The Shark is the first release from the 2024 Art on the Underground Writer in Residence, Kristel Tracey. The work is a reflection and response to A Taste of Home, an artwork by artist Joy Gregory, which is currently on display at Heathrow Terminal 4 Underground station. Like Joy’s artwork, Kristel’s short story is inspired by the stories of the refugee and asylum-seeking communities living in temporary accommodation near the airport and the poems ‘Home’ and ‘Seeds in Flight’ by Warsan Shire and Khaled Abdallah respectively.
Kristel is TfL’s Head of Advocacy and Engagement and has worked for the organisation for just over three years. Previously an avid writer with work published in both print and digital, she is now reexploring her passion for creative writing alongside her career and parenting her 5-year-old daughter.
Kristel said: The stories of the refugee and asylum seeker community Joy spoke to while exceptional and not universal, speak to the deeper feelings of belonging, loss, upheaval, loneliness, anxiety and the desire for home that are universal. We all want to be able to decide for ourselves where home is. It implores the reader to home in on their humanity, rather than headlines that narrow human stories down to dehumanised statistics.
The Art on the Underground Writer in Residence is annual creative opportunity for a TfL staff member to develop their writing by working with TfL’s contemporary art programme Art on the Underground over a period of six months.
The Writer in Residence programme aims to highlight and amplify the creative voices within TfL, creating engaging responses to Art on the Underground’s ongoing programme.
Read the full story below.
The Shark
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
Warsan Shire, Home
The sound of keys jangling at a door stirred Youssef from his sleep. His eyes sprang open, as he felt the familiar confusion of trying to remember where he was. He heard the creak of a door open and shut in the distance and tried to calm his racing heart. “No one is coming for you today, Youssef” he whispered to himself, before reminding himself that he ought to stop talking to himself. That said, where was he?
He blinked in the darkness. At the window, a curtain hung limply from its rail revealing an orange glow from the street lights outside. He could make out the slats of the bed above him and hear the low rumble of his roommate’s snoring from above. He pieced together the clues.
- Isaac – his roommate of a week, the one with the huge laugh to match his belly. Nice, noisy, nosey.
- The place near the airport. Houns…ley? No, Hounslow?
- The hotel. The one with the bright green sign, everything inside grey.
Yes – this is where he is. No longer in Doncaster, Slough or any other places he’d been shunted around to over the past two years while he waited for his asylum case to be processed. Always leaving at short notice, embryonic friendships disrupted, his few belongings hurriedly bundled into his tattered rucksack. Never told where he was headed as he sat in the back of a minivan, fields and tarmac flashing past on a motorway from somewhere to somewhere.
‘Limbo’ was the word a caseworker used to describe his situation, and that of the stack of other souls whose fate rested in a pile on her desk. Limbo. He’d looked up the meaning of the word when he’d gone back to his room later that day.
Limbo 1: (noun) the state of being cast aside or forgotten
Limbo 2: (noun) A dance from the Caribbean where dancers bend backwards to pass under a horizontal bar that is lowered each time.
Both felt apt – being forgotten or bending backwards, beneath a bar that got harder and harder to pass.
Youssef rolled on his side, leaning over the edge of the mattress to reach for his phone. Time – 05:52. A message from Mama: “Where are you now, habibi? Are you OK? Why haven’t you called? Are you eating?”. His mind wandered back to the night he left. He thought about how heavy her head had felt on his shoulder as she held him, her scent of camomile, the weight of her hopes and grief leaving a salty pool on his shirt. He thought of the kibbeh she had made and carefully packed in his rucksack that day (his favourite). Hours later, huddled in the back of a lorry as it travelled further and further away from everything he knew, he stuffed the delicious morsels in his mouth. Youssef wondered whether this would be the last time he’d taste her kibbeh. The flavour of bulgur wheat and fried lamb mixed with the hot, saline tears that flowed down his cheeks.
Some days the loneliness was so overwhelming he contemplated fleeing back to the danger of the war but the safety of her arms. In darker moments he questioned what the point of life was at all, surrounded by glacial stares and without the people he loved.
Youssef balled his fists and held them to his eyes as he laid in the dark, his throat burning to restrain the sob that threatened to escape. “Yalla, get up!” he told himself. “Today is a big day”. For today, Youssef was meeting the shark.
He leaned over and pulled a prayer mat out from under his bed. He would need all the help he could get.
*
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
Warsan Shire, Home
Youssef stepped out of the revolving doors of the hotel and pulled up the collar of his coat, the biting cold of the February morning finding every chink in his thin polyester armour. He nodded in the direction of a few of the other residents stood outside, all hopping from right foot to left to stay warm.
The people he encountered in the area were less hostile than some of the other towns, but he missed the friends he’d started to make in the last place. He missed the camaraderie in the TV room, or the local church people who would do English and art classes with the residents – anything to take the edge off the waiting. Here, communal areas were off-limit, blocked by temporary walls and locked doors. Pale patches on the corridor walls hinted at the artwork that had once adorned them, now removed. The last place had a shared kitchen, where he would cook for himself or share home-cooked offerings with other residents, each trying to share a little taste of home with one another. Compared to Mama’s his kibbeh tasted more like kibble, but his friends ate it graciously. Here, only rows of microwaves. He’d watch parents trying to work their magic with cans of ravioli or spaghetti hoops, doing what they could to keep their children fed – if not nourished. This was not designed to be a place for anyone to get comfortable.
Months earlier, he and others had gathered around the screen in the TV room watching images on the news of a mob trying to set a hotel alight. Hatred bubbled at the lips of boys and men draped in white and red flags as they shouted “get them out” and “we want our country back”. Words and projectiles were catapulted towards the black and brown faces peering out from the windows of the besieged hotel. Youssef recognised the faces as his own – terrified, alone, confused. “What is it they think we have taken?” Youssef’s friend quietly muttered, eyes transfixed on the screen. “What if they come for us too?”. Making his way to the bus stop for his journey to Croydon on that cold February morning, he prayed he might one day be accepted in this land which did not want him.
The train would be quicker, but the bus was cheaper. The £49.18 allowance he received each week meant that money had to be managed down to the last penny, and that last penny never stretched far enough. Not allowed to work, the only option was to rely on local charities, who tried their best to fill the gap. In another life, he had graduated top of his class in engineering. In this one, he felt worthless.
Youssef saw the 281 bus in the distance and held out his hand.
*
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying leave,
run away from me now
I don’t know what I’ve become
but I know that anywhere
is safer than here
Warsan Shire, Home
No matter how fast you run, the past is faster. No matter how deep you dig to bury it, the past will claw at you from the inside to unearth itself. The sound of jangled keys in a door lock might transport him back to that cell. The sudden loud pop from a motorcycle exhaust could leave him diving for cover, huddled in foetal position until he came back to himself. He did everything he could to supress thoughts of home, but he could not stop his dreams from taking him back to the garden of his childhood; the smell of jasmine so strong he could swear he was there, the sound of Baba’s kind-but-commanding voice travelling on the warm breeze, the tinkling sound of his younger sisters’ laughter in the distance. Home before the war. Home when it was the most beautiful place on earth. Home when home still had Baba in it.
Youssef hadn’t contacted Mama for over two months now. He was her eldest son, the one who was supposed to take care of her and his siblings now that Baba was gone. She had given almost everything the family had left to the traffickers to try to get Youssef to safety, away from those who had taken his father. They had lost so much, she had given him so much; Youssef couldn’t bear to tell her that after all this time, he’d found nothing.
*
Two buses and two hours later, Youssef had arrived at his destination. As he stared up at the building, he wasn’t sure whether his teeth were chattering from the cold or the dread. A white sign with purple letters announced his destination as ‘Lunar House’, but nothing felt illuminating about the cement block of a building.
In Islam, barzakh is the place souls go when they are separated from the body but haven’t yet entered heaven or hell. For the past two years Youssef had been suspended in purgatory; after today’s interview, his final destination would be confirmed. He wasn’t sure whether he was more terrified of the not-knowing, or the knowing.
Clasping his hands together in a bid to stop them shaking, Youssef took a deep breath. His feet felt as though they were made of lead, but he willed them to move forward, through the revolving doors.
Entering its jaws, he awaited his fate.
