Nah bruv, you should be talking to me, still. Not them man who did all kind of foolishness and got caught and sent back after four months in Harlesden or Moss Side or Handsworth. I never really done nothing wrong and they still shipped me out to this place. Fuckery, innit?

Still, could be worse, I could be like one of them man that don’t have any family left here. Sometimes you see them walking around like zombies. All cracked out and thing. Nothing else for them to do, it’s not like anybody likes them. I used to think the British didn’t like outsiders, but I was wrong. This place don’t like outsiders. They don’t even like man from the next parish over. They tolerate tourists cos they come in with a little money and thing. But man like me. We are at the bottom of the shit heap, I’m telling you.

Yeah, I was born here, but I left when I was two and only came back for one holiday when they buried my nan. I didn’t know shit about this place before they sent me here. I thought it was paradise. Before they deported me, I thought well, I got family here, it’s warm, at least it won’t be so bad.

I was wrong. Fucking wrong.

When I first turned up they had me in that little deportee house where they just about have electricity and you got to share some little room with next man. One man was in that place crying like a little boy the whole first day. I was like, you need to turn the volume on that wailing down, bruv. It’s not no-one’s funeral, you’re still alive. Shut up, you get me.

Still, pure noise so we booted him out of the house for the day until he calmed down. Two twos, we hear one big old bit of noise outside and when we look out the window there’s like five or six people just thumping him up out on road. I was like, what is this? Man runs down the street and back into the house and hides in his little room and starts bawling even louder.

That was when I first realised that this place might not be the paradise I thought it was. Still, he might have done something to somebody out there, you know? That’s what I thought at the time, didn’t want to believe that this place was gonna be difficult for me.

They didn’t want you to stay in the house so there was just about enough electricity for a little lamp in your room and a shower. A cold shower. That might not sound so bad considering it’s always warm here, but when everything else is shit, a cold shower is what can break you.

I only stayed there a couple of weeks, until I moved out here with my uncle. But in that time it was a madness. I seen two man get into a fight that nearly ended in a stabbing, I seen a man get chased by a woman with a machete, fucking thing looked like sword, and no-one helping him, I seen a crowd of people chase someone who they said was a thief and they beat him with bits of board and stuff they found on the roadside until the police come and take him away. I seen crackheads and drug dealers and teenagers with guns, mad people walking the streets and everyone ignoring them like they might catch something if they go near, people dressed in white packed on the back of pick-up trucks singing religious songs loud over Tannoy speakers as they drive past kids sleeping on the roadside. Bruv, this place ain’t no paradise. Especially the city. Nah, that place is messed up.

When my uncle come and picked me up, I was so happy. It was like escaping hell. I don’t know what happened to the mandem I left behind. None of us had phones, some of them didn’t have no family here, they might have just kicked them out to make way for whoever is getting off the plane next. Nuff of them man were getting involved with shotters, smoking crack and whatnot. Nitty behaviour.

I’m telling you, bruv! These streets is rough. When I was a younger, we used to do some foolishness for the olders on the estate, run this bag here, carry this thing there, all for one little cheeseburger from Maccy’s. But down here, especially in the city? Life ain’t worth a packet of crisps. And because we come in now sounding different, not Black in the right way or some shit, we have to go to the bottom of the pile. Even when I go market, I hear people talking about me. Talking about my kind and how it’s people like me that are causing all the trouble going on in the country.

I know some of the mandem that get sent back here get involved with criminals, but them dons who give them guns was here before the deportees returned. It weren’t like we come down here and set up a whole criminal organisation that never existed. But that’s the way people are, innit? Looking for someone to blame and we was the last ones in so it must be us.

That’s, like, the worst part, get me. In England all the newspapers and thing always running a bruvva down. It’s always immigrants coming here and doing this, or if something goes wrong how dark your skin comes before they say your name. Asian lawyer caught in drugs raid. African businessman in tax avoidance shame. Live in that country twenty years and wake up to them reminding you that you don’t belong in size forty-two font on the front page of the newspapers.

And then they send you back home, or what they calling your home, some place you can’t remember, that you only ever seen in faded, sepia photographs that your nan and grandad have locked up in the guest front room and the people who sort of look like you start telling you that you don’t belong here neither.

I’d like to know where I’m supposed to belong. Like, where is my fucking home, yeah?

All this for some traffic offences. As if running two red lights and failing to pay couple parking tickets means you should be sent from the place you’ve lived for twenty-five years to some next place where you was born but can’t remember.

Look, yeah, they took me to the detention centre, Home Office and that said I don’t really have no ties to the country because I ain’t married, don’t have no children and don’t own a house. How can I afford a house in London? I don’t know no-one that owns their own house. Still, before I could say nothing or call no-one, I’m on a plane headed back here.

Then when I reach the place where they keep us it’s ramshackle. One bruk down place that had roaches and all sorts. I left, cos I ain’t staying in that place. Some of them man stayed cos they ain’t had no options, at least I had family I could come live with. I knew them from when my mum would send us home for holidays. And family look after each other here, even if they are always in your business and think they can give advice when you ain’t ask for it.

At first, yeah, people was cool. They would say good morning and all that, ask about London and thing. Then they heard the story that I was one of them deportees and people changed. It was like I had some disease. People started crossing the road and avoiding me. Making up their faces like they smelled shit. I heard them talking to my auntie and uncle and complaining loudly about England was sending back home the dregs of society and how we were England’s problem and we shouldn’t be sent here.

Like I wanted to be sent to this place. It’s nice for a holiday, but fucking hell, I like having electricity and water that don’t go off for the whole weekend, you get me? Yeah it’s warm, but I had central heating back home. Home. Fucking hell. Home feels a long way away.

So I left one place where they say I don’t belong and come down here and hear people saying I shouldn’t be allowed back, telling me I’m England’s problem cos they created me. Fuckery, innit? Bruv, where am I supposed to go and live and find some peace?