Today I bumped into a friend on his way home from yet another ordeal with the home office. The conversation passed through the usual descriptions of the UKBA official’s insolence, of my friend’s in-comprehension, of the Home Office’s arbitrary processes and decisions, of our frustration, and of my own futile apologies (I often feel as though the home office is my own dis-obedient son which I cannot get to behave when we have visitors): this time the conversation concluded unexpectedly though, with the sad news that he has decided to leave.
Speaking angrily and with obvious pain in his voice, he told me he is done with this country, with its politics, with a system based on business rather than humanity, with a policy which de-legitimizes him in every sense. He is done with this.
No wonder. R has been subjected to a system which understands him not as a human – but as a statistic, as a political tool, as a business opportunity (Glasgow City Council profits from the dispersal program). Despite the trauma he fled: despite the danger he is seeking sanctuary from here in the UK, the home office refuses to take his claim into consideration because the place he comes from is *not* (according to them) war-torn – it is not a site of human rights atrocities, it is not subjected to regular shelling, it is not one of the most volatile regions in the world at this time. Yet without a claim – without legitimation from the big boys (this is what they call the Home Office officials) – he remains beyond the margins, excluded from any life worth living – and unlikely to ever feel safe in any real sense.
The invisible walls (for those who remain outside detention) of the asylum system can only be tholed for so long. Watching so many go through it, it seems to me that it is too much for any woman or man to bear – and certainly too much to bear for a man who believes, passionately and unequivocally in the freedom of each man and woman. And so R will leave in search of a place where freedom might live (though it’s scarcity in these times is likely to make this an endless search). I can tell that he has made this decision with a very heavy heart – he will be sad to leave Glasgow – a city whose people have welcomed him in the small ways that they can.
I guess the home office believes they have won – another one gone. I guess the Conservative Government believes they have won – reducing the burden on the state (and freeing it for other things like military war-fare). I guess the tabloid press also believes that they have won – one less ‘competitor’ for jobs that don’t exist in this dog-eat-dog world – ‘charity begins at home mate’.
But I know better. I know we have lost. I know we have lost a brilliant mind, and a huge heart. I know we have lost man with a sense of humour and playfulness which is in short supply in these dark times: I know we have lost a man with incredible artistic talent. I know we have lost a fellow revolutionary in a time when such creatures are in short supply: I know we have lost the opportunity to learn from a man who could have taught us so much.
I also know that we have lost an opportunity to be what, in our national rhetoric, and in our personal discourses, we aspire to – a democratic people who uphold human rights and value human dignity. I know that we have lost our opportunity to be more than a country of cold-hearted bureaucracy.
This loss saddens me deeply. I am angry at this nation and it’s people for being so blind, so naive and so selfish. I am angry at a system in which an arbitrary decision by a man in a suit has the power to de-humanize even the bravest and brightest of spirits. I am angry at myself for not fighting the hypocrisy and callousness of the state harder.
But with no way to express this anger and no way to change these things, all I can say, with sorrow and futile hope, is ‘haste ye back my friend’.
