White and Black

The van coughed to a stop outside the community shelter, a red-brick building that had once been a Methodist chapel. Rain drummed on the roof. Brian climbed down with a box of tins and followed the young volunteer, Sarah, through the side door.

The shelter smelled of stew and disinfectant. People queued quietly for food—some asleep on plastic chairs, others staring through the steam that fogged the windows. A television in the corner played the news with the sound off.

Brian stacked his box, nodded to Sarah, and drifted to the back of the hall where the line thinned. That was where he first saw the man.

He was tall, narrow-shouldered, wearing a second-hand parka too short in the sleeves. His eyes had the stillness of someone who had looked at too many borders. When Brian handed him a sandwich, their hands brushed. The man hesitated, studying Brian’s face.

“You are not from here,” he said in accented English.

Brian smiled faintly. “I might be. Once.”

The man tilted his head. “You speak like them. But your eyes… they look somewhere else.”

“Maybe both,” Brian said. “Maybe nowhere.”

Later, when the queue was gone and the volunteers packed up, the man lingered near the door. He watched the rain with the patience of someone used to waiting.

Brian nodded toward an empty table. “Sit a bit. There’s tea left.”

They sat across from each other, steam curling between them. The man held the mug as if testing its warmth against the cold.

“My name is Samuel,” he said. “From Kinshasa. In the DRC.”

“Brian,” he said. “Durban. Well—originally Watford. Then Durban. Now Watford again.” He smiled thinly. “Full circle.”

Samuel looked puzzled. “You went to Africa and came back?”

“Something like that.”

“Then you are not a refugee,” Samuel said. “You had a home here before.”

Brian thought for a moment. “Maybe I did. But it didn’t feel like mine when I returned.”

Samuel’s brows drew together. “I do not understand. You are white. English. This is your land.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

Samuel sipped the tea, grimaced at its strength. “In my country, we ran. War came to our street. Soldiers with red scarves took my brother. My wife hid in the church with the children. When the shooting stopped, the church was gone. After that I walked. Uganda, Kenya, Libya, boats, camps. You know the story.”

Brian nodded. “I’ve read it. Never lived it.”

Samuel looked at him curiously. “Then what did you run from?”

Brian stared into his mug. “Myself, mostly. And a place that changed faster than I could.”

Samuel waited.

“I lived in South Africa for twenty-two years,” Brian said finally. “Good life at first. Sun, work, friends. Then one night a mate was killed by burglars. I shot the men who did it.”

Samuel blinked slowly. “You killed them?”

“Three of them. The police said self-defence. But it didn’t feel like that. After that, I couldn’t sleep. So I left. Thought I could start again here.”

“And did you?”

Brian shook his head. “You can change countries easier than you can change yourself.”

Samuel leaned back. “When I came here, I thought England would be peace. No guns, no fear. But there are other kinds of war here—papers, offices, words I do not understand. They tell me to wait. Always wait. For interviews, for letters, for permission to work. Waiting becomes another prison.”

Brian nodded. “You’d think being legal made it easier. It doesn’t.”

Samuel smiled faintly. “You? You are a citizen. You can go anywhere.”

Brian laughed without humour. “Anywhere I can afford, maybe. You think the world opens up when you’ve got a passport? Try handing it over to a jobcentre clerk and telling them you’ve got no fixed address.”

Samuel studied him carefully. “You are angry.”

“I’m tired,” Brian said. “Anger needs more energy than I’ve got.”

They sat in silence, listening to the rain ease against the glass.

After a while, Samuel said, “In the camp, there was a man from Sudan. He said every refugee has two journeys: the one to get away and the one to find a reason to keep living after he stops running. The second one is harder.”

Brian smiled faintly. “Then we’re both still travelling.”

Samuel nodded. “Yes. But at least here, no one shoots at you.”

“Not yet,” Brian said, then caught himself. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

Samuel’s eyes softened. “When I hear thunder, I still lie on the floor. My body remembers even when my mind says it is safe.”

Brian looked down at his hands. “Same here, different noises.”

They drank in silence again. The rain had stopped. A grey light fell through the window, making the puddles outside shimmer like thin metal.

“You said your friend died,” Samuel said quietly. “Do you see him?”

“All the time,” Brian said. “Mostly at night. Sometimes in mirrors.”

Samuel nodded slowly. “I see my brother. When I am walking to the bus, sometimes I think he is behind me. Then I remember he has no face left to see.”

They sat without speaking. Two men from different continents, joined by a silence that had travelled farther than either of them.

After a while, Brian said, “You got anyone here?”

“Some people from my church. Good people. But they are busy surviving too. When I find work, they say I must send money home. But I have no home to send it to.”

“I know that feeling,” Brian said.

Samuel smiled without irony. “No, you do not. Your home still stands. Your mother, your people—they are here.”

“Standing’s not the same as belonging,” Brian said. “You think a country waits for you? It moves on. You come back a stranger.”

Samuel nodded thoughtfully. “Then maybe we are both strangers. You from inside your home, me from outside mine.”

Brian raised his mug. “To that.”

They clinked enamel lightly, two ghosts saluting their own absence.

After a moment, Samuel asked, “Do you still believe in God?”

Brian looked towards the small crucifix above the kitchen hatch. “Some days. Other days I just like being near people who do.”

“In my country,” Samuel said, “we prayed to stay alive. Here I pray to feel alive again. It is different.”

“I pray to forget,” Brian murmured. “But He’s not good with that one.”

Samuel smiled faintly. “He does not delete. He archives.”

Brian chuckled. “Spoken like a man who’s spent too long with bureaucrats.”

They both laughed quietly, the sound strange but honest.

When the hall emptied, Brian walked Samuel to the bus stop. The pavement shone under the sodium lights. The smell of fried chicken drifted from a shop still open.

Samuel looked up at the sign listing bus routes. “I am learning all the numbers,” he said. “Each one a small piece of the country.”

Brian nodded. “You’ll get there.”

“And you?” Samuel asked.

“Still working on the map.”

The bus arrived with a hiss of brakes. Samuel stepped up, then turned back. “You know, when I first saw you, I thought you could not be a refugee. White hair, white skin, English voice. But now I see—refugee is not colour. It is what you become when the world stops making sense.”

Brian met his eyes. “Then we’re both still waiting for it to start again.”

Samuel smiled. “Maybe that is why we meet—to wait together.”

He climbed aboard. The bus pulled away, taillights disappearing into drizzle. Brian watched until it turned the corner, then stood a long time under the streetlight, feeling the night press gently against his face.

He thought of Hennie on the beach, of Durban waves, of all the men who had laughed too loudly to hear the world ending behind them.
He thought of Samuel, chasing safety through barbed wire and bureaucracy, only to find another kind of exile.

And he wondered which of them was truly free—the man who had fled war, or the man who had fled himself.

The rain began again, soft and steady.
Brian turned up his collar and started walking, his reflection keeping pace in every puddle.