Moving Towards Home 2

Today I spent hours with a woman who is about to be deported from the UK back to her home country. She desperately wants to stay here. She's HIV positive, a mother and a widow and will not be able to guarantee a safe future for her child after her death. Nor can she guarantee her and her small family's safety from the persecution from which she fled. She doesn't even talk about medication or health care. Her money cut off, she's relying on help given un-officially, accommodation donated by a friend. The organisations helping her carry on even though they worry about helping an "illegal immigrant".

Like we always do, we carried out our now "un-official" meeting whilst making lunch, sitting in front of the oven which was the only source of heat in the non-specific accommodation. We were talking about her husband, presumed murdered in her homeland. He was a romantic, he chased her relentlessly, she loves to talk about him and finishes her story with a head-thrown-back laugh and a firm slap of her thigh. Then we talk about my lack of marriage and children which I pass over quickly. That only leaves us with the future to talk about. At this point she does something that i've only ever seen done by women in the West Bank of Palestine. It's a gentle shrug of the shoulders, a rapid roll of the eyes and a resounding sigh....Immediately her jesture took me back to another displaced person, Um Hussain, Balata Refugee Camp Palestine 2003. I saw it first on the night that yet another child was murdered by the Israeli army. This time in front of 6 western eyes- a soft bodied child throwing stones at the nightly terrors visiting the camp in armoured jeeps. Um Hussain's almost imperceptable jesture spoke of despair and impatience and relief (this time it wasn't her son) and a million other emotions that only a mother could experience in the space of 5 seconds.

And today, there it was again, another mother, another world. One mother forced from, another back to her home. And here I am again, utterly useless in the face of politics and cold injustice, resorting to making food and cleaning plates, entertaining a child and complaining about the lack of good men in this town- anything to avoid discussing her future.