A Neighbrourhood Called Exile

The window, misted over and streaked with condensed moisture, let through a dribble of red and blue light from a neon sign placed on the rooftop across the street giving the room an anaemic air.

Lying on the bed fully dressed Simon gazed at the high ceiling with moulded plaster vines and clusters of grapes - chalky, unnatural in appearance. His mouth, stimulated by the sharp twinges of memories, watered. Sweet, warm to the touch grapes. Transparent when held against the sunlight. Bursting with juice when slightly pressed. They used to hang in tight, heavy bunches and, uncollected throughout summer, they would splash onto the cement walkway under the wooden pillars. From the clay oven behind the house the smell of freshly made bread wafted in. In the bamboo hedge skirting the garden sparrows squabbled and chattered but without any animosity. From time to time, a visiting breeze fluttered the bamboo stalks sending a blizzard of dry leaves onto his head. Inside the house, the clamour of salsa mingled with the routine kitchen noises - sounds so comforting that even now, listening only to their echoes in his mind, they warmed his blood.

Through the paper-thin partition separating his bed-sit from the turbaned Sikh’s, the tedious drone of a sitar sifted in - permanent and persistent as the hum of a mosquito about to land, never varying an octave, never giving up. He covered his ears with his fists and squeezed his eyes shut to block out the aggressive drone and the bluish-red glare advertising a fourth- rate Bayswater hotel, home to restive exiles like himself and tarts with young bodies, middle-aged old eyes and old souls.

Every night was the same - numbed by a couple of Carlsbergs and wearied beyond repair by the ten-hour shift washing off the vestiges of congealed curries in Jalal’s Tandoori, he would fall into a dreamless, fidgety sleep for exactly four hours. Slumber that failed to restore the strength to either body or spirit. Then, just after three in the morning, he’d wake up – frequently to the buzzing of the sitar or the late-night combats of the Polish couple from across the hall.

“Kurwa!” - the word, repeated over and over by the man whose face remained as anonymous as his voice, clung to the folds of his brain like a particularly pleasant, memory-prodding refrain. He even went as far as to check its meaning. The Polish dictionary, unearthed in a Bayswater library, its pages still virgin crisp, failed to list it or maybe Simon didn’t really know how to spell it.

Downstairs, a door slammed shut - Paddy O’Toole was weaving his way up the stairs, extolling at the top of his voice the virtue of smiling Irish eyes. He wondered what he looked like – the guy he thought of as Paddy O’Toole. Handsome in a typical Irish way or ruined by the draught Guinness drunk in London pubs and roaming the paths of voluntary exile? For all he knew, his name was probably not O’Toole and it might not even be Paddy. But stereotypes (and who better than he with a dusky face, wiry black hair and a thick Latino accent would know more about their powerful grip?) took root easily and remained anchored firmly.

The sound of the sitar faded away - the cassette had finished, or the turbaned Sikh had fallen asleep.

The room was stuffy, pervaded by the clinging, cloying smells of previous occupants and their national concoctions: stale chapatis, pickled gherkins, laurel-laced spaghetti Bolognese. He wondered if his own smell - the aroma of tandoori ovens and spicy Massalas he carried on his clothes, his hair, his skin - would mingle with the other smells. Would the last, more powerful, fresher odour prod at someone’s curiosity? Would the aroma of food that was not even his own be all he’d leave behind?

Outside, a taxi horn blared in the departing night and the voices of its drunken passengers floated on the cold, December air. Christmas with tinsel chains, glass baubles, turkey and sage was striding forward fast. His first cold, not necessarily white, Christmas. His thoughts went on a mental ramble back to the sweltering Christmases in Santiago. Who’d have thought back then that he’d ever see a cold, if not white, Christmas? Who’d have thought that gales of political unrest and opera-uniformed military juntas would blow him over here to a crummy hotel room, sandwiched between a sitar-mad Sikh and a Polish couple? To a neighbourhood called exile where no-one really belonged, no-one could claim as his own. To a place where every inhabitant shared a similar baggage - Latinos running away from the terror of dictators and caudillos, Blacks who set their faces against the stalwart grip of poverty and racism, Poles and Russians escaping the illusory idyll of the Red Paradise. Thrown into the seething cauldron of a London suburb, chasing dreams of freedom, elusive ideals of peace and friendship for all, but failing to find them.

How many other neighbourhoods that differed in name only and shared the same type of people, the same kind of loneliness, the same damned lack of belonging, would he see before going back? How many more ceilings with chalky grapes, cherubs, and damp plaster frescoes would he see? How many more sleepless nights, how many hours of inhaling tandoori fumes and the smell of stale chapatis?

It was quiet now - no sitar, no mournful lamentations about sunshine and shadow, no arguments, no passion. All exiles, all restless souls, had finally seemed to have settled down for the night.

He gazed at the clock ticking away the night - ten to seven. One hour before it woke him up. Two before he started, once again, scraping off last night’s Chicken Jalfrezi at Jalal’s Tandoori. It was time to sleep.

Author Notes: In each and every immigrant there is a Simon - I know because I am one.

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