Free Divinity Road by Martin Pevsner

stayed in when we first arrived here after our dispersal. Oh, Kassa, those were crazy times. Women and their children crammed together, everyone’s fuse shortened by exhaustion and despair, no outlet for the tension, no escape,
    Yes, this flat is only temporary, but who knows what that means in real terms, so I have decided to make the best of it and treat this corner of Bristol, a suburb they call Lawrence Weston, as my new home. I do what I can to lay down roots. I take Yanit and Abebe to the nearby parks and the local library. We do our shopping at the Ridingleaze row of stores or sometimes venture further afield, to the ugly Broadmead shopping mall to browse, or for the sake of our souls, to the vast grounds of Blaise Castle where we can spread our wings, fill our lungs, run and scream and fight and laugh.
    For all these months I have watched our lives unfold, a helpless observer. It is difficult to express how I have been feeling, Kassa, but close your eyes and imagine that Abebe and Yanit and I find ourselves lined up on a dry dusty plain, standing with our arms straight down by our sides like soldiers on parade. Imagine that we then realise that we are part of some giant children’s game, that we are the skittles and these infant monsters towering above us are about to launch colossal bowling balls at us, that we are paralysed, waiting to take the full impact of these missiles, that they will cannon against us, sending us spinning off in unforeseen directions and that there is nothing we can do to prevent this bombardment. Can you imagine that, Kassa? Well, that is how I have been feeling.
    So I yearn for permanency, for some stability in our lives and perhaps this letter, this words-on-paper process, is also part of my attempt to fix our existence, to make it more real.
    I hope too that you will appreciate this account of our lives since we separated, Kassa, you whose passion was always the story in all its forms – the yarn, the fairytale, the myth and legend – you whose nose was perpetually buried in one novel or another, whose notebooks were filled with your own creativity, plays and tales of domestic discord, family betrayal, political machinations, broken hearts and unfathomable courage. Perhaps you will read our story and it will inspire you.
    So where do I begin? Let us start here in Bristol and then go backwards. This city, I read from a local history book, my first borrowing from the library, has a population of over 400,000, was always a major urban centre, a wealthy commercial port, but only really made a name for itself with its involvement in the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century. During that period, I discover, more than 2,000 ships were fitted out here, responsible for the transport of over half a million slaves during those ghastly but profitable years.
    But let me take you back to our arrival, cold and wet and filthy, crawling out of that lorry somewhere south of London, our first contact with the authorities at the police station, the first days at the hostel. The initial shock at the women there, glazed and mute through surrender; or irritable, vicious-tongued, their tempers taut with tension, the slightest look or word a pretext for a venting of fury. And their children, feral with neglect, twitchy with boredom, sweeping through the rooms like packs of wild dogs.
    And back we continue, ever further. Back to the dark, vile journey across Europe that brought us here across the Channel, no idea of our precise itinerary, only vague snapshots of signposts and advertising hoardings spied during the snatched toilet breaks, clues indicating a route from Turkey that may have passed through Bulgaria, the Balkans, Germany and Belgium.
    And if we take one more rearward leap, we are again in the back of a lorry, dusty days and nights carrying us from Ethiopia through Sudan to Egypt. Weeks of waiting in Cairo, then up to Alexandria and the boat crossing to Turkey.
    And then, between these two