The Refugee Hotel

By Olivia Rana (Runner-up)

Every Saturday night Amina Deng sneaked out of her room and made her way down Chapel Lane, and into the Cathedral Quarter of Belfast. She didn’t care that she might get caught, because it’s hard to punish someone who doesn’t have any privileges in the first place. This boldness was the only thing that made her feel alive, that kept Amina from disappearing into herself.

She took photographs on her phone of street art and cobbles on Hill Street and the colourful suspended umbrellas above Commercial Court. Images helped her map out each new place, and to make sense of it somehow. She studied the cocktail menu in the Spaniard on Skipper Street and imagined herself ordering a Pornstar martini, but it was £8 and that would be all the money she had for the week. She asked for a glass of water with lime and sipped it slowly while listening to the raspy soulful sounds of jazz music. At that moment her heart was overflowing with optimism, and she wished that she could bottle it up and feed it to her mother who wanted only to lie in bed and cry.

Amina knew that people in the bar were watching her as she moved to the music, this dark-skinned slender girl, with high cheekbones and a short afro. She liked that they looked at her, that she was seen. In the bathroom, she listened to the girls fixing their makeup, their voices high with alcohol. From their chatter, she picked out words and saved them on her phone: aye, dander, baltic, geg. Amina would try them out on her sister tomorrow to see if she could guess the meaning. It was a game they had. Already she had fifty-seven words of Belfast slang. She’d highlighted the word banjaxed, and practiced saying it with a Belfast accent. ‘I’m banjaxed.’ It meant something that was ruined or broken. Amina wanted to hang out with these girls in sequin dresses and high heels, but they would consider her odd, a girl wandering around bars alone like that. They would think she was a street walker, a fajira, so she continued to The National on her own. Amina liked the industrial design and the cosy little nooks in the lounge where lovers hid. In Yambio county, strict sharia law banned intimacy in bars, and alcohol, and tight black dresses. If her friend Mariam was with her, they would dance their asses off to the RnB music, and get so drunk they would be falling over one another in fits of laughter.

Amina’s head was full of Mariam as she descended the stairs. She thought of her friend being dragged from her bed by rebel forces, and heard her terrified screams. After that night, Amina’s father decided to send Amina away with her mother and three sisters, thinking he was saving them. It was a journey that had turned her mother inside out and when Amina thought of it now, she felt herself gasping for breath, hurrying to get out into the air.

She was forced to stop midway on the stairs because someone was blocking her, a boy who was bent over tying his laces. She saw his eyes flick to her slim legs as he rose to meet her. ‘Sorry,’ he said, but he didn’t move to let her pass. Amina saw his green eyes, and something settled in her.

‘Callum, are you coming?’ his friends called from the top of the stairs, but he waved them away.

‘You’re not leaving already?’ he said to Amina. He had a lopsided smile that made him look shy, but he was so certain. ‘It’s only early.’

He took her hand then, and she followed Callum up to Nightclub Sixty-Six because she wanted to forget about everything. She’d never held a boy’s hand before and it made her feel safe, the firmness of it, like his name. Callum bought her a real gin and tonic and tipped his bottle of Rockshore against her glass. Amina liked the way the alcohol loosened her spine, and they danced at the side of the bar with their drinks in their hands.

He leaned in so that Amina could smell his aftershave, like mandarin and lemon. ‘Where are you from?’

‘I’m from Botswana.’ Saying she came from Sudan would break the spell. ‘My friend James went to Botswana on a Safari, said it was class.’

Amina could feel his hand on her waist.

‘So, what’s a girl like you doing in Belfast?’ he asked.

‘I work as a nurse, in the Royal.’ Now that she’d started, the lies came easy. ‘I’ve been working there for six months.’

‘There’s a shortage of nurses here alright,’ he said. ‘The NHS has gone to the dogs.’

Amina thought of the time she stood on a rusted nail, and her father had to take her on a bus to the state hospital. It had cost them two hundred Naira, money that was meant for rent.

Callum told her that he’d graduated from university two months ago as a software engineer, and he’d already got a job. ‘I know it sounds boring,’ he said, ‘but it pays the rent.’

It sounded impressive to Amina. Barely anyone from her village ever went to college. She’d wanted to go to the teacher training college in the city, but when the militia moved in, her chances vanished.

Amina could have stayed with Callum all night, but she had to leave or she might be locked out and would have to sleep on the street again. She told him she had to find her friends and Callum asked for her number, programming it into his phone. ‘I never asked you your name,’ he said.

‘I’m Amina.’ She felt shy saying this little truth.

‘A-me-na.’

She liked the way it sounded from his mouth, the slowness of it.

Callum leaned in and kissed her on the lips and Amina stepped back suddenly, her mouth fizzing.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Amina had never heard a man apologise, and it made her smile. She floated down the stairs and back up Skipper Street and Hill Street, and when she arrived at the Refugee Hotel, the security man, Jack, buzzed her through the door. Jack had kept Amina’s secret from her mother, because here in Belfast, girls like her were free enough to do such things. ‘A good night?’ he asked, as Amina signed her name in the book.

‘It was a cracker,’ she said, using one of the words she’d collected.

Jack laughed. ‘You’re getting the hang of Belfast speak. Next thing you’ll be singing Van Morrison songs.’

Amina took the lift to the third floor. The mirror in the lift was cracked and it made Amina look like she was split in two. She swiped her card up against the door and snuck quietly into the room which was now their home. By the light of her phone, Amina changed out of her short dress in the bathroom and removed her makeup. The bathroom was crammed with wet clothes hanging from the shower rail, and the floor was littered with bags, books, and shoes, because they were a family of four living in one room. Amina closed her eyes and tried to remember the feel of Callum’s hand on her skin.

The two double beds were pushed together, the rest of the space cluttered with household items – an ironing board, her mother’s prayer mat that was no longer used, and a scooter that her sisters rode up and down the corridors all day long. Six-year-old Fiza and their youngest sister, Suma, who was still being bottle-fed at age three years old, shared a bed with their mother, dead to the world on sleeping pills. Amina slipped in beside Nadima who was awake. Nadima wanted to hear something cheerful because she was fourteen and hadn’t been allocated a place in a school, and had no friends except her sister.

‘I met a boy,’ Amina whispered.

Nadima wanted to know everything and Amina told her it all, like a bedtime story, until they were yawning with sleep. ‘Do you think he will call?’ Nadima asked. ‘That you will be his girlfriend?’

‘No. It was one night only.’ Amina couldn’t imagine anything different for a girl like

her.

He didn’t call, but he sent her a text. Amina received it when she was trying to fish out a piece of bread that Fiza had gotten stuck in the toaster.

Did you find ur friends ok?

Yes

Sorry if I was too forward and talked too much! I have a right gob on me when I’m drunk!

Amina put the word Gob into her phone and imagined Callum’s mouth, his lips on hers. That was twice he was sorry, and Amina wasn’t sorry at all when she said yes to meeting him for coffee, even though her mother hadn’t approved it.

So, that’s how it started. With the little money she had, Amina bought a set of blue hospital scrubs on Amazon, and twice a week, when she was supposed to be studying in the library, she met Callum outside the Royal Victoria Hospital. He brought her for coffee on the Lisburn Road, and in Botanic gardens he took a selfie of them outside the Palm House. Amina couldn’t believe how they could just walk together hand-in-hand.

He dropped her off outside Margarita Plaza on Linenhall Street. Amina pointed up at one of the apartments with a balcony and told him she shared it with two friends who were also nurses. ‘They’re sleeping because they work night shifts,’ she said when Callum asked if he could come in. Instead, they kissed in the car, and when he was safely out of sight, she walked back to the refugee hotel.

Amina filled in papers for her mother who hadn’t good English and tried to get an appointment for Suma at the doctor because she was constipated. Then she lay in bed wishing she could be an ordinary girl, and that she didn’t have to pretend just to have a piece of happiness.

She tried to imagine telling Callum who she really was. In her head, he told her that he’d love her for who she was. He wasn’t like those people who threw eggs and called them illegal. Callum would understand that none of this was her doing. But each time she sat outside Margarita Plaza and looked at his face, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Her mother was holding a letter that had been posted underneath the bedroom door. ‘What does it say?’ she asked Amina. It was a letter telling them that the contract at the refugee hotel was coming to an end. ‘The moves to alternative accommodation will commence over the coming weeks’ it said.

They were moving again and Amina had to decide whether to tell Callum. She thought of saying she’d been offered a nursing position somewhere else, hoping he might visit. Or she would tell him the truth, that her mother was unable to dress herself, because in Turkey she had to pay favours to men just to keep them in food, and that her sister Nadima had stopped eating and Amina feared she might be ill.

She met him at the Duke of York and drank more than she should have. They needed to be properly in love so that Callum would see past anything just to be with her, so when he walked her across Writer’s Square, she led him towards the alleyway between two blocks of flats. Their bodies pressed together against the wall, and Callum felt like the only solid thing in the world. She kissed him hard and he responded, mouth wet and vicious.

‘Woah, maybe we need to stop a minute.’ Callum pulled back and looked at her. Amina felt full of shame. ‘You don’t love me?’
‘Love? Jesus, Amina that’s not what this is about,’ he said. ‘I....’

Amina didn’t want to hear. She ran out onto North Street and could feel the sway of the river Farset hidden underneath the streets, the pull of it making her unsteady. She ran and ran until she could feel a tightness in her chest, and when she reached the refugee hotel she heard him calling.

‘Amina!’ When he reached her he was out of breath. ‘Why did you run off like that?’

They were right outside the door of the hotel and Amina was unable to speak, suddenly gripped by fear.

‘I just thought you’d too much to drink, and I didn’t want to take advantage,’ Callum said.

Amina could see that he was blushing.

‘It doesn’t mean I don’t want to, just not like that.’ He reached out for her hands and pulled Amina towards him.

The door opened and Jack appeared. ‘Is this lad giving you any hassle, Amina?’

Callum looked at Jack, and then up at the sign on the refugee hotel. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ His hands came free from Amina’s.

Amina couldn’t look at him. ‘I live here,’ she said. ‘With my mother and my sisters.’

‘What the fuck?’ Callum rubbed a hand over his face like he was trying to wake himself up.

Jack reached out towards Callum. ‘Steady there lad.’

‘It’s ok Jack,’ Amina said. ‘I’ll be in in a minute.’

Jack stepped back in through the automatic doors but kept an eye on them.

‘You’re not a nurse,’ Callum said. ‘You don’t work at the Royal, do you?’ ‘No. I’m a refugee. I’m not allowed to work.’

Callum turned and looked behind him like he might find someone filming this prank for TV, but it was never meant as a trick. Amina just wanted to know what it was to be loved. She reached a hand out to him. ‘I didn’t think someone like you could ever care for someone like me.’

Callum held his hands up. ‘But you never gave me that chance,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know who you are.’

Amina felt the sway of the river again. ‘If I had told you that first night that I was a refugee from Sudan, would you have asked me upstairs to dance?’

Callum shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Tomorrow we’re being moved, and you will never have to see me again.’ She turned to go back inside the hotel, but Callum held his hand out to stop the doors from closing.

‘Is your real name Amina?’ he asked. ‘Was that true?’

‘Yes, I’m Amina Deng.’ She walked on into the hotel, taking the stairs instead of the lift. From the stairwell she could see Callum still standing down below, his face illuminated underneath the streetlight. She took a picture of him on her phone, wanting to capture a moment of meaning something to someone. Then she watched as he turned the corner of the refugee hotel and disappeared.