I first got in tube to a train station, then a train to another one. There, i waited a van just for my transport. A woman and her two children joined me in. We’ve been drove to a place far from the center, near an airport, hidden behind trees. I wait in front of a door opened slowly after i pushed a button. A camera is watching me. Barbed wire also.

There, my passport is checked. A man in uniform asks me to stand against a wall in order to take a picture of me. Because he asked me i put my finger on a red light who scan my fingerprint. By reflex, i can’t help myself thinking about i should have burnt my fingerprint on a red burnt iron stick in a jungle’s fire camp.

I’m asked who i’m visiting, when i give your name, shoulders are shaked and your number’s been asked to me. Your number. In the staff’s conversation, this number is not added, as a precision or to facilitate the job of the one who has to look for you, no, you are this number, joined to a picture of you, nothing else anymore.

I’m told that i can’t enter in with the cookies i brought, either my lighter, or my cigaretts, nor my mobile. I obey to the frisk.

I walk through an electronic door. Cross a outside area, camera and barbed wire are still watching me. I wait in front of anotehr door. A woman in uniform comes to open that door, helped by a big keys secured at her belt. I walk outside, still under surveillance. I wait again in front of a first of serial doors which secure a lockchamber. No one can be open if the others are not closed before. I reach a place, watched by two guards, man and woman, in uniform. Carpet, chairs around numbered tables, tv on the background, toys also, coffee and fingerfood machine. I’m waiting. Again i notice the keys’ noices, so i know something is going to happen. Your nmber is shouted. A camera is watching me. I feel unconfortable to be unwill witness of love hug, that woman has joined her irakian husband, soon deported, and they make the most of that short time together, and no choice, that’s in front of me, the children, the camera, so of everybody.

You come. Late, like usual. But maybe that time, it’s not your fault. When you see me you open your arms to welcome me. You’re called out. And asked what you get in your hand. You show your music player. It’s the first time in 8 month that i see you just obey. You give me a shy smile and whisper “shit guy”.

The first time i saw you, you walk to me, hidden by a hood, to forbidden me to picture your sisters and brothers eating the food I brought. Then you went back to slip yourself among them, in the mad and rain of a dirty Pas de Calais ditch. The king of the jungle.

You left your country, Eritrea, in June 2003, for a ethiopian refugee camp, after paying to get out of it, thanks to your father’s money, orthodox pope, which fled the religious persecutions to take refuge in Israel. There after one year and half doing nothing than playing card, you went to Sudan to see if there’s something to do there rather than just waiting.

Since, you crossed the Sahara desert and the mediterranean sea, and let others holding your life and your money in their hand, by obligation. You remember the skull in the desert, and the fuel added to the water by this others, in order to avoid that could be drank too fast. And then again the jail, in Libya that time. To get out of that you cheated this others who come to look at you, like a strange thing, who ask you when people like fall from a high building, they die also, or if where you’re from the sun and the moon order the day like in their own country.

Ignorance. Understanding.

When you reach this world that everybody talk about, you’re looked up for 3 month. Bored. You meet for the first time so many differents people, cultures, habits, you keep a track on your chest of that cultural chock, made by knife, on the heart side.

You don’t realise that this aliens for you, look at you like alien. You just take the habit not to be in touch with them. Just with those uniform dressed.

You’re allowed to stay, you don’t know the language, you don’t know how to cope, no one explain you how this new world works.

You spend one year killing your time in a Rome’s squat for foreigners. Analina, pretty name for a disused building, where refugees sell their place when they decide to hit the road again.

You follow the group, dreaming that further is better as everybody say.

You discover Calais for the first time, its squats, its cold, its rain, its aliens in uniforms, its police harassment, its pepper gaz, and the binge with friends to forget the cold and the life. You cope to cross the channel. For the first time you don’t pay.

You enter in England at the end of 2005. as you’ve been fingerprinted in Italy, you don’t have any acces to an asylum application, so you run quickly from that new uniforms. You joined your lucky brother and your community. You go through small jobs, fried chicken fabrik, folding clothe. During a washed down with alcool evening to celebrate the arrival of your borther’s wife and child, the police just detained you after checking paper and fingerprint. You discovered for the first time the english detention. Then you’s been back to Italy.

You tell me that the removed detainees were among the passenger but with handcuff. You turn down your eyes with shame when you precise me.

It was your first flight.

At the airport, other uniforms just gave you a 5 day traveling permit, 15 euros and, with a strong movement of your legg, you explain me : “they just kick me out !”.

What else than to play the chance again ? You get a stabble place that you know, now.

Calais again. The same aliens that you look at from far. 18 days in detention to hear that Italy and England don’t want you, then you’re released, without any explaination. You’re on your way that you know to nowhere now.

At the end of 2007, you’re abck to England. Jobs. Hassle. You decided to apply for asylum again, just before christmas.

You’ll spend christmas in detention. While explaining me, you look at your fingers, and, laughing, you make the sign to cut them.

Begining of 2008 you’re back to Italy, so to Calais.

I met you around a ditch, in a frizing rainy february night. The gendarme are just gone with 4 men come to intimidate all of you, if you refuse to pay the “rent” of the highway station ! All the group explained me that you gathered to take back by force the car park because that smugglers ask too much money and slave the people, force the women to sexual relations, and that lot of you wait for too long time, blocked in Calais.

You precise : “i’m a good man”.

Hours of conversation sitting on jerrican, on the top of the ditch, you always try to run away but we follow you to win over you. That makes you laugh. That french people you mix with in that jungle are not like the others that you never stop to look at from far, since you entered in Europe, but you’ve never understood and have allways been afraid by you. That french people are “different, they are crazy !”

You get a short sentences way of speech. You never explain yourself. You watch me to know which answer could please me :

“you’re white. That’s not the same.”

No trust, but you doubt, so you start talking a bit, asking few questions, you just try to understand.

At your turn, you crossed again. In June, you’re in Leeds, you kill you time.

“I miss the jungle life”. Jungle life is social life.

In July, you called me to let me know that you seek asylum but you “told all the truth”, that they let you free and said they’re not going to deport you again to Italy. I felt that you would like to enjoy but nothing is sure, you don’t dare to feel reassured and happy.

“If they send me back, after one month, i’m back to jungle !! I miss that jungle life. Shit life !”

in september you still kill your time in London.

But today, you’re locked up, you dare to tell me that you missed one night in the hostel where english uniforms told you to sign everyday, so you’ve been kicked out, so you seem to have gone back to underground. That’s why earlier in september you were in your own flat, sharing it with 4friends, paying it with your “own money”. In fact, you share a roof against an african social way of life. But a new street shout with young english, attract the police. And you’ve been sent back to detention. Even if you can’t be deported.

“_why you always seek asylum if you know they knwo for your fingerprints ? _I try ! What can I do ? Whitout document ? Nothing !! _why did you not put pressure to stay inthe hostel ? To explain yourself ? Why you don’t let them going till the end of the process, if they seemed to let you a chance ? _I don’t know....my brain is allready flat...”

long break.

“it seems that Obama said : you can’t trust in 3 things : the weather, the women and the white...he’s smart. He understood everything”.

You look at me, shy or shamed, laughing you hold me and whisper “haftey...” (my sister) like if you want me to forgive you.

After 2 month in detention, you’re surprised not to get any removal letter or news from the immigration services or Home Office. You don’t have a clue of the process in which your case could be. Listening to conversation i have with one od you co-detainee, through a window, you learnt that there’s not limit in time to detention in UK, for those who can’t be deported anywhere. You ask me to call your solicitor, you don’t dare to say that you don’t understand him when he talk to you. You’re worried, you don’t show anything, you would like explaination but you don’t trust anyone. And you can’t express anything, you’re too much proud to show your limits.

The king of jungle without crown.

You relate me the detention life, the shout between guards and detainees, the frontkick from a guard which knocked out a somalian detainee, then the general fight, for you “english vs somalian”, then the suicide attempt of nigerians by hanging or swallowing chemicals. In your voice’s tone i feel that became usual for you. That’s your days for about three month now, and another christmas in detention. With your roommate, you share with me you comments about that acts. Some laugh ironickly, considering that the destination si their country so they don’t have to die for that. You agree. You tell me they’re crazy, you don’t want to do that, you just want to live.

And you get jalous about them.

“I miss my country. My mum. Sometimes i would like to go back. I’d go to jail there some years. I’d be tortured. But with the help of God i could survive. And then i would be free. Prison here or there, that’s the same. But i would be free and at home. I hate Europe. I hate this life. All I wanted was peace and safety. Just live.”