The Special Relationship

Hassan Abdulrazzak

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781786828699
• eBook ISBN: 9781786828682
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

True stories from the sharp edge of transatlantic deportation. In America, foreign nationals can be deported after serving prison sentences; some of them are British. Hassan Abdulrazzak interviewed ex-prisoners and experts in immigration and criminal law to get behind the political rhetoric, and to explore the extraordinary realities of people caught up in the quagmire of immigration detention and deportation. These are their verbatim stories of double punishment and separation, stuck in the transatlantic tango between Trump and May.

PROLOGUE

The scene titles could be projected.

Passengers on an airplane.

NIKOL enters, one arm in a sling, her other arm chained to her waist and her ankles are shackled. She is guided to her seat by CURTIS, our immigration MC. Everyone is looking at her. She takes her seat.

CURTIS dances to ‘Immigration To The Trap’ by Belly. It’s a dance to show his authority. He ends by pointing his gun at KATHY.

PAT: This is no, this is no cockamamie story, this is for real.

CURTIS: Welcome to my world ladies and gents. It’s a hot world. It’s a cold world. It’s an ICE world. And I’m the best goddamn thing in it. Let me introduce you to the extras.

KATHY: The Mexican mafia are pretty amazing people. You should see the tunnels they make.

CURTIS: Kathy is the Wild West.

NIKOL: I’m coming across that ocean if I’ve got to come in a tugboat, singing, ‘Row, row, row your boat’.

CURTIS: Nikol is a star in the making.

PAT: I says to the two marshalls on the plane, I says to ‘em, I says, I guarantee you I’ll be back before you punch your card out.

CURTIS: Pat is nothing if not determined.

JOHN: It’s too easy in America to buy a gun. You just go in a pawn shop. Fifty dollars. Boom. There’s a gun.

CURTIS: John is a dark horse frozen in time.

CLODINE: My life hanged on a one digit number. Hmm.

CURTIS: Hmm. Clodine’s life turned on a coin.

ANNE: I was about three hundred and fifty pounds, full-blown diabetic and he had made crystal meth to cure me of my diabetes.

CURTIS: Anne is Breaking Bad. (Beat.) Begin.

ORIGIN

KATHY: I’m Kathy. I was born and raised in Biggleswade and Newcastle.

NIKOL: My name is Nikol. I was born in Lambeth, England.

CLODINE: Clodine. Southeast London, by London bridge, that area. Mm-hmm.

PAT: Pat. I was born in Northern Ireland.

JOHN: John. Sunderland, in the north east, up near Newcastle.

ANNE: My name is Anne. I was born in Southampton. I kinda had a crazy start, so my biological mother was fourteen, when she fell in love with my father in Argentina and got pregnant.

KATHY: My mother’s Egyptian, my father is British. After they got divorced, my mother moved and um, we went to the States.

NIKOL: My parents separated before I was born.

ANNE: (Continuing her story.) My mom’s dad got so mad that he sent her back here to live with the grandparents and put me up for adoption.

NIKOL: My mother was born in Grenada and my father was born in Guyana. In South America, yes.

CLODINE: My parents? Well, they weren’t criminals if that’s what you mean.

JOHN: My mother died in 1980. My father died in 1982.

ANNE: I was adopted by two British parents.

PAT: I was a farmer back in Northern Ireland. And, you know, farming is up and down, you have good years and bad years.

JOHN: I joined the Air Force when I was eighteen, OK? I worked as an electrician for the Air Force.

PAT: So I was doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Smuggling pigs across the border, you know. There was never no big much money to be made in farming.

JOHN: What I really wanted to be was a pilot.

CLODINE: As a child I would go to the United States, I would see the difference. Everyone in Britain complains and grumbles about hard life, lack of money. Over there in America everything was just – (Clicks her fingers twice.) You know.

ANNE: I came from a wealthy family.

JOHN: I did a few tours in the Middle East, in Cyprus, in Germany and while I was in there I learnt to fly at my own expense.

NIKOL: My step dad was very abusive. I remember experiencing him hitting my mom even threw her down the stairs one time. And that’s the reason why we left for America.

JOHN: I went to the United States in January of ’83. I was thirty-one.

PAT: I went to the States in 1985, July of 1985. I was twenty-nine.

CLODINE: I was nineteen when I moved there permanently.

KATHY: I was twelve when we moved to the States. It was February 5th, 1973. That’s what’s on my green card.

NIKOL: I was six years old.

ANNE: I was three and a half when I went to America.

CURTIS: As for me I represent the righteous in this story. And now ladies and gents, you’re in for a special treat, ’cause I’m about to introduce you to the man that’s been on your mind for the past several years, my very very special guest.

INTERLUDE

DONALD TRUMP and THERESA MAY do the tango.

TRUMP: So I would say I give our relationship, in terms of grade, the highest level of special. So we start off with special I would give our relationship with the UK…and now especially after this two days with your prime minster, I would say the highest level of special. Am I allowed to go…am I allowed to go higher than that, I am not sure. But it’s the highest level of special. They’re a very special people. It’s a very special country. And as I said, I have a relationship because my mother was born in Scotland.

ARRIVAL

They all head to their various destinations.

KATHY: Scotland. I went to a little town in Florida called Dunedin, just like in Scotland. It even has like little posters that say Dunedin, sister city to Dunedin, Scotland. How that worked out, I have no idea.

ANNE: Fairfax, Virginia then Baltimore, Maryland.

CLODINE: Houston, Texas.

JOHN: Texas, just to look around and do some flying.

PAT: Long Island, New York. To work in construction.

NIKOL zigzagging.

NIKOL: I remember the day we left. We were rushing in the cab to the airport and we missed the plane. So we had to sleep at the airport and finally on the plane and arrived in Miami, Florida.

DEPORTATION

A movement. And now we are in another time.

CURTIS: Let’s go.

CLODINE: They came and got me around eight-thirty, nine.

ANNE: They woke me up at three in the morning and told me I had to leave.

KATHY: Two in the morning. Three days before I was supposed to see the neurologist about hitting my head.

NIKOL: Where we going?

CURTIS: Just pack your shit.

KATHY: When you get deported you’re allowed to take one set of pants. One shirt. One set of underclothes and shoes and socks and a backpack. And that’s it. You can’t go home.

NIKOL: I came with two outfits that my children was able to put in a bag for me. And one o...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Characters
• Prologue
• Acknowledgements