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iv. just an immigrant
If we were born in the cities we long for, Love – Paris,
Prague, New York –
what languages would they have taught us to speak?
– ‘Broken Ghazal: Speak Arabic’
from Louder Than Hearts by Zeina Hashem Beck
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Arrival
i.
October 1998. When I first arrived
I did not tell anyone that I had
a rice cooker in my suitcase.
‘You’ll miss rice over there,’
my mother said. At Customs
the officer glanced at the letter
embossed with the college crest:
five yellow birds. ‘Why would they
offer you a place at Oxford?’
He shook his head and stamped
limited leave to remain.
ii.
Helen’s Court was where they put
all the foreign students together
so they’d feel more at home.
A bedsit waiting for its tenant:
empty bookshelves; a quaint-looking desk,
a worn-out armchair; a lamp with a green shade.
I opened the sash window and heard
a faint trail of bicycle bells. ‘Home,’ I said
but it hurt.
iii.
The post-room: among the narrow
wooden shelves I was the only Wong there:
my parents would be pleased.
Mum told me she went to Ying Kee
to stock up on tea leaves, and to Mei Foo
where she knew the best fishmonger.
Her letters were full of questions:
how cold is England’s cold?
Should we send more instant noodles?
iv.
Each week I went to Sainsbury’s
to improve my English. Walking up and down
the busy aisles, I relished the sound
of each exotic word: courgette, crumpets,
Red Leicester cheese, horseradish.
I smiled. Saying it right is an art.
Here they actually have ‘Chinese cabbage’.
At night I’d leave the butter and milk
outside the window to keep it chilled.
v.
On winter days when the sun
went missing, and I felt I was
an incomplete being, I’d visit Edamame,
hidden on Holywell Street just like
the other ramen place in Yaumatei
with its wooden screen doors.
There, people would queue for ages
for a bowl of miso happiness. Sometimes,
in the middle of my lunch at Edamame,
it felt as if me and my brother were
having noodles together,
as he asks me to repeat after him
the names of his favourite players:
Rooney, Fellaini, Rafael, de Gea.
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Trace
Whatever you say, don’t ask me where I come from. I’ve been here fifteen years. I went to school in Cheltenham. I’m a voter (but didn’t vote to leave). I’m good at saying ‘how lovely’, even when things go wrong. I live in a good postcode and have a garden of my own.
Whatever you say, don’t ask me where I come from. I have traded my country up for better air. There’s nothing I miss – not the sea of black heads in a metro station, certainly not my ageing relatives. Sometimes I think of char siu and chicken rice done the proper way – half-lean, half-fat – served with a dash of julienned ginger and garlic. I only drink lukewarm water. And I follow news on the protests over there,
night after night.
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London, 2008
The ashen-faced tr...
