The food is repetitive, the friendly guests never leave, the streets of Reading rarely change. “There is nothing to do. Nothing is happening. All I want is a real book to read, but there aren’t any here and there’s no way I can afford one.’ Ali is one of 37,000 asylum seekers currently holed up in hotels and lives on £1 a day, which he says is earmarked for clothes and other necessities. For the 34-year-old, who fled religious persecution in Iran and survived a treacherous crossing of the English Channel in a small boat carrying twice its safe capacity, life in England has proved somewhat anticlimactic. His overloaded boat arrived in Kent on 2 July 2021 and Home Office officials entered his details into the asylum system. After a short stay in Kent, he was bussed to the capital, but found that accommodation in London had run out. The Kurdish Iranian was moved 40 miles west to Reading and as of July 7, 2021, Ali lives in room 221, praying that something will happen. “One, two, three months is reasonable in a hotel, but not 17 months,” he said. “To wait and do nothing is unacceptable.” For a man who was a successful scientific academic in Iran – he has two university degrees, including a master’s in astrophysics, and can speak six languages, including English – not being able to work or study has become a kind of psychological torture. Ali, like the 100 other residents of the hotel, has received no update on his asylum claim and no information on the Application Registration Card (ARC), which offers a crucial platform to make a new start . Ali: “We must be brave enough to consider that we are all human.” Photo: Andrew Aitchison/Andy Aitchison “Asylum seekers need ARC for bank account, driving license, exams. When I checked the government website it said that asylum seekers will receive the card in three working days, but I still haven’t got it. The government is trying to make everything more complicated. The situation scuppers Ali’s hopes of studying international politics at Reading University – that and finding the £160 required for an entrance exam. “How can I afford it?” Ali and the other hotel residents often wonder why they can’t work and pay taxes, noting the huge number of job vacancies and huge labor shortages in the UK. Free to leave the hotel and explore the local neighborhoods, Ali and all his friends are not interested in disappearing into the black economy, preferring to wait for a decision that, they hope, will allow them to work legally and contribute to society. One of the worst parts of Ali’s Groundhog Day existence is what he eats – bland canteen fodder he thinks relies heavily on eggs. “The food is the most terrible part, so repetitive. I can’t take it anymore.” Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said life in limbo for people like Ali was having an increasingly devastating effect on the mental health of asylum seekers. “Long delays leave people like Ali trapped in inadequate accommodation for months or even years, unable to work, put down roots in their community or get on with their lives. This is incredibly damaging to their mental health, causing unnecessary suffering and a real waste of human resources.” Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Life in England, limited as it is, gave Ali a sense of how some of its citizens perceive him. “People don’t seem to have a good opinion of asylum seekers from the Middle East. They read the press about wars, about the poor. They seem to think that people with our hair color, our skin color are stupid. “If you are a white European, with blond hair and blue eyes, like Ukrainians, then you are considered intelligent. We must be brave enough to consider that we are all human.” Ali is determined to change such attitudes. “The problem is that no one can understand that asylum seekers can change something. In 2018 an Iranian asylum seeker in the UK won the Fields Medal [for outstanding achievement] in Math”. For now, Ali says it’s hard not to compare the modern reality to what he was forced to leave behind in Iran. “I had the best lifestyle. The best job, my own office. I had my job, my house and a luxury car, but sometimes, in life, everything changes suddenly and there is no other option than to leave everything behind and just go.” “Someone fell into the water and you only have two or three seconds to think: you want to help, but helping is too dangerous – to choose between your life and his. “But when I tried to pull him up, he tried to pull me down. I got him into the boat, but I have the same dream every night, him pulling and me trying to save him, at that very moment in my dreams.” The one big positive of his experience was the welcome he received from many of the people of Reading. “The English are the kindest people I have ever seen in my life, very kind and very kind, sharing what they have with people who have nothing,” he said. It is the government, he believes, that is letting everyone down. “Their policies are not like the English. They are trying to help. their government is not.”
