A New Identity

The Writers' Block #33 - Theme: Identity - Who am I? - Who are you?

The corridor was full of confusion. The latest horde had arrived looking scared, mumbling incoherently to each other, shushing their crying children, smelling damp and had hunger in their eyes.

‘You. Yes, you. Over here. No, not you, no. You in the brown coat. You, yes.’

The man in the brown coat gathered his group around him and herded them towards the organiser.

‘In there, please. There, yes. All of you. To that man. Yes, him. Go on. Hell fire - give him a wave George, so he knows where to go.’

George waved without looking up from his papers. The last batch had taken far too long to sort out. Where were the blasted interpreters? Or, even better, why couldn’t any of these people speak bloody English?

They stood in front of his desk, casting a scruffy shadow across it. The little girl pointed at the ornate portrait of the Queen, but one of her brothers pulled her hand down.

George closed the file, lifted the wad up and give it a straightening tap on the red leather desktop before placing the buff collection onto a pile of papers waiting to be collected. This tower was leaning against the wall to his right and screamed out that everyone in this building was a part of a struggling bureaucracy.

‘Now.’ As George spoke, the odour of the group consumed him. A mixture of body odour, human excrement and halitosis. He rested his left elbow on the desk’s edge and placed his palm across his forehead, covering his closed eyes. His right hand reached down and opened a draw, removing a buff file exactly like the one he had finished with moments ago, which he let plop in front of him.

He sighed and produced a small tub of menthol oil from the drawer. A quick dab with a finger and he smeared it onto his top lip. As he put it away and closed the drawer, the foreigner tried to make contact.

‘Hello.’ His guttural voice made the greeting sound like a cough. ‘Hello.’

George opened the file and straightened the papers that were now on show. ‘Hello. Is this your family? Do you understand? Yes? How many are there? One, two, three, four, five. Five, is that right?’

The man nodded and smiled, showing uneven yellow teeth.

‘Name?’

The man nodded and smiled again.

‘You understand? What is your name? Me - I am George. Me George. You?’

‘Ah!’ comprehended the man.

A wave of old meals washed across George’s face and he resisted the urge to retch.

What followed was the usual collecting of names and ages of the man, his wife and the three children. All of it taken on trust. George had to guess at the spelling because they had no papers of their own, destroyed so they could not be sent back. These people were homeless and in need. They were most probably illiterate, too.

When the man had to sign, he fumbled the pen, unable to grip it. He marked a cross on the dotted line where George pointed.

Then they were ushered away, ready to get new papers and become citizens of a nation proud to receive them.

A request came above the din: ‘George! Ready for another?’

He sighed. ‘Only if it’s Queen Victoria herself,’ he mumbled before beckoning the next group towards him.