Zamani, the monster

 Per versione italiana di questa storia, premere qui

We discovered our windows were bulletproof the day the monster decided to smash his head into one of them. That same morning we found him tossed onto the ground, all bloodstained and halfdead. We imagined he’d had a fight with someone but, while we waited for the ambulance, we checked the security cameras and saw that Zamani, the monster, had arrived with a solid brick in hand, the type that can only be found in Yorkshire. He was determined to shatter all the glass in our windows. He threw the brick with brutal force and it bounced back like a tennis ball, fracturing his skull, knocking him unconscious and leaving him in a gory state.

 There’s nothing worse for an enraged spirit than unleashing his anger with violence only to become the laughing stock of his surroundings. Our manager, who we would all call Debby to mark our democratic spirit, could not help but laugh when she learned about unfortunate Zamani, and she was the only one, along with the administrators, who knew about the change, , because every week somebody would break a window during the  night, until the one day she resolved that bulletproof windows were what was needed.

 A few weeks later Zamani appeared in our office. Helenka, the receptionist, rushed over to tell me to deal with him. I had a reputation of being good with difficult clients.

 -Fab, there’s a pretty pretty guy here. Can you take care of him?

 -Of course- I said without hesitation. Nobody liked dealing with violent, dangerous, or cry-baby clients. But I was of the view  that these were the only  interesting service users. Partly due to my ethical predisposition to help those most in need. But partly due to a very selfish reason. It had become a game.

 Yes, a game. Dangerous, but a game. And fun, too. I learned this in Venezuela from the famously untamed llaneros. I remembered once the pride with which a brave tamer said that he’d mounted the wildest horse, an impossible mare, and had left her meek. And so it was that  one day I said to myself, "with clients I will do the same".  So if one of them arrived in a serious sweat, furious, red, with  protuberant veins, bulging eyes, a contained scream, and clenched teeth I would say to myself, in silence:

 -Here you are papito... I’ll have you meek in no time.

 Little by little I became the expert in all types of fury and Hallucinations. And my dear Helenka knew of my longing to deal with all kinds of demonized clients and for that reason she immediately called on me to deal with Zamani.

 -Fab, he's the one who broke his head with the brick, he's furious. He still has a bandaged head. Doesn't speak. Says nothing. His eyes are going to pop out. Right up your street. - Helenka said to me, laughing, for she didn't understand how I could be mad enough to deal with someone like that. But she knew the other option was to call William, Paul or Vicky, and they’d end up reciting the institutional mantra, very much aligned to our policies, that we simply do not tolerate assaults or insults. Helenka knew our policies all too well, without Vanessa or I everything would end up with the police involved. Zamani would punch the table, break something, yell, throw a chair against a wall, and the security guard would come, and with his black belt of I don't know how many martial arts, he would tie him up and ten minutes later the police too. For that, and more, Helenka adored me.

 -Please Helenka, try to tell him where the door for the security room is. I’ll wait for him there.

He came in  through the door on one side of the room, I came in through the other. Both at the same time. The security guard followed behind him.

 -Please leave me alone with Mr Zamani, I asked the security guard.

-Are you sure?

-Yes.

 I sat down in my chair, facing the desk where my computer was placed, and he sat in front of me.

 -Good morning Mr Zamani.

He did not answer. He put one elbow on the table, with force, as if he wanted to break the table. Then his other elbow. Then he leaned forward a little to put his hands on both sides of his face, his elbows firmly fixed to the table. I was calm, or at least calm in appearance, let's say that if someone had looked at me, they would have said yeah, that guy is calm, but I couldn't have been because I am really rather terrible with physical attacks - at school I was the worst at fighting, in any case I just defended myself with words, don’t get distracted, Fabrizio, you know nobody is interested in that so go back to telling the story, and as I was saying  I could see that elbows on the table were aggressive, but people that are after a fight don’t put their elbows on the table. My expectation was that it would end well, but I knew that with the faintest negative stimulus the man would jump me. I waited for a bit and Zamani didn’t return the greeting.

 -I’ll do my best to help you, -"I’ll wait for you to explain". I waited patiently for his response.

And I waited. I didn't rush to follow the procedures that were specifically outlined by the organization where I worked. The first step was to ask for the name, confirm the person’s identity, ask for their identity document and to confirm date of birth, nationality and so on. If my boss had been supervising me, she would have already marked several Xs under "things to improve". I of course ignored that procedure, or to say it in true Venezuelan, which is how it should be said here, I passed it through the very lining of my balls. This guy was furious and needed to be heard, to let it all out. I waited, then added:

 -I’ll wait, don't worry, I'm here to help you. 

And Zamani only moved his chest for take deep and controlled breaths. His arms were thick, muscular, and his veins were visible. I imagined that the air he expired when he breathed came out hot and vaporous. It seemed as though he wanted to avoid an explosion.

 And so that he didn’t explode, I continued to wait  a few seconds longer. “Maybe he needs his adrenaline to drop”, I thought, a little worried about my safety. I visualized my escape plan in case he jumped across to strangle me, since it looked like I wouldn't have time to activate the emergency button. And just when I glanced at the door, I saw my manager beckoning me through the window with a gesture, something along the lines of “we-have-to-talk". I didn't pay any attention to her, of course. And I focused on Zamani. Nothing happened after allowing a reasonable amount of time to pass so his adrenaline to drop, what do I know if I am not a shrink, but thus, unarmed:

 -I'm here to help you, Sir -I repeated, and left a short pause to add - And to help you I need to know what's wrong.

I waited for a few more seconds to pass, which felt more like hours to me, possibly also for him, but I knew that this phrase needed to break into his consciousness, of which there was little. Little, yes, but enough to get him here, the right place to get help. Like a true Venezuelan I know very well how to react in moments of extreme tension because we’ve all gone through the training of being detained by the terrible Guardia Nacional, the fearsome malandros or any of the new police forces created by the dictatorship which I was spared the doubtful honour of meeting. Anyway, I tried to hold the silence for as long as possible so that the discomfort made him speak.

But I was the one that  felt uncomfortable when out of the corner of my eye I saw the manager making a gesture to me that I pretended not to notice. And it suddenly occurred to me that the problem was perhaps that neither of us spoke English as the primary language. So in slightly tarzan-esque English I repeated:

 -To help, I need to know. I know, I help, I don´t know, I don’t help. You tell me, I help.  

Nothing. There he was; still looking at the table. Firm elbows.  His head propped up by his hands. There wasn’t a single movement coming  from his extremities, only his breathing, always heavy, deep and sonorous. For me it wasn’t altogether easy to imagine what he was feeling. He was frightening, rather than pitiful, and that's why I continued to play tamer.

Certainly, I didn't yet know he’d been accumulating rage since he was a child. Less still, that his fate by birth was not to become a traumatised child, but the spoiled child of an Iranian upper middle class, with studies abroad and all the sophistication of Persian culture. He had a quiet and privileged childhood in Tehran. He had not learned much about the Islamic revolution, as he lived in the protected world of his home, which included domestic workers, and frequent visits from family and friends of his parents. They frequently travelled to Turkey, where they would go to the beach, and his mother enjoyed the markets of Istanbul, a city she preferred to Paris or Rome. But master Zamani was not impressed by Anatolian beaches because he preferred to play in the pool at home, originally built for an English diplomat, always clean and more often than not featuring some carefully selected family guest. Who would have thought that this child would have metamorphosed into this monster that everyone feared?

 -Take your time, Mr. Zamani. I am also a foreigner and I have become very angry in this country. Not everyone understands us, I know. 

And I decided to wait a few seconds longer. Maybe minutes. But hours according to my warped perception of time. And I was trying to understand what he was thinking but he didn't give me such a kinetic indication, his body motionless. I only managed to suppose that the night before the incident of the vengeful brick, Zamani travelled across the north of the city of Leeds, went downtown, grabbed a huge brick from a nearby building site and walked south of the city. He arrived  at our office to release all the anger he had against us, the Home Office, the United Nations, God and life. And all that with a brick against the vengeful window; and this time, as with all other occasions both in this country and in his native Iran, he was down on his luck, and with all his muscles he merely managed to get  bricked by the window in return. Poor Zamani.

And poor me, that the man was still silent. And poor me that the manager had disappeared and the internal phone had begun to ring, and I knew why. Obviously the manager, Debby. I unplugged it. My full attention available for Zamani once more .

 -I don't know what happened to you, but things have happened to me in this country too, that's why I came to work here, to help people like you, people like me.

I still didn't know what his problem was, but it was easy to guess from his fury that he was in a grave situation , or at least according to himself. For my part, I had to make him understand that there is a them and there is an us, there is a “you-and-I" that is us. It’s not very fair to my colleagues, but it’s the way to break this barrier. But nothing worked. He was still there, pinned down. I could still hear his breathing. His elbows were still pinned firmly to the table. Still I couldn't see a single sign that he was hearing  me, that there was empathy. And of course, I hadn’t yet learned that his family fell into disgrace due to his father's political membership, and that the revolution stripped them of all their privileges at great speed. The final privilege to be lost was his mother's freedom to wear a half-covered veil, in clear contravention of the rules imposed by the Ayatollahs and rigorously imposed by the moral guards. While still  accustomed to the privileges of being a wealthy child in an unequal society, he was forced as a child to see his mother stoned to death following a brutal trial. And with each stone came insults, to add humiliation to the pain. Every stone the mother received wounded him in the chest with a burning pain that would never leave him. And so he saw her die. And she died not only with the pain of stones and humiliation, but with the pain of seeing her son watching, to add more suffering. What a death!

 I kept asking myself how to break the ice. I couldn't let him go without solving his problem or he would kill someone, or would kill himself, or he would throw another brick at a window, preferably not ours again. And the manager reappeared at the window with her talk-later or I-have-something-to-say grimace. I made a gesture for later, a gesture indicating to wait, hoping for the best ... I waited a while and said:

 -Listen , Zamani, we’re not from the Home Office here. The Home Office is often wrong, maybe we can help you.

 I waited some more. Nothing. I kept waiting.

 -Zamani, listen, I need to help you. Look, I'm not doing it for the Refugee Council. I do it for me. To give my life some peace. I came to help because I want to help people like you: but I can't help you if you don't tell me the problem.

 And he finally looked up. He looked at me and made a gesture as if to say  "yes", yes something. I waited. I thought; "Looking at me, he won’t bear the silence," but he held on. And I had no choice but to carefully process his gaze, of only a few seconds, but it’s very intense when a gesture is all you have to go on to understand somebody. He had that look of doubt, of enquiry and of will-you-be-the-one-who-understands? A look of I can't cope any longer.

Until finally he took out a bunch of papers, documents, and various things he had in his pockets. They were wrinkled, folded, stained with coffee. I took the papers and saw notifications from the Home Office about housing…and also that one about his “liability to detention”, in other words that they can put you in prison without reason, for the simple fact that you  applied for asylum, for, you see, claiming asylum is your human right, but for asserting your right they can put you in jail, as vulgar as that, almost as much as Chavez threatening to put people in jail by national TV broadcast. Now here they’re more “civilized” than in Venezuela or Iran, they have judges with white wigs, and what they do is send you a little letter with your name and current address, and later on the judges with white wigs don’t question the legality of putting you in jail without having committed a crime. Civilised my arse. Callous beasts. This letter is not exactly comforting when they hand it to you while informing you that they’ll analyse your asylum application and you’ll have to wait for months or years. Years in limbo - better limbo than hell - but with the threat of hell, and to make it more pleasant, years you can be detained, just like that, for nothing more than ‘a stitch in their ass’, as they would say in Venezuela.

That letter, that piece of paper saying liability to detention always came up among the documents of refugees. It was one of many. It was never relevant. And yet there he was yelling at me about the injustices of the world. I am Venezuelan, just like Carlos, just like Sofía, just like my mate Arturo, the scientist-turned-entrepreneur. But there’s something different about me, something for which I cannot take credit. I’m also Italian, my parents are. It’s written in the Italian constitution, article 4.  It’s just their luck that the others receive this letter and I do not. For me if I go to prison it’s because I’ve killed somebody, no matter how stupid they are. Or I’ll go to jail for writing these stories, who knows. Or because some story offends one of these white wigs from a bygone nineteenth-century era. And now, in leaving the European Union, Europeans get goosebumps because of their newly insecure status, and look at Zamani, his status permits detention and deportation to hell rather than the horrors of Paris or tortures of the dolce vita.

 I kept looking through the papers. I read about articles that spoke about  his mother and father when they were arrested. I read an Amnesty International petition for his father. I read about their sonorous cases, years ago. I also read and learned about his childhood by reading testimonies from his parents' relatives in Canada and Germany. And I got to the letter that had led to his current state of alienation. "Your asylum request has been denied," it said.  

A few sentences later, this was followed by "there are no reasonable grounds  for your fears " because "the experience suffered by your mother, father and older brother are not related to your own circumstances..." which, by the way, is correct, if it’s being analysed by a computer that has been programmed by an extra-terrestrial robot. How can they say that his fear is unfounded because he wasn’t killed and that they will therefore not want to do anything to him? What kind of reasoning is that? Malparidos! 

You have to eat a lot of tinned ravioli to think like this. Or could it be the effect of  fries with vinegar? I kept looking and it was not easy to reassemble the sheaf of papers that made up  his asylum application because they were folded, curled, and unstapled. Filled with tiny little words, handwritten in Persian, underlined, fist marks, and of course, they were torn and stuck back together with sticky tape, all sorts, and with all kinds of marks to make you think the documents had been on tables, floors, trash cans, dumpsters. The papers had been  trampled on, spat on, insulted. When those sheets of paper left the factory, they didn't know they would go through so many forms of harassment. They were themselves wondering what could possibly be said by these words that could drive someone so crazy.

 -You’ve come to solve this problem, I imagine? I said showing him the document in which he was denied asylum.

 Zamani finally moved. He stared at me and something in his eyes said you get it, at last someone who understands. But right then during that magical moment,  the manager, Debby, appeared. She first appeared through the window, and then, breaking common practice  and the established protocols, she opened the door.

 -Fabrizio, sorry, but can we talk for a minute?

 I looked at Zamani to see if he looked like the type to smash her face in, which would have been convenient for me, so she can learn for once and for all not to interrupt these kinds of sessions. But unfortunately Zamani was more reasonable than Debby, so the manager managed  to keep all her teeth, preserving the work of her dentist, and leaving her uneven jaw bones, intact. I looked at the manager again and said:

 -Sure Debby, I'll be there in a moment,- I said, knowing that I had no intention of interrupting the session with Zamani.

-If you could come now, that’d be better, she said with a face of "once-again-Fabrizio-you-just-do-what-you-want"

 Zamani looked at me and somehow saw my face of "this-bastard-doesn't-understand-anything".

 -English people- said Zamani.

 Victory, I thought. This Zamani is more reasonable than the boss, as expected. So I made a gesture to Zamani and asked him to wait for a moment. I went to the door and walked out of the room. From the corner of my eye I saw Zamani saying no with his head and he repeated:

 -English people.

 When we went out Debby, with her cryptic smile and her usual rictus, showing her dentist's teeth, began her sermon.

 -Fabrizio, there are procedures. And today there are special circumstances. We have many service users so you have to be quick with this client.

 -Don't worry, Debby, I'll be as fast as possible.- I said knowing that I wouldn’t do it and that I would get into trouble, but at least the trouble would come later.

 -What's his problem?- She asked.

 -They denied him asylum.

 -Ah, something simple,- she said with a look of someone that knows it all - Refer him to the immigration office to arrange the return to his country and that way he can complete his section 4”. Section 4 is  the bureaucratic jargon used to refer to a request for financial support, by means of supermarket vouchers and temporary housing, while a return is being organized.

 -Ah, section 4, what a good idea,- I said knowing that this was a bad idea, let alone being far down the list of Zamani's priorities, although nobody cares about that. Not to mention that if the first thing I’d said to Zamani had been that his only solution  was to get packing, he would do nothing less than pack his things and go to Iran and make friends among the Ayatollahs, in any case, if I recommended that, the only things that would need packing would have been  little fragments from my  head, skull on one side and brains on the other, to send them back to Venezuela together with my coffin.

-Remember not to take too long-, Debby told me, - so far from what I thought and what I wanted to say: "Sure, motherfucker."

 And I was about to open the door to return  to the room with Zamani when Debby stressed:

 -And remember you’ve got to follow the procedures, Fabrizio. You need the security guard. He’s a dangerous person and we have confidential information saying he’s intransigent,” and she gave me a little pat on the back and a wink as if to say“you’re-a-naughty-child-and-we-need-to-keep-an-eye-on-you”.

 -He’s calmed down now, don't worry” I replied “and I don't think he’s too intransigent” I said, without adding, since I wasn’t yet aware myself, you are far more intransigent, after all she was the one that  hadinterrupted the session to tell me to hurry while he, who fears for his life and saw the death of his assassinated mother, agreed to the session’s interruption. And I suddenly become lost in the thought of  her ease to classify him as intransigent. And it does happen to me that sometimes I get stuck wrapped up in the things that people say, especially when they’re very  stupid and I cannot respond. And I said to myself  what about you, motherfucker, are you really so tolerant and open to negotiation, you call him intransigent and you interrupted me lots of times,what would you do if you punctured your shitty fucking bicycle, and you criticize him for being intransigent, go fry a monkey as we say in Venezuela. 

 -Are you sure?- she said.

 -sure about what?-; My thoughts had made me lose track.

 -What else would it be, Fabrizio, that he calmed down.

 -Oh, sure, yes. I'm completely sure” I said, not being sure in the slightest, but I needed at all costs to avoid having a security guard put inside there. It would have destroyed the atmosphere that we’d only just managed to build.

 At last I returned to the room where Zamani was. What a relief. I sat down. Took a breath. In truth, I  was rather missing the bulging veins, and the elbows firmly nailed to Zamani’s side of the table. Much better than that crazy woman with her worthless institutionalism that forces me into being a hypocrite.

 -What did your boss want?- said Zamani.

 -Nothing. It doesn't have anything to do with you, don't worry. It's that we have a problem with the alarms, do not worry” I lied. Of course I wouldn’t tell him that she doesn't like us solving problems to do with access to justice.

I took the handful of papers that at some point were the answer to his asylum request into my hands . I already imagined, as  was often the case, that his problem was that the lawyer didn’t want to continue to represent him but Zamani wanted him to continue. The logic in this country was very simple. Lawyers are paid by none other than  the Home Office itself, and the condition for payment is that they win 50% of cases or more before a Court of Appeal. That’s in Anglo-Saxon parlance, because in Venezuelan we’d be a little more prolific in our explanation, in other words that it’s is like a bet of sorts between the Home Office and the lawyer, and in this bet the Home Office says something along the lines of :

 “Hey lawyer, come here , something ‘ere for the both of us, so let's bet.  If you beat me for half the cases, I’ll pay you for all of them; if you don’t, you’ll lose your contract, go find yourself another job and write stories with Fabrizio, which  nobody reads, or you can both go sing Mexican rancheras together in the London underground. Wanna bet?”

 “OK, says the lawyer that has a mortgage to pay, on top of dental treatment for his children who need to smile like Debby.”

 Well, the idea of the bet is not a bad one. It has allowed capitalism to survive all its mistakes, but we are in England, and this must never be forgotten: there’s always small print and the small print is the only thing that counts. So to place its bet the  Home Officesays, again in good creole Venezuelan:

 "Well, mate, I’m not going to pay you for all your work, only for a very small number of hours, not many, I don’t want this to be a walk in the park for you, and if you start to investigate and get interpreters, hey pal, just let it be known I won’t  pay for any of those little luxuries, not even the luxury of understanding what it is that your victim’s got to say through somebody that speaks their language, don’t take me for a fool, no soy pendejo,  hell, I don’t need to tell you that if you start to find out exactly how it is that everything we make up is a lie, well it’ll come out your own pocket and you’ll lose.  Up to you. We’ll go halfsies. There’s enough bacon to go around here.”. 

 The Home Office pays the solicitor a set number of hours. And if the case can be appealed using a simple copy-paste from other cases, asylum seekers have a chance, if not, then no. So lawyers, who believe in justice and who are democratic and support human rights, end up more committed to staying afloat on easy money, instead of combating injustice at their own cost. As such, having registered the situation, I asked Zamani: 

  -So you want us to find you a lawyer or do you want us to talk to yours?

-Please,- he said. As if the answer was clear. 

  -Do not worry. The first thing will be to call your lawyer,- which would apply to whatever obvious response he thought he’d given. .

I called his lawyer. The receptionist answered. After some formalities and generic greetings she told me: 

  -Oh, excuse me, but what nationality is our client? 

 -Iranian. 

-Oh no, it can’t be done.

-What do you mean can’t be done, why?

-I’ve been instructed. No Iranians. 

-Well, I understand that,”-clearly there is much to understand. It’s shameless discrimination and confirmation that, in this country, if there’s a particular kind of fuckery that is not banned, forbidden, prosecutable, then that is exactly how they’ll fuck you over. Asylum claims aren’t assessed on merit but by discrimination on the grounds of nationality, wow.. 

  -Can I help you with anything else?- She recited with the usual do-not-bother-more-with-this-issue tone, and get-ready-to-turn-the-phone-off-without-you-being-able-to-say-that-I didn't-give-you-the-courteous-opportunity-to-talk-about-something. Typical. 

  - Yes, I understand, no Iranians. But this person used to be your client. He waited for years and was counting on your services as their lawyer and all of a sudden he’s abandoned, just like that. No further details..

 -Well, a lawyer reviewed his case and he received their letter. His asylum claim lacks evidence, it is weak.. 

  And how do you know if you are a secretary without legal training? I felt like asking. But it wasn't worth it. I had long known the explanation, it's very simple: If your client is Iraqi, your asylum application will be accepted, if they’re Iranian, it won´t. In Germany judges were of the opposite view.  But it couldn’t end here. 

 -And, apologies, how do you know that got everything if you don't know who I'm talking about?  

 -What’s the name of the client, please? 

 -Don´t-remember-his-first-name Zamani.

 -Date of birth? 

  And we continued the  standard  data privacy protocol. 

  -Well, as I said before, Sir, it says here he received his information. He doesn’t have a strong case. As far we’re concerned the case is closed, I’m sorry.-

 -I am sorry,” repeated Zamani, from his chair. From the tone he was using I was made to  think that he must also scoff at how much they say I'm sorry when this is far from how they feel, especially when their tone indicates only their great contempt and disinterest. For my part, I wanted to shout at her that they’re a bunch of penny pinchers, they have no commitment to justice, but my rage could only lead to them filing a complaint against me, although risking a complaint was perhaps worth it, I could have thought, at least that way Zamani would know I was on his side. 

  - The British are like that, I can imagine what she is saying,” said Zamani, having guessed the receptionist's replies correctly. .

  And I began to realise that Zamani knew surprisingly more than what it first seemed about the country where we lived. On the one hand, I wanted to tell him that there are English people who are not like that, like Sue. But greater was the temptation to yell at that secretary so that he understood I was on his side. But by the time it got to this point  I gathered he must understand that I had no choice but to uphold professional etiquette, where being professional means being indifferent. And as soon as I finished the phone call, Zamani told me: 

  - Well, now is the time to look for another lawyer, one that believes in justice.

  I suddenly confirmed that I was dealing with someone of great intelligence and not some wild beast, no matter how mad it was to throw stones at our bulletproof windows. No wonder that when I asked him whether to call his lawyer or look for another he simply said "please". He already knew the script in advance. What a relief, finally. Now I was going to look in my notebook for an Iranian lawyer’s phone number, of Italian culture, who had studied at the same university as my father, La Sapienza. I wanted to tell Zamani about this lawyer, to whom by the way I certainly enjoyed talking to, and who would reward me for allowing him to speak Italian by taking on more Iranian cases than was reasonable. But luck is often in short supply and at that moment, just then, Debby appeared through the window again. Again with her I-have-something-to-say grimace and circular hand movements, akin to a robot. 

  - There's your boss again- Zamani said, and pounded his fist on the table. 

 -I'm going to call a lawyer who I think could help you.- I said ignoring Debby.

 -I'd prefer if you call this one,- and he pulled out a card. 

 What a great coincidence. It was the same lawyer. Except this wasn’t at all a coincidence; it’s not like there were many committed Iranian lawyers, and in this very region to boot. I started to dial the phone number, but Debby came in with the security guard. 

  -Are you all right? 

 -Yeah, fine 

 -Please can you come out for a moment?

-Of course, as soon as I finish, I'm on the phone with someone.  

-You can call them later. 

-No, I can't, I'm on hold because they’re looking for some documents for me, they’re on the other line and asked me to wait- I lied, holding the phone right up against my ear  so that she wouldn’t hear the monotone beep indicating that the line was busy. 

 -Ok, I'll wait for you,” said the boss. And she left. 

 -What do you think she wants- asked Zamani as soon as the door was closed.

 -Nothing. She wants me to hurry up and was frightened by you punching the table. She thought you were going to kill me,- I said jokingly. 

 -What can I do to give you more time? 

 "Fill out a Section 4 form,” and I gave it to him. 

  As the lawyer did not answer due to the line still being busy, I went out to speak to the boss. After many questions on her part I explained that Zamani had decided to apply to Section 4. The boss congratulated me. I went back to Zamani. 

  -We have a few more minutes, Zamani,- I said. 

  I dialled the number again and realised that there was something absurd about the situation. How is it possible that Zamani had this contact and gave me the phone number but he hadn’t called the number himself or appeared at their offices. I thought this guy was smart, and he didn’t seem shy at all. In fact, he came in like the Hulk wherever he went, and I simply could not square the two together. 

 -Do you want to speak once they respond?- I asked. 

-Do not!!! Please! That's the problem; the secretary won't let me speak to the lawyer.

 Suddenly I remembered that my dad once said something along the lines of to have a friend who’s a minister is to have a good contact but is of little use without making friends with their secretary. And here was Zamani giving me evidence that my father's sociological intuition was correct. I waited on the phone, the famous secretary, who held the keys to power, answered, until I finally spoke with Izadi, the Iranian lawyer. We had a relatively long conversation as a greeting, without mentioning  for whom I was making a referral. Izadi just liked to talk in Italian, whatever the topic. But when I told him about Zamani, a cold water bath fell on me, which luckily was in a language that Zamani did not understand. 

 -Me ne vado, I'm done, I'm leaving. I'm moving country. I’m going to Canada where I have family and where I don't have to go through the things that happen here

  -I'm glad for you, Izadi. I’ve heard very good things about Canada. Many friends live there and love that country. Lucky you. In bocca al lupo! 

  -Hey, why did you call me?” 

  -I wanted to refer you to an Iranian client. Typical case where lawyers appear to represent their clients, but when it’s time to take it to the court for appeal, they say the  case is weak. 

  -I won't be able to take the client, sorry. My departure is imminent. 

  -I figured Iza, but can't you leave the case to one of your colleagues? 

  -Impossible, I already left them a lot of cases that they think are lost. My clients will be abandoned. 

  -Well, Iza, that's a shame for my service user, I'll let him know. Again, in bocca al lupo, good luck. 

  Now it was time to talk to Zamani. I tried to gather my strength. How do I tell him that the Iranian-friendly lawyer who also speaks Farsi is leaving the country? I was about to speak to Zamani but Debby, the manager appeared again. 

  -Fabrizio, can we talk for a minute?”

 -Well, give me a second with Zamani and I'll go outside and we can talk.

  She left and Zamani came to my rescue, in the most unexpected way. For a second I thought he had understood the conversation, but I realised that no, was simply helping me control my boss. 

  -Hey Fabrizio," said Zamani" tell her I'm going to commit suicide. 

  -What do you mean? Are you going to commit suicide? 

  -Do not be silly. Listen. If you tell her I told you I'm going to commit suicide, we have more time to talk" and winked" You are going to have to follow another protocol. You can  make sure  that everything in the notes is fine and that's it! And in the meantime we can continue speaking with the lawyer.   

-Ok, I think it's a good idea," I said, admiring his cunning.

  But even if the idea were a good one, unfortunately it could actually happen that Zamani would be driven to thinking of committing suicide, if he found out that the lawyer that has any hope is leaving the country. It was ironic that the Zamani monster helped me control the personification of the bureaucracy by pretending to say something that he would probably think when I told him what I had to say. I went out to talk to the boss with a thousand ideas entangled in my head. 

  -Hello Debby, I have a delicate situation- I said. 

  -Fabrizio, you have to finish. You have to be professional. It can't be that it takes you so long to fill out a worksheet for a section 4! I know you're a good member of staff but you have to respect the boundaries. Again, she looked at me and I could read her expression as  “Fabrizio, you are a nice cheeky child but we have to control you”. 

  -Debby, he just told me that he is going to commit suicide.

 -Well you know what you have to say. Go and make sure to refer him properly so that they take care of his mental health. And don't forget to write your notes very carefully. 

  -Sure.- And I went to talk to Zamani. 

  I went to talk to him and he immediately asked me: 

  -You got rid of that monster? 

  -For a while. I'm supposed to refer you to specialised medical services and alert other organisations about your intentions 

-And you forgot that you have to tell me that you have to breach my expectations of confidentiality because you have to protect a life.

-Exactly.

 I explained everything to Zamani about the lawyer. Poor man. I followed the procedure for referrals of this kind, of course. And we agreed that he would return so that we could  refer him to lawyers in London. He told me that he knew lawyers in London. And Zamani left calmly. Very calm indeed. I was happy because he helped me control Debby, which turned out to be a far more difficult endeavour. 

And a few weeks later the boss called me to her office. She had an indecipherable face. And she said: 

  I have two bits news, one good and one bad. We start with the bad”

 -Okay.

 -Zamani committed suicide.

 -And the good one?

  -They were investigating you. You did everything right. You referred him, you alerted the competent authorities, you disclosed the information according to the Data Protection Act, followed all the procedures and you wrote perfect casenotes. All very professional.

  -Thank you. 

Translated by Fabiana Macor

 

Two questions for Mamostá

                      Translated by Derekk Ross

Zaid was a client of the British Refugee Council, where I used to work, and the first time I saw him it was my job to take down his details - first name, surname, nationality - in order to register him on the system. The moment I asked him whether he was Muslim (following the questions on the proforma which I had to follow) he accused me of being a racist.

My immediate thought was that I was dealing with another of these stubborn, pig-headed types, but at the same time there was something about his aggressive behaviour which I quite liked, even if it was directed towards myself. Towards myself, yes, but only accidentally. I showed him the form I was filling out, in which there were boxes containing the names of the most common religions of the people who attended the refugee service.


"Look", I said to him, "It's of no interest to me personally what your religion is; I have to put something down, and the first box in the list asks me to put a tick if you're a Muslim". - The form wasn't my own design but merely a procedure I had to follow.


I should explain - I didn't understand his rational: he was Iraqi, or some such culture; his name was Zaid or whatever, he's from the Islamic world, although more atheist than Voltaire; and indeed all the Iraqis I know - and I know a lot - are Muslim. In other words I didn't have the remotest idea what was going on in his mind for saying what he said, but I was convinced nonetheless that he was an interesting person - really interesting - if categorically wrong. And however huge the fallacy of his argument, this moment, this moment in particular, was not one for discussing his reasoning. So I limited my response to simply showing him that I was not a part of the prejudice that he carried around with him. I made sure that he could see clearly the form on the screen. He leaned in, looked very closely and then nodded, as if to say I knew I was right, and then he said,

"There are several options. Only one of them is Muslim. Others are atheist or agnostic. Why did you assume I might be Muslim?


This guy thinks that he is smart, I thought. And also - I continued to think - of course! He's assuming I think everyone in Iraq is Muslim - though of course that's not at all what I was thinking. Probably none of my colleagues would know anything about this (at least not Paul, Vicky, Debby and William, as they never read anything about anything, not even the few university students - their weekends are dedicated to their family or partners, or to just getting drunk, if they happen to be single) but in Venezuela I had learnt about the Kurdish people and I knew something of Iraq. And I knew all this without even knowing a single Kurd or a single Iraqi. Some of it came from a leaflet published by the Centro Gumilla - to whom I am more indebted for my education than my actual Alma Mater - and other bits came from reports I had read earlier, published by the MIR (Revolutionary Left Movement). So I knew that there were Jews in Iraq too, although Saddam Husain had tried to eradicate them, and of course I could guess that there were many atheists, as the Ba'ath party was secular and had support from amongst the non-religious.

And this Zaid smart arse thinks I'm as ignorant as everyone else. But all the same, I wasn't going to fall into the trap of saying, "Yeah, I knew they weren't all Muslims". And then a more interesting idea occurred to me:

This guy could be a religious dissident, someone who doesn't fit in with the general culture of his country and is asserting his identity, and I, stupidly, by following the procedures of this British burocracy, was unequipped to have the sensitivity of asking him about these things. Who's to tell me not to follow my own instincts and intuitions? (which actually happen to be better!)


But I knew I wasn't there to show any solidarity with his political stand so I defended myself through purely statistical argument. I said to him, "Listen, the majority of Iraqis are Muslim. All those that have come here are Muslim. But the important point thing is that I personally don't have anything against Muslims." And he nodded as if to say, "So you're agreeing with me". And I continued to feel a little uncomfortable.


"So you see, I'm not being prejudiced here in the way you thought I was. Because yes, it's merely a statistical probability, and I have no negative feelings about it either way. I'm just filing in the form."


"Are you a Muslim?" He asked.


"Me? No. What's that got to do with it?"


"It has everything to do with it. Are you a believer?"


And his question annoyed me because I was losing the time I had left to interview people and if I had problems to sort out I was going to have to meet with my bosses, who only assessed my work by the actual length of the sessions. So I told him,
 "No, I'm not a believer" and he immediately added,
"And if you're a non-believer then you assume that all religions are a made up fantasy, an elaborate superstition, don´t you?"


And I had to answer him with care because I could see that I was dealing with someone difficult, astute, capable of reasoning, but stubborn and misguided, happy to waste my time. To be honest, I didn't want to argue.


"Yes, I have my own beliefs about religion, naturally, but I don't judge people by their religion and I've known very intelligent people who are believers and also stupid people who are atheists, but please, can we move on, otherwise if you need help I'm not going to have enough time..." But he interrupted me:


"-It seems to me that you think there are believers who are intelligent despite the fact that they are believers, and stupid people who despite being stupid are atheists"

I was getting quite annoyed by this point and I lent back in order to listen to his little arguments, which isn't to say they were bad, but this wasn't the time - he wasn't gaining anything from this and anyway he was completely wrong.

"...Anyway", Zaid went on, "intelligent people are influenced by science and think religion is less important. And you assumed I'm from the Middle East and because of that, I'm stupid and a believer"

"Look, I promise you, I didn't assume you were stupid. Just that you were a Muslim, and I was wrong there. It was an error and I corrected it so let's move on. What was I supposed to have done anyway? What question should I have asked you?


"You should have asked, 'Do you have a religion?' "


"Ok, I'm sorry."

What a pain this guy is, I thought, and I got ready to finish the rest of the questionnaire as quickly as possible. Time was moving on and the managers would be complaining that I was too slow. Of course an English person on the desk would have said from the start "This is about your religion, not mine, so let's have an answer". But here I was with all these digressions and this smart Alec with his idiot face. So I said to him,

"Ok, let's start again. Do you have a religion?".

And without waiting for his reply I put a cross in the box that said 'non-believer'. I was happy that this point had been resolved. But then he replied:


"Yes. I am a Muslim".

So that was Zaid. He liked an argument and he was good at it. And no presumption was correct. He had already defeated me twice, intellectually, but in an unfair fight because I had nothing to do with the design of these proformas. I asked him to consider better use of his time - which wasn't unlimited - and said I did want to help him: what was it that was bothering him? And he looked at me as if to say Let's see what you're going to come up with now.


The next question was about languages. No chance of messing this one up. No way he could lark about this time. He was an Iraqi. But he was good at arguing (if somewhat inappropriately), and so this is how I asked him about language:


"Languages that you speak. Arabic and English?"


"I don't speak Arabic"


Don’t fuck about with me, I thought. This guy is Iraqi and he's gonna tell me he doesn't speak Arabic? In Iraq they speak Arabic and this one even speaks English. So how is that possible? I felt trapped: It could be that in some villages in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan, they don't speak Arabic but this guy speaks like he's educated and his English isn't at all bad. So, I was a bit intrigued, but I carefully followed his previous 'lesson', almost like I was playing his game:


"Sorry. 'What languages do you speak?' ", I asked him.


"Kurdish and English"


"Ok, sorry. I just assumed you must speak Arabic"


I was trying to apologise so as not to fall into another diplomatic incident with Zaid, now that I could see what a difficult type of person he was. On the other hand, I was thinking: this is happening to me because of the way I am. It wouldn't be like this with someone else in my place because his prejudice would have been cut short from the very start and this Zaid guy would have found himself at the mercy of the Institution. In any case, an English colleague would have just said to him the complaints form is over there on the right, there you go. Or he'd have refused to deal with him, and that would've been that. And here I am trying to negotiate with his prejudices. It's not by chance that my sessions were always the longest. But hey, I carried on regardless in my own style - which was, nonetheless, detrimental to me. I continued:


"Very sorry. I thought that schools in Iraq taught in Arabic"


"Yes, they do speak Arabic in Iraqi schools"


"Ah! So you didn't study in Iraq?" I asked, hoping that would clear up the mystery.


"Yes, I studied in Iraq. School and University"


His answer intrigued me because here he was telling me more than what I'd asked for, when up to now he'd always shown himself to be very sparing in the information he gave out. Clearly he did want to talk, though I didn’t want to argue. But still I couldn't resist asking him:


"So the teaching isn't in Arabic?"


"Yes, the schools and universities are in Arabic", he said, without further comment, as though it were all completely logical.


"But yours weren't in Arabic?" -there was nothing but that left for me to ask.

"Yes they were in Arabic. I studied in Arabic."


"Then why do you say you don't speak Arabic?"


"Because... I don't speak Arabic because I don't want to."