Lesson 4 – jokes, cricket, dinner and faux pas

Tuesday.

I arrive to the park, find Mehrab and the boys. Who pops up but Jahandar, the lad I had taken to the hospital. Hey look at you, I joked as the young man who stood before me had almost completely transformed! The old Jahandar, dirty, exhausted, stinky, limping and emotionally burnt out from his days sleeping in the make-shift tents in Calais had turned into a new person in fresh clothes (from the local charitiable associations in the area) all clean and all smiles. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “my foot it’s good, it’s good. I spent the last three days with this guy (points to Mehrab) and I’m telling you, this guy is funny.” As he continues I note that this is the second person to tell me, when they arrived to the streets in Paris, pint-sized Mehrab (24yrs) took them under his wing, shared blankets and information but perhaps more importantly lifted their spirits with his chilled demeanour, quick sense of humour and ability to keep his group safe and away from the dangers that can lie on the streets.

I learn that Mehrab and the teenager from the Pakistan/Afghanistan border (Imran, 17yrs) had travelled together across Turkey and Iran. Mehrab tells me in Pashto their story of crossing mountains for days in the snow, being held up by bandits in Turkey who fired kalashnikovs over their heads and of being moved back and forth between Turkey and Iran as neither country wanted to deal with them. Most if not all of my Afghan friends have the same story to tell. “Say this line is the border yeah cos at the end of the day that’s what it looks like” says Jahandar drawing a line in the dirt with his trainer highlighting some of the comical yet scary situations people experience. “The soldiers are screaming at you with guns to cross the border so you do it but there’s nothing there! You don’t know where to go! So people just sit down on a bank ten metres away from this line looking at the soldiers.”

Why did you leave Afghanistan, I ask Jahandar. “So my step-brother is high up in the Taliban,” he begins, “if I ever needed money when I was a kid he’d give it to me. One day he comes to our house, I was maybe fourteen or less and he stays for two days bringing with him two armed guards who stand outside our house while he’s there. He’s saying to me, you should join us, you’ll get money, food, training, this is what we’re doing you should join us”. When he left I spoke with my mother and she said, Jahandar you’ve got to get out of here. Secretly we went to my uncle and he agreed, it was time for me to leave and leave fast so that was it, gone.” If you had stayed in Afghanistan I asked, what would have happened to you? Jahandar’s humour is similar to mine so a comical grimace that doesn’t signify good things is enough for me. I see.

I’m alone with young Imran for a short time and he tells me that he had argued with Mehrab a day ago. Imran says bombs had exploded in his village days before it hit the media. His family house had been hit but nobody had died. He was angry, frightened for his family and so frustrated that he had shouted at Mehrab to give him five euros so that he could go home. Mehrab had scoffed and scolded the skinny seventeen year old and said, “What can you do? You’ll be taken by you don’t know who and made to fight for you don’t know what, how will that help?” Imran shook his head as we walked. We reach our destination, he digs his hands into his jean pockets and shakes his head with a grin that says, my world is a joke. I say nothing but I know that Mehrab was protecting Imran from his own hotheadedness. And the reality is, at 17, he cannot join the Pakistan army and so would be conscripted into the Taliban, no negotiation. The subject turns to cricket. Imran is a big fan and it’s one bright light in his life. “There is no cricket in Paris, we’ve played just one time this year.” Funnily enough, I say talking about my ex-pat friends, we’ve been looking for cricket pitches in Paris too. I’ll see if I can find some pitches and get something going for the spring when we can play.

Sunday.

I have arranged to meet another Afghan who worked as a translator for the Allied forces so his English is better than most. I meet him because I know that he knows Mahreb and after four language lessons together I’m curious to know what level of schooling Mahreb may have had so that I can teach him French more effectively. Bahar lays it down in black and white. Mahreb is from a village where there’s little to no education, he’s barely literate, he doesn’t even know real Pashto. OK I say, so I need to take a language pit-stop with Mahreb and go back to really nailing the French alphabet. This guy who looks after his gang of friends is conversely the guy who needs language skills the most. Bahar tells me that it’s his dinner time and we both walk towards the metro station.

It’s 7pm and suddenly I get what Bahar means by dinner time. At the entrance of the park are five long makeshift tables on trestles full of French volunteers giving hot food and drink to the poor (when the trestles are packed away clothes are distributed) There are about 300 people in the queues, the majority clearly Afghan. I’m a little taken aback as I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life. Of course I know that these things happen across the globe but because I’ve never sought out anything like this before I’ve never seen it with my own eyes. I see my friends queueing for food. Sometimes it’s easy for me to forget that my friends are homeless because they’re so clean and upbeat but as they queued for food that facade fell away. I saw Imran. You’re not eating? I ask. “I ate already, we eat at one of the other places where food is given out.” What did you eat? “Grapes, apples, cornflakes.” Is that it, I ask, no soup? “There was soup and food but it has meat which is not Halal so we can’t eat it.”

Thursday

Mahreb and I spend two hours going over and drawing the French and Pashto alphabet under the watchful eye of Imran and Jahandar who translate and correct because Mahreb can’t speak English, I can’t yet speak Pashto and his Pashto alphabet isn’t so good either. Imran and Jahandar find the pair of us comical. Afterwards we go to eat. Jahandar is joined by two guys who say that they are on their way back to Calais. “France is a bad place,” one says, “there’s no need for me to stay in France because I can already speak English, I’m ready to work and build my life now!” This twenty-two year old guy had an incredibly frustrated and angry edge to his personality compared to my Pashto friends who are always chilled and humourous. He and his friend didn’t look Afghan but it made no difference to me so I didn’t ask. I asked him about living in La Jungle and he told me how they had made cookers from metal bins to make bread. His phone rings and he talks in Farsi as we eat. Five minutes later he apologises. “That was my family, they call to see how I am, they’re worried about me but also they don’t understand how come I haven’t made it to England yet. My father is saying, what’s the problem? Why are you in France? They don’t understand Calais, they can’t imagine what the reality is.” He asks why I left the UK. I answer, because I didn’t agree with going to war in Iraq. This guy laughs. “So let me get this straight, me and him,” he motions to himself and his friend with his fork, “we are from Iraq. So you left England cos of the war in Iraq and here I am trying to get into England cos of the war in Iraq.” He fell silent, his fork repeatedly jabbing his food with increased force, the pressure in his jaw building so much so that when I meet eyes with Jahandar and Marheb we can’t stop ourselves from laughing at him. He laughed at himself too, looking at all of us and shaking his head, “I’m telling you, it’s a total joke”.

Lesson 3: Emergency room / Les Urgences

Today’s lesson ended with a whole other adventure that I didn’t anticipate. Our park is the gathering point for all Afghans passing through or living in Paris. I met some minors who’d been given accommodation and French schooling by the state. One spoke French with real confidence and told me that he’d been learning at school for three months, I was incredibly impressed. “I live just outside Paris,” he said, “I just come by to see my friends, whoevers here.” During our lesson a really scruffy, unkempt guy came to me and said with a Pashto yet clearly London accent, “I hear you speak English and French?” He pointed at his foot. “I need to go to the hospital, will you take me and translate for me, I can’t speak French” I wasn’t sure about this guy, he had what looked like just a big blister on his foot however on closer inspection I could see that it was something more serious so I agreed but asked if he would wait until we finished our lesson in thirty minutes. He waited. I just wanted to kind of suss him out a little bit. As we continued this guy joined in, helped translate between Pashto and English as I tried to explain the difference between “Bon soir”, “bon nuit” and “bon soirée”. They got it quickly. We talked, joked and I felt more comfortable with him. When our lesson finished we walked (he limped) to the local hospital where he got seen to in under and hour (vive la France!) He had an abscess on the sole of his right foot which would only grow bigger and lead to blood poisoning if left unchecked. As we walked back and forth between the reception and waiting room a guy repeatedly tried to catch his attention saying, “Afghan? Afghan?” We walked on. Who’s that, what do you think he wants? I asked. “I dunno,” he replied, “he looks Bangladeshi, they recognise Afghan’s, they know we’re living on the street, could be anything.”

While we waited he told me his story. He was 23 and seemed weary and tired of the past eight years spent bouncing around Europe and Afghanistan. He shook his head as he looked down, “I’m lost in Europe.” He had arrived to Paris from Calais three weeks ago. As we talked I realised that his swagger and chat came from having lived in the same part of London as me where he worked as a cook. I learned that the familiar twang I’d noticed immediately in his English accent came from having spent time with a lot of Jamaicans so we reminisced about London. “When I went back to Afghanistan the first time I left it had changed completely,” he said, “it was like the whole place had been bombed, there’s nothing there.” He told me that he’d worked briefly as a translator for the US army but that it made his life very complicated with his fellow Afghans and so he quit and left. Without going into more details I knew that this young man was exactly the kind of migrant that the readers of The Daily Mail absolutely fear and abhor. I asked him to describe to me an average day in his life: kicked awake by the police at 6am, queues for food (once in the morning and once at night), appointments, the park, sleeping in packs for protection. Here’s what it was like, to live day in and day out waiting to be accepted into any country where, his words, he could rebuild his life: “time just blurs into time, it’s limbo, just waiting everyday you know?” He apologised repeatedly for being dirty and asked if I could help him stay in France. I replied that the associations that he had already made contact with (France Terre d’Asile) were better equipped than me but look, I said, you can’t speak a word of French, let me teach you while we’re waiting for you to be seen so at least you have something. I taught him phrases to appease police and a bundle of other phrases like “une bouteille d’eau”, “je comprends”, “je ne comprends pas”, “ou? Quoi? Quand? Qui?” He asked for the piece of paper with our notes, folded it and put it into his pocket.

The doctor called him into the treatment room and I translated what they were going to do. His whole exterior soon dropped once they showed him a mask for the gas he was going to have to breathe while they cut open and treated his foot: panic. The doctor was kind but firm and explained that this was a completely normal procedure, that she had treated much much worse cases and the gas was essential for the pain he was going to feel. Leaving out the ins and outs of how I realised the following, I could see that the fact that he was going to be rendered powerless in a room full of people that he didn’t know, couldn’t understand and in an environment where he knew everybody knew he was a completely illegal alien was freaking him out. The fragility of his situation hit me and I went out into the corridoor and shed a couple of tears which I’m glad I got out of the way as when the treatment began (anyone who has had anything similar will understand!) his pain was excrutiating and the gas made him disorientated. The doctor called me back into the room with a friendly smile, “he thinks we’re killing him so you better come in to calm him down.”

An expertly bandaged foot, a fat box of paracetamol, a tetanus jab and lots and lots of thank-you’s later and we were walking (he, dazed but walking much more comfortably) back to the park. When we were in sight of it he relaxed and showed huge relief. “Thank God,” he said, “When I see the park I feel secure again, I can’t explain it, it’s what I know.” I asked what time the nightly queue for food ended and he said that he’d missed it. He said that he’d also missed an appointment with an old friend who was meeting him on his day off work and might have a lead for somewhere to crash. You know he’ll be back to the park, I said trying to be positive but also knowing it to be true, he’ll come back on his next day off I’m sure. We shook hands and he hobbled off to his place. As I walked towards the metro I realised that I’d made a stupid error at the pharmacy when they gave him his medicine. The pharmacist had pulled out tablets that had to be dissolved into a cup of water three times a day instead of the prescribed gel capsules. At the time none of us thought it a big deal but now I realised that pills simply swallowed with water are more practical for a homeless person who has to actively go out and hunt a cup. Tsk. Idiot. My lesson for the day. This guy has been on the road for eight years my practical side told my more emotional side, he’ll know how to find a plastic cup.

Lesson 2: Je suis, tu est, nous sommes…

After a week with a mild flu I return to the park to see my friends. As you’ll remember they’re a small group of best friends aged between 15-24, all have fled the war in Afghanistan, their common language is Pashto and some (but not all) are surviving together on the streets of Paris. Arriving I could see that others in the park have the same mild flu that practically everyone in Paris and London is experiencing. My particular group of friends in the park haven’t caught it yet but Imran, 17, was worried that nobody could go to a hospital, a doctor or buy medicine because they don’t have the correct papers. But wait, I said and asked for him to translate his friends symptoms. It’s a mild flu, I say and you can go to any pharmacy to buy what I took, Aspégic. No need for a hospital or doctor, just look for a shop with a big green cross and this word “P.H.A.R.M.A.C.I.E” They didn’t look convinced that a pharmacy is essentially a shop where anybody can buy cold and flu treatment without being asked for papers. Maybe this has happened to them I can’t say but I offered to take one of them with me to the pharmacy to buy a box of Aspégic. Adamant that they didn’t want my money (even if it only costs five euros) they refused. If these guys catch the cold I’m sure the story will change cos I had it and it wasn’t fun! I’ll be sure to take one there with me as I buy it so that they can see for themselves and know what to do in the future. My sole goal is that these little dudes begin making sense of the city and its language for themselves and so learn how to stand on their own feet. Otherwise, what’s the point?

And so on with the lessons of the day. Je suis, tu est, il est, nous sommes, vous etes, ils sont. Repeat. We follow with ‘avoir’, ‘faire’ and some sentences that illustrate the verbs. By total accident I had picked an incredibly ironic triplet of sentences and Luckman had a great time play-acting their humour against the backdrop of their situation. “Oui c’est ca, j’ai un livre, je suis en Paris and je fait mon lit,” he continued with a smile, “in English this means yes, here I am in Paris, I’m reading my book and then I’m making my bed.” He motions to the sun and the trees under which he reads his imaginary book and pats the park bench when he says the word ‘bed’. We all laugh and I apologise, very embarrassed, I’m sorry guys, I didn’t think! They’re incredibly keen that I learn the Pashto for everything I teach them to the point of comical mishap for example when I taught them the word metro. A silent pause dispersed with exchanged looks came. And then, “actually we don’t have a metro system in Kabul so there’s no word, just train.” These guys have told me just some of their tales of bombings, capture, torture and escape. And of relatives being killed so there’s a dark joke in lots of the phrases I’m teaching them but we all get it, conversely we all get that they need to learn the basics of French grammar to survive. Twenty-four year old Mehrab wants me to go over and over the conjugations of “etre” with him until he feels more comfortable. As we wrangle over the meaning of the words ‘gentil’ and ‘tranquille’ one ventures that tranquille could be used if someone is being aggressive towards them. Definitely I say. Luckman acts out a situation, holds out his hands and says “je suis tranquille, nous sommes tranquille”. Yes, I say, you got it. We’re all tranquille on our bench with our books before later going off to make our beds, no problem.

(Ps. As I write this a huge thunder, rain and lightening storm is passing over Paris. I hope those guys are ok. I know that they sleep together, look after eachother and are pretty street smart. I have nothing to offer them except my language skills. It is what it is. Or, as little Mehrab says, opening his hands up to the purple sky with a smile, Inshallah)