Chapter 7: Green Grass of Home

Tamara

2092

After the many months of uncertainty and anxiety since Tamara had began her desperate exodus, it could only be a relief to finally arrive at the Broad Oak Refugee Centre just outside the Ashton Lovelock gated community. She'd have been naive if she'd imagined that her welcome would be especially warm simply because the government of the Republic of England had reluctantly and belatedly agreed to provide asylum for a nominal fraction of the many millions of refugees spilling out of the devastated and still radioactive Holy Land. Nevertheless, she hadn't really anticipated quite the degree of hostility that greeted her and what was left of her family.

Tamara and the hundreds of other Jewish refugees in the convoy still identified themselves as citizens of the State of Israel, however much this was a nation that now existed in name alone. The charred wasteland that once held host to so many high hopes and aspirations was now under the reluctant care of the resentful citizens of Palestine. Israel's victory in the Holy War had been Pyrrhic at best. It was the official losers in the conflict who were now dominant in what had once been core Israeli territory. And this was simply by virtue of the fact that the number of Palestinian survivors was substantially greater than that of the equally wretched Israeli victors.

What had once been a short plane ride from the Middle East to the Republic of England was now a fraught journey for the Jewish refugees through the two competing and loosely federated European Unions. Not one nation state through which Tamara and her family travelled on their exodus would willingly antagonise their Muslim citizens by expressing more sympathy than was necessary to the mostly despised tribe of Israel.

The protest that greeted the refugees outside the Broad Oak Refugee Camp's forbidding gates was not substantially different to the others that had followed their peripatetic trek from one temporary camp site to another. There were much the same banners on display which as always attributed the entire blame to the Jewish race for the military disaster that had devastated the Middle East. The slow but inevitable demise of the State of Israel had been equally as agonising as, but rather less spectacular than the apocalyptic annihilation of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Tel Aviv just over a generation ago.

Tamara was too young to remember much about the war although the images of mushroom clouds rising above the city of Jerusalem had been replayed so many times that she almost believed that she'd seen it for real. Like most Israeli citizens, her actual memories of the war were of a time spent huddling in underground bomb shelters. She was one of the lucky ones who weren't instantly vaporised or had survived only to endure a more painful lingering death from the radioactive fallout that fell not only on Israel, Syria, Egypt and Palestine, but also on non-combatant nations as far afield as Turkey, Cyprus and Iran. Although Israel had suffered at least as much as any other nation, to the extent that it was no longer a nation at all, Israeli citizens were still blamed for the catastrophe with undiminished resentment by those who'd suffered directly or indirectly from its affects. There were few people in the world who didn't know someone who'd died or was afflicted by radioactive sickness after Israel resorted to the ultimate deterrent as a response to the threat from its belligerent neighbours. As if there hadn't already been enough distress from water shortage, crop failure and the long-heralded final collapse of the oil industry.

However much Tamara understood and in a sense sympathised with the protestors it troubled her that Broad Oak wasn't intended to be just one more stop on the journey but the final destination. This welcome wasn't one that boded well for the future.

The gates to the refugee camp shut close behind the trucks after they'd filed into the courtyard. The refugees disembarked, but the thickness of the camp's walls didn't muffle the sounds of protest from outside. Some were chants of disgust at Israel's role in the Middle East Apocalypse whereas others were the same gratuitously offensive anti-Semitic chants with which Tamara had become increasingly familiar during her years of exile.

Tamara and her family settled down to their new overcrowded home of ragged sheets, threadbare mattresses and leaking roofs. And home it was. At long last. Broad Oak Refugee Camp: home to the unwanted and despised. Shelter had only been provided because of Israel's role in England's imperial past when the nation was head of an empire powerful enough to dictate the fate of other nations. Now it was a republic as self-obsessed as the people of Israel with its own relative decline since the dissolution of the United Kingdom.

The Broad Oak Refugee Camp was asylum not only to Israelis, but also to refugees from Armenia, Kurdistan, Laos and Venezuela whose citizens belonged to the lengthening list of failed nation states. Amongst these, whether represented by actual governments or by governments-in-exile, there were also refugees from the now irradiated Gaza Republic whose mere existence had been considered sufficient provocation for the missiles to be launched. At least the administrators of Broad Oak had the sense not to house Israelis in the same buildings as the Gazans.

"They should have stayed in the Gaza City slums," complained Tamara's mother. She could never forgive the Palestinian militia for the summary execution of her husband and Tamara's stepfather. This happened in the desolate ruins of Ashdod where Tamara's family had once enjoyed prosperity and an easy life. "At least the bastards have somewhere they can go."

Tamara couldn't really dispute the logic of her mother's assertion. Palestine continued to exist as a state with real territory, but only the most romantic fool would genuinely prefer a radioactive wilderness to the relative security of the Republic of England. There was no need here to wear a mask to shield one's lungs from radioactive dust. No need to use a Geiger counter simply to decide where to settle down for the night. Even the hardiest former resident of Gaza City couldn't survive long in the fine dust and ash blowing about the extinguished cities of the Middle East.

"We have to treat everyone equally," said Benita, an old woman whose job in the kitchen was to help feed the thousands of refugees crammed into the camp. "There are very strict rules which everyone has to obey."

"Surely you can see the injustice," pleaded Tamara's mother to the older woman. "We've got nowhere to go. Literally nowhere. We Jews are persecuted wherever we go..."

"Not all Jews," disagreed Juan Valdez, an elderly man whose mattress lay adjacent to Tamara's. "American Jews are no more persecuted than they ever were."

"They aren't Israeli Jews!" complained Tamara's mother. "And precious little welcome do they give their fellows. Did they help us in our hour of need? Did they help clear the Holy Land of the Palestinian scum?"

"I have to warn you not to use language like that," said Benita firmly. "Whatever grievances you have must be put aside here. The administrators don't take provocation lightly. The Sherwood Forest Refugee Camp has already been shut down because of rioting. We can't risk the same thing here."

"I still think it's unfair," said Tamara's mother grumpily.

Despite Benita's admonition, Tamara couldn't help agreeing with her mother. It was all well and good trying to enforce a bland neutrality to maintain the peace, but what could this old woman know? She'd spent all her life in England. She was unlikely to have dallied long in the war-torn Middle East. The English might complain about the poverty that had returned to Europe and the humiliating break-up of the United Kingdom, but the worst they'd ever known was a brief episode of what had amounted to almost a dictatorship and which had served only to hasten the nation's decline.

The Refugee Camp dormitories were overcrowded. Food handouts were sporadic, unpredictable and never really adequate. There was little to do in the grounds of what had once been a private garden and throughout which were now scattered tents and make-shift shelters in wait for the next intake of refugees. Nowadays Tamara's life was principally focused on just two things. The first was the tedious and lengthy processing of her family's petition for asylum. If this process ever came to a resolution, she and her family would be released into more permanent accommodation elsewhere and could start earning a living again. The second was the erratic arrival of the food trucks. These were the very deliveries that the crowds of anti-immigration or anti-Semitic protestors outside the camp walls most complained about. Food was no longer plentiful even in England and many English were upset that a scarce and expensive resource was now being provided free to foreigners who were unable to work for a living.