Travelling back from Belgium this summer I was inadvertently caught up in the rush of returning holidaymakers, all making for the Eurotunnel at Calais. The signs on the motorway from Dunkirk were ominous. ‘Congestion’, ‘Bouchon’ at junction 27, the channel tunnel. On arrival I became ensnared in a build-up of vehicles which showed little sign of moving. I was in the outside lane of a three-lane queue, with vehicles to my left and to my right a free lane for freight traffic only. Beyond in the far distance I could make out the tolls, streams of cars shining under the arc lights like mackerel shoals, all funneling though, backing up into a great estuary of flickering brake lights and machine urgency, the will of each anxious vehicle occupant bristling with only one ambition, to get through the next obstruction, the next absurdity thrown in their path, passport control, onto the train, then the open road again and the final prize of their beds. Stationary, I turned the engine off, opened the window and let the cooler evening air sweep out the interior fug of the car.

To my right and rear, I saw in the wing mirror a number of huge trucks were attempting to push their way through the narrow gap the build-up of cars had left and gain access to their freight lane, the only one which was unimpeded. They finally sneaked a way through. Before their engines came closer and drowned out any background noise, I was suddenly aware to my right of a series of excited whispers, two people I sensed excitedly communicating without wanting to be heard, in a language I could not make out. Beyond the freight lane to my right was an area of bushes and stunted trees, a dense thicket that pressed in on the metal barrier like a wall of shadow. From this dark thorny waste land the animated whispers issued and gazing out I thought I saw indistinct shadows move. I instinctively attempted to make out who was whispering, as it seemed they must be only a few metres away and must be staring straight at me, perhaps discussing me, but hard as I strained to distinguish some definite human form in the darkness, I could see nothing at all. I surveyed the attitudes of other drivers around me but they all seemed oblivious and stared straight ahead, eyes glued to the tolls. I felt more and more as if I personally was being sized up by unseen figures and experienced a sudden compulsion to respond to this perceived gaze, say something, anything, even an absurdly formal ‘good evening’, just to break the tension.

But then as the trucks eased their way closer, I realized these would-be stowaways, primed for an opportunity, had quickly noticed the unforeseen bottleneck and guessed the slow speed of the trucks might make it worth their while to attempt to enter one or merely cling on and with luck be landed in England. As the first truck ground slowly past I expected to see an attempt, I envisioned a lean man darting from the thicket and swinging himself underneath the trailer, perhaps chaining himself to the undercarriage and I asked myself what would I do if that happened. But it did not happen and by then the truck had passed and no human form had appeared. As the engine died away the whispering began again, even more urgently than before, another truck passed and then another and still I expected a grand entrance. The trucks had gone, as had their moment. The whispers died away. I stared vainly at the black branches quivering in the choppy night breeze, there was no outline of a body, no shadow, no silhouette, was I imagining this due to extreme fatigue and the late hour? But then as if in answer, something happened, but not from my area of bushes, further along the barrier I saw the figures of two African men steadily approaching. They were calmly following the barrier as if going for a walk in their own village, which in a sense they were. These two young men were silent, withdrawn and simply walked past with their heads slightly lowered; they looked neither right nor left and seemed oblivious to the massed vehicles just metres away. They wore drab coats of a dirty cream colour and dark trousers and seemed to be hugging the thick shadow which in its turn seemed to hold them, as if seeking to draw them back from the barrier.

Then the cars moved forward a little. Now I was aware of new sounds to my right, and this time, there came a more animated chattering and whispering of a larger number of people, many of whom I could discern were women. Clearly there was a large group gathered deeper in the thicket, but again I could make out nothing at all, no lights, no movement, again the darkness appeared unwilling to give them up. These people were hiding there, probably living there, in this labyrinth of miserable scrub and bushes. I felt their presence more insistently and instinctively raised my window in a moment of perceived self-protection, then feeling ashamed I lowered it again. The two men passed by going the other way, silent, as if bearing an oppressive secret. The voices in the gloom continued though remained indistinct and I tried to imagine the scene; the plastic sheeting, the mouldy blankets on the ground, the primitive shelters, the carefully maintained cooking apparatus, the youth like coiled springs eager to release, to depart, the older men standing around smoking in taciturn resignation. But was this image my mind had readily provided just a shameful cliché, a portrait of the ubiquitous shantytown occupant as seen on the news?

Was not this unseen community something quite different, something far more universally human and unpredictable, something inherently closer to those who sat encased in their luxurious cars only metres away from this hapless tribe, with their heated seats, bluetooth and climate control, those imagining themselves of a different race entirely from these nomadic ‘untouchables’. How was it these two groups of human beings, equal ‘before God’, could co-exist in such fantastic contrast but in such close proximity, drawn together only since both ardently desired to reach the same location and yet in such vastly opposing circumstances. Our self-deluding society, which, through its carefully choreographed newspapers, television and media outlets harps on about the freedom of the individual, of compassion and tolerance. But rhetoric aside, what we do not care to look at, what in fact disgusts us, unsettles us, that which rudely interferes with our ever more meticulously controlled lives, we simply tell ourselves is not there. This failure to look, to heed, to reflect and most crucially, to learn from those bitter equivalences that litter the past and stand as great warning beacons, proves the Achilles heel of any society which perceives itself as entrenched in the moral high ground. The presence in the pas de Calais of these tragic gypsies of circumstance is ever more evident, especially on those occasions when the never healed wound gives and an angry burst of toxins are ejected. Riots, logs left across the highways, the massed desperate shaking of barbed wire fences… Yet people now just accept this immigrant presence as being an integral part of the port scenery as they enter and leave the embarkation points, freshly ringed with double layers of razor wire and patrolling guards, before zooming off obliviously in fleets of Audis, Jaguars, VWs, Volvos and Mercedes sports utility vehicles.

These hungry souls pressed against the glass and peering in at the diners, adrift on the perimeter of the homeland, are now yesterday’s novelty for those within, who look out at them in passing like the not so exotic animals in the zoo, those one has to pass before finding the more alluring creatures. They have become something whose movement or skewed presence happens to catch their eye, like the aftermath of a road accident, a burned out house or a run over dog. They recognize these foreign strays, these rogue people as a threat, inter-continental loose cannons, periodically thronging the drawbridge, but thankfully unable to break into the keep. Who would want to hear their stories, to accept the pathetic crumbs of their suffering, to get involved? A twinge of compassion from behind glass is the best they can hope for. A fortnight later and the same cars return to the port and the unfortunates are there waiting for them, perhaps the same individuals, who, for the whole time have been glugging the Beaujolais, the Burgundy or Bordeaux, have been shaking their mouldy blankets, clearing rain water from their plastic sheeting and searching for ‘firewood’ amongst the broken exhausts and blown tyres of the dual carriageway, while assessing the chances of forcing their way into an airless freight container.

But though waiting for us, they will not look our way or attempt to catch our eye as they pass, those who know only too well they are the unwelcome, the disinherited. They do not dare acknowledge our presence beyond being physical entities as we do not dare acknowledge theirs. Threats and mistrust sprout like summer weeds after a downpour. Though we may not all be able to do something for them as individuals in a practical sense, let us at least give them the respect of thinking of them not as an amorphous mass of roving mannequins periodically swamping the ferry ramps and digging rat-like under the barbed wire of the channel tunnel complex, but as human beings of equal value, fatefully trapped through no fault of their own in a hideous vortex of suffering and self-abasement. When we hear their urgent whisperings travel on the night air and feel their forms milling around us in the darkness, so close yet so infinitely distant, can we not at least honour their presence with a degree of compassion, rather than by giving in to instinctual disgust and fear, and however ambitious a proposition at this hour, acknowledge their potential future contribution to and reconciliation with the ‘civilized world’. He who drives past them without empathy, with disdain or indifference, who sees these unfortunates only as a monotonous element of the landscape to be registered, commented on then discarded, further corrupts whatever claims to humanistic torch bearing we might ascribe to our western democracies in the early twenty-first century.


Will Stone is a poet, essayist and literary translator. Shearsman Books have recently reissued his poetry collections in new editions and published his third The Sleepwalkers in March 2016. His translations with Arc, Menard and Hesperus include works by Verhaeren, Roden- bach, Trakl, Rilke, Nerval and Roth. Pushkin Press published his Stefan Zweig Montaigne in August 2015 and Zweig’s 1930’s essays as Messages from a Lost World in January 2016. His Selected Poems of Georges Rodenbach will be published by Arc in 2017 and an expanded collection of the poetry of Georg Trakl by Seagull Books in 2017. Will also contributes to Poetry Review, The TLS and Apollo magazine.

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