{"id":146,"date":"2016-11-06T11:21:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T11:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nethergatewriters.org\/?p=146"},"modified":"2021-03-12T10:48:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T10:48:00","slug":"travellers-inn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"Travellers’ Inn"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Carson, chair of the Nethergate Writers, has written this moving and highly topical piece.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Mohsen leaned against the tent pole.\u00a0 It was cold and hard.\u00a0 He looked inside at the crush of women rummaging through boxes.\u00a0\u00a0 Hands stretched out and seized tins of soup, jars of spices and bottles of water.\u00a0 A tall figure in European dress came towards him.\u00a0 She wore a sympathetic but firm expression.\u00a0 She spoke slowly in English.
\n\u201cYou know how it works.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t have a time ticket, you can\u2019t come in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mohsen held out his hands, palms up.<\/p>\n

The woman shook her head. \u201cSo you have to go away.\u00a0 You can\u2019t hang around here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The boy paused a moment, then turned and walked along the muddy makeshift street.\u00a0 Time tickets were like currency in the camp, better even.\u00a0 With a time ticket you got fifteen minutes inside the warehouse, the inn as it was called, to help yourself to food and drink, enough to last a week.\u00a0 With a time ticket you could relax, look forward to a full belly.\u00a0 With a time ticket you didn\u2019t need to rely on Ashram\u2019s kitchen where they served up rubbish twice a day cooked by people like Kurds and Eritreans who didn\u2019t understand the needs of Somalian stomachs.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d had a time ticket recently, a few days ago, given to him by one of the volunteers.\u00a0 But the gang took it from him.\u00a0 Three of them surrounded him, pushed him, emptied his pockets, speaking a language he didn\u2019t understand.\u00a0 Their eyes, dark and green,\u00a0 glowed when they found the ticket.\u00a0 In his village, everybody knew that if you had green eyes, you were possessed of evil spirits.<\/p>\n

Mohsen thought about his home, a hut on the outskirts of the village, the wooden walls warm and inviting, the door always ajar.\u00a0 Inside, his mother,\u00a0 and aunts and cousins, preparing food for the evening meal.\u00a0 They would look up at him, gently mocking.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s Mohsen, always hanging about.\u00a0 How tall he\u2019s getting, too big for his boots – if he had any.\u00a0 We need water, Mohsen, off you go.\u00a0 Bring it to us in the buckets, you\u2019re strong enough to carry them by yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he would go to the edge of the field, with its gleaming standpipe and shining tap.\u00a0 Sometimes he regretted that he no longer had to splash into the stream, standing between rocks made smooth by the gliding water, flexing his toes and feeling it swirl over his ankles, then stooping to hold the pails against the flow until they grew heavy, judging when he had filled them to the maximum.\u00a0 But the pipe was easier, and when he bent down he could rub his cheek against the cool metal.<\/p>\n

He was there the day the soldiers came. They arrived when his father and the other men were at work, at the canning factory.<\/p>\n

They came in lorries, guns swinging and pointing,\u00a0 and took the women from their houses,\u00a0 His mother shouted at Mohsen to run, run, then screamed as she was dragged along the ground, the men pulling at her clothes. She was silenced by the butt of a rifle.<\/p>\n

And Mohsen ran, and journeyed through the wilderness of the world to arrive at this den, this collection of tents draped with carpets, muddy and smelling of excrement.<\/p>\n

\u201cMohsen, where have you been?\u00a0 I was worried.\u201d\u00a0 The woman came towards him, carrying a bag, his bag. A volunteer, a house mother who looked after boys like Mohsen.\u00a0 At least, tried.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re coming!\u00a0 They\u2019re going to move everyone out.\u00a0 They\u2019re going to knock the place down.\u00a0 There are buses to take you\u2026somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mohsen looked around and saw lorries, police, soldiers approaching.\u00a0 He snatched his bag.\u00a0 Once again he would run.\u00a0 But he knew that hell would follow him wherever he went.<\/p>\n

David Carson.\u00a0 November 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Carson, chair of the Nethergate Writers, has written this moving and highly topical piece. Mohsen leaned against the tent pole.\u00a0 It was cold and hard.\u00a0 He looked inside at the crush of women rummaging through boxes.\u00a0\u00a0 Hands stretched out and seized tins of soup, jars of spices and bottles of water.\u00a0 A tall figure… Read More »Travellers’ Inn<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nethergatewriters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}