The Piccadilly Line
Julia let herself out of the front door of her block of flats into the crisp, sunlit air of Islington. She walked along Mckenzie Road, admiring as usual the prettiness of Paradise Park on the left. She turned to the right and reached the main road. The traffic was already heavy although it was only 7:30 am. Using the pelican crossing, she headed towards Caledonian Road tube station. Tapping her Oyster card, she joined the growing throng waiting for the lift to take them underground.
The westbound platform was already heaving but she knew that if she positioned herself at a certain point she would get a seat. Moving carefully along platform she reached her goal. Checking the indicator she noted that fortunately the train she needed, the one going to Heathrow, was the first one. The train approached, slowing down. The doors opened and she stepped inside turning to the left and taking the seat vacated by a young woman. She breathed a sigh of relief. As this was a train going to Heathrow, very soon it would be full of people with travel baggage of various shapes and sizes cluttering the carriage.
She remembered the times she had taken this journey to Heathrow in the days when she travelled abroad for work and for holidays. Nowadays she stayed in Britain although she did have plans to travel in Europe by train – someday.
The train trundles towards King’s Cross where many more passengers entered the carriage. Julia was used to travelling on the underground and it didn’t bother her that they were all packed in. She sat back and reflected on how often over the years she had travelled on the Piccadilly Line.
She knew the stations by heart and as her ultimate destination was Osterley, she began to reflect on the parts of her life punctuated by the various stops on the Piccadilly Line.
As the train made its way through central London, Julia allowed her mind to pick up fleeting memories at each of the familiar stations. Meeting Friends in the Italian café in Russell Square during lunch hours when she had worked at the British museum. Opera at Covent Garden, The to visit Leicester Square, leisurely walks through Green Park and Saint Jameses Park.
However, she found that her memories were beginning to focus on the eventual destination of a journey, Osterley, and on Hounslow Central. It was with thoughts this latter station that she found the memories and emotions were the most vivid and painful.
Three years earlier she had been living in Oxford in a small faith based community which gave hospitality to five asylum seekers. One of the young men, Nazar, had to go to Eaton House, the immigration reporting centre in Hounslow. She had agreed to accompany him as it was his first reporting session since leaving detention.
They caught the bright blue and red Oxford Tube bus which ran frequently between Oxford and London, leaving it at Hillingdon, a station on the Piccadilly line. They had to change at Acton Town and then catch the train for Hounslow. After leaving the train they joined a large group of people waiting for the bus to go to Eaton House. Nazarr was actually chatting to a couple of other Afghan men and it was obvious that the bus had many people whose destination was the IRC.
It was a bright sunny day and people were queueing up to go in to the unattractive and functional building. Julia asked the guard if she could accompany Nazar as he was feeling a little nervous but the guard refused, saying that it was for her own safety not to allow her into the building just in case something “kicked off”.
Naza grinned nervously at her and then joined the queue which was moving quite swiftly. Julia stood outside with those waiting to enter, admiring some of the brightly coloured clothes that some of the women were wearing.
Time passed.
She gradually became anxious and then really worried when she realised that people who had gone in after Nazar were now coming out again. She approached the guard at the door and asked where Nazar was.
“I don’t think he’ll be coming back with you so you’d best go home.”
“What do you mean? I really need to speak to someone to find out what’s going on.”
Fortunately the guard said, “Wait here.”
After about 20 minutes an immigration officer came out and took her to one side, explaining that Nazar would not be leaving with her but would be taken to an Immigration Removal Centre near Heathrow Airport. He gave her the name of the centre -Colnbrooke – and a phone number so that she could call for information.
Sitting on the Piccadilly line train three years later she remembered how she had set off on the journey back to Oxford with a sinking heart and an overwhelming sense of powerlessness.
Even after three years she remembered the painful experiences of visiting Nazar in Colnbrooke. No need for the Piccadilly Line now; she took the green and yellow bus which ran between Oxford and Heathrow and then caught a local bus to the large forbidding IRC. Nazar, just seventeen, had often wept and because there was a language barrier which neither of them could breach, all she could do was sit holding his hand or with her arm around him. It was a massive wrench to leave him each time she visited and she once she wept loudly and openly after she had left him, feeling again the powerlessness but also rage.
As the train slowed down approaching Osterley, Julia remembered that Naz story, as far as the Oxford community was concerned, had a strange and yet unbelievably helpful ending. He had been released from the IRC but was told he would have to be attacked taking his chance he simply disappeared she assumed he went underground and she did receive a couple of short phone calls from him saying he was okay. He was a very resourceful young man and she didn’t doubt that somehow or he would survive. Watt remained was the mixture of happy memories of him and the painful remembrance of his tears.
Leaving the tube station Julia set off to walk the short distance to the small retreat centre where she was to meet her spiritual director. Centre was not very big but was surrounded by pretty gardens and many trees These monthly visits where a source of peace and refreshment to her in her busy life but as she reflected on her own comfortable life, she was left with the question why people who didn’t deserve it, like Nazar and countless others, were given a difficult path to tread.
As if in queue, an aeroplane pled the sky noisily overhead as it left Heathrow. She wondered as she dead if that plane was carrying refugees away from the country which they had thought to be safe and welcoming
Live Adventurously 