‘Veronica Hayes’ isn’t my real name, I’m actually a middle-aged mum of Punjabi Sikh heritage. I can’t use my real name for the moment for complex reasons that I’ll write about in the future, but it seems simultaneously prudent and cowardly to use a pen name. I grew up in Hayes in West London though, and I once met a woman called Veronica who I liked. Until recently I worked full-time as a doctor and I miss it very much. I love reading, observing and concluding. Writing is a way of sharing my thoughts. These days I read in snatches through the day on the Kindle App on my phone, anything from a M.W. Craven thriller to a William Boyd or a Thomas Hardy.
“Blurring Out The North Circular”
‘Red blooms, rose sky’
Nilofar paused from writing, desperately forcing an entrance into her memories. She squeezed to remember the fragrance of the flower plains from her grandmother’s rooftop in Dahrab, but the effort only pushed the scenes out. Her eyes wandered to the spindly geraniums on the windowsill. She removed her glasses trying to focus on the petals by blurring out the North Circular beyond; but it just made the motes of dust sharper.
Her struggles to concentrate meant the sudden interruption of the WhatsApp tone made her flash with irritation. It was her mother, with her father in the background. As disgusted as they were when she left her husband, six weeks after settling in England, it was overlooked with their almost immediate requests for money. Nadia needed gallstone surgery, Bashir needed help with his studies, Noor’s Billah was getting married.
The video call meant poetry was over, so Nilofar decided to look at her work emails instead. She preferred the face-to-face stuff to Language Line from home. Although in-person interpreting meant travel costs, it did at least get her out of her room, and meant she wasn’t at the mercy of service -user feedback. She’d quickly realised how many non-verbal cues she used, not only from English officials but also from the Persian and Parsi speakers. Some of the dialects were impenetrable, Parsi from Nooristan was very different from Persian from Tehran. There were also Scottish or Indian accents from doctors and housing officers and the like. Interesting for a linguist but it meant she relied on facial expressions and body language which in turn meant more face-to-face work which resulted in her staying in the HMO in Neasden. Rumi could write poetry from a walled garden. She only had walls.
Tottenham Police Station was a beautiful red-brick building, like some of the Cambridge colleges she’d seen on a daytrip. But inside was the familiar mouldy coffee cup smell, green lino and Sellotape residue on eye level surfaces that marked institutions all over England. She waited for nearly an hour, she knew this time wouldn’t be counted. She would get the out-of-hour bonus if it went over 1900hr but it was only 11:43hr on her phone. The bonus only likely if it was a serious crime but at this time of day it would probably be young men shoplifting or urinating outside migrant hotels. The police wanted swift conclusions as much as the men did. Nilofar was the only person in the room who wanted it to last until bonus-time.
Today’s client was a man, probably mid-twenties, with stubble, torn jeans – designer-torn not employment-torn – fake trainers, and a home-knitted sweater over his shoulders. His body odour hit her as she sat down. He smelled of faeces which got worse in waves. She realised that he was bouncing his feet. When the foot emerged from the trainer, the smell intensified. She said to him in Parsi, ‘You should wash as soon as you can brother.’
‘What are you? My mother?’ he snarled. He looked her up and down, half in curiosity at her bare head, cosmetic-free face and big spectacles.
‘I’m your interpreter.’
‘Not Marik?’
She’d been told that this man had been picked up in a layby in North London. One of several men who’d cut themselves out of a lorry. Most had run off or been picked up by pre-arranged agents. She guessed this man had no contacts, perhaps hadn’t paid enough. But he knew about Marik. There were rumours about Marik. An interpreter also connected with immigration lawyers and the black economy, who was able to find cash work – for a percentage. She’d not met ‘Marik’, but had heard of him from a Pashto interpreter who spoke some Dari in another waiting room somewhere.
‘Azheri bitch’, she thought she’d heard this man mutter.
One of the police officers coughed. They asked him his details, showed him some dashcam footage and asked him if he was in danger. She could almost recite their speech. The young man sneered. She translated. He looked at her contemptuously, “I want Marik”. And then he turned to the police officers and said in English, “I seek asylum. No comment.”
So far, she’d earnt £25. She’d get £16.
She thought of Lorry-Man on her way to Ealing Hospital, a hospital she knew too well. Today the patient was an Afghan boy in a wheelchair with what looked like Down Syndrome. He gave her a high five when she introduced herself and grinned. She jerked backwards at his brown rotting teeth. ‘Don’t worry’, the father said, ‘they’re his milk teeth.’ As if they were disposable.
The father’s own teeth were bright and ruler-drawn. She assumed they were false after his own teeth were long gone. Dentistry was scarce in Taliban times, or perhaps he’d had his teeth removed under torture. But if that was the case, how had he been able to come to England with his family and afford such teeth? More likely he was the torturer.
She wondered all this as she watched the family some more. The wife pushed the bag towards her husband and looked at him from under her brow. She wears the trousers thought Nilofar, practising one of her English idioms.
“It is a lady doctor”, the man began.
“A nice lady doctor”, the woman added.
“We need her to do the housing forms,” the man said. “It is better from a specialist doctor, the GP won’t do it anyway”.
“And the Home Office forms”, the woman pressed.
Nilofar sighed. At least they presented their forms before the consultation. Often people waited until the doctor was concluding when they started with the housing or Disability Living Allowance requests. Then families would get angry at Nilofar and berate her for not telling the doctor earlier.
“Are your forms in order?”
“Order?” The man asked, slightly aggressively.
“Yes, have they all been filled in and all you need is her signature? Or are they blank? If they’re blank the doctors often will not do them because they say the form could be for anyone. But there are other doctors who want to do the comments section themselves. Do you know this doctor?”
“They’re paid by the government,” the man muttered, cursing something. A curse unfamiliar to Nilofar but recognisable as a curse nevertheless from the tone.
“Well, you ask and see”. The woman said to her sharply. “You’re paid by the government too”.
Were people rude because she didn’t ask for bribes? Marik probably asked openly, but people seemed to respect him, fear him almost.
‘Ferenghi’, she thought contemptuously. An alien word in her university days, it was old Persian for ‘foreigner’, interchangeable with vermin.
“Habib Durani” a large middle-aged white woman called from the doorway of a clinic room.
“High Five Habib” the same woman cried as they wheeled into the small consultation room. The boy was pleased to see her and made laughing noises. He dribbled as he laughed. “How is your English going?”
“Very good” the boy replied. At first Nilofar thought he was talking in Parsi but realised it was accented English strained through a speech defect. “One, two, five, six, eight, ten!”
The lady consultant laughed. “A bit more work there but well done!”
Nilofar was disappointed; she liked looking at doctors. She liked to see smart clothes and their individual styles. She’d imagine how the doctors’ wives dressed, but this lady was the surgeon and looked like she’d dressed from a charity shop. A charity shop with limited sizes Nilofar thought sniffing inwardly.
The consultant asked, “Does he have physiotherapy? Which school does he go to?” The father named the school but looked to his wife for physiotherapy information. The wife seemed to understand English and replied to her husband before Nilofar could translate, “He had physiotherapy once, the woman is off sick. She came to the hotel, gave us exercises.”
“A bit” the man replied. Nilofar translated. “It’s not good. It’s not enough.” Nilofar translated again.
The consultant asked Habib this time, “Do you do this?” Leaning back in her chair and mimicking some exercises. Habib laughed, more saliva. “Do you stand? In one of these?” She pivoted the computer screen to show photographs of frames.
The mother said, “She wanted to give us one of these, but the hotel room is too small”.
Before Nilofar could translate the father pushed the forms onto the desk. “Can you do these?” The consultant pushed her glasses down her nose. “I will fill these in, but I cannot operate without physiotherapy before, during and after the operation. There are other children with knees like Habib who walk. I think he can strengthen these muscles”. She paused for Nilofar to translate and pointed at her own ample thighs. “No matter how good the surgery – the operation – is, if these muscles are not strong it will not work.”
She turned to Habib smiling, “Like a Lamborghini without petrol. You need to be like the other Habib, the boxer, and do lots of exercise”.
Habib rocked and laughed this time, more spit springing from between brown teeth.
The parents began to argue quietly. “There’s no point asking for physiotherapy while we’re in the hotel” the father snapped.
“Tell her the physiotherapist won’t come to a hotel”. The mother insisted.
“Also, the home office form” the father continued. Nilofar translated.
The consultant turned to Nilofar this time and looked at her sternly in the eye with a look straight from the classroom, “You’re here to translate not interpret”.
Nilofar froze, suddenly back at school.
“You’re not translating the important bits”.
The consultant’s words struck with blade-like penetration. For the next twenty minutes the surgeon filled in forms and asked questions about names and dates. Nilofar translated monosyllabically.
After they were ushered out, the mother said gratefully, “Thank you for telling her to fill out the forms. A good doctor, she must be a mother too. What a country! Where mothers can be doctors”.
Nilofar realised her own timesheet was unsigned. She couldn’t leave with just the police station money so returned to the consultation room. The consultant let her in and smiled, “Of course, I’ll fill it in. You’re in so many hospital appointments, you could probably do my job!”
She had nice eyes, this consultant. Nilofar could also imagine her as a mother. Kind and strict, with well-behaved children. Maybe they would be doctors too.
The consultant signed Nilofar’s form without looking, though she’d interrogated the Durani family over their forms rigorously. This implicit trust, or her maternal aura prompted Nilofar to ask, “If you don’t mind Madam, when you said that thing about translation and interpretation – ”
“Yes, I’m sorry, I upset you, I know you do a hard job, but I could see the mother was saying things that would help me with Habib, but you only translated the father’s comments. They probably didn’t notice, but I noticed.”
“You’re a good doctor, but they are using you to get a house! They’re using their son’s disability to get a house”.
“I know that” the doctor sighed, “but remember, the patient is the boy not the parents. But the family surround the patient. If they are without stress, then he is without stress. He could stand you know, probably walk a few steps but has never been taught and helped. I think he’s only eating pureed and soft food with those teeth, that’s why he’s so small. Did you notice his clothes?”
Nilofar shrugged.
“I notice these things,” the doctor continued, “try to notice things when you’re getting fed up of people. It helps. We can’t develop compassion fatigue you and me.
“The boy had new clothes, they were clean. That can’t be easy in a hotel. The father’s clothes were old and not ironed properly. Did you see the mother’s feet?”
Nilofar didn’t answer. She’d only noticed the smell.
“She had beautifully nail-polished toenails. Really neatly cut. She’s a mother who cares about appearances. She’s a woman who’d keep a lovely house if she had one, I bet she’d have a gorgeous garden. She’d probably sweep the pavement in front of her home. Of course I don’t know that, but when I get annoyed with another form shoved in front of me, I try to imagine the family at home. Anyway, we can’t chat like this, I’ve got a waiting room of angry people waiting”.
Nilofar only woke from her daze on the bus. She saw that the consultant had added an extra hour to the form. Nilofar noticed the neat symmetrical rows of plaits of the woman in the seat in front of her. She saw the IKEA flags fluttering in the distance, like blossom where the petals do not fall. And she imagined the rose petals circling to the floor in the breeze in Dahrab.