Web of Lies

Two children who campaigned to free their father from prison were rewarded on Christmas Eve when he was released by special order of the Home Secretary. Folarin Solaja, a journalist from Nigeria, has been on hunger strike for the last two weeks at Heathlands Detention Center. He is seeking asylum in Britain.

In Nigeria, Solaja is known for his outspoken criticism of the dictator General Abacha. Six weeks ago his wife was shot dead by gunmen in an attack at his Lagos home. Solaja says that further death threats were made to his family. “I was their real target. These assassins were acting on the highest orders.”

Solaja admits that his children, Sade, 12, and Femi, 10, were smuggled into London and that he tried to enter Britain a week later with false papers. “I did not know where my children were and I was desperate to find them before sorting out my position.” He says he was not aware that claims for asylum have to be made immediately on arrival. “When challenged by immigration officers, I tried to explain, but I was arrested.”

Solaja says “a miracle” reunited him with his children, who had been aban
doned in London by their courier. A refugee adviser visiting Heathlands Detention Center was able to identify them despite the false surname they had given to social workers.

When Nigerian officials demanded Solaja’s extradition on a charge of murdering his wife, he began a hunger strike. “They trumped up the charge to get me back. I have always fought for the truth. It pains me that we had to lie about ourselves to save our lives.”

Solaja paid tribute to his children for bringing his plight to the attention of a television news presenter. Asked about their father’s release, Sade replied, “He is our best Christmas present.”

London
September 1997

1
“Hi, Little Brother!”

The first hullabaloo left Femi pressed against the wall like a leech. The blaring bell brought a tidal wave of bodies swooping down the corridor. He glimpsed his friend Gary’s sandy-brown hair bob away and disappear. By the time he could prize himself off the wall, he was alone. Late and lost.

From behind closed doors came the muffled sounds of classes settling down. He scurried along the empty corridor, trying to delve into his bag at the same time. He needed to consult his map. There was a T-junction coming up. Was math to the left? His heart was already pumping fast when the second hullabaloo struck. A whacking great thud…a raw, yelping howl…sudden laughter. Then a posse of older boys careered around the corner from the left, one almost tumbling over Femi. The boy swore as Femi’s eyes met his. Dark black pupils in a
delicate brown web. A flicker like a camera shutter. Femi didn’t wait. He darted around the corner.

Deep, awful moans arose from a man crouched in the doorway of the nearest classroom. With his head drawn in like a wounded soldier’s, he was rocking back and forth, clutching one hand over the other. Femi gaped at the emerging tattoo of red rivulets.

The children inside the room looked strangely frozen, except for a girl and boy standing close behind the kneeling figure. First years, like Femi.

“Miss! Help, Miss!” They signaled frantically at a teacher hurrying down the corridor. Noisy older students spilled out from the classroom behind her.

“Sir’s fingers caught in the door, Miss!” squealed the girl.

“Someone slammed it, Miss!” The boy looked ashen. “Sir was looking the other way!”

Femi stood transfixed as a crowd swirled around him to see the injured teacher.

“WHAT is going on here?” a voice thundered behind them. “Get back to class immediately, all of you! Back to class!”

Femi had only been two days at Avon High, but already he recognized the voice of Mr. Gordon, the deputy head teacher. Flash Gordon! His sister, Sade, had told him the nickname. It was a joke. He was tall and broad shouldered, but he had a large pot belly and thinly spread-out gray hair. However, his voice was deep and powerful, and it propelled Femi out of the combat zone, down the corridor in search of his math class.

“Sorry, Miss, I got lost!” Femi mumbled.

Ms. Hassan raised her eyebrows and placed him in an empty seat close to her, nowhere near Gary or any of the others from his primary school. This was 7B’s second lesson with Ms. Hassan, and Femi had already seen that her tongue was even sharper than her eyebrows. Terminator eyebrows, said Gary. Femi tried to concentrate on the numbers that squeaked out from the chalk scratching the blackboard. He copied the multiplication problems into his new exercise book slowly and neatly. But when it came to filling in the answers, the pen poised above the page, he began to panic, trying to think. But his brain could only conjure up a figure curled up in pain—and a pair of eyes clicking in front of him like a camera shutter. When Ms. Hassan did not collect the books but said they should complete the problems for homework, he breathed more easily.

Femi slid next to Gary as they left the room. Even before Gary opened his packet of crisps, Femi was recounting his tale of bloodcurdling cries and a teacher on the floor with blood spurting like a fountain from his hands. He said nothing, however, about the posse of boys in flight. Something made him hold back. Instead, he let Gary go on about the class hearing a weird faraway howl and how Ms. Hassan had stopped anyone from leaving their desks.

They had been friends for a whole year now. Gary had joined the top class at Greenslades Primary. Femi had been new the year before and had slipped into being a
loner. But something about Gary had appealed to him. He liked the way Gary had shrugged off comments about his Liverpool accent. His mother had brought him down to London to live with a new stepdad. There had been gossip about his real dad dying in a terrible accident, but Femi had never asked questions. He knew about not prizing open a lid that was nailed down.

By lunchtime the rumors had spread about a teacher losing a finger. There was talk of an ambulance driving into Avon school. Someone said they had seen a police car. However, apart from Gary, Femi didn’t tell anyone else that he had seen the teacher rocking in agony on the floor.

They were edging nearer the cafeteria hatch when Femi felt a hand on his shoulder. He swung around.

“Hi, little brother! Long time no see!” The boy with the dark-brown camera eyes smiled and hustled between him and Gary. Femi bit his lip.

“Keep my brother’s place, right!” the older boy ordered Gary, steering Femi away.

“There’s a girl, Sade, in my class. Is she your sister?” The grip allowed no resistance, but the boy’s voice was soft and quite friendly.

Femi nodded, avoiding looking up.

“Yeah, you look alike, but you’re not as pretty as her, are you?”

Femi swallowed, his mouth dry.

“Just a joke, right! What’s your name?”

Femi managed to say his name, not much louder than a whisper.

“Okay, Femi. I want you to give her a message.”

So, was this just about Sade—not about the teacher losing a finger? Femi picked up courage.

“But you said she’s in your class.” He couldn’t hide the puzzlement.

“Girls like a bit of mystery!” The boy laughed. “Just tell her Errol likes her and don’t tell her how you know.”

“Is that you? Errol?” Femi ventured.

“No way, man! You don’t know Errol Richards?”

Femi shook his head.

“Where’ve you been, man? You live around here and you don’t know Errol Richards? You, little brother, sure got a lot to learn!”

Femi didn’t want to say that he had indeed heard the surname Richards. There had been a Richards in the year above him at his primary school, and he had tried to keep well clear of him. That Richards had been sent to another school, to the relief of most of the children. Femi didn’t know what to say now. It would be awkward to ask if they were related. Instead, he shot a glance at the line queuing up for lunch. Gary was nearly at the front.

“I’ve got to—”

The older boy smiled and put his arm around Femi again.

“Well, even if you’re still a bit ignorant, I like you, Femi. You’ll learn fast, man. You need to, around here. You need somebody to look out for you—like Errol did for me.”

There was something the older boy wasn’t saying.

“The brothers need to stick together, right?” The boy
was bending over now, almost whispering. Femi felt the pressure of the hand on his shoulder. “There’s always someone wants to put us down…make up stories…things they didn’t see with their own eyes. You know what I mean?”

Femi didn’t know whether to nod or shake his head. When you can’t see what is underfoot in the forest, how do you know where to step? He was being steered back toward Gary, who was calling anxiously.

“You give that message to your sister, right? You tell me what she says next time I see you, little brother!” The boy spoke loud enough for Gary to hear as he gave Femi a slight shove toward the cafeteria hatch.

“Is he your brother? You never said!” Gary jutted his chin out accusingly.

Femi frowned.

“Not that kind of brother. I’m hungry. Thought I was going to miss my turn.”

The lady at the hatch eyed him.

“Chips, please.”

Femi didn’t want Gary to interrogate him. He didn’t even know the older boy’s name. Why did he choose Femi to talk to as a “brother”? This wasn’t just a message for Sade. The camera eyes made that clear. It was a message to him.

They headed for a table that was filling up. Two year-seven girls were at the center of a cluster.

“Sir had his fingers in the door. Must have broken all of ’em! It was a right slam!”

“It was only his forefinger! I saw the bit at the end hanging off.”

“Yuck! You didn’t!”

“I did. It was horrible. But only for a second like, before Sir grabbed it, trying to push it back!”

“Jason says he saw the fingertip fly across the room!”

There was a burst of laughter.

“Oh, disgusting! D’you mind, we’re eating.”

“Did Sir see who did it?”

“Nah! He was just screaming and bawling his head off!”

“Slammed the door from behind, didn’t they?”

“Change the conversation, will you? I’m going to be sick!”

Flash Gordon called a special assembly after lunch. Images from the morning flooded back as the deputy head teacher spoke about “a very serious incident.” He emphasized that it was a temporary teacher who was involved.

“A visitor new to our school, helping us out, and this is how we welcomed him….”

Femi felt his stomach cramping. Being new was something he knew all about.

“One finger was almost severed. The doctors are still struggling to see what they can do. If charges of assault are made, the police will…”

Another sharp cramp. Femi pressed his folded arms against his lower ribs.

“…it will be better for everyone if the matter can be handled within school. It might have started as a foolish prank with someone not thinking of the consequences.
However it occurred, I want whoever is responsible to own up and do the decent thing now. Anyone else—who heard or saw anything—should come and see me as soon as possible.”

Blood rushed up to Femi’s head, making it throb. Gary poked him.

“Get up, Femi! We’ve already missed twenty minutes!”

Femi threw himself into the football practice in an effort to wipe out the words from assembly. But when he and Gary jostled their way out of the front entrance after school, a new spasm of cramp gripped Femi’s stomach. Flash Gordon loomed over them on the front steps. He looked grim enough to be an immigration officer! Femi wanted to tell Gary, to try to make a joke of it. But he had hardly ever spoken, not even to Gary, about their immigration trouble. When their year-six class at Greenslades Primary had made a day trip to France, Femi and a new girl from Kosovo were the only two children left behind. In school Femi had made light of it. He had pretended that he wasn’t bothered about spending a day with year fives while Gary and the others went off on their bus and ferry. But at home he had cried himself to sleep, tasting the salt in his tears. Papa had explained that until the government accepted that they were proper refugees, they couldn’t get any travel documents. Femi could leave England, but the immigration officers wouldn’t let him back in! They would separate him from Papa and Sade. Where would they expect him to go? A twelve-year-old
boy, who didn’t even speak French, all alone in France.

Just as Gary had never spoken of what happened to his dad, Femi had said nothing about Papa being locked up when he first arrived in the country. Nor did Gary know about The Interview. In Heathlands Detention Center, Papa had filled in a long form about why it was too dangerous for them to go home to Nigeria. He had described the police raids on their home in Lagos as well as the day the gunmen came. Femi had seen a copy of the form when Mr. Nathan, their lawyer, wanted to check what the children remembered of events that Femi preferred to forget. Mr. Nathan had turned over pages and pages filled with Papa’s small, neat writing. Obviously the immigration officers thought Papa might be lying. That was why Papa had to go to The Interview. They would try to trip Papa up. Trap him. Then they would refuse him permission to stay in England. Papa and the children would be put on a plane back to Nigeria, where General Abacha and his soldiers would be waiting for them.

Papa had prepared himself like he was getting ready for an exam. He didn’t know when he would be called, and every month he had to report to the police station as an asylum seeker. They had waited almost a year. Femi had just moved into year six when a letter arrived with “IND” printed boldly on the front. The Immigration and Nationality Directorate ordered Papa to present himself at Heathrow Airport. Only Papa was to be interviewed, not the children. It was very scary. What if the immigration officers suddenly forced Papa on to a plane—or took him back to prison? On the day of The Interview, Femi
kept expecting his head teacher to appear at the classroom door. She would call him out to give him the bad news.

By the end of school, however, there had been no news. He and Sade had run all the way back to their flat. It was empty. They had waited, fearing the worst. Papa arrived in the evening. He looked wrung out.

I told them everything—the whole truth. We should be all right.

Femi knew that he was just trying to reassure them. None of the immigration officers at the Asylum Screening Unit had made him feel “all right.” But Papa insisted that their case was very strong and they must continue to be patient.

They had waited and waited. Every time Mr. Nathan tried to find out what was happening, he was told that a decision had not yet been made. When another letter finally arrived with “IND” on the envelope, Femi and his sister had been on tenterhooks. They watched as Papa’s eyes moved down the page. Shaking his head, he had exploded.

I don’t believe it!

The immigration officers had lost all his papers, including their own records of The Interview. The letter informed Papa that he must apply all over again. Mr. Nathan had been furious as well. But there was nothing Mr. Nathan or Papa could do except submit a new form. Another year on, with Femi now at Avon High, Papa was still waiting to be called to Interview Number Two.

“Hey, Femi, aren’t you coming?”

Gary’s question jolted him. Femi had stopped near the
gate. Papa’s instructions were for him and Sade to wait for each other and to walk home together. Even in broad daylight Papa was anxious for their safety. Femi scanned the students milling by the gate. On the first two days of term, Sade had been waiting there, so it had seemed quite natural to walk off together. But today she wasn’t there. He didn’t want to say anything about Papa’s instructions. Even Gary might laugh at him being treated like an infant. He turned to see if Sade was following. She wasn’t. But Flash Gordon was now walking toward the gate.

“Yeah, coming.” Femi adjusted the bag on his shoulder and turned quickly into the High Street behind his friend. He knew that Sade would wait for him, like Papa told her. She would be mad. So would Papa. Well, he would just have to handle the storm when it came.

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