Love in a Hostile Environment

Welcome to The Mortar, a biweekly newsletter created by Stack Magazines. Every Tuesday and Friday we’ll select a great story from one of our favourite independent publishers and drop it into your inbox. For this first instalment we’re starting close to home with a piece from The Fence, the London-based quarterly that has become renowned for its outstanding writing and its gorgeous, two-colour layouts. I chose this story because it’s a good example of what I want The Mortar to do, with storytelling that can give you a fresh perspective on the world. And just like the magazines we send out on Stack, the stories will always be totally different every time. I hope you’ll enjoy this first one…

“I’m blaming this on Disney,” Victor winces, burying his head in his hands.

Aged 15, he was the new kid at a school in Hackney. He had a thick Nigerian accent that he was trying hard to mask, and zero clue about the social order of teenage life in London. He’s also a sucker for love, so when his cousin introduced him to a girl who looked just like someone he knew in Lagos, he fell hard. “She felt like home,” he explains. “And I caught feelings really fast.”

Victor was learning on the job, so he turned to the TV shows and films he grew up with, watching for a blueprint. He decided, in his infinite wisdom, that the best way to woo his crush was to serenade her. In the playground. In front of the entire school. “Oh God, I’m blushing,” he squirms, in a rare break from cloud-like calm. “I sang Ocean Eyes by Billie Eilish. I was a bit rusty so my voice cracked. To this day I can’t listen to that song.”

Did it work? “Nooooo!” But, like Prince Eric himself, Victor persevered. The next time, he asked the girl out during lunch break and was turned down again. But about a month later, they finally got together.

The two ended up dating for over a year, breaking up just before they started sixth form college – arguably a model trajectory for a first relationship. But they could have had a different ending. Victor and his mum had flown to Heathrow from Nigeria in December 2020 for what Victor thought was a two-week holiday. In fact they were escaping his father’s family, who were convinced that Victor was not his father’s son and were making threats on their lives. By the time Victor started his dating life, he and his mum had overstayed.

“I had this deep fear that the police could stop me at any point and tell me I had to go back,” he says. “So I tried my best to stay inside.” It was a relationship that existed in school corridors and DMs. So, who ended things? “I wanna say it was mutual, but I think she did,” Victor concludes.

For asylum seekers in the UK, life can be deeply boring in a way that allows for space to think about little else but their predicament. Those awaiting news on claims – a process that can take anywhere from a few months to many years – are not allowed to work. There are regular check-ins at a reporting centre, with the possibility of random detention a constant threat. Housing is temporary, so putting down roots is virtually impossible. Outside of check-ins, time is filled with figuring out how to subsist on £49.18 a week in independent living, and £8.86 a week in catered accommodation.

This all makes for an unsettled existence at the edges of society. In my time working with and reporting on asylum seekers, I’ve always wondered how feasible it is to maintain a love life in the mayhem. So I put a call-out across a tight migrant network of activists, charities and WhatsApp groups, asking for stories. There was an enthusiastic response. It proved something I already knew: migrants love the opportunity to talk about anything other than their immigration status.