cost £5, and after Bagi Annan and Kajini had used it, they called Sarva to come to the bus stand, where they handed him the travel card. When he returned, he gave it to Prathipan, and he in turn shared it with Pakistani. To make the most of the day ticket, all errands in the city—visits to the post office, refugee council or butcher—would be scheduled on the same day. The community centre had recommended a local physician who worked with immigrants, and Sarva spent an hour at the clinic every week receiving physiotherapy for his feet and back.

The group lived like intertwined creepers, awaiting the same fate, though no one shared his story with the others. Bagi Annan and Prathipan knew from Sarva’s injuries that he had suffered
some form of physical abuse, but they never knew the details. Bagi Annan and Kajini did not describe what they had endured in the war or how they had escaped the Manik Farm camp and escaped to the UK. Prathipan had an iPad that he had bought when he was a student at an obscure university in England, but he did not explain why he had overstayed his student visa.

Lynx House abounded with examples of refugees stealing scenes from another person’s history, refining and practising it for the asylum interview. They had all heard the cautionary tale of two Iranian roommates who were best friends and had shared their stories with each other. The one who was interviewed first by the UK agency had told his friend’s story as his own. When it was the other man’s turn, he was accused of lying and denied a visa. It was only when he challenged the ruling in the courts that, a year later, the decision was reversed. Everyone wanted a visa, Sarva’s group agreed, and people would not hesitate to spice up their history with someone else’s horrific experience. It was best to be careful.

Sarva and his friends spent most of their time in supermarkets, reading price labels, prowling for new discounts and offers, such as a jar of mayonnaise with every bottle of ketchup or a two-for-one offer on packets of rice. Sarva knew that Poundland was where he could get the most enormous bottle of shampoo or body lotion for only a pound. Tesco had the spicy chillies and pungent red onions essential to his Sri Lankan curries. The chicken was fleshier at the local Arab shop than at the big stores. Basmati rice and vegetables were cheaper at Lidl and the 99 pence store had the best deals on cheap sweets and chocolate, of which Sarva ate fistfuls when he was hungry. The housemates shopped together like a family. Their purchases differed according to culture and dietary habits, but in a matter of weeks everyone settled into an even pattern determined solely by the £5 daily allowance from the NASS.

Sarva had a phone now and called home daily. He saved small amounts from his meagre dole and sent them to Malar so she could pay her phone and Internet bills. Their conversations these days always degenerated into a fight, broken only by a heavy silence or tears. A prospective husband had visited Malar at her house. ‘I couldn’t help it, Mummy just invited him,’ she said.

‘Okay, so why did you have to serve him tea and snacks?’ he had demanded. She explained that she couldn’t insult her parents in front of guests. She assured him she would love no one else as much, that he was her soulmate.

‘It’s not all that,’ he said. ‘You are tired of waiting for me.’ In his angst, he was rude about her family. She hung up. They did not speak for weeks after that.

To overcome his insomnia and impending failure in love, Sarva drank cheap readymade cocktails (‘It’s only juice,’ he told Kajini) with Prathipan till he passed out on his bed around dawn. He would wake at noon, drink a mug of milk, and check the mail to see if he had a date for his interview. He whiled away the rest of his time going for walks, thinking about Malar or visiting Niru. Days and nights blurred together. Finally, one snow-lashed February morning, he received a letter calling him to an interview on 11 March.

HIS BODY BUZZED
, his back throbbed, his sleeplessness worsened. The interview was a month away, but Sarva was tense with anticipation. His lawyer was overjoyed. ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up,’ she said on the phone. ‘But an early interview is usually good news.’

There was a party at no. 77. Prathipan invited three Sri Lankan Tamil women from the neighbourhood, Kajini brought her sister, brother-in-law and their children visiting from Luton, and Bagi Annan supplied soft drinks (there would be no alcohol in front of the women). As the guests arrived at midday, filling the kitchen and living room, Sarva started on his elaborate version of
koli kozhambu
and
elumbu rasam
, chicken curry and bones soup. He delegated the onion chopping, garlic smashing and tamarind squeezing to the other men and he cleaned the large bird. Niru darted around the house playing train with his cousins. Kajini teased that Sarva’s idea of good food was copious amounts of oil, cream and dried fruit. The women itched to take over—‘Turn the heat down,’ ‘Cut the tomatoes finer,’ ‘Put the lid on’—but the men banished them from the kitchen.

When he finally served lunch at five o’clock, the famished guests attacked the soggy potatoes and spicy chicken with gusto.
The housemates joined them. ‘Sarva, my brother! Asylum for you!’ Takloum toasted with a glass of Pepsi. Sarva widened his eyes and shook his head, dramatically mouthing, ‘No! Ssh!’

By dusk, the men had shut themselves in a room with a bottle of brandy. The women wished Sarva luck and left. Kajini hung back at the door. ‘There were twelve of us here today,’ she said. ‘Some have been in the UK for years, but only
you
got an interview. I am praying every day. God will take your side.’ She asked a sleepy Niru to give Sarva
maama
a hug and kiss.

‘
Akka
, it will happen for you also soon,’ he said, guiltily.

‘I sure hope so,’ Kajini sighed.

Sarva had downplayed it all day, but he knew that for everyone he had fed, an interview was nothing short of a miracle. He didn’t want to rub it in their faces. He had been edgy about the evil eye, about envy corroding his good fortune. He had no experience of being the lucky one in the room.