Free Divinity Road by Martin Pevsner Page A

hellish journeys, somewhere in Turkey there is a black hole so deep and dark that I cannot, will not, must not attempt to penetrate it. Not now, not ever.
    But that is not the only chapter of my story that I will not touch, my dear. The first chapter, our life at home, I must also by-pass. That whole world, my studies, my job, my marriage, my friends and, dare I say it, my family, the ups and downs, the mirth and misery, I roll it into a ball, box it up in a locked case, stow it under my bed. Besides, most of it you know already, of course. No, I will start my story in the here and now, the bright positive present.
    Bristol is a strange city, a gateway to the countryside, a split personality, half cosmopolitan and half peasant; half Old England, half ethnic melting pot. A walk through the town is like a stroll through modern British history, the words from my library book made real: I see maritime commerce in the floating harbour and the tobacco warehouses; I pass through breezeblock Broadmead rebuilt after the devastation of German bombing; I admire the engineering feat of Clifton Bridge, what my library book refers to as a proud legacy of the Industrial Revolution; I observe another legacy, this time of colonialism and Empire, in the ethnic diversity of the inner-city districts; and finally I am struck by the elegance of the mansions and palatial townhouses of Clifton, built with the blood of African slaves, men and women and children torn from their families, their communities, by circumstances beyond their control.
    I was with my solicitor today. With him, I walk a tightrope between truth and deception. My passport and our identity papers disappeared into the hands of the traffickers before we had even left Ethiopia. To give my real name, my authentic story, is to reveal myself to the world, open up the possibility of my discovery by that Asmara family and their boundless tentacles, to put Yanit and Abebe in danger. While our true identities stay hidden, we remain safe. Yet, as the solicitor told us when we were first interviewed after our arrival, any hope for our asylum case here rests on the plausibility of our story, and lies are always harder to maintain than the truth.
    I had given this a lot of thought during our journey and in the end I decided it would be too risky to reveal the blood feud story. Instead I have created a political prisoner for my husband’s persona, fabricated a history of persecution. Much of what I told them was true – Ethiopian woman weds Eritrean man, our marriage and move to Asmara, even his imprisonment, though his misdemeanour has become political. And historical events are on my side – growing government repression in Eritrea has made my story more believable.
    The case is backed up further by the interpreters and language experts assessing my linguistic competence in Amharic, Tigrinya, Arabic, as well as Yanit and Abebe’s language abilities. And of course when the children were interviewed separately, they could also confirm their father’s imprisonment, though they are vague about his so-called crime. You remember, don’t you, that they had been too young to understand what he had done? We had only told them that he was being jailed unjustly, hadn’t we?
    Our names, too, are another half-truth. I have reverted to my grandfather’s name here. You remember that it is our custom for children to take their father’s first name as surname when they are born? To avoid identification, I have given Yanit and Abebe my own family name as theirs. I have drilled them since our arrival, it is what they use at school, and they accept it without question.
    Today, the solicitor runs through the story again. There is still no court date, but I am told my presence is not required. Our future is decided in an unknown place by strangers who have never met me.
    A further task completed since our arrival in the UK was to seek help from the Red Cross and its international tracing service. At the