Darker Shades of Light : Short Stories

Jungle

They come at night. They wait until the children are sleeping, the birds quiet.  The world feels like a blanket has finally fallen to wrap it - us - in safety. That is why my mother and father and I sleep in shifts, the baby passed between us as we move like wraiths between sleeping and waking, never quite either. They wait until the moon is a gentle sliver in the damask sky before they descend, swathing their way through our make-shift town, a brutal tsunami of uniforms.
The tents are torn down, the families exposed. Those who were unprepared, those who arrived newly and had no friends to reach out to, who spoke different dialects or languages, who were still processing and hadn't known how to reach out... They gather, exposed, shivering as their tents are stolen.

I do not know what they do with the tents after they smash them, but the smell of burning plastic lights my imagination.

Every night before bed we follow a new ritual, my mother, my father and I. At home we would laugh as we prepared food for the next day, my father washing the dishes while my mother and I folded dough.  Now, the children snuffle in their sleep as we check everything is packed, ready to move. When the police come - if they come, when they come - we will be ready. The sleeping bags the charity workers gave us are already half-tucked into the sacks that they came in, but they are bulky and hard to move in a hurry, in the chaos of batons and shouting and wailing. So they will be abandoned. 

 We have had to make many sacrifices to come to this country, what is one more?

That is what my father says, even as he fingers the waterproof, insulated material - the two bags we share among the six of us - his knuckles swollen.  He was a doctor, but here in this strange land that none of us can speak to, they assume he is nothing.

The three wooden bowls my grandfather made as part of a woodworking class, varnished and old, are packed into my rucksack. My mother keeps a torch, the children's exercise books - for we have managed to hold on to those despite the long, torturous walks - and a pen. Our only pen.
She was a poet but now they assume she is a housewife.

She was a teacher, too, but in our hurt she acts as though she cannot remember it.

The teenage boys and a few men, those who are naturally more awake at night, night owls, insomniacs; they keep watch for us. When the police come - if they come, when they come - they will start to shout. They will try to buy us time to rouse the children, grab our meager belongings, get them both out of the tent before the boots arrive.   

We offered to join them, we women, but nobody trusts this foreign land. Nobody trusts the way they look at us, the women, as though we were crafted for their pleasure.

So we stay awake in shifts, soothing the children, praying for the dawn - for they only come for the tents at night.

Note: This was written based on lived experiences in the Calais Jungle, and released in support and love for International Refugee Day (20th June).  To find out more or donate, please consider visiting Help Refugees or Amnesty International, or listening to the podcast Guilty Feminist by Deborah Frances-White.