The Foreigner

It was a long hard road. There were many to start with and more joined along the road, facing hardship all the way. Not everyone made it. A young man died, not much older than me. I watched him die, took his papers, left him mine.

I tried to keep away from other refugees. The war made everyone suspicious, less trusting of your fellow man. You relax and sleep easier alone.

Half a continent I walked, looking for safe haven, until settling here. Arriving, they questioned me, afraid of who I was, once, when I followed orders. I understand suspicion and fear. I show the dead man's papers. They questioned me but I knew it all my heart. I was waved through.

I kept away from meeting strangers, especially my old countrymen, I particularly avoided any who might have known me. I was involved in the fighting, of course, I said, when questioned. Boys my age were all called up to fight. No choice but kill or die in the madness of war. We did terrible things we cannot forget. No matter how free you are, memories are locked away.

My new country had also endured hardship. Everybody lost something or someone, some lost everything. They moaned of course, everyone complains. I almost laughed. They knew nothing at all of real hardship. Sometimes they looked at me strangely, knowing where I came from, seeing the bombed buildings on the news, or acted out on films. Sure, I've been bombed. I've seen my home city on film, the streets bombed out, buildings like broken teeth, looking more like Stonehenge than any city.

I preferred the countryside, away from cities, away from too many people and too many questions. I settled in a small, quiet place off the beaten track. I didn't have much, but then, neither did they. I found work, a little here, a little more there, gardening, washing windows, repairs. I was good with my hands, keen to work, word got around. I bought a van, some second hand tools from widows who didn't want them. I did all right.

I met a girl, Sarah, who seemed to like me. I resisted, at first, I don't like to attract attention. I was The Foreigner, I did not understand these people and tried to stay apart within them. This only made Sarah try harder, to draw me in, play on my loneliness.

Time passed, still a foreigner but in time I was accepted. I didn't stand out so much. I speak a lot like them, I even think in English now.

I forget all the old ways, how easily we were led back then to do the terrible things asked of us. Here, in my new country, they are more individual, nobody makes anybody do anything that they don't want to do.

That independence, the freedom of the individual to determine their own future, frightened me at first but then it only makes it easier to fit in when everybody around you is a little different, one more oddball makes no difference.

They knocked off my rough edges, smoothed me down until I became a beach pebble, almost exactly like everybody else.

Our three children left home. There was nothing for young people in our small slightly sleepy community. The grandchildren came back for holidays of course. I didn't feel a foreigner in this strange land any more, strange becomes familiar, I was accepted.

I'm glad that my dear Sarah is no longer around now, it would break her heart. She died just a month into the new millennium.

The police came for me at dawn.

Ha! As if they though that when I was confronted with their accusations I could make a run for it! I am over 80, actually three years younger than my British driver's licence says.

They have evidence, mostly grainy photos, sworn testimonies of ex-prisoners, many long dead, reaching out for revenge from beyond the grave.

They say, I'm the "Monster of Majdanek", the extermination camp in what was German-occupied Poland. That is not me, no, the Monster died on the road 60 years ago.

Yes, I was a soldier and I did things I was not proud of, the advancing Russian recruits at Leningrad a sacrificial shooting gallery, but my damning papers came from a dead man.

They don't listen but deported me to The Hague and there they convicted me for life. I am shunned, disowned.

I am The Foreigner, again.