Container by Clare Bayley

Author:Clare Bayley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nick Hern Books

Scene Three

Lights up. The AGENT is with them. They are eating bread and something in tins he has brought for them.

AGENT. The next time we stop, the door will be opened. Then you are in England.

ASHA. Are we going in a boat?

AGENT. No. In the Eurotunnel. Under the sea.

ASHA. Under the sea?

JEMAL. Where will he drop us? By the terminus?

AGENT. Yes, by the terminus, or on the road to London. I don’t know.

JEMAL. Where will you be?

AGENT. I put you on the Eurotunnel. Then I go.

FATIMA. But we can’t trust this man, this driver!

AGENT. When you are on the Eurotunnel, you are shut in a metal cage and no one can get in or out, so you are safe.

FATIMA. I don’t like this.

AGENT. Trust me. Trust me. Eurotunnel is safe. They don’t search and they don’t spray on Eurotunnel.

AHMAD. What do you mean, spray?

AGENT. Eurotunnel is fast and safe. Believe me. I have a good reputation.

So. He opens the back. And then you are in England. You all get out, and you split up. Understand? You don’t all go together.

If you are going to claim political asylum, first person you see, you say you are a refugee.

AHMAD. I’m not a refugee! I’m a businessman!

AGENT. You want to run a business?

You got one million pounds?

You haven’t? No?

Then you’re illegal immigrant. That’s their rules. So if you’re illegal immigrant, you get out of truck, and you hide.

If they catch you, they will ask you lot of questions. Who brought you, how you come, where you stop along the way . . . Now. Why they need to know that?

Think.

Why they want to know all that?

So they can stop more people like you getting here. You going to make it more difficult for people like you? No. So. You don’t tell them nothing. You can’t remember. Ten days ago, you were at home. Now, you are here. That’s all you know. Non-stop travel. Is that true?

So. You know my name?

No.

You know what I look like?

No. Because now I’m gone, and you never saw me in the first place.

ASHA. What if they come in looking and we are not in England yet?

AGENT. This is why you paid me. No one will come in looking before England. OK. I go now.

ASHA stops him.

ASHA. Where is Mariam? Please, sir, can you tell me what happened to her?

AGENT. Don’t worry about her now. You going to get your new life now.

He exits.

AHMAD. I don’t trust that man, but I wish he was coming with us all the way. What’s happening out there? Are we on the train already?

JEMAL. It’s time to get our stories straight, now. He’s right, it’s very important. What we say makes a big difference.

FATIMA. You stop telling us what we got to do! You just the same as us, so you say. So you don’t tell us what to do.

JEMAL. No. I’m not the same as you. You haven’t spent three months living in a cardboard box in Calais, outside the terminus. I have.

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