A broken doll and refugee tales

 

My broken doll, my oldest surviving toy along with a threadbare teddy, has lost her hands and her hair's coming off. I don't know where she came from but I do remember showing her off once to some removals men when I was small. They rescued us when the car broke down. 

My mother bundled us into the lorry and I couldn't sleep. I was too aware of the claustrophobic darkness and noises I couldn't identify. 

When they opened the back of the lorry outside our house in Ascot, when Mum put the lights on in the hall and made cups of tea for the men who helped, I rushed to show off my doll. 

As memory goes, creating links randomly, across time, ignoring conventions, my memory of being in the back of a lorry and arriving home safely, is a prompt to The Lorry Driver's Tale, a story from Refugee Tales, that I read a couple of times to groups. It's one of three volumes published by Comma Press, about the experiences of people trying to reach the UK.