ONE OF THE THINGS I would have to explain to the girls from back home, if I was telling them this story, is the simple little word horror. It means something different to the people from my village.

In your country, if you are not scared enough already, you can go to watch a horror film. Afterward you can go out of the cinema into the night and for a little while there is horror in everything. Perhaps there are murderers lying in wait for you at home. You think this because there is a light on in your house that you are certain you did not leave on. And when you remove your makeup in the mirror last thing, you see a strange look in your own eyes. It is not you. For one hour you are haunted, and you do not trust anybody, and then the feeling fades away. Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.

For me and the girls from my village, horror is a disease and we are sick with it. It is not an illness you can cure yourself of by standing up and letting the big red cinema seat fold itself up behind you. That would be a good trick. If I could do that, please believe me, I would already be standing in the foyer. I would be laughing with the kiosk boy, and exchanging British one-pound coins for hot buttered popcorn, and saying, Phew, thank the Good Lord all that is over, that is the most frightening film I ever saw and I think next time I will go to see a comedy, or maybe a romantic film with kissing. But the film in your memory, you cannot walk out of it so easily. Wherever you go it is always playing. So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.

Some days I wonder how many there are just like me. Thousands, I think, just floating on the oceans right now. In between our world and yours. If we cannot pay smugglers to transport us, we stow away on cargo ships. In the dark, in freight containers. Breathing quietly in the darkness, hungry, hearing the strange clanking sounds of ships, smelling the diesel oil and the paint, listening to the bom-bom-bom of the engines. Wide-awake at night, hearing the singing of whales rising up from the deep sea and vibrating through the ship. All of us whispering, praying, thinking. And what are we thinking of? Of physical safety, of peace of mind. Of all these imaginary countries that are now being served in the foyer.

I stowed away in a great steel boat, but the horror stowed away inside me. When I left my homeland I thought I had escaped—but out on the open sea, I started to have nightmares. I was naive to suppose I had left my country with nothing. It was a heavy cargo that I carried.

They unloaded my cargo in a port on the estuary of the Thames river. I did not walk across the gangplank, I was carried off the ship by your immigration officials and they put me into detention. It was no joke inside the detention center. What will I say about this? Your system is cruel, but many of you were kind to me. You sent charity boxes. You dressed my horror in boots and a colorful shirt. You sent it something to paint its nails with. You posted it books and newspapers. Now the horror can speak the Queen’s English. This is how we can speak now of sanctuary and refuge. This is how I can tell you—soon-soon as we say in my country—a little about the thing I was running from.

There are things the men can do to you in this life, I promise you, it would be much better to kill yourself first. Once you have this knowledge, your eyes are always flickering from this place to that, watching for the moment when the men will come.

In the immigration detention center, they told us we must be disciplined to overcome our fears. This is the discipline I learned: whenever I go into a new place, I work out how I would kill myself there. In case the men come suddenly, I make sure I am ready. The first time I went into Sarah’s bathroom I was thinking, Yes Little Bee, in here you would break the mirror of that medicine cabinet and cut your wrists with the splinters. When Sarah took me for a ride in her car I was thinking, Here, Little Bee, you would roll down the window and unbuckle your seat belt and tip yourself out of the window, no fuss, in front of the very next lorry that comes the other way. And when Sarah took me for a day in Richmond Park, she was looking at the scenery but I was looking for a hollow in the ground where I could hide and lie very still until all that you would find of me was a small white skull that the foxes and the rabbits would fuss over with their soft, wet noses.

If the men come suddenly, I will be ready to kill myself. Do you feel sorry for me, for thinking always in this way? If the men come and they find you not ready, then it will be me who is feeling sorry for you.

For the first six months in the detention center, I screamed every night and in the day I imagined a thousand ways to kill myself. I worked out how to kill myself in every single one of the situations a girl like me might get into in the detention center. In the medical wing, morphine. In the cleaners’ room, bleach. In the kitchens, boiling fat. You think I am exaggerating? Some of the others that were detained with me, they really did these things. The detention officers sent the bodies away in the night, because it was not good for the local people to see the slow ambulances leaving that place.

Or what if they released me? And I went to a movie and I had to kill myself there? I would throw myself down from the projection gallery. Or a restaurant? I would hide in the biggest refrigerator and go into a long, cool sleep. Or the seaside? Ah, at the seaside, I would steal an ice-cream van and drive it into the sea. You would never see me again. The only thing to show that a frightened African girl had ever existed would be two thousand melting ice creams, bobbing in their packets on the cool blue waves.

After a hundred sleepless nights I had finished working out how to kill myself in every single corner of the detention center and the country outside, but I still carried on imagining. I was weak from horror and they put me in the medical wing. Away from the other prisoners I lay between the scratchy sheets and I spent each day all alone in my mind. I knew they planned to deport me so I started to imagine killing myself back home in Nigeria. It was just like killing myself in the detention center but the scenery was nicer. This was a small and unexpected happiness. In forests, in quiet villages, on the sides of mountains I took my own life again and again.

In the most beautiful places I secretly lingered over the act. Once, in a deep and hot jungle that smelled of wet moss and the excrement of monkeys, I took nearly one whole day to chop down trees and build a tall tower to hang myself from by the neck. I had a machete. I imagined the sticky sap on my hands and the sweet honey smell of it, the good tired feeling in my arms from the chopping, and the screeches of the monkeys who were angry when I cut their trees down. I worked hard in my imagination and I tied the tree trunks together with vines and creepers and I used a special knot that my sister Nkiruka showed me. It was a big day’s work for a small girl. I was proud. At the end of that whole day alone in my sickbed working on my suicide tower, I realized I could just have climbed a jungle tree and jumped with my silly head first onto a rock.

This was the first time that I smiled.

I began to eat the meals they brought me. I thought to myself, you must keep up your strength, Little Bee, or you will be too weak to kill your foolish self when the time arrives, and then you will be sorry. I started to walk from the medical wing to the canteen at mealtimes, so that I could choose my food instead of having it brought to me. I started asking myself questions like: Which will make me stronger for the act of suicide? The carrots or the peas?

In the canteen there was a television that was always on. I began to learn more about life in your country. I watched programs called Love Island and Hell’s Kitchen and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and I worked out how I would kill myself on all of those shows. Drowning, knives, and ask the audience.

One day the detention officers gave all of us a copy of a book called LIFE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. It explains the history of your country and how to fit in. I planned how I would kill myself in the time of Churchill (stand under bombs), Victoria (throw myself under a horse), and Henry the Eighth (marry Henry the Eighth). I worked out how to kill myself under Labour and Conservative governments, and why it was not important to have a plan for suicide under the Liberal Democrats. I began to understand how your country worked.

They moved me out of the medical wing. I still screamed in the night, but not every night. I realized that I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope. I realized I had killed myself back to life.

I read your novels. I read the newspapers you sent. In the opinion columns I underlined the grand sentences and I looked up every word in my Collins Gem. I practiced for hours in front of the mirror until I could make the big words look natural in my mouth.

I read a lot about your Royal Family. I like your Queen more than I like her English. Do you know how you would kill yourself during a garden party with Queen Elizabeth the Second on the great lawn of Buckingham Palace in London, just in case you were invited? I do. Me, I would kill myself with a broken champagne glass, or maybe a sharp lobster claw, or even a small piece of cucumber that I could suck down into my windpipe, if the men suddenly came.

I often wonder what the Queen would do, if the men suddenly came. You cannot tell me she does not think about it a lot. When I read in LIFE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM about some of the things that have happened to the women in the Queen’s job, I understood that she must think about it all of the time. I think that if the Queen and I met then we would have many things in common.

The Queen smiles sometimes but if you look at her eyes in her portrait on the back of the five-pound note, you will see she is carrying a heavy cargo too. The Queen and me, we are ready for the worst. In public you will see both of us smiling and sometimes even laughing, but if you were a man who looked at us in a certain way we would both of us make sure we were dead before you could lay a single finger on our bodies. Me and the Queen of England, we would not give you the satisfaction.

It is good to live like this. Once you are ready to die, you do not suffer so badly from the horror. So I was nervous but I was smiling, because I was ready to die, that morning they let us girls out of detention.

I will tell you what happened when the taxi driver came. The four of us girls, we were waiting outside the Immigration Detention Centre. We were keeping our backs to it, because this is what you do to a big gray monster who has kept you in his belly for two years, when he suddenly spits you out. You keep your back to him and you talk in whispers, in case he remembers you and the clever idea comes into his mind to swallow you all up again.

I looked across to Yevette, the tall pretty girl from Jamaica. Every time I looked at her before, she was laughing and smiling. But now her smile looked as nervous as mine.

“What is wrong?” I whispered.

Yevette moved her mouth close to my ear.

“It ain’t safe out ere.”

“But they have released us, haven’t they? We are free to go. What is the problem?”

Yevette shook her head and whispered again.

“Ain’t dat simple, darlin. Dere’s freedom as in, yu girls is free to go, and den dere’s freedom as in, yu girls is free to go till we catches yu. Sorry, but it’s dat second kind of freedom we got right now, Lil Bee. Truth. Dey call it bein a illegal immigrant.”

“I don’t understand, Yevette.”

“Yeh, an I can’t explain it to yu here.”

Yevette looked across at the other two girls, and behind her at the detention center. When she turned back to me, she leaned close in to my ear again.

“I played a trick to get us let out of dere.”

“What sort of trick?”

“Shh, darlin. Dey is too many lisseners in dis place, Bee. Trus me, we got to find someplace we can hide up. Den I can explain de situation to yu at leisure.”

Now the other two girls were staring at us. I smiled at them and I tried not to think about what Yevette said. We were sitting on our heels at the main gate of the detention center. The fences stretched away from us on both sides. The fences were as high as four men and they had razor wire on the tops, in nasty black rolls. I looked at the other three girls and I started giggling. Yevette stood up and she put her hands on her hips and made big eyes at me.

“Why de hell yu laughin, Little Bug?”

“My name is Little Bee, Yevette, and I am laughing because of this fence.”

Yevette looked up at it.

“My god, darlin, yu Nye-jirryians is worse dan yu look. Yu tink dis fence is funny, me hope me never see de fence yu considda to be sirius.”

“It is the razor wire, Yevette. I mean, look at us girls. Me with my underwear in a see-through plastic bag and you in your flip-flops, and this girl in her nice yellow sari, and this one with her documents. Do we look like we could climb that fence? I am telling you, girls, they could take away that razor wire and they could put pound coins and fresh mangoes on the top of the fence and we still could not climb out.”

Now Yevette started to laugh, WU-ha-ha-ha-ha, and she scolded me with her finger.

“Yu foolish girl! Yu tink dey build dis fence for to keep us girls in? Yu crazy? Dey build dis fence for to keep all de boys out. Dem boys know de quality of de oomans dey keep lock up in dis place, dey be brekkin down de doors!”

I was laughing, but then the girl with the documents spoke. She was sitting on her heels and looking down at her Dunlop Green Flash trainers.

“Where all of us going to go?”

“Wherever de taxi take us, yu nah see it? An den we take it on from dere. Brighten up dat gloomy face, darlin! We going dere, in England.”

Yevette pointed her finger out through the open gate. The girl with the documents looked up at where she was pointing, and so did the sari girl, and so did I.

It was a bright morning, I told you this already. It was the month of May and there was warm sunshine dripping through the holes between the clouds, like the sky was a broken blue bowl and a child was trying to keep honey in it. We were at the top of the hill. There was a long tarmac road winding from our gate all the way to the horizon. There was no traffic on it. At our end the road finished where we sat—it did not go anywhere else. On both sides of the road there were fields. And these were beautiful fields, with bright green grass so fresh it made you hungry. I looked at those fields and I thought, I could get down on my hands and my knees and put my face into that grass and eat and eat and eat. And that is what a very great number of cows were doing to the left of the road, and an even greater number of sheep to the right.

In the nearest field a white man in a small blue tractor was pulling some implement across the ground, but do not ask me what was its function. Another white man in blue clothes that I think you call overalls, he was tying a gate closed with bright orange rope. The fields were very neat and square, and the hedgerows between them were straight and low.

“It is big,” said the girl with the documents.

“Nah, it ain’t nuthin,” said Yevette. “We jus got to get to London. Me know pipple dere.”

“I do not know people,” said the girl with the documents. “I do not know anyone.”

“Well, yu jus gonna do yore best, darlin.”

The girl with the documents frowned.

“How come there no one here to help us? How come my caseworker she not here to fetch me? How come they give us no release papers?”

Yevette shook her head.

“Ain’t yu got nuff papers in dat bag of yours already, darlin? Some people, yu give em de inch, dey want de whole mile.”

Yevette laughed, but her eyes looked desperate.

“Now where is dat dam taxi?” she said.

“The man on the phone said ten minutes.”

“Feel like ten years already, truth.”

Yevette fell quiet. We looked out over the countryside again. The landscape was deep and wide. A breeze blew across it. We sat there on our heels and we watched the cows and the sheep and the white man tying the gates closed around them.

After some time our taxi came into sight. We watched it from the moment it was a small white speck at the distant end of the road. Yevette turned to me and she smiled.

“Dis taxi driver, he soun cute on de phone?”

“I did not talk to the driver. I only talked to the taxi controller.”

“Eighteen month I gone without a man, Bug. Dis taxi driver better be a rill Mister Mention, yu know what I’m sayin? Me like em tall, wid a bit o fat on em. Me no like no skinny boys. An me like em dress fine. Got no time fo loosers, ain’t dat right?”

I shrugged. I watched the taxi getting nearer. Yevette looked at me.

“What sorta man yu like, Lil Bug?”

I looked at the ground. There was grass there, pushing out of the tarmac, and I twisted it in my hands. When I thought about men, I felt a fear in my belly so sharp it was like knives piercing me. I did not want to speak, but Yevette nudged me with her elbow.

“Come on, Bug, what sorta boy be madam’s type?”

“Oh, you know, the usual sort.”

“What? What yu mean, de yoo-sual sort? Tall, short, skinny, fat?”

I looked down at my hands.

“I think my ideal man would speak many languages. He would speak Ibo and Yoruba and English and French and all of the others. He could speak with any person, even the soldiers, and if there was violence in their heart he could change it. He would not have to fight, do you see? Maybe he would not be very handsome, but he would be beautiful when he spoke. He would be very kind, even if you burned his food because you were laughing and talking with your girlfriends instead of watching the cooking. He would just say, Ah, never mind.”

Yevette looked at me.

“Forgive me, Bug, but yore ideal man, he don’t sound very rillistic.”

The girl with the documents, she looked up from her Dunlop Green Flash trainers.

“Leave her alone. Can’t you see she is a virgin?”

I looked at the ground. Yevette, she stared at me for a long time and then she put her hand on the back of my neck. I ground the toe of my boot into the ground and Yevette looked at the girl with the documents.

“How yu know dis, darlin?”

The girl shrugged and she pointed at the documents in her see-through plastic bag.

“I have seen things. I know about people.”

“So how come yu so quiet, if yu know so dam much?”

The girl shrugged again. Yevette stared at her.

“What dey call yu anyway, darlin?”

“I do not tell people my name. This way it is safer.”

Yevette rolled her eyes.

“Bet you don’t give de boys your phone number, neither.”

The girl with the documents, she stared at Yevette. Then she spat on the ground. She was trembling.

“You don’t know anything,” she said. “If you knew one thing about this life you would not think it was so funny.”

Yevette put her hands on her hips. She shook her head slowly.

“Darlin,” she said. “Life did take its gifts back from yu and me in de diffren order, dat’s all. Truth to tell, funny is all me got lef wid. An yu, darlin, all yu got lef is paperwork.”

They stopped then, because the taxi was pulling up. It stopped just in front of us. The side window was open and there was music blasting out. I will tell you what that music was. It was a song called “We Are the Champions” by a British music band called Queen. This is why I knew the song: it is because one of the officers in the immigration detention center, he liked the band very much. He used to bring his stereo and play the music to us when we were locked in our cells. If you danced and swayed to show you liked the music, he would bring you extra food. One time he showed me a picture of the band. It was the picture from the CD box. One of the musicians in the picture, he had a lot of hair. It was black with tight curls and it sat on the top of his head like a heavy weight and it went right down the back of his neck to his shoulders. I understand fashion in your language, but this hair did not look like fashion, I am telling you, it looked like a punishment.

One of the other detention officers came past while we were looking at the picture on the CD box, and he pointed to the musician with all that hair and he said, What a cock. I remember that I was very pleased, because I was still learning to really speak your language back then, and I was just beginning to understand that one word can have two meanings. I understood this word straightaway. I could see that cock referred to the musician’s hair. It was like a cockerel’s comb, you see. So a cock was a cockerel, and it was also a man with that kind of hair.

I am telling you this because the taxi driver had exactly that kind of hair.

When the taxi stopped outside the main gate of the detention center, the driver did not get out of his seat. He looked at us through the open window. He was a thin white man and he was wearing sunglasses with dark green lenses and shiny gold frames. The girl in the yellow sari, she was amazed by the taxi car. I think she was like me and she had never seen such a big and new and shining white car. She walked all around it and stroked her hands across its surfaces and she said, Mmmm. She was still holding the empty see-through bag. She took one hand off the bag and traced the letters on the back of the car with her finger. She spoke their names very slowly and carefully, the way she had learned them in the detention center. She said, F…O…R…D…hmm! Fod! When she got to the front of the car, she looked at the headlights, and she blinked. She put her head on one side, and then she put it straight again, and she looked the car in the eyes and giggled. The taxi driver watched her all this time. Then he turned back to the rest of us girls and the expression on his face was like a man who has just realized he has swallowed a hand grenade because he thought it was a plum.

“Your friend’s not right in the head,” he said.

Yevette poked me in the stomach with her elbow.

“Yu better do de talkin, Lil Bug,” she whispered.

I looked at the taxi driver. “We Are the Champions” was still playing on his stereo, very loud. I realized I needed to tell the taxi driver something that showed him we were not refugees. I wanted to show that we were British and we spoke your language and understood all the subtle things about your culture. Also, I wanted to make him happy. This is why I smiled and walked up to the open window and said to the taxi driver, Hello, I see that you are a cock.

I do not think the driver understood me. The sour expression on his face became even worse. He shook his head from side to side, very slowly. He said, Don’t they teach you monkeys any manners in the jungle?

And then he drove away, very quickly, so that the tires of his taxi squealed like a baby when you take its milk away. The four of us girls, we stood and watched the taxi disappearing back down the hill. The cows to the left of the road and the sheep to the right of the road, they watched it too. Then they went back to eating the grass, and we girls went back to sitting on our heels. The wind blew, and the rolls of razor wire rattled on the top of the fence. The shadows of small high clouds drifted across the countryside.

It was a long time before any of us spoke.

“Mebbe we shoulda let Sari Girl do de talkin.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Damn Africans. You always tink yu so smart but yu ignorant.”

I stood and walked up to the fence. I held on to the chain link and stared through it, down the hill and over the fields. Down there the two farmers were still working, the one driving the tractor and the other tying up the gates.

Yevette came and stood beside me.

“What we gonna do now, Bug? No way we can stay here. Let’s jus walk, okay?”

I shook my head.

“What about those men down there?”

“You tink dey gonna stop us?”

I gripped on tighter to the wire.

“I don’t know, Yevette. I am scared.”

“What yu scared of, Bug? Maybe dey jus leave us be. Unless yu plannin on callin dem names too, like you done dat taxi man?”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Well all right den. Don be fraid. Me come wid yu, any road. Keep a check on dem monkey manners you got.”

Yevette turned to the girl with the documents.

“What bout you, lil miss no-name? You commin wid?”

The girl looked back at the detention center.

“Why they didn’t give us more help? Why they didn’t send our caseworkers to meet us?”

“Well, cos dey did not elect to do dat, darlin. So what yu gonna do? Yu gonna go back in dere, ask em fo a car, an a boyfren, an mebbe some nice jool-rie?”

The girl shook her head. Yevette smiled.

“Bless yu, darlin. An now fo yu, Sari Girl. Me gonna make dis easy fo yu. Yu comin wid us, darlin. If yu agree, say nuthin.”

The girl with the sari blinked at her, and tilted her head to one side.

“Good. We all in, Lil Bug. We all walking out of dis place.”

Yevette turned toward me but I was still watching the girl. The wind blew at her yellow sari and I saw there was a scar across her throat, right across it, thick like your little finger. It was white as a bone against her dark skin. It was knotted and curled around her windpipe, like it did not want to let go. Like it thought it still had a chance of finishing her off. She saw me looking and she hid the scar with her hand, so I looked at her hand. There were scars on that too. We have our agreement about scars, I know, but this time I looked away because sometimes you can see too much beauty.

We walked through the gates and down the tarmac road to the bottom of the hill. Yevette went first and I was second and the other two went behind me. I looked down at Yevette’s heels all the way. I did not look left or right. My heart was pounding when we reached the bottom of the hill. The rumbling noise of the tractor grew louder until it drowned out the sound of Yevette’s flip-flops. When the tractor noise grew quieter behind us I breathed more easily again. It is okay, I thought. We have passed them, and of course there wasn’t any trouble. How foolish I was to be scared. Then the tractor noise stopped. Somewhere nearby a bird sang, in the sudden silence.

“Wait,” said a man’s voice.

I whispered to Yevette, Keep walking.

“WAIT!”

Yevette stopped. I tried to go past her but she held on to my arm.

“Be sirrius, darlin. Where yu gonna run to?”

I stopped. I was so scared, I was struggling to breathe. The other girls looked the same. The girl with no name, she whispered in my ear again.

“Please. Let us turn around and go back up the hill. These people do not like us, can’t you see?”

The tractor man got down from his cab. The other man, the one who was tying up the gates, he came and joined the first man. They stood in the road, between us and the detention center. The tractor driver was wearing a green jacket and a cap. He stood with his hands in his pockets. The man who had been tying the gates—the man in the blue overalls—he was very big. The tractor driver only came up to his chest. He was so tall that the trousers of his overalls ended higher than his socks, and he was very fat too. There was a wide pink roll of fat under his neck, and the fat bulged out in the gaps between the bottom of his overalls and the top of his socks. He was wearing a woolen hat pulled down tight. He took a packet of tobacco out of his pocket, and he made a cigarette without taking his eyes off us girls. He had not shaved, and his nose was swollen and red. His eyes were red too. He lit his cigarette, and blew out the smoke, and spat on the ground. When he spoke, his fat wobbled.

“You escaped, ave you, my children?”

The tractor driver laughed.

“Don’t mind Small Albert,” he said.

We girls looked at the ground. Me and Yevette, we were in front, and the girl with the yellow sari and the girl with no name stood behind us. The girl with no name, she whispered in my ear.

“Please. Let us turn around and go. These people will not help us, can’t you see?”

“They cannot hurt us. We are in England now. It is not like it was where we came from.”

“Please, let’s just go.”

I watched her hopping from one foot to the other foot in her Dunlop Green Flash trainers. I did not know whether to run or to stay.

“But ave you?” said the tall fat man. “Escaped?”

I shook my head.

“No mister. We have been released. We are official refugees.”

“You got proof of that, I suppose?”

“Our papers are held by our caseworkers,” said the girl with no name.

The tall fat man looked all around us. He looked up and down the road. He stretched up to look over the hedge into the next field.

“I don’t see no caseworkers,” he said.

“Call them if you do not believe us,” said the girl with no name. “Call the Border and Immigration Agency. Tell them to check their files. They will tell you we are legal.”

She looked in her plastic bag full of documents until she found the paper she wanted.

“Here,” she said. “The number is here. Call it, and you will see.”

“No. Please. Don’t do dat,” said Yevette.

The girl with no name stared at her.

“What is the problem?” she said. “They released us, didn’t they?”

Yevette gripped her hands together.

“It ain’t dat simple,” she whispered.

The girl with no name stared at Yevette. There was fury in her eyes.

“What have you done?” she said.

“What me had to do,” said Yevette.

At first the girl with no name looked angry and then she was confused and then, slowly, I could see the terror come into her eyes. Yevette reached out her hands to her.

“Sorry, darlin. I wish it weren’t dis way.”

The girl pushed Yevette’s hands away.

The tractor driver took a step forward, and looked at us, and sighed.

“I reckon it’s bloody typical, Small Albert, I really do.”

He looked at me with sadness and I felt my stomach twisting.

“You ladies are in a very vulnerable situation without papers, aren’t you? Certain people might take advantage of that.”

The wind blew through the fields. My throat was closed so tight I could not speak. The tractor driver coughed.

“It’s bloody typical of this government,” he said. “I don’t give a damn if you’re legal or illegal. But how can they release you without papers? Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is up to. Is that everything you’ve got?”

I held up my see-through plastic bag, and when the other girls saw me they held up theirs too. The tractor driver shook his head.

“Bloody typical, isn’t it Albert?”

“Wouldn’t know, Mr. Ayres.”

“This government doesn’t care about anyone. You’re not the first people we’ve seen, wandering through these fields like Martians. You don’t even know what planet you’re on, do you? Bloody government. Doesn’t care about you refugees, doesn’t care about the countryside, doesn’t care about farmers. All this bloody government cares about is foxes and townspeople.”

He looked up at the razor wire of the detention center behind us, then he looked at each of us girls in turn.

“You shouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is, keeping girls like you locked up in a place like that. Isn’t that right Albert?”

Small Albert took off his woolen hat and scratched his head, and looked up at the detention center. He blew cigarette smoke out of his nose. He did not say anything.

Mr. Ayres looked at the four of us girls.

“So. What are we going to do with you? You want me to go back up there with you and tell them they’ve got to hold on to you till your caseworkers can be contacted?”

Yevette’s eyes went very wide when Mr. Ayres said this.

“No way mister. Me ain’t nivver goin back in that hell place no more. Not fo one minnit, kill me dead. Uh-uh.”

Mr. Ayres looked at me then.

“I’m thinking they might have let you out by mistake,” he said. “Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. Am I right?”

I shrugged. The sari girl and the girl with no name, they just looked at the rest of us to see what was going to happen.

“Have you girls got anywhere to go? Any relatives? People expecting you somewhere?”

I looked at the other girls, and then I looked back at him and shook my head no.

“Is there any way you can prove that you’re legal? I could be in trouble if I let you onto my land and then it turns out I’m harboring illegal immigrants. I have a wife and three children. This is a serious question I’m asking you.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Ayres. We will not go on your land. We will just go.”

Mr. Ayres nodded, and took off his flat cap, and looked at the inside of it, and turned it around and around in his hands. I watched his fingers twisting in the green cloth. His nails were thick and yellow. His fingers were dirty with earth.

A large black bird flapped over our heads and flew away in the direction where our taxi had disappeared. Mr. Ayres, he took a deep breath and he held up the inside of his cap for me to see. There was a name sewn in the lining of the hat. The name was written in handwriting on a white cloth label. The label was yellow from sweat.

“You read English? You see what that name label says?”

“It says AYRES, mister.”

“That’s right. Yes, that’s it. I am Ayres, and this is my hat, and this land you girls are standing on is Ayres Farm. I work this land but I don’t make the law for it, I just plow it spring and autumn and parallel with the contours. Do you suppose that gives me the right to say if these women can stay on it, Small Albert?”

The wind was the only sound for a while. Small Albert spat on the ground.

“Well Mr. Ayres, I ain’t a lawyer. I’m a cow-and-pig man at the end of the day, ain’t I?”

Mr. Ayres laughed.

“You ladies can stay,” he said.

Then there was sobbing from behind me. It was the girl with no name. She held on to her bag of documents and she cried, and the girl with the yellow sari put her arms around her. She sang to her in a quiet voice, the way we would sing to a baby who was woken in the night by the sound of distant guns and who must be soothed without being further excited. I do not know if you have a word for this kind of singing.

Albert took the cigarette from his mouth. He pinched it out between his thumb and forefinger. He rolled it into a little ball and dropped it into the pocket of his overalls. He spat on the ground again, and he put his woolen hat back on.

“What’s she blubbin for?”

Yevette shrugged.

“Mebbe de girl jus ain’t used to kindness.”

Albert thought about this. Then he nodded, slowly.

“I could put em in the pickers’ barn, Mr. Ayres?”

“Thanks Albert. Yes, take them there and get them settled in. I’ll get my wife to dig out what they need.”

He turned to us girls.

“We have a dormitory where our seasonal laborers sleep. It’s empty at the moment. It’s only needed around harvest and lambing. You can stay there a week, no longer. After that, you’re not my problem.”

I smiled at Mr. Ayres, but Mr. Ayres waved away my smile with his hand. Maybe this is the way you would wave away a bee before it came too close. The four of us girls, we followed Albert across the fields. We walked in a single line. Albert walked in front in his wool hat and blue overalls. He was carrying a large ball of bright orange plastic rope. Then it was Yevette in her purple A-line dress and flip-flops, then me, and I was wearing the blue jeans and the Hawaiian shirt. Behind me there was the girl with no name, and she was still weeping, and then there was the girl in the yellow sari, who was still singing to her. The cows and the sheep moved aside to watch us as we walked across their fields. You could see them thinking, Here are some strange new creatures that Small Albert is leading.

He took us to a long building beside a stream. The building had low brick walls, as high as my shoulder, but it had a high metal roof that rose in an arch from the walls, so that the building was like a tunnel. The metal roof was not painted. There were no windows in the walls but there were plastic skylights in the roof. The building stood in a dirt field where pigs and hens were scratching at the ground. When we appeared, the pigs stayed where they were and stared at us. The hens moved away with a nervous walk, looking behind them to make sure we were not following.

The hens were ready to run if they needed to. They picked up each foot with a jerky movement and when they put the foot back down you could see the claws trembling. They moved closer to one another and made a muttering sound. The pitch of the noise rose each time one of us girls took a step closer, and it fell each time the hens put the distance back between them and us. It made me very unhappy to watch those hens. The way they moved and the noise they made, this is exactly how it was when Nkiruka and me finally left our village back home.

We joined a group of women and girls and we ran off into the jungle one morning and we walked until it was dark and then we lay down to sleep beside the path. We did not dare to make a fire. In the night we heard gunshots. We heard men screaming like pigs when they are waiting in the cage to have their throats cut. There was a full moon that night and if the moon had opened its mouth and started screaming I would not have been more terrified. Nkiruka held me tight. There were babies in our group and some of them woke up and had to have songs sung to them before they would settle. In the morning there was a tall, evil line of smoke rising over the fields where our village was. It was black smoke and it curled and boiled as it rose up into the blue sky. Some of the very young children in our group asked what the smoke was from, and the women smiled and told them, It is just the smoke from a volcano, little ones. It is nothing to worry about. And I watched the way the smiles left their faces when they turned away from their children’s eyes and stared back into the blue sky filling with black.

“You all right?”

Albert was staring at me. I blinked.

“Yes. Thank you mister.”

“Daydreaming, were you?”

“Yes sir.”

Albert shook his head and laughed.

“Honestly, you young people. Heads in the clouds.”

He unlocked the long building and let us in. Inside there were two rows of beds, one row on each long wall. The beds were made of metal and they were painted dark green. There were clean white mattresses on the beds, and pillows without pillowcases. The floor was concrete painted gray, and it was shining and swept. The sunlight came down in thick stripes from the skylights. There were long loops of chain hanging down. They stretched right up into the roof, which was the height of five men at the center of the building. Albert showed us how to pull on one side of each chain loop to open the skylight, and on the other side of the chain to close it. He showed us the cubicles at the end of the building where we could take a shower or use the toilet. Then he winked at us.

“There you go, ladies. The accommodation ain’t up to ’otel standard, I’ll grant you, but then show me the ’otel where you can get twenty Polish girls sharing your room and the management don’t even bat an eyelid. You should see some of the things our harvesters get up to after lights-out. I’m telling you, I should chuck in the livestock work and make a film.”

Albert was laughing but the four of us girls, we stood there just looking back at him. I did not understand why he was talking about films. In my village, each year when the rains stopped, the men went to the town and they brought back a projector and a diesel generator, and they tied a rope between two trees, and we watched a film on a white sheet that they hung from the rope. There was no sound with the film, only the rumble of the generator and the shrieking of the creatures in the jungle. This is how we learned about your world. The only film we had was called Top Gun and we watched it five times. I remember the first time we saw it, the boys in my village were excited because they thought it was going to be a film about a gun, but it was not a film about a gun. It was a film about a man who had to travel everywhere very fast, sometimes on a motorbike and sometimes in an aeroplane that he flew himself, and sometimes upside down. We discussed this, the children in my village, and we decided two things: one, that the film should really be called The Man Who Was in a Great Hurry and two, that the moral of the film was that he should get up earlier so that he would not have to rush to fit everything into his day, instead of lying in bed with the woman with blond hair that we called The Stay-in-Bed Woman. That was the only film I had ever seen, so I did not understand when Albert said he should make a film. He did not look like he could fly an aeroplane upside down. In fact I had noticed how Mr. Ayres did not even let him drive his blue tractor. Albert saw us girls staring back at him, and he shook his head.

“Oh, never mind,” he said. “Look, there’s blankets and towels and what ’ave you in them cupboards over there. I daresay Mrs. Ayres will be down later with some food for you. I’ll see you ladies around the farm, I shouldn’t wonder.”

The four of us girls, we stood in the center of the building and we watched Albert as he walked out between the two lines of beds. He was still laughing to himself when he walked out into the daylight. Yevette looked at the rest of us and she tapped her finger on the side of her head.

“Nivver mind im. De white mens is all crazy.”

She sat down on the edge of the nearest bed and she took a dried pineapple slice out of her see-through plastic bag and she started to chew on it. I sat down next to her, while the sari girl took the girl with no name down the room a little way to lie down because she was still crying.

Albert had left the door open, and a few hens came in and began to look for food under the beds. The girl with no name screamed when she saw the hens coming into the building, and she pulled her knees close to her chest and held a pillow in front of her. She sat there with her wide eyes poking out over the top of the pillow, and her Dunlop Green Flash trainers sticking out underneath it.

“Re-LAX, darlin. Dey int gonna hurt yu, dey is only chickens, yu nah see it?”

Yevette sighed.

“Here we go again, huh Lil Bug?”

“Yes. Here we go again.”

“Dat girl in a bad way, huh?”

I looked over at the girl with no name. She was staring at Yevette and making the sign of the cross.

“Yes,” I said.

“Mebbe dis is de hardest part, now dey is lettin us out. In dat detention center dey was always tellin yu, do dis, do dat. No time to tink. But now dey all ovva sudden gone quiet, no? Dat dangerous, me tellin yu. Let all de bad memory come back.”

“You think that is why she is crying?”

“Me know it, darlin. We all gotta mind our heads now, truth.”

I shrugged and pulled my knees up to my chin.

“What do we do now, Yevette?”

“No idea, darlin. Yu ask me, dis gonna be our nummer one problem in dis country. Where me come from, we ain’t got no peace but we got a thousand rumors. Yu always got a whisper where yu can go for dis or dat. But here we got de opposite problem, Bug. We got peace but we ain’t got no in-fo-MAY-shun, you know what I’m sayin?”

I looked Yevette in the eyes.

“What is going on, Yevette? What is this trick you have done? How come they let us out of that place without papers?”

Yevette sighed.

“Me did a favor for one of dem immigration men, all right? He make a few changes on de computer, jus put a tick in de right box, yu know, an—POW!—up come de names for release. Yu, me an dem two other girls. Dem detention officers don’t be askin no questions. Dey jus see de names come up on dere computer screen dis morning and—BAM!—dey take yu from your room and dey show you de door. Dey don’t care if yore caseworker be dere to pick yu up or not. Dey too busy peekin at de titty-swingers in de newspaper, truth. So here we is. Free and ee-zee.”

“Except we don’t have papers.”

“Yeah. But I ain’t afraid.”

“I am afraid.”

“Don be.”

Yevette squeezed my hand and I smiled.

“Dat’s me girl.”

I looked around the room. The sari girl and the girl with no name, they were six beds farther along. I leaned in close to Yevette and I whispered to her.

“Do you know anyone in this country?”

“Sure, darlin. Williyam Shakespeare, Lady Diana, Battle of Britten. Me know dem all. Learned de names for me Citizenship Exam. Yu can test me.”

“No. I mean, do you know where you will go if we can get out of here?”

“Sure darlin. I got pipple in London. Got de half of Jamaica livin down on Cole Harbour Lane. Probly bitchin on how much dey vexed by all de Nye-Jirrians livin nex door. How bout yu? Yu got famly dere?”

I showed her the United Kingdom Driver’s License from my see-through plastic bag. It was a small plastic card with Andrew O’Rourke’s photo on it. Yevette held it up to look at it.

“What ting is dis?”

“It is a driving license. It has the man’s address on it. I am going to visit him.”

Yevette held the photo card close and stared at it. Then she held it far from her eyes and squinted down her nose at it. Then she looked up close again. She blinked.

“Dis is a white man, Lil Bug.”

“I know that.”

“Okay, okay, jus checkin. Jus establishin whether yu blind or stupid.”

I smiled but Yevette did not.

“We should stick together, darlin. Why yu no come to London wid me? For sure we gonna find some of your pipple down dere.”

“But I will not know them, Yevette. I will not know I can trust them.”

“What, and yu trust dis man?”

“I met him once.”

“Scuse me, Bug, but dis man don’t look like yo type.”

“I met him in my country.”

“What de hell was dis man’s business in Nye-Jirrya?”

“I met him on a beach.”

Yevette threw her head back and slapped her thighs.

“WU-ha-ha-ha-ha! Now me see. An dey tole me yu was a virgin!”

I shook my head.

“It was not like that.”

“Don tell me it wasn’t like dat, Lil Miss Sexy-Bug. Yu mus of done someting to de man, make him want to give yu dis vall-able dockerment.”

“His wife was there too, Yevette. She is a beautiful lady. She is called Sarah.”

“So why he give yu his driver license? His wife be so beautiful, he be tinking, Damn, me won’t be needin dis again, me lady so pretty I ain’t nivver gonna drive nowhere no more, me jus gonna sit home an stare at de wife?”

I looked away.

“What, den? Yu stole dis dockerment?”

“No.”

“What, den? What happen?”

“I cannot talk about it. It happened in another lifetime.”

“Mebbe yu bin spending too much time learnin yore fancy English, Lil Bug, cos dat is crazy talk. Yu only be livin one life, darlin. Don’t matter yu don’t uh-preshie-ate part of it, cos it don’t stop bein part of yu.”

I shrugged and I lay back on the bed and I watched the nearest chain dangling from the roof. Every link was joined to the one before and the one after. It was too strong for a girl like me to break. The whole chain swayed back and fro and it shone in the sun from the skylights. Like you could pull on the grown-up end and sooner or later you would get to the child, just like pulling a bucket out of a well. Like you would never be left holding a broken end, with nothing attached to it at all.

“It is hard for me to think about the day I met Andrew and Sarah, Yevette. Now I cannot decide if I should go to visit them or not.”

“So tell me all bout it, Bug. Me tell yu if dey sound good fo yu.”

“I do not want to talk about it with you, Yevette.”

Yevette put her fists on her hips and made her big eyes at me.

“Well get yu, lil miss Africa!”

I smiled.

“I am sure there are parts of your life you do not like to talk about, Yevette.”

“Only so yu no get jealous, Bug. Me tell yu some of de tings me done in me life of ease an luxury, yu be gettin yu self so jealous you gonna explode, and den Sari Girl over dere gonna have to mop up de mess, an she looks tired enough, yu ask me.”

“No, I am serious, Yevette. Do you talk about what happened to you, to make you come to the United Kingdom?”

Yevette stopped smiling.

“Nah. Me tell pipple what happen to me, dey ain’t nivver gonna believe it. Pipple tink Jamaica be all sunshine an ganja an Jah Rastafari. But it ain’t. Yu get on de wrong side of de politics, Bug, dey gonna make yu suffah. An dey gonna make yore famly suffah. An me don’t mean suffah, like no ice cream fo a week. Me mean suffah, like you wake up in you chillen’s blood, an suddenly yo house is very very quiet, fo ivver an ivver, amen.”

Yevette sat completely still and she looked down at her flip-flops. I put my hand on her hand. Above our heads the chains swung to and fro, and then Yevette sighed.

“But pipple nivver believe dat about me country.”

“So what did you tell the man from the Home Office?”

“For me asylum interview? You wanna know what I tole him?”

“Yes.”

Yevette shrugged.

“I tole him if he arrange to get me release from dat place, he can do what he want wid me.”

“I don’t understand.”

Yevette rolled her eyes.

“Well thank de lord de Home Office man was a lil bit smarter dan yu, Bug. Yu nivver notice dey interview rooms didn’t have no windows? Me swear to yu, dat man’s ooman mus of kept her legs cross for de las ten year, de way he took me up on me offer. An it wasn’t jus on de one day, mind. It took de man four interviews fore he was certain me papers was in order, yu know what I’m sayin?”

I stroked her hand.

“Oh Yevette.”

“It was nuthin, Bug. Compare to what dey do to me, if I be sent back to Jamaica? Nuthin.”

Yevette smiled at me. The tears flowed from the corners of her eyes and around the curve of her cheek. I started to wipe her tears away and then I started crying as well, so Yevette had to wipe my tears too. It was funny, because we could not stop crying. Yevette started laughing, and then I was laughing too, and the more we laughed the more we could not stop crying, until we made so much noise that the sari girl hissed at us to shush so we would not disturb the woman with no name, who was making crazy talk to herself in some language.

“Oh, look at de state of us, Bug. What we gonna do wid ourselves?”

“I do not know. You really think you were released because of what you did with the Home Office man?”

“Me know it, Bug. De man even tole me de date.”

“But he didn’t give you your papers?”

“Uh-uh. No papers. Him say dere a limit to his powah, yu see what I’m sayin? He be tickin one little box on de computer to tell dem officers to let us free, him can jus say, Me hand slipped. But approvin de asylum application? Dat’s a diffren story.”

“So you’re illegal now?”

Yevette nodded.

“Yu an me both, Bug. Yu an me an dem other two also. All four of us gettin let out cos of what I done fo de Home Office man.”

“Why all four of us, Yevette?”

“Him say it look suspicious on im, if it just be me gettin let go.”

“How did he choose the rest of us?”

Yevette shrugged.

“Close is eyes and stick a pin in de list, I dunno.”

I shook my head and looked down.

“What?” said Yevette. “Yu no like it, Bug? Yu girls should uhpreshie-ate what I done fo yu.”

“But we can’t do anything without papers, Yevette. Don’t you see? If we had stayed, if we had gone through the proper procedure, maybe they would have released us with papers.”

“Uh-uh, Bug, uh-uh. It don’t work like dat. Not for pipple from Jamaica, an not for pipple from Nye-Jirrya neither. Get dis into yore head, darlin: dere is only one place where de proper procedure ends, an dat is de-por-tay-SHUN.”

She tapped the syllables out on my forehead with the palm of her hand, and then she smiled at me.

“If dey deport us, we gonna be killed when we get back home. Right? Dis way at leas we got a chance, darlin, yu better believe it.”

“But we can’t work if we are illegal, Yevette. We can’t earn money. We can’t live.”

Yevette shrugged.

“Yu can’t live if yu dead, neither. Yu probly too smart to get dat.”

I sighed and I shook my head. Yevette grinned.

“Dat’s what I like to see,” she said. “A young ting like yu being rill-istic. Now, lissen. Yu tink dese English people yu know could help us?”

I looked down at the driver’s license.

“I do not know.”

“But yu don’t know no one else, huh?”

“No.”

“An what we gonna do when we get dere, if I come wid yu?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we could find work, somewhere where they do not ask us for papers.”

“Easy fo yu. Yu smart, yu talk nice. Plenty work fo a girl like yu.”

“You talk nice too, Yevette.”

“Me talk like a ooman who swallowed a ooman who talk nice. Me dumb, yu nuh see it?”

“You are not dumb, Yevette. All of us who have got this far, all of us who have survived—how can we be dumb? Dumb could not come this far, I am telling you.”

Yevette leaned in toward me and whispered.

“Are you sirius? Yu no see de way Sari Girl start gigglin at dat taxi back dere?”

“Okay. Maybe Sari Girl is not very clever. But she is prettier than all of us.”

Yevette made her eyes big and snatched her see-though bag closer to her body.

“Dat hurts, Bug. How dare yu say she de prettiest? Me was gonna share me pineapple slice wid yu, but now yu on ya own, darlin.”

I giggled, and Yevette smiled and rubbed the top of my head.

Then we turned around very fast because there was a scream from the girl with no name. She was standing on her bed and she held her bag of documents against her chest with both hands, and she started to scream again.

“Make them stop coming! They will kill us all, you girls do not understand!”

Yevette stood up and walked over to her. She looked up at the girl with no name. The hens pecked and clucked around Yevette’s flip-flops.

“Lissen darlin. Dese ain’t mens commin to kill yu, I tole yu before. Dese is chickens. Dey is more scared of us dan we is of dem. Look yu!”

Yevette put her head down and ran into a group of hens. There was a great explosion of flapping wings and flying feathers, and the hens were jumping up onto the mattresses, and the girl with no name was screaming and screaming and kicking at the hens with her Dunlop Green Flash trainers. Suddenly she stopped screaming and pointed. I could not see where she was pointing because there were hen feathers everywhere, falling down in the bright beams of sunshine from the skylights. Her pointing finger was trembling and she was whispering, Look! Look! My child!

All of us girls were looking, but when the feathers finished falling there was nothing there. The girl with no name, she was just smiling at a bright beam of sunlight on the clean gray-painted floor. There were tears falling from her eyes. My child, she said, and she held her arms outstretched toward the beam of light. I watched her fingers trembling.

I looked at Yevette and the sari girl. The sari girl looked down at the floor. Yevette shrugged at me. I looked back at the girl with no name and I spoke to her.

“What is your child’s name?”

The girl with no name smiled. Her face shone.

“This is Aabirah. She is my youngest. Isn’t she beautiful?”

I looked at the place she was looking.

“Yes. She is lovely.”

I looked at Yevette and made my eyes wide at her.

“Isn’t she lovely, Yevette?”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure. She a rill heartbrekka. What yu say yu callin her?”

“Aabirah.”

“Dat’s nice. Lissen, Aa-BI-rah, why don’t yu come wid me, an help me chase de fowls outta dis barn?”

And so Yevette and the sari girl and the youngest daughter of the girl with no name, they started chasing the hens out of the building. Me, I sat and held the hand of the girl with no name. I said, Your daughter is very helpful. Look how she chases those hens. The girl with no name, she was smiling. I was smiling too. I think it was nice for both of us that she had her daughter back.

If I was telling this story to the girls from back home, then one of the new words I would have to explain to them is efficiency. We refugees are very efficient. We do not have the things we need—our children, for example—and so we are clever at making things stretch a little further. Just see what that girl with no name could make out of one little patch of sunlight. Or look how the sari girl could fit the entire color of yellow into one empty see-through plastic bag.

I lay back on the bed and looked up at the chains. I was thinking, That sunshine, that color yellow, maybe I will not see very much of these now. Maybe the new color of my life was gray. Two years in the gray detention center, and now I was an illegal immigrant. That means, you are free until they catch you. That means, you live in a gray area. I thought about how I was going to live. I thought about the years, living as quiet as could be. Hiding my colors and living in the twilight and the shadows. I sighed, and I tried to breathe deeply. I wanted to cry when I looked up at those chains and thought about the color gray.

I was thinking, if the head of the United Nations telephoned one morning and said, Greetings, Little Bee, to you falls the great honor of designing a national flag for all the world’s refugees, then the flag I would make would be gray. You would not need any particular fabric to make it. I would say that the flag could be any shape and it could be made with anything you had. A worn-out old brassiere, for example, that has been washed so many times it has become gray. You could fly it on the end of a broom handle, if you did not have a flagpole. Although if you did have a spare flagpole, for example in that line of tall white flagpoles outside the United Nations building in New York City, then I think that old gray brassiere would make a fine spectacle, flying in the long colorful line of flags. I would fly it between the Stars and Stripes and the big red Chinese flag. That would be a good trick. Thinking about this, I made myself laugh.

“What de hell you laughin at, Bug?”

“I was thinking about the color gray.”

Yevette frowned.

“Don’t yu go crazy too please, Bug,” she said.

I lay back on the bed and I looked up to the ceiling, but all that was there were those long chains dangling down. I thought, I could hang myself by the neck from those, no problem.

In the afternoon the farmer’s wife came. She brought food. There was bread and cheese in a basket, and a sharp knife to cut the bread with. I thought, I can cut open my veins with that knife, if the men come. The farmer’s wife was a kind woman. I asked her why was she doing this good thing for us. She said it was because we were all human beings. I said, Excuse me miss but I do not think Yevette is a human being. I think she is another species with a louder mouth. Yevette and the farmer’s wife started laughing then, and we talked for a little while about where we had all come from and where we were going to. She told me the direction to go to Kingston-upon-Thames, but she also told me that I shouldn’t. You don’t want to go to the suburbs, dear, she said. Neither fish nor flesh, the suburbs. Unnatural places, full of unnatural people. I laughed. I told her, Maybe I will fit right in.

The farmer’s wife was surprised when we asked for five plates instead of four, but she brought them anyway. We divided the food into five portions, and we gave the biggest helping to the daughter of the woman with no name, because she was still growing.

That night I dreamed about my village before the men came. There was a swing that the boys had made. It was the old tire of a car, and the boys had tied ropes around it and suspended it from the high branch of a tree. This was a big old limba tree and it grew a little way apart from our homes, near to the schoolhouse. Even before I was big enough to go on the swing, my mother would sit me down in the dark red dust by the trunk of the limba so I could watch the big children swinging. I loved to listen to them laughing and singing. Two, three, four children at once, all ways up, with legs and arms and heads all tangled up and dragging in the red scrape of dust at the lowest point of the swing. Aie! Ouch! Get off me in the name of god! Do not push! There was always a lot of chatter and joking around the swing, and up above my head in the branches of the limba tree there were grumpy hornbills that shouted back at us. Nkiruka would get down from the swing sometimes and pick me up in her arms and give me little pieces of soft uncooked dough to squeeze between my chubby fingers.

Everything was happiness and singing when I was a little girl. There was plenty of time for it. We did not have hurry. We did not have electricity or fresh water or sadness either, because none of these had been connected to our village yet. I sat in between the roots of my limba tree and I laughed while I watched Nkiruka swinging back and fro, back and fro. The tether of the swing was very long, so it took a long time for her to travel from one end of its swing to the other. It never looked like it was in a rush, that swing. I used to watch it all day long and I never realized I was watching a pendulum counting down the last seasons of peace in my village.

In my dream I watched that tire swinging back and fro, back and fro, in that village we did not yet know was built on an oil field and would soon be fought over by men in a crazy hurry to drill down into the oil. This is the trouble with all happiness—all of it is built on top of something that men want.

I dreamed of watching Nkiruka swinging back and fro, back and fro, and when I woke up there were tears in my eyes and in the light of the moon I was watching something else swinging back and fro, back and fro. I could not tell what it was. I wiped the tears from my eyes and I opened them fully, and then I saw what it was that was swinging through the air at the end of my bed.

It was a single Dunlop Green Flash trainer. The other one had fallen off the foot of the woman with no name. She had hanged herself from one of the long chains that reached up to the roof. Her body was naked apart from that one shoe. She was very thin. Her ribs and her hipbones were sharp. Her eyes bulged open and pointed up into thin blue light. They glittered. The chain had crushed her neck as thin as her ankle. I watched the Dunlop Green Flash trainer and the bare dark brown foot with its gray sole, swinging back and fro past the end of my bed. The Green Flash trainer glowed in the moonlight, like a slow and shining silver fish, and the bare foot chased it like a shark. They swum circles around one another. The chain squeaked quietly.

I went and touched the bare leg of the girl with no name. It was cold. I looked over at Yevette and the sari girl. They were sleeping. Yevette was muttering in her sleep. I started to walk over to Yevette’s bed to wake her, but my foot slipped on something wet. I knelt down and touched it. It was urine. It was as cold as the painted concrete floor. A puddle of it had collected underneath the girl with no name. I looked up and I saw a single drop of urine hang from the big toe of her bare foot, then sparkle as it fell to the floor. I stood up quickly. I felt so depressed about the urine. I did not want to wake up the other girls because then they would see it too, and then we would all be seeing it, and then none of us could deny it. I do not know why the small puddle of urine made me start to cry. I do not know why the mind chooses these small things to break itself on.

I went over to the bed that the girl with no name had been sleeping on, and I picked up her T-shirt. I was going to go back and use the T-shirt to wipe up the urine, but then I saw the see-through plastic bag of documents on the end of the bed. I opened it and I started to read the story of the girl with no name.

The men came and they… That was how all of our stories started. I was still crying, and it was difficult to read in the dim light from the moon. I put the girl’s documents back down on the bed and I closed the bag carefully. I held it tightly in my hands. I was thinking, I could take this girl’s story for my own. I could take these documents and I could take this story with its official red stamp at the end of it that tells everyone it is TRUE. Maybe I can win my asylum case with these papers. I thought about it for one minute, but while I held the girl’s story in my hands the squeaking of her chain seemed to get louder, and I had to drop her story back down on the bed because I knew how it ended. A story is a powerful thing in my country, and God help the girl who takes one that is not her own. So I left it on the girl’s bed, every word of it, including the paper clips and all the photographs of the scar tissue and the names of the missing daughters, and all of the red ink that said this was CONFIRMED.

Me, I put one small kiss on the cheek of Yevette, who was still sleeping, and I walked off quietly across the fields.

Leaving Yevette, that was the hardest thing I had to do since I left my village. But if you are a refugee, when death comes you do not stay for one minute in the place it has visited. Many things arrive after death—sadness, questions, and policemen—and none of these can be answered when your papers are not in order.

Truly, there is no flag for us floating people. We are millions, but we are not a nation. We cannot stay together. Maybe we get together in ones and twos, for a day or a month or even a year, but then the wind changes and carries the hope away. Death came and I left in fear. Now all I have is my shame and the memory of bright colors and the echo of Yevette’s laugh. Sometimes I feel as lonely as the Queen of England.

It was not difficult to know which way to go. London lit up the sky. The clouds glowed orange, as if the city that awaited me was burning. I walked uphill, through fields with some kind of grain and into a high wood of some kind of trees, and when I looked back down toward the farm for the last time, I saw a floodlight come on outside the barn they put us in. I think it was an automatic light, and standing in the middle of the beam there was the single bright lemon-yellow dot of the sari girl. It was too far away to see her face, but I imagined her blinking in surprise when the light came on. Like an actress who has walked onto the stage by mistake. Like a girl who does not have a speaking part, who is thinking, Why have they turned this great light upon me now?

I was very scared but I did not feel alone. All through that night it seemed to me as if my big sister Nkiruka walked beside me. I could almost see her face, glowing in the pale orange light. We walked all night, across fields and through woods. We steered around the lights of villages. Whenever we saw a farmhouse we went around that too. Once, the farm dogs heard us and barked, but there was no trouble. We kept on walking. My legs were tired. Two years I had been in that detention center, going nowhere, and I was weak. But although my ankles hurt and the backs of my legs ached, it felt very good to be moving, and to be free, and to feel the night air on my face and the grass on my legs, wet from the dew. I know my sister was happy too. She was whistling under her breath. Once when we stopped to rest, she dug her toes into the earth at the edge of a field and smiled. When I saw her smile, I felt strong enough to carry on.

The orange glow of the night faded, and I started to see the fields and the hedges around us. Everything was gray at first, but then the colors began to come into the land—blue and green, but very soft, as if the colors did not have any happiness in them. Then the sun rose, and the whole world turned to gold. The gold was all around me and I was walking through clouds of it. The sun was blazing on the white mist that hung over the fields, and the mist swirled around my legs. I looked over at my sister, but she had disappeared with the night. I smiled though, because I realized that she had left me with her strength. I looked around me at the beautiful sunrise and I was thinking, Yes, yes, everything will be beautiful like this now. I will never be afraid again. I will never spend another day trapped in the color gray.

There was a low roaring, rumbling sound ahead of me. The noise rose and fell in the mist. It is a waterfall, I thought. I must be careful not to fall into the river in this mist.

I walked on, more carefully now, and the noise got louder. Now it did not sound like a river anymore. There were individual sounds in the middle of the roaring. Each sound got louder, rumbling and shaking and then fading away. There was a dirty, sharp smell in the air. Now I could hear the sound of cars and trucks. I went closer. I came to the top of a green grass slope and there it was in front of me. The road was incredible. On my side of it there were three lines of traffic going from right to left. Then there was a low metal barrier, and another three lines of traffic going from left to right. The cars and the trucks were moving very fast. I walked down to the edge of the road and put out my hand to stop the traffic, so I could cross, but the traffic did not stop. A truck blew its horn at me, and I had to step back.

I waited for a gap in the traffic and then I ran across to the center of the road. I climbed over the metal barrier. This time a great many car horns were blown at me. I ran across, and up the green grass bank at the other side of the road. I sat down. I was out of breath. I watched the traffic racing past below me, three lines in one direction and three lines in the other. If I was telling this story to the girls from back home they would be saying, Okay, it was the morning, so the people were traveling to work in the fields. But why do the people who are driving from right to left not exchange their fields with the people who are driving from left to right? That way everyone could work in the fields near to their homes. And then I would just shrug because there are no answers that would not lead to more foolish questions, like What is an office and what crops can you grow in it?

I just fixed the motorway in my mind as a place I could run back to and kill myself very easily if the men suddenly came, and then I stood up and carried on going. I walked for another hour across fields. Then I came to some small roads, and these roads had houses on them. I was amazed when I saw them. They were two stories high and made out of strong red bricks. They had sloping roofs with neat rows of tiles on them. They had white windows, and there was glass in all of them. Nothing was broken. All the houses were very smart, and each one looked like the next. In front of nearly every house there was a car. I walked along the street and I stared at the shining rows of them. These were beautiful cars, sleek and shining, not the kind of vehicles we saw where I came from. In my village there were two cars, one Peugeot and one Mercedes. The Peugeot came before I was born. I know this because the driver was my father, and my village was the place where his Peugeot coughed twice and died in the red dust. He went into the first house in the village to ask if they had a mechanic. They did not have a mechanic but what they did have was my mother, and my father realized he needed her more than he needed a mechanic in any case, and so he stayed. The Mercedes arrived when I was five years old. The driver was drunk, and he crashed into my father’s Peugeot, which was still standing exactly how my father had left it except that the boys had taken one of its tires away to use as the seat of the swing on the limba tree. The driver of the Mercedes got out and he walked over to the first house and met my father there and he said, Sorry. And my father smiled at him and said, We should be thanking you, sir, you have really put our village on the map, this is our very first road traffic accident. And the driver of that Mercedes, he laughed, and he stayed too, and he became great friends with my father, so much that I called him my uncle. And my father and my uncle lived very happily in that place until the afternoon when the men came and shot them.

So, it was astonishing to see all these new, beautiful shining cars parked outside these big, perfect houses. I walked through many streets like this.

I walked all morning. The buildings got bigger and heavier. The streets got wider and busier. I stared at everything, and I did not mind the hunger in my stomach or the aching in my legs because I was amazed by each new wonder. Each time I saw something for the first time—a nearly naked girl on an advertising billboard, or a red double-decker bus, or a glittering building so tall it made you dizzy—the excitement in my stomach was so fierce it hurt. The noise was too much—the roar of the traffic and the shouting. Soon there were such crowds on the streets that it seemed I was nothing. I was pushed and bumped all over the pavements, and no one took any notice of me. I kept on walking as straight as I could, following one street and then another, and just as the buildings got so big it seemed they could not possibly stand up, and the noise got so loud it seemed as if my body would be shaken to pieces, I turned a corner and I gasped and ran across one last busy road, with car horns blasting and the drivers screaming, and I leaned over a low white stone wall and stared and stared, because there in front of me was the River Thames. Boats were pushing along through the muddy brown water, honking their horns under the bridges. All along the river to the left and the right, there were huge towers that rose high into the blue sky. Some were still being built, with huge yellow cranes moving above them. They even trained the birds of the air to help them build? Weh!

I stayed there on the bank of the river and I stared and stared at these marvels. The sun shone out of the bright blue sky. It was warm, and a soft breeze blew along the bank of the river. I whispered to my sister Nkiruka, because it seemed to me that she was there in the flowing of the river and the blowing of the breeze.

“Look at this place, sister. We are going to be all right here. There will be room for two girls like us in a country as fine as this. We are not going to suffer anymore.”

I smiled, and I walked away down the embankment of the river, in the direction of the west. I knew that if I followed along the bank, I would get to Kingston—that is why they call it Kingston-upon-Thames. I wanted to get there as quick as I could, because now the crowds in London were starting to frighten me. In my village we never saw more than fifty people in one place. If you ever saw more than that, it meant that you had died and gone to the city of the spirits. That is where the dead go, to a city, to live together in their thousands because they do not need the space to grow their fields of cassava. When you are dead you are not hungry for cassava, only for company.

A million people were all around me. Their faces hurried past. I looked and looked. I never saw the faces of my family but when you have lost everyone, you never lose the habit of looking. My sister, my mother, my father and my uncle. Every face I see, I am looking for them in it. If I did meet you then the first thing you would have noticed would have been my eyes staring at your face, as if they were trying to see someone else in you, as if they were desperate to make you into a ghost. If we did meet, I hope you did not take this personally.

I hurried along the river embankment, through the crowds, through my memories, through this city of the dead. Once, beside a tall stone needle engraved with strange symbols, my legs burned and I needed to rest, so I stood still for a moment and the dead flowed around me, like the muddy brown Thames flowing around the pillar of a bridge.

If I was telling this story to the girls from back home, I would have to explain to them how it was possible to be drowning in a river of people and also to feel so very, very alone. But truly, I do not think I would have the words.