Chapter 17: Faith and Charity

Tamara

2093

Tamara studied the framed picture on the wall. It showed the image of a slightly tubby middle-aged woman which had been made to resemble a mediaeval Christian saint. She even had a halo around her forehead.

"Who's this?" Tamara asked.

"It's Saint Diane," said Dahab. "She was the founder of the Reigate centre."

"Is she a saint?" wondered Tamara. "The picture doesn't look genuine."

"It's a picture that was composed on a computer," Dahab explained. "We call her Saint Diane. I'm not a Christian so I don't know if she's been made a saint, but we call her one here."

"I'm not a Christian, either," said Tamara. "I don't even know whether there are any Christians staying here. But I think there's a quite convoluted process involved in becoming a saint. I don't even know whether the Church of England has saints."

"This is the church of St Mary Magdalene," said Dahab. "It's an Anglican church so I guess the Church of England does have saints."

Although the Reigate Centre was just as packed out as the Broad Oak Refugee Camp, it was much better managed and the staff who worked there significantly more sympathetic to the plight of refugees and asylum seekers. Tamara was impressed by the difference a more efficient administration could make, especially since it was managed by people who'd originally arrived in England as refugees themselves.

Tamara was determined to make a positive contribution right from the start. That was partly because it was obvious that there were jobs that needed to be done that she could help do, but mostly it was because she desperately needed the distraction.

Tamara was more grief-stricken than she'd imagined possible when her mother died and her body was taken away for a proper Jewish funeral. This had to be in London as it was one of the few English cities where there was still a working synagogue. The fragile threads that had held Tamara's family together during those months of travel across Europe finally snapped the moment her mother was buried. Her two brothers took the opportunity of the London excursion to slip away from the lax supervision and surrender their fortunes to the huge sprawling city. Those family members with which Tamara was left were only distantly relatives and quite capable of managing without her. For a while she believed she owed them an obligation but when she realised that they were eligible for more food and resources if they continued to claim for her two missing brothers and dead mother, Tamara decided that she could make a better contribution to their welfare if she also absconded.

Her family shed more tears for the departure of Tamara's mother than they would for her. Perhaps they knew about her relationship with Bilal who, in any case, had been transferred to a refugee camp in the North of England where there was an urgent requirement for cheap labour to help shore up the collapsing flood defences. Tamara was now alone, wretched and grieving in South London, but at least she no longer had to share a mattress with two brothers, a distant cousin from what had once been Tel Aviv and an uncle who farted most of the night.

For the first few nights, Tamara wasn't so sure that her decision to leave was such a good one. Her only possessions were the clothes she wore, a backpack full of underwear and the all-important documentation that included a passport to a no longer functioning nation. She mingled with the countless unfortunates begging on Croydon's cratered streets. She ate soup that was doled out by makeshift soup kitchens and slept in the doorways of boarded-up shops. By chance, she heard of another refugee centre in Reigate that might be able to help her if she was willing to work there for no pay. Tamara's main concerns were food and sleep rather than money, so she walked the twenty kilometres or more across the suburban sprawl and decaying slums to Reigate.

South London had suffered badly from generations of neglect. The wealthy lived in gated communities or along well-appointed avenues guarded at both ends by private security guards. The less privileged lived in overcrowded and rotting houses. Many were refugees who'd migrated not from distant war-torn or famine-struck foreign countries but from the hinterland of the River Thames that had finally been overwhelmed by the rising tide. The traffic in South London's congested roads was a miscellaneous assortment of electric cars and buses, bicycle-driven vehicles and even make-shift carts pulled by donkeys and mules.

Reigate was beyond a ridge of hills and thus relatively safe from flooding. It wasn't so secure from London's suburban sprawl that stretched unbroken along the A23. Why, wondered Tamara, would the Reigate Centre give her shelter when it was denied by so many other places?

"We just don't like turning people away," said Mehmed when she asked why she'd been so lucky. "In any case, it would seem especially heartless to turn away a person who's just lost her mother and is sleeping on the streets. There's also the fact that you're Jewish and a woman."

"What difference does that make?"

"There's a great deal of prejudice against Jews these days," said Mehmed, "particularly in my community."

"Your community?"

"The Muslim community. It can be very vicious. Many blame Israel for all the misery that's blighted the Middle East. And many don't distinguish between the government of Israel and its citizens."

"And also for being a woman? Can't I look after myself as well as a man?"

"I don't mean to appear sexist," said Mehmed. "One of the few professions flourishing at the moment is prostitution. Women like you, especially young and pretty ones, are immediate candidates for exploitation. It mightn't be too long until you became just another one of the wretched souls on Bell Street and Reigate Road."

Tamara wasn't going to complain too much about receiving preferential treatment, but she guessed that it was because Mehmed was a father of two teenage girls that he showed such compassion.