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Chapter two

Within high fences

I arrived at work. I showed my identity card to the guards and drove through the gates.

I stopped my car, got out and walked to the next gates. I showed my identity card again to some more guards. Then they opened the gates and let me in.

I was now at work. I worked in a centre for asylum seekers - people who want to live in Great Britain because of bad problems in their countries.

When I first started working as a guard, I didn’t know much about asylum seekers. Now, I was beginning to understand more about the people I was guarding.

Sometimes asylum seekers come to this country because there is terrible fighting in their countries and they are afraid. Asylum seekers come here because they hope they will have a better life in Britain.

When they arrive, asylum seekers wait to know who can stay, and who must go home to their countries. Sometimes the asylum seekers wait in the centre for days, sometimes for weeks and sometimes for months.

We were all locked in together. At the end of every night’s work, I could go home, but the asylum seekers had to stay in the centre.

When you have a lot of people together in one place, you have to have rules. Rules tell people what they can and can’t do. I didn’t always agree with the rules. But I had to make sure everybody followed them. It was my job.

I went to the dining room. Dinner was finished, but there was nowhere else to go. Most of the asylum seekers spent their time here. But there was nothing to do. The tables and chairs and walls were grey.

I walked around the dining room and looked at all the faces. Some of them were very sad. Some were just tired and afraid. I wanted to make them feel better. I tried to smile. But when they saw my uniform, they looked away. To them, my uniform said ‘I am not your friend’.

People were waiting for a cup of tea or coffee, and a biscuit. Bill, one of the other guards, was watching them.

I saw a woman at a table. She had a little boy with her. They both looked really sad, really tired.

‘Do you want some tea or coffee?’ I asked the woman.

She didn’t understand.

I began to speak again, but there was a shout. The woman and the child looked up. They looked really afraid. Bill was shouting at a tall man.

‘Put it back!’ he shouted. ‘I saw you. You were stealing!’

The tall man had black hair and dark eyes. He looked down at Bill.

‘Steal?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Bill. ‘You took something that wasn’t yours!’

The tall man looked at the two biscuits in his hand.

‘But this is a biscuit!’ said the man angrily. ‘It isn’t something expensive!’

‘You can only have one biscuit. It’s the rules. You took two,’ said Bill.

‘But this biscuit isn’t for me,’ said the tall man. ‘It’s for that boy.’ He looked at the little boy with the woman. ‘The boy was afraid to take a biscuit. He was afraid of the rules. There are so many rules here.’

‘Yes,’ said Bill, ‘and you have to follow the rules.’

The tall man wasn’t afraid of Bill’s words. He turned and walked away. He gave the two biscuits to the boy and smiled. It was a beautiful smile.

The boy was too tired to smile back. He ate the biscuits quickly. one, two. He was very hungry. The man smiled at the boy again, and I smiled at the man.

The tall man looked at me for a moment and stopped smiling. Then he turned his back to me.

I wanted to tell him I was a friend. But my uniform said something different. It said ‘I am not a friend’. It said ‘I agree with all these rules’.

The tall man saw my uniform, and he understood what it said.

But that night, my heart was saying something very different to my uniform.