KHALED
10:04.00 You drive me crazy. Believe me, you drive me crazy.
TINA
10:08:00 I have no time.
KHALED
10:12:00 You never understand. For three months I’ve been telling you to stop helping these people.
SEAN McALLISTER
10:26:00 Khaled’s been trying to stop Tina helping asylum seekers.
KHALED
10:33:30 Fuck off.
SEAN McALLISTER
10.34.0 But she’s been helping them for free. When they came to her city in September 2000 she was first to welcome them.
10.35.0
10:42:00 Are you Amir? When did he come in the country?
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:52:30 Tina thinks we should let everyone in Britain. But her asylum seeker boyfriend Khaled always likes to disagree.
TELEVISION NEWS REPORT
c/u of television
10:01:02:00 These ITV news pictures showing asylum seekers attempting to storm into the channel tunnel have helped put asylum at the top of the political agenda…
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:01:10:00 What do you think about these asylum seekers coming into England?
10:01:14:30 These asylum seekers coming to England are killing England.
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:01:18:00 What do you think England should do?
KHALED
subtitles
10:01:19 Stop them and shoot them. It’s too much this. Too many people.
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:01:30:30 Too many asylum seekers.
KHALED
10:32:30 Yes, too many asylum seekers.
TINA AND KHALED,
CAR SCENE (inside car)
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:01:49:00 Tina and Khaled were the thing I’d expected to find when I came to Hull to make a film about the 1500 asylum seekers who’d been sent to live here. Khaled had arrived from the Sangatte camp 6 months earlier and was sent to a hostel where Tina worked. He is 24 from Iraq, she is 48 from Hull. Like the 76,000 asylum seekers that came into England last year, Khaled needs a British passport; Tina wants to help them all.
Wide shot of car
10:02:28:00 They had their cultural differences but Khaled really knew how to charm Tina.
10:02:42:00 Tina was sacked from the hostel because she couldn’t work within the rigid Home Office rules. She now does it her own way using Khaled as her interpreter. Gazzi is her latest problem.
10:02:58:00 Gazzi’s depressed. He’s been cutting himself. He’s just found out his father’s died in Iraq.
10:03:14
GAZZI I’m going to Dover.
10:03:20:00
TINA Tell him we’ll get it sorted. He must come to the house tommorrow.
10:03:28
SEAN MCALLISTER Gazzi left the house he was allocated but because he stayed away for more than 2 weeks he wasn’t allowed back. He’s been sleeping on friends floors.
SUBTITLES
KHALED & GAZZI TALKING ON STEPS
10:03:38:00
KHALED - Go back to Dover and start again.
GAZZI – I can’t, I can’t start again.
10:03:44:00
KHALED - Now look…
GAZZI - I’m not going to a detention centre, they’ve got detention centres now.
10:03:52:00
KHALED - Come on.
GAZZI - I’m not starting again.
0:03:56:00
KHALED - It’s been on TV everybody coming to England now gets £1000.
10:04:02:00
KHALED - Isn’t it true Tina, everyone coming to England now gets money.
10:04:05:00
GAZZI - I’ve got nothing, I’m not staying here.
10:04:10:00
(END OF SUB TITLES)
SEAN MCALLISTER
(Tina stood on doorstep) Tina seemed almost alone in welcoming asylum seekers to her city but there was something about her bizarre relationship with Khaled that made me think about Britain and how it was going to live with its new citizens.
10:04:29:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Hull is a white city that has never had an immigrant population before the arrival of asylum seekers in Sept 2000.
(Empty Street Shot)
Many people here feel the city has enough problems of its own. Tina’s daughter Nicola lives in an area that was once part of a thriving fishing community. Today it’s known as Little Beruit after gangs of kids have been running riot and terrorising residents.
10:05:06:00
VIDEO WEDDING on tv Tina’s daughter, Nicola mad the headlines here when she married
Mohammed, a Kurdish asylum seeker from Iraq. Their marriage caused rifts within Tina’s family but Tina was used to this, when she walked out on a 28 year marriage, it was only Nicola who stood by her.
Now she’s using Nicola’s house as an unofficial drop in centre.
10:05:36:00
TINA So he has had no work permit? Has he had his money for his clothes?
10:05:47:00
SUBTITLES
MOHAMMED - This friend went to shop at Kwik Save, when he came out some kids said “Give me a cigarette”
10:05:57:00
MOHAMMED - They hit him with a bottle.
10:06:03:20
MOHAMMED - Twenty Five kids attacked him with bottles.
10:06:10:00
TINA Saddam kills you immediately, England kills you very slowly and very painfully.
10:06:22:00
OLD LADY
(SUBTITLES) - Mohammed please help me, I’m not like the young men.
10:06:27:00
OLD LADY - I’ve been trying to leave Hull for 7 months, please help me.
10:06:33:00
MOHAMMED - I know…don’t cry.
10:06:45:00
TINA Can you tell her we will help.
10:06:48:00
MOHAMMED - We’re helping everybody.
10:06:51:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Hull was not prepared for asylum seekers, they’d been sent unannounced and it was left to people like Tina to help. She seemed to identify with their loss. After walking out on her marriage she was left on the streets with everything she owned in binliners.
She’d been left homeless and was lodging in an asylum seekers flat.
10:07:07:00
TINA In the space of 2 months…..Well…well… I’d lost all my furniture when Dave and I split up because he took all that. But in the space of 2 months, I’d lost my house, lost my job, lost my car, lost everything and we came out and we just pissed ourselves laughing because that’s what you have to do.
SEAN MCALLISTER You didn’t cry?
TINA No. Everyone was like that…thinking have you lost it, have you totally lost your way Tina, this is whats happened. I did when I found out I’d lost the house, I said to the kids, “just leave me alone, give me a few days, I need to get it straight in my head” I really felt bad then but then I thought if I cave in now he’s won me and there’s no way he’ll ever do that. So it was get your act together Tina and start again.
10:08:11:00
Khaled brushing teeth
SEAN MCALLISTER In the 5 months that Tina’s been living with Khaled she hadn’t seen her mother. I’d heard they’d fallen out over Tina’s work with the asylum seekers but they’ve recently got back together.
10:08:25:00
TINA’S MOTHERS HOUSE
Wedding pictures
SEAN OFF CAMERA Is that Tina? It’s about 30 years ago that was taken, wasn’t it?
TINA’S MOTHER Yeah 1972.
10:08:36:00
TINA’S MOTHER Any sugar?
Making tea
KHALED 5
TINA’S MOTHER 4?….5?! No wonder you don’t eat, you can have 5 if you want 5 love. Looks like treacle.
10:08:52:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina was the rebel of the family she’d taken after her father Tom, a staunch Trade Union leader. She said that nothing was the same after he died.
10:09:01:00
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why did you say that things fell apart after he died?
10:09:03:00
TINA AND MOTHER TO CAM
TINA’S MOTHER Everything fell apart, the family, the lot. Her marriage broke up and the kids they all went wayward.
10:09:17:00
TINA As a family we were always together, we still are but before he was dying, while he was dying and after he died we all went in our own corners.
10:09:27:00
TINA’S MOTHER KISSING BOYS GOODBYE
TINA’S MOTHER Get some food down you, look at your waistline.
10:09:33:00
SEAN MCALLISTER It had been difficult for Tina’s mother to accept her daughter and granddaughter with asylum seekers but she had welcomed them into home. I wondered what it meant for someone of her generation.
10:09:48:00
SEAN OFF CAMERA What would Tom think of asylum seekers?
M Well, I don’t know.
S Do you think he’d have an open mind?
M No, not really. But then again he always argued when they never let the Jews in during the war. He said you should never shut the doors on them. But at the way they come in and at the rate they are coming in, we just don’t have the room for them. We’re too small an island and its costing a vast amount of money.
10:10:22:00
CLOSE UP OF PHOTO OF TINA AS CHILD
TINA’S MOTHER There’s Tina when she was little. We’ve always been the closest me and her, always. There’s Tina when she was a baby.
SEAN MCALLISTER Have you got a soft spot for Tina?
TINA’S MOTHER Yes, that’s what makes me so angry with her at times.
SEAN MCALLISTER Why’s that?
TINA’S MOTHER She could have made a life and a career for herself, she was brainy enough.
SEAN MCALLISTER What kind of career could she have had?
TINA’S MOTHER She could have been anything she wanted.
10:10:58:00
Tina & Khaled sitting to camera
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina’s mother made me realise that no matter how much Tina believed in helping asylum seekers her own relationship with one was not going to be that simple.
10:11:10:00
TINA Have you got any credit on that phone?
KHALED No, no Tina.
10:11:27:20
SEAN OFF CAMERA What’s the similarities between you two?
TINA None. What’s the attraction, none. I think we’re like two lost souls.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why then?
TINA I think we’re just used to being together.
10:11:48:00
TINA I used to think Dave wasn’t very romantic but he was like Casanova compared to this.
10:11:56:00
SEAN OFF CAMERA Does he ever compliment you?
TINA No can’t say I’ve ever been complimented, me Mam compliments me and our Nic. God if I didn’t have our Nic but no, no I can only remember one occasion.
10:12:19:00
SUBTITLES
SEAN OFF CAMERA Khaled don’t you like to cuddle?, snuggle?
KHALED No.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why not?
TINA It’s not manly.
KHALED I don’t like to cuddle, I don’t like to kiss, never.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You never kiss?
KHALED Never.
SEAN OFF CAMERA isn’t that a bit weird?
TINA Yes very. Some deep psychological problems, he doesn’t like women I think.
SEAN OFF CAMERA He likes kissing me.
KHALED I’ll kiss a man no problem.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You kissed me 3 times earlier.
KHALED With you no problem but with women, no.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Would you snuggle with me?
KHALED Yes no problem but a woman, no.
10:13:11:00
TINA Just sit there Khaled, don’t bloody exert yourself.
Tina clears up around Khaled
10:13:17:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina and Khaled were worlds apart and had been brought together by chance. They seemed to enjoy each others company in an irritable kind of way. I was beginning to see where Tina had come from but found it impossible to imagine Khaled’s past.
10:13:45:00
Khaled showing photos - This is my father. That is his gas station.
(SUBTITLES)
SEAN OFF CAMERA Your father’s gas station?
KHALED - This is my mother.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you miss your Mum?
KHALED - Too much.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you ever talk to your Mum on the telephone?
KHALED - No, no telephone.
KHALED - This is me in prison.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why?
KHALED - I was in the wrong party. Many people go to prison for 25 years. You English, you know nothing about Iraq.
- How far away it is.
- What happens there, every day, every minute, every hour.
- Before England was the father of Iraq.
- England controlled the whole of Iraq.
10:40:49:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Khaled said it was Britain and America’s fault that asylum seekers were coming here, they’d been bombing Iraq for 10 years which was making people leave. He said he’d been shot 7 times by Saddam’s men and left for dead in a body bag.
10:15:06:30
SEAN OFF CAMERA Ooh that’s a big one…..It came in here did it?
10:15:18:20
KHALED - It came out here and went in through my back.
(Subtitles)
10:15:30:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Monday is Tina’s busiest day at the city centre post office. It’s when everyone gets their weekly £28 in vouchers and £10 in cash.
10:15:44:00
OLD MAN It’s a bloody disgrace mate.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why?
OLD MAN Why ask a stupid question like that for.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why is it a disgrace?
OLD MAN Send them back to where they come from.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Don’t feel like that, they’ve run away from dangerous things.
OLD MAN A load of bunkum, I’ve been over there, they’re all deserters. You should send them to Buckingham Palace.
10:16:08:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina is a socialist who believes in helping all people no matter where they come from but some people in her city didn’t agree. She’d been punched by someone who’d seen her helping asylum seekers. A week later her daughter Nicola was also attacked.
10:16:26:00
NICOLA We was walking home and they called him a black bastard, so he told them to piss off, they threw half a telly at me then they was saying “come on then, if you think you’re hard enough” and they was all around then, all had knives on them like this.
SEAN OFF CAMERA How old are these kids?
NICOLA 15/16/17 and 18.
SEAN OFF CAMERA And you can’t feel like you can go back there now, it’s just not safe?
NICOLA No.
SEAN OFF CAMERA So you’ve had to come and sleep here?
NICOLA Yeah on the kitchen floor.
TINA The asylum seekers’ struggle is the struggle of all the working class. Their problems internationally are our problems. You can’t devide them like the bourgeoisie would like to divide us and dice us up. Their problem, the reason why they’ve escaped is greed and power; the same in this country; greed and power. The people who own the wealth have the power to give and take away and that’s all they’ve escaped from.
Street shots
10:17:34
SEAN MCALLISTER A week after the knife attack Tina’s daughter Nicola moved back home to Little Beirut, her landlord has employed minders to look after their house. Tina was round looking after Nicola who was too scared to go out.
TINA
Doorstep with neighbour They should be at school but they just don’t go do they…there’s not just one reason why.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You cannot go out?
NICOLA Not even going for the bus or even taking the dog out for a walk. Can’t go to local shops or anything.
10:18:23
Street shot
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina had thrown herself into the asylum seekers world, I couldn’t help wondering if like them she was running away from something. She hadn’t seen her own two sons for months, they’d gone off the rails during her marriage.
TINA I mean my mothers saying you should be there for your children and all the rest of it but they’re grown men and I’ve been through that. You know I’ve been in family therapy with the best of them, blamed everything on me and taken all responsibility and no doubt I had the biggest part to play in that. I don’t know, in the way they’ve grown up.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why would you say that?
TINA Because I’m there mother I suppose, I’m supposed to take all the shit and all the blame.
SEAN OFF CAMERA What do you think the blame is?
TINA On the way I brought them up.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you think it’s you?
TINA Yeah.
10:19:27
TINA You go through each year; was it wrong that I went to work, was it
(kid throwing bottle) working nights, was I always knackered during the day, so did I take it out on the kids cause I used to loose my rag like everybody else.
I’ve listened to other people about their families, I don’t know what the hell a normal family is but it would be lovely to have something approaching a family that care about each other, which sounds a bit ‘Mills & Boon’.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you have a family that care about each other?
TINA I did have. Yeah I did have.
Tina in white at Post Office
10:22:03
SEAN MCALLISTER I realised that Tina’s work was more than just helping asylum seekers, they were another family for her. She’d call them ‘her lads’ and they’d call her ‘mother’ but the debts from her marriage are mounting and she and Nicola need to find work.
Tina into office Asylum seekers were now being issued with work permits, while their applications were being considered Tina was trying to find everyone jobs but the only ones available are in deunionised work agencies. It is everything that Tina’s trade unionist Father fought against.
TINA I’m like a traitor. When I give it a bit more thought I will feel even
Surrounded by asylum seekers more of a traitor.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why?
TINA Health and safety issues, you should be working for minimum of £7 an hour not £3.70, everything! It goes against every principle I’ve ever stood for and I’ve gone and done it I’ve gone and signed.
10:23:20
Chicken Factory over pic. Tina
SEAN MCALLISTER 6 months after losing her 18k a year job working for asylum seekers Tina’s now working alongside them slaughtering 22 thousand chickens for £35 a day.
Tina is spending all her money on helping asylum seekers each evening. She is supporting Khaled who needs to send his money home to his family in Iraq but after a month of working thins are getting tense.
10:24:30
TINA Money for shopping. I’ve bought the food for weeks and weeks and weeks now.
KHALED - No problem.
TINA I’ve bought the food for weeks now.
KHALED - I don’t have money.
TINA But you must have. You go to company like me. I spend my money you save yours.
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina had been surviving on 4 hours sleep for the past month and I was getting concerned.
10:25:00
Tina/Khaled
Walking
TINA I’m fucked off. It’s like bloody open all hours.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Are you not talking?
TINA No not really.
Kitchen Opening Curtains
TINA It’s non stop.
SEAN OFF CAMERA What people coming round?
TINA Yeah, I mean I’d invited a couple round for something to eat but then everybody came round and I just wanted to go to bed. The other night it was one o clock in the morning and I was like that, thinking please go home.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You’ve got to start telling them to go home if you’re working these hours. If you’re getting up that early. Look at that man. Is he reading the Quoran?
10:25:57
TINA Yeah. I look at the young lasses and the young lads and I think; God what a life! You know, packing chickens for the rest of your bloody life. And what got me yesterday is that I’m covered in all this blood and it’s splashing in my face which I can’t stand. And I’m thinking I bet the prat who owns the factory, I bet his wife’s driving about in a Merc and we’re packing bloody chickens. Now if that doesn’t turn people to socialism God knows what will! I mean who has the right to tell me and the majority of working class, who should dictate that we should have that and be grateful for it, be grateful that we’ve got a job, doff that cap as the master goes by. I mean who has the bloody right to do that?
SEAN OFF CAMERA What, you said ‘life isn’t fair?’
TINA No. Don’t cause you’ll get me crying.
10:27:02
(Tina cries)
SEAN OFF CAMERA What is wrong? It’s too much isn’t it?
TINA No, I’m a strong woman, I was brought up like it, it’s not that it’s too much. I’m momentarily lost I think.
SEAN OFF CAMERA With what?
TINA With life in general and it will pass. In the next half an hour it will pass.
SEAN OFF CAMERA I’m not sure you’re happy in the relationship you’re in?
TINA No I’m not happy in it.
C/U chips cooking Just at this moment in time I don’t know where I’m going and it’ll pass because then I’ll think my life isn’t planned out so that’s great. And I think when they all go back which is really selfish and I’m left here on my own, then what do I do then?
10:28: 27
KHALED SAT SMILING
SEAN MCALLISTER Khaled seemed oblivious to Tina’s needs. They really were two different worlds living under one roof.
NICOLA/MOHAMMED HOME
10:28:42
SEAN MCALLISTER I got a call from Tina’s daughter Nicola. Her husband Mohammed had received the dreaded letter from Dover summoning him for an interview or possible deportation.
Khaled and friends have come to say their goodbyes in case they don’t see him again.
NICOLA When they came here they thought at least if they didn’t get a passport they’d be able to stay here a while, whilst the decision is being made but they’re shipping them through that quickly that everyone in this room has received a refusal and they’re fighting to get their appeal through. And they are upset and worried for ‘him’ because he has to go to Dover because everyone dreads the letter they get from Dover and they don’t know if they’ll be seeing him next week or not and I can’t imagine it so I try not to think about it. We’ll wait until Friday comes.
10:29:50
SEAN MCALLISTER This is the third time they’ve been summoned to Dover, each time they fear the worst. Tina has been calling her MP to find out what the interview is about. 4 hours into the 9 hour coach journey they get some news.
NICOLA She said shes just heard from them now and she’s phoned us straight
(over c/u of away. They told her at immigration that you are just going for an
mobile telephone) interview nothing else and it was just an investigation that they want us both there to go through the statements we made and to see if our marriage was genuine but you are just going for an interview and they will not be deporting you.
TINA TO CAMERA/
KHALED PROPOSES
SEAN MCALLISTER A couple of weeks later Nicola and Mohammed decide to leave Hull for a new start in Dewsbury.
I wasn’t sure what the future held for Tina and Khaled but he seemed to have plans of his own.
10:32:07
TINA He’s asked me a few times and I’ve told him to go shuv. Apparently ‘the lads’ all got together 3 months ago, its not on that he lives with me and they think he should be marrying me. So he says to them, I’ve asked her and she says no. So the other night he says about getting married, I said ‘you’ve got a wife’, I mean he’s engaged, so he says but I want to marry you and we get married in the mosque and married at the registry. But just 2 of us. So I says ‘I bloody don’t think so!’ He says not to tell anyone because his family don’t know and his wife.
KHALED TEA BAG
10:32:51
SEAN MCALLISTER I was suspicious, did Khaled want to marry Tina for love or for a passport. Now he was getting suspicious of my suspicions.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Is it strange for you 24, Tina 48. Big difference?
KHALED - No, no difference, I told Tina don’t think like that.
- I said I’ll bring my wife from Iraq and we’ll all live together.
- One big family, eating and working together.
- She said ’No’.
- She’s a good woman.
- Tina said ‘I’m not coming between you and your wife – never’.
- No problem.
- What do you think about asylum seekers in England?
SEAN OFF CAMERA It’s quite tough.
KHALED - Everyone says send them back.
SEAN OFF CAMERA I look at asylum seekers and I think, do they have a real problem or are they just coming here for a better life.
KHALED - I’ll tell you the truth.
- I wouldn’t lie for England.
- I wouldn’t say all Iraqi people have problems but I’d say 90% of people have problem with the Government of Iraq.
- Maybe 10% don’t have a problem, this 10% don’t have electricity, water or medicine.
- They don’t have a job, they have nothing.
10:35:04
KHALED GETTING PASSPORT PAPERS
SEAN MCALLISTER After 12 months in the country Khaled is given indefinite leave to remain in Britain.
TINA This is saying ‘You can stay in the country’.
KHALED - For job no problem?
TINA For job, no problem.
KHALED - Very good, thank you so much.
KHALED IN CAR
KHALED - Now I am English, I am not Iraqi, I’m English.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Welcome to England.
KHALED - You’re welcome, thank you very much everybody.
SEAN MCALLISTER Khaled had finally become British but the differing worlds between him and Tina had grown further apart. She was now losing sympathy with the very thing she’d set out to help.
10:35:38
KHALED PACKING SUITCASE
TINA It’s what you call packing your bags.
SEAN OFF CAMERA It’s not?
TINA Makes a change from me packing mine.
KHALED - You kill me. I’m 24 years old and my hair is going white.
TINA Its not my fault Khaled but I don’t want you to be nice to me when it suits you to be nice and not nice when it suits you not to be nice. I expect you to clean your mess up.
KHALED - I am not cleaning, I told you before.
- I told you in hostel.
- I told you I’d only cook eggs.
10:36:27 - I’m not clearing up.
C/U on Tina
KHALED - I phone my family today that’s why I’m sad. - You know I’m unhappy because of what’s happening in Iraq.
TINA No I says I am not happy I didn’t ask if you were not happy. I listen to your problems, we speak about your problems but that is not good enough for you.
KHALED - Saddam is destroying everything, my Mother’s in hospital.
- My wife’s in hospital, she has no medicine…and you ask why I’m unhappy.
TINA What did I say to you? We will get working, we will send your family money. What more can I do?
10:37:18
CAR DRIVING
SEAN OFF CAMERA Have you ever felt that you’ve had a normal life?
TINA No not at all. But then my cover up for that is who’d want a normal life? How boring that would be.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you think you would?
TINA Oh yes, if it was just one day a week, one day a month, to say this is normal day, you get Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, normal day…
10:37:49
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina had finally found the courage to break away from Khaled. I wondered if she was now totally disillusioned with asylum seekers.
BRADFORD
10:40:03
SEAN MCALLISTER 3 months later Tina has moved to Bradford and Nicola and Mohammed were living in Dewsbury. Tina was lodging in a house full of asylum seekers. She’d asked me to bring round her belongings in binliners from Nicola’s.
She’d got a job as hostel manager for the homeless. She was still helping asylum seekers in her spare time.
Tina said she’d moved on from Khaled and that she’d never been happier but there’d been some complications.
Life was never straightforward but nothing could prepare me for the surprise she had in store this time.
TINA to cam The worst thing I could have done was to fall in love with his cousin, it’s against all….
SEAN OFF CAMERA How do you feel about falling in love with his cousin and all the stigma with the family?
10:41:02
TINA I feel awful, cause I didn’t know, honest to God I didn’t know. I said well I’m sorry Khaled. You know well I didn’t say it just like that but I said you played me along for a year, lets be honest.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Did he?
TINA Oh yeah.
SEAN OFF CAMERA But you both got what you wanted from it?
TINA Yeah. I said we’ve both had a good time for a year – more or less. I said you tell me every day about what woman came up to you, she was going to buy you a car and give you a house so I said just go and find one, it’ll be easy for ya.
10: 41:38
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you think he was just after you for what he could get?
TINA I don’t know.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You don’t know him at the end of the relationship?
TINA No.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You really don’t know him?
TINA I think at the end of the day, I think he likes me, I think he lives me a lot but I think Khaled comes first.
10:41:59
SEAN OFF CAMERA So what made you fall in love with him?
TINA Because we go out, because we go in city centre and hold hands because we sit and talk because when I come home from work. Like with my husband, like with Khaled, it wasn’t him sat down and me rushing around the place, cooking and cleaning and all the rest of it around Dave or Khaled. He will cook.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Is he more like Mohammed is with Nicola?
TINA Yeah, and he speaks what he feels. At the end of the day I’ve said to him, I mean I’m like more than 20 years older because I don’t even think he’s 26.
10:42:48
SEAN OFF CAMERA He’s 22 isn’t he?
TINA 23 I think.
SEAN OFF CAMERA So you’re how much older then?
TINA 22 years, no I’m more aren’t I? 24, 25 years yeah.
(MASSOUD WASHING CUPS IN KITCHEN)
10:43:08
TINA I would have loved to have had with Massoud what I had with Dave, a nice house and I never thought I’d ever say that again. To settle down, my God…
SEAN OFF CAMERA To get married again?
TINA Yeah.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you think you will get married again?
TINA Yeah.
SEAN OFF CAMERA To Massoud?
TINA Yeah.
10:43:37
SEAN MCALLISTER I couldn’t quite believe it. It had taken me completely by surprise. It was the last thing I’d expected Tina to tell me. Although Tina seemed very much in love with Massoud I wanted to make sure she wasn’t making the same mistake again.
MASSOUD WINDOW
10:43:58
SEAN OFF CAMERA Its strange, you 24 years old and Tina 48. Its different.
MASSOUD - Very different, I know very different.
SEAN OFF CAMERA I don’t understand it.
MASSOUD - You don’t understand it?
SEAN OFF CAMERA No I cannot understand why.
MASSOUD - Sean when I first saw Tina, I was very sad for her.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why are you sad for Tina?
10:41:28
MASSOUD - Believe me, when I first saw Tina I was sad.
- This woman.
- This big, intelligent woman who was living in Hull.
- She didn’t have cigarettes or anything, no car, she didn’t have a job.
- I thought this is no good for a woman.
- Why don’t I help this woman? Why don’t I help her.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You won’t leave Tina after you get your passport? When you get passport you won’t leave Tina, say goodbye and go find a 22 year old girl?
MASSOUD - No, never. Some people say he wants to marry for his passport. I’m not marrying for a passport.
TINA AND MASSOUD CAR
10:45:27
SEAN OFF CAMERA Does your mother know you’re getting married Massoud?
MASSOUD - Yeah.
SEAN OFF CAMERA What did she say?
MASSOUD She said ‘Get married, no problem’! She said ‘Send a picture to Kurdistan’
TINA God I wish I’d grown my fringe.
INTO MULLAH’S HOUSE
10:46:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina was really going through with it. She’d come round to the Mullah’s to seek approval for a Muslim wedding. She’d agreed to Massoud’s one condition of marriage, to stop helping asylum seekers.
MULLAH He has to provide everything for you. He has to provide house, he has to provide clothes, he has to provide everything.
TINA Very good.
SEAN MCALLISTER But there was a price to pay because they’d already been living together. They could only marry if they didn’t sleep together for 100 days.
10:46:38
TINA AND MASSOUD ROOM
TINA That’s your bed then for the next 3 months and 10 days.
MASSOUD - No problem for me. For 3 months I am sleeping in the mountain.
TINA It wouldn’t bother me if I was sleeping in the bloody mountain.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Who’s going to give in first?
TINA We won’t give in, neither of us will give in but we might come pretty well close to it.
SEAN MCALLISTER It had been a long strange journey with Tina but at the end I felt that she’d found happiness with Massoud and that it was going to work but I could guess what her mother was going to say.
10:47:15
MOTHER She’ll get hurt as sure as God made little apples she’ll get hurt.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you think she’ll get hurt with Massoud?
MOTHER Well I don’t know, cause I don’t know enough about him. He’s so young, lets be honest he’ll eventually want a young woman won’t he?
SEAN OFF CAMERA He says not.
MOTHER Well I know he says not now.
SEAN OFF CAMERA I said why do you love Tina, he says because he wants to help her.
MOTHER Tina can’t bear to live on her own. That’s her problem. She should stand on her own 2 feet.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Has she ever been on her own since Dave?
MOTHER Off and on, she’s had boyfriends. None of them was any good. She always seemed to pick the wrong one.
10:47:55
C/U TINA WEDDING PHOTO
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why does she always pick the wrong man do you think?
MOTHER I don’t know, she falls for their stories, never looks beyond them.
SEAN OFF CAMERA I think she’s looking for her mother’s approval all the time.
MOTHER Oh she does, I know that.
SEAN OFF CAMERA She wants your approval?
MOTHER Oh I know she does.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Have you ever given her it?
MOTHER Oh yeah.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Are you going to give her it with this one?
MOTHER I reserve judgement on that. Well it’s her life at her age there’s nothing much I can do about it.
10:48:25
TINA/MASSOUD ON BED
NICOLA Me Mam’s got her own life. She isn’t just me Mam she has a life as Tina and I want her to enjoy it and get in there and do all the stuff she wants to do.
10:48:44
NIC/MO WALKING The fight in Hulls’ finished and that’s it but the rest of the world and the torment that’s going on, that fight will never end. And we are starting to get our lives back together; that’s why we’re decorating and things. Its all spring is in the air.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Its like a new start?
NICOLA TO CAMERA
NICOLA Yeah, it’s nice being sat with the door open and go to the shops if you want. Just stupid things like that.
SEAN OFF CAMERA It’s real nice here isn’t it?
NICOLA Yeah I love it. Come and live in Dewsbury it’s lovely. This is our home now. This is where our kid’s are going to be born, where the rest of our family are going to live, hopefully.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Are you thinking like that now?
NICOLA I said ‘No kids until this house is done’ so he’s off like the clappers!
10:49:39
MASSOUD HOOVERING
SEAN MCALLISTER I wondered if Tina’s views on asylum seekers had changed, after all she’d been through with Khaled and the violence in Hull. Did she still think we should let everyone into Britain?
SEAN OFF CAMERA So have you changed your opinion of asylum seekers?
10:50:03
TINA I’ve learnt a bit more.
SEAN OFF CAMERA What have you learnt?
TINA I learnt that there’s far more economic refugees here than I first thought.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Does that bother you?
TINA No.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why not?
TINA Because if my only way out of poverty was to either go fight my own people or escape to a country that’s affluent then I’d be escaping, I would be earning the money and sending it home. In England we’ve had quite a cosseted life, we don’t have kalashnikovs behind the back door and front door, we’ve not been bombed, we’ve not been told to move from our cities. If people actually sit down and think what it must be like to leave your family, the most important thing.
SEAN OFF CAMERA How do you feel about your home town?
TINA I’m sad, I’m sad that it’s splitting my family up because I’ve moved, Nicola and Mohammeds’ moved
TINA/MASSOUD EATING ICE CREAM
10:51:10 and sometimes I feel a bit ashamed that we all copped out and left. Like the asylum seekers, we’ve copped out and left Hull and not stayed there and spoke to more people and tried to put the message across.
TINA 88 days, not too long.
MASSOUD - No tomorrow 87.
SEAN OFF CAMERA 87 days.
End card
10:51:37
‘87 Days later Tina and Massoud were married in Bradford’.
CREDITS.
TRANSLATOR
MAHDI SALIH
MUSIC
BIGHAND PRODUCTIONS
COLOURIST
PERRY GIBBS
DUBBING MIXER
BOB JACKSON
ONLINE EDITOR
IAN BIRCHALL
ASSISTANT PRODUCER
RUTH TILLEY
PRODUCER
ALICE HENTY
FILM EDITOR
OLLIE HUDDLESTON
FILMED & DIRECTED BY
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:04.00 You drive me crazy. Believe me, you drive me crazy.
TINA
10:08:00 I have no time.
KHALED
10:12:00 You never understand. For three months I’ve been telling you to stop helping these people.
SEAN McALLISTER
10:26:00 Khaled’s been trying to stop Tina helping asylum seekers.
KHALED
10:33:30 Fuck off.
SEAN McALLISTER
10.34.0 But she’s been helping them for free. When they came to her city in September 2000 she was first to welcome them.
10.35.0
10:42:00 Are you Amir? When did he come in the country?
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:52:30 Tina thinks we should let everyone in Britain. But her asylum seeker boyfriend Khaled always likes to disagree.
TELEVISION NEWS REPORT
c/u of television
10:01:02:00 These ITV news pictures showing asylum seekers attempting to storm into the channel tunnel have helped put asylum at the top of the political agenda…
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:01:10:00 What do you think about these asylum seekers coming into England?
10:01:14:30 These asylum seekers coming to England are killing England.
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:01:18:00 What do you think England should do?
KHALED
subtitles
10:01:19 Stop them and shoot them. It’s too much this. Too many people.
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:01:30:30 Too many asylum seekers.
KHALED
10:32:30 Yes, too many asylum seekers.
TINA AND KHALED,
CAR SCENE (inside car)
SEAN MCALLISTER
10:01:49:00 Tina and Khaled were the thing I’d expected to find when I came to Hull to make a film about the 1500 asylum seekers who’d been sent to live here. Khaled had arrived from the Sangatte camp 6 months earlier and was sent to a hostel where Tina worked. He is 24 from Iraq, she is 48 from Hull. Like the 76,000 asylum seekers that came into England last year, Khaled needs a British passport; Tina wants to help them all.
Wide shot of car
10:02:28:00 They had their cultural differences but Khaled really knew how to charm Tina.
10:02:42:00 Tina was sacked from the hostel because she couldn’t work within the rigid Home Office rules. She now does it her own way using Khaled as her interpreter. Gazzi is her latest problem.
10:02:58:00 Gazzi’s depressed. He’s been cutting himself. He’s just found out his father’s died in Iraq.
10:03:14
GAZZI I’m going to Dover.
10:03:20:00
TINA Tell him we’ll get it sorted. He must come to the house tommorrow.
10:03:28
SEAN MCALLISTER Gazzi left the house he was allocated but because he stayed away for more than 2 weeks he wasn’t allowed back. He’s been sleeping on friends floors.
SUBTITLES
KHALED & GAZZI TALKING ON STEPS
10:03:38:00
KHALED - Go back to Dover and start again.
GAZZI – I can’t, I can’t start again.
10:03:44:00
KHALED - Now look…
GAZZI - I’m not going to a detention centre, they’ve got detention centres now.
10:03:52:00
KHALED - Come on.
GAZZI - I’m not starting again.
0:03:56:00
KHALED - It’s been on TV everybody coming to England now gets £1000.
10:04:02:00
KHALED - Isn’t it true Tina, everyone coming to England now gets money.
10:04:05:00
GAZZI - I’ve got nothing, I’m not staying here.
10:04:10:00
(END OF SUB TITLES)
SEAN MCALLISTER
(Tina stood on doorstep) Tina seemed almost alone in welcoming asylum seekers to her city but there was something about her bizarre relationship with Khaled that made me think about Britain and how it was going to live with its new citizens.
10:04:29:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Hull is a white city that has never had an immigrant population before the arrival of asylum seekers in Sept 2000.
(Empty Street Shot)
Many people here feel the city has enough problems of its own. Tina’s daughter Nicola lives in an area that was once part of a thriving fishing community. Today it’s known as Little Beruit after gangs of kids have been running riot and terrorising residents.
10:05:06:00
VIDEO WEDDING on tv Tina’s daughter, Nicola mad the headlines here when she married
Mohammed, a Kurdish asylum seeker from Iraq. Their marriage caused rifts within Tina’s family but Tina was used to this, when she walked out on a 28 year marriage, it was only Nicola who stood by her.
Now she’s using Nicola’s house as an unofficial drop in centre.
10:05:36:00
TINA So he has had no work permit? Has he had his money for his clothes?
10:05:47:00
SUBTITLES
MOHAMMED - This friend went to shop at Kwik Save, when he came out some kids said “Give me a cigarette”
10:05:57:00
MOHAMMED - They hit him with a bottle.
10:06:03:20
MOHAMMED - Twenty Five kids attacked him with bottles.
10:06:10:00
TINA Saddam kills you immediately, England kills you very slowly and very painfully.
10:06:22:00
OLD LADY
(SUBTITLES) - Mohammed please help me, I’m not like the young men.
10:06:27:00
OLD LADY - I’ve been trying to leave Hull for 7 months, please help me.
10:06:33:00
MOHAMMED - I know…don’t cry.
10:06:45:00
TINA Can you tell her we will help.
10:06:48:00
MOHAMMED - We’re helping everybody.
10:06:51:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Hull was not prepared for asylum seekers, they’d been sent unannounced and it was left to people like Tina to help. She seemed to identify with their loss. After walking out on her marriage she was left on the streets with everything she owned in binliners.
She’d been left homeless and was lodging in an asylum seekers flat.
10:07:07:00
TINA In the space of 2 months…..Well…well… I’d lost all my furniture when Dave and I split up because he took all that. But in the space of 2 months, I’d lost my house, lost my job, lost my car, lost everything and we came out and we just pissed ourselves laughing because that’s what you have to do.
SEAN MCALLISTER You didn’t cry?
TINA No. Everyone was like that…thinking have you lost it, have you totally lost your way Tina, this is whats happened. I did when I found out I’d lost the house, I said to the kids, “just leave me alone, give me a few days, I need to get it straight in my head” I really felt bad then but then I thought if I cave in now he’s won me and there’s no way he’ll ever do that. So it was get your act together Tina and start again.
10:08:11:00
Khaled brushing teeth
SEAN MCALLISTER In the 5 months that Tina’s been living with Khaled she hadn’t seen her mother. I’d heard they’d fallen out over Tina’s work with the asylum seekers but they’ve recently got back together.
10:08:25:00
TINA’S MOTHERS HOUSE
Wedding pictures
SEAN OFF CAMERA Is that Tina? It’s about 30 years ago that was taken, wasn’t it?
TINA’S MOTHER Yeah 1972.
10:08:36:00
TINA’S MOTHER Any sugar?
Making tea
KHALED 5
TINA’S MOTHER 4?….5?! No wonder you don’t eat, you can have 5 if you want 5 love. Looks like treacle.
10:08:52:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina was the rebel of the family she’d taken after her father Tom, a staunch Trade Union leader. She said that nothing was the same after he died.
10:09:01:00
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why did you say that things fell apart after he died?
10:09:03:00
TINA AND MOTHER TO CAM
TINA’S MOTHER Everything fell apart, the family, the lot. Her marriage broke up and the kids they all went wayward.
10:09:17:00
TINA As a family we were always together, we still are but before he was dying, while he was dying and after he died we all went in our own corners.
10:09:27:00
TINA’S MOTHER KISSING BOYS GOODBYE
TINA’S MOTHER Get some food down you, look at your waistline.
10:09:33:00
SEAN MCALLISTER It had been difficult for Tina’s mother to accept her daughter and granddaughter with asylum seekers but she had welcomed them into home. I wondered what it meant for someone of her generation.
10:09:48:00
SEAN OFF CAMERA What would Tom think of asylum seekers?
M Well, I don’t know.
S Do you think he’d have an open mind?
M No, not really. But then again he always argued when they never let the Jews in during the war. He said you should never shut the doors on them. But at the way they come in and at the rate they are coming in, we just don’t have the room for them. We’re too small an island and its costing a vast amount of money.
10:10:22:00
CLOSE UP OF PHOTO OF TINA AS CHILD
TINA’S MOTHER There’s Tina when she was little. We’ve always been the closest me and her, always. There’s Tina when she was a baby.
SEAN MCALLISTER Have you got a soft spot for Tina?
TINA’S MOTHER Yes, that’s what makes me so angry with her at times.
SEAN MCALLISTER Why’s that?
TINA’S MOTHER She could have made a life and a career for herself, she was brainy enough.
SEAN MCALLISTER What kind of career could she have had?
TINA’S MOTHER She could have been anything she wanted.
10:10:58:00
Tina & Khaled sitting to camera
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina’s mother made me realise that no matter how much Tina believed in helping asylum seekers her own relationship with one was not going to be that simple.
10:11:10:00
TINA Have you got any credit on that phone?
KHALED No, no Tina.
10:11:27:20
SEAN OFF CAMERA What’s the similarities between you two?
TINA None. What’s the attraction, none. I think we’re like two lost souls.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why then?
TINA I think we’re just used to being together.
10:11:48:00
TINA I used to think Dave wasn’t very romantic but he was like Casanova compared to this.
10:11:56:00
SEAN OFF CAMERA Does he ever compliment you?
TINA No can’t say I’ve ever been complimented, me Mam compliments me and our Nic. God if I didn’t have our Nic but no, no I can only remember one occasion.
10:12:19:00
SUBTITLES
SEAN OFF CAMERA Khaled don’t you like to cuddle?, snuggle?
KHALED No.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why not?
TINA It’s not manly.
KHALED I don’t like to cuddle, I don’t like to kiss, never.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You never kiss?
KHALED Never.
SEAN OFF CAMERA isn’t that a bit weird?
TINA Yes very. Some deep psychological problems, he doesn’t like women I think.
SEAN OFF CAMERA He likes kissing me.
KHALED I’ll kiss a man no problem.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You kissed me 3 times earlier.
KHALED With you no problem but with women, no.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Would you snuggle with me?
KHALED Yes no problem but a woman, no.
10:13:11:00
TINA Just sit there Khaled, don’t bloody exert yourself.
Tina clears up around Khaled
10:13:17:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina and Khaled were worlds apart and had been brought together by chance. They seemed to enjoy each others company in an irritable kind of way. I was beginning to see where Tina had come from but found it impossible to imagine Khaled’s past.
10:13:45:00
Khaled showing photos - This is my father. That is his gas station.
(SUBTITLES)
SEAN OFF CAMERA Your father’s gas station?
KHALED - This is my mother.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you miss your Mum?
KHALED - Too much.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you ever talk to your Mum on the telephone?
KHALED - No, no telephone.
KHALED - This is me in prison.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why?
KHALED - I was in the wrong party. Many people go to prison for 25 years. You English, you know nothing about Iraq.
- How far away it is.
- What happens there, every day, every minute, every hour.
- Before England was the father of Iraq.
- England controlled the whole of Iraq.
10:40:49:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Khaled said it was Britain and America’s fault that asylum seekers were coming here, they’d been bombing Iraq for 10 years which was making people leave. He said he’d been shot 7 times by Saddam’s men and left for dead in a body bag.
10:15:06:30
SEAN OFF CAMERA Ooh that’s a big one…..It came in here did it?
10:15:18:20
KHALED - It came out here and went in through my back.
(Subtitles)
10:15:30:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Monday is Tina’s busiest day at the city centre post office. It’s when everyone gets their weekly £28 in vouchers and £10 in cash.
10:15:44:00
OLD MAN It’s a bloody disgrace mate.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why?
OLD MAN Why ask a stupid question like that for.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why is it a disgrace?
OLD MAN Send them back to where they come from.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Don’t feel like that, they’ve run away from dangerous things.
OLD MAN A load of bunkum, I’ve been over there, they’re all deserters. You should send them to Buckingham Palace.
10:16:08:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina is a socialist who believes in helping all people no matter where they come from but some people in her city didn’t agree. She’d been punched by someone who’d seen her helping asylum seekers. A week later her daughter Nicola was also attacked.
10:16:26:00
NICOLA We was walking home and they called him a black bastard, so he told them to piss off, they threw half a telly at me then they was saying “come on then, if you think you’re hard enough” and they was all around then, all had knives on them like this.
SEAN OFF CAMERA How old are these kids?
NICOLA 15/16/17 and 18.
SEAN OFF CAMERA And you can’t feel like you can go back there now, it’s just not safe?
NICOLA No.
SEAN OFF CAMERA So you’ve had to come and sleep here?
NICOLA Yeah on the kitchen floor.
TINA The asylum seekers’ struggle is the struggle of all the working class. Their problems internationally are our problems. You can’t devide them like the bourgeoisie would like to divide us and dice us up. Their problem, the reason why they’ve escaped is greed and power; the same in this country; greed and power. The people who own the wealth have the power to give and take away and that’s all they’ve escaped from.
Street shots
10:17:34
SEAN MCALLISTER A week after the knife attack Tina’s daughter Nicola moved back home to Little Beirut, her landlord has employed minders to look after their house. Tina was round looking after Nicola who was too scared to go out.
TINA
Doorstep with neighbour They should be at school but they just don’t go do they…there’s not just one reason why.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You cannot go out?
NICOLA Not even going for the bus or even taking the dog out for a walk. Can’t go to local shops or anything.
10:18:23
Street shot
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina had thrown herself into the asylum seekers world, I couldn’t help wondering if like them she was running away from something. She hadn’t seen her own two sons for months, they’d gone off the rails during her marriage.
TINA I mean my mothers saying you should be there for your children and all the rest of it but they’re grown men and I’ve been through that. You know I’ve been in family therapy with the best of them, blamed everything on me and taken all responsibility and no doubt I had the biggest part to play in that. I don’t know, in the way they’ve grown up.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why would you say that?
TINA Because I’m there mother I suppose, I’m supposed to take all the shit and all the blame.
SEAN OFF CAMERA What do you think the blame is?
TINA On the way I brought them up.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you think it’s you?
TINA Yeah.
10:19:27
TINA You go through each year; was it wrong that I went to work, was it
(kid throwing bottle) working nights, was I always knackered during the day, so did I take it out on the kids cause I used to loose my rag like everybody else.
I’ve listened to other people about their families, I don’t know what the hell a normal family is but it would be lovely to have something approaching a family that care about each other, which sounds a bit ‘Mills & Boon’.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you have a family that care about each other?
TINA I did have. Yeah I did have.
Tina in white at Post Office
10:22:03
SEAN MCALLISTER I realised that Tina’s work was more than just helping asylum seekers, they were another family for her. She’d call them ‘her lads’ and they’d call her ‘mother’ but the debts from her marriage are mounting and she and Nicola need to find work.
Tina into office Asylum seekers were now being issued with work permits, while their applications were being considered Tina was trying to find everyone jobs but the only ones available are in deunionised work agencies. It is everything that Tina’s trade unionist Father fought against.
TINA I’m like a traitor. When I give it a bit more thought I will feel even
Surrounded by asylum seekers more of a traitor.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why?
TINA Health and safety issues, you should be working for minimum of £7 an hour not £3.70, everything! It goes against every principle I’ve ever stood for and I’ve gone and done it I’ve gone and signed.
10:23:20
Chicken Factory over pic. Tina
SEAN MCALLISTER 6 months after losing her 18k a year job working for asylum seekers Tina’s now working alongside them slaughtering 22 thousand chickens for £35 a day.
Tina is spending all her money on helping asylum seekers each evening. She is supporting Khaled who needs to send his money home to his family in Iraq but after a month of working thins are getting tense.
10:24:30
TINA Money for shopping. I’ve bought the food for weeks and weeks and weeks now.
KHALED - No problem.
TINA I’ve bought the food for weeks now.
KHALED - I don’t have money.
TINA But you must have. You go to company like me. I spend my money you save yours.
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina had been surviving on 4 hours sleep for the past month and I was getting concerned.
10:25:00
Tina/Khaled
Walking
TINA I’m fucked off. It’s like bloody open all hours.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Are you not talking?
TINA No not really.
Kitchen Opening Curtains
TINA It’s non stop.
SEAN OFF CAMERA What people coming round?
TINA Yeah, I mean I’d invited a couple round for something to eat but then everybody came round and I just wanted to go to bed. The other night it was one o clock in the morning and I was like that, thinking please go home.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You’ve got to start telling them to go home if you’re working these hours. If you’re getting up that early. Look at that man. Is he reading the Quoran?
10:25:57
TINA Yeah. I look at the young lasses and the young lads and I think; God what a life! You know, packing chickens for the rest of your bloody life. And what got me yesterday is that I’m covered in all this blood and it’s splashing in my face which I can’t stand. And I’m thinking I bet the prat who owns the factory, I bet his wife’s driving about in a Merc and we’re packing bloody chickens. Now if that doesn’t turn people to socialism God knows what will! I mean who has the right to tell me and the majority of working class, who should dictate that we should have that and be grateful for it, be grateful that we’ve got a job, doff that cap as the master goes by. I mean who has the bloody right to do that?
SEAN OFF CAMERA What, you said ‘life isn’t fair?’
TINA No. Don’t cause you’ll get me crying.
10:27:02
(Tina cries)
SEAN OFF CAMERA What is wrong? It’s too much isn’t it?
TINA No, I’m a strong woman, I was brought up like it, it’s not that it’s too much. I’m momentarily lost I think.
SEAN OFF CAMERA With what?
TINA With life in general and it will pass. In the next half an hour it will pass.
SEAN OFF CAMERA I’m not sure you’re happy in the relationship you’re in?
TINA No I’m not happy in it.
C/U chips cooking Just at this moment in time I don’t know where I’m going and it’ll pass because then I’ll think my life isn’t planned out so that’s great. And I think when they all go back which is really selfish and I’m left here on my own, then what do I do then?
10:28: 27
KHALED SAT SMILING
SEAN MCALLISTER Khaled seemed oblivious to Tina’s needs. They really were two different worlds living under one roof.
NICOLA/MOHAMMED HOME
10:28:42
SEAN MCALLISTER I got a call from Tina’s daughter Nicola. Her husband Mohammed had received the dreaded letter from Dover summoning him for an interview or possible deportation.
Khaled and friends have come to say their goodbyes in case they don’t see him again.
NICOLA When they came here they thought at least if they didn’t get a passport they’d be able to stay here a while, whilst the decision is being made but they’re shipping them through that quickly that everyone in this room has received a refusal and they’re fighting to get their appeal through. And they are upset and worried for ‘him’ because he has to go to Dover because everyone dreads the letter they get from Dover and they don’t know if they’ll be seeing him next week or not and I can’t imagine it so I try not to think about it. We’ll wait until Friday comes.
10:29:50
SEAN MCALLISTER This is the third time they’ve been summoned to Dover, each time they fear the worst. Tina has been calling her MP to find out what the interview is about. 4 hours into the 9 hour coach journey they get some news.
NICOLA She said shes just heard from them now and she’s phoned us straight
(over c/u of away. They told her at immigration that you are just going for an
mobile telephone) interview nothing else and it was just an investigation that they want us both there to go through the statements we made and to see if our marriage was genuine but you are just going for an interview and they will not be deporting you.
TINA TO CAMERA/
KHALED PROPOSES
SEAN MCALLISTER A couple of weeks later Nicola and Mohammed decide to leave Hull for a new start in Dewsbury.
I wasn’t sure what the future held for Tina and Khaled but he seemed to have plans of his own.
10:32:07
TINA He’s asked me a few times and I’ve told him to go shuv. Apparently ‘the lads’ all got together 3 months ago, its not on that he lives with me and they think he should be marrying me. So he says to them, I’ve asked her and she says no. So the other night he says about getting married, I said ‘you’ve got a wife’, I mean he’s engaged, so he says but I want to marry you and we get married in the mosque and married at the registry. But just 2 of us. So I says ‘I bloody don’t think so!’ He says not to tell anyone because his family don’t know and his wife.
KHALED TEA BAG
10:32:51
SEAN MCALLISTER I was suspicious, did Khaled want to marry Tina for love or for a passport. Now he was getting suspicious of my suspicions.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Is it strange for you 24, Tina 48. Big difference?
KHALED - No, no difference, I told Tina don’t think like that.
- I said I’ll bring my wife from Iraq and we’ll all live together.
- One big family, eating and working together.
- She said ’No’.
- She’s a good woman.
- Tina said ‘I’m not coming between you and your wife – never’.
- No problem.
- What do you think about asylum seekers in England?
SEAN OFF CAMERA It’s quite tough.
KHALED - Everyone says send them back.
SEAN OFF CAMERA I look at asylum seekers and I think, do they have a real problem or are they just coming here for a better life.
KHALED - I’ll tell you the truth.
- I wouldn’t lie for England.
- I wouldn’t say all Iraqi people have problems but I’d say 90% of people have problem with the Government of Iraq.
- Maybe 10% don’t have a problem, this 10% don’t have electricity, water or medicine.
- They don’t have a job, they have nothing.
10:35:04
KHALED GETTING PASSPORT PAPERS
SEAN MCALLISTER After 12 months in the country Khaled is given indefinite leave to remain in Britain.
TINA This is saying ‘You can stay in the country’.
KHALED - For job no problem?
TINA For job, no problem.
KHALED - Very good, thank you so much.
KHALED IN CAR
KHALED - Now I am English, I am not Iraqi, I’m English.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Welcome to England.
KHALED - You’re welcome, thank you very much everybody.
SEAN MCALLISTER Khaled had finally become British but the differing worlds between him and Tina had grown further apart. She was now losing sympathy with the very thing she’d set out to help.
10:35:38
KHALED PACKING SUITCASE
TINA It’s what you call packing your bags.
SEAN OFF CAMERA It’s not?
TINA Makes a change from me packing mine.
KHALED - You kill me. I’m 24 years old and my hair is going white.
TINA Its not my fault Khaled but I don’t want you to be nice to me when it suits you to be nice and not nice when it suits you not to be nice. I expect you to clean your mess up.
KHALED - I am not cleaning, I told you before.
- I told you in hostel.
- I told you I’d only cook eggs.
10:36:27 - I’m not clearing up.
C/U on Tina
KHALED - I phone my family today that’s why I’m sad. - You know I’m unhappy because of what’s happening in Iraq.
TINA No I says I am not happy I didn’t ask if you were not happy. I listen to your problems, we speak about your problems but that is not good enough for you.
KHALED - Saddam is destroying everything, my Mother’s in hospital.
- My wife’s in hospital, she has no medicine…and you ask why I’m unhappy.
TINA What did I say to you? We will get working, we will send your family money. What more can I do?
10:37:18
CAR DRIVING
SEAN OFF CAMERA Have you ever felt that you’ve had a normal life?
TINA No not at all. But then my cover up for that is who’d want a normal life? How boring that would be.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you think you would?
TINA Oh yes, if it was just one day a week, one day a month, to say this is normal day, you get Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, normal day…
10:37:49
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina had finally found the courage to break away from Khaled. I wondered if she was now totally disillusioned with asylum seekers.
BRADFORD
10:40:03
SEAN MCALLISTER 3 months later Tina has moved to Bradford and Nicola and Mohammed were living in Dewsbury. Tina was lodging in a house full of asylum seekers. She’d asked me to bring round her belongings in binliners from Nicola’s.
She’d got a job as hostel manager for the homeless. She was still helping asylum seekers in her spare time.
Tina said she’d moved on from Khaled and that she’d never been happier but there’d been some complications.
Life was never straightforward but nothing could prepare me for the surprise she had in store this time.
TINA to cam The worst thing I could have done was to fall in love with his cousin, it’s against all….
SEAN OFF CAMERA How do you feel about falling in love with his cousin and all the stigma with the family?
10:41:02
TINA I feel awful, cause I didn’t know, honest to God I didn’t know. I said well I’m sorry Khaled. You know well I didn’t say it just like that but I said you played me along for a year, lets be honest.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Did he?
TINA Oh yeah.
SEAN OFF CAMERA But you both got what you wanted from it?
TINA Yeah. I said we’ve both had a good time for a year – more or less. I said you tell me every day about what woman came up to you, she was going to buy you a car and give you a house so I said just go and find one, it’ll be easy for ya.
10: 41:38
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you think he was just after you for what he could get?
TINA I don’t know.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You don’t know him at the end of the relationship?
TINA No.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You really don’t know him?
TINA I think at the end of the day, I think he likes me, I think he lives me a lot but I think Khaled comes first.
10:41:59
SEAN OFF CAMERA So what made you fall in love with him?
TINA Because we go out, because we go in city centre and hold hands because we sit and talk because when I come home from work. Like with my husband, like with Khaled, it wasn’t him sat down and me rushing around the place, cooking and cleaning and all the rest of it around Dave or Khaled. He will cook.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Is he more like Mohammed is with Nicola?
TINA Yeah, and he speaks what he feels. At the end of the day I’ve said to him, I mean I’m like more than 20 years older because I don’t even think he’s 26.
10:42:48
SEAN OFF CAMERA He’s 22 isn’t he?
TINA 23 I think.
SEAN OFF CAMERA So you’re how much older then?
TINA 22 years, no I’m more aren’t I? 24, 25 years yeah.
(MASSOUD WASHING CUPS IN KITCHEN)
10:43:08
TINA I would have loved to have had with Massoud what I had with Dave, a nice house and I never thought I’d ever say that again. To settle down, my God…
SEAN OFF CAMERA To get married again?
TINA Yeah.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you think you will get married again?
TINA Yeah.
SEAN OFF CAMERA To Massoud?
TINA Yeah.
10:43:37
SEAN MCALLISTER I couldn’t quite believe it. It had taken me completely by surprise. It was the last thing I’d expected Tina to tell me. Although Tina seemed very much in love with Massoud I wanted to make sure she wasn’t making the same mistake again.
MASSOUD WINDOW
10:43:58
SEAN OFF CAMERA Its strange, you 24 years old and Tina 48. Its different.
MASSOUD - Very different, I know very different.
SEAN OFF CAMERA I don’t understand it.
MASSOUD - You don’t understand it?
SEAN OFF CAMERA No I cannot understand why.
MASSOUD - Sean when I first saw Tina, I was very sad for her.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why are you sad for Tina?
10:41:28
MASSOUD - Believe me, when I first saw Tina I was sad.
- This woman.
- This big, intelligent woman who was living in Hull.
- She didn’t have cigarettes or anything, no car, she didn’t have a job.
- I thought this is no good for a woman.
- Why don’t I help this woman? Why don’t I help her.
SEAN OFF CAMERA You won’t leave Tina after you get your passport? When you get passport you won’t leave Tina, say goodbye and go find a 22 year old girl?
MASSOUD - No, never. Some people say he wants to marry for his passport. I’m not marrying for a passport.
TINA AND MASSOUD CAR
10:45:27
SEAN OFF CAMERA Does your mother know you’re getting married Massoud?
MASSOUD - Yeah.
SEAN OFF CAMERA What did she say?
MASSOUD She said ‘Get married, no problem’! She said ‘Send a picture to Kurdistan’
TINA God I wish I’d grown my fringe.
INTO MULLAH’S HOUSE
10:46:00
SEAN MCALLISTER Tina was really going through with it. She’d come round to the Mullah’s to seek approval for a Muslim wedding. She’d agreed to Massoud’s one condition of marriage, to stop helping asylum seekers.
MULLAH He has to provide everything for you. He has to provide house, he has to provide clothes, he has to provide everything.
TINA Very good.
SEAN MCALLISTER But there was a price to pay because they’d already been living together. They could only marry if they didn’t sleep together for 100 days.
10:46:38
TINA AND MASSOUD ROOM
TINA That’s your bed then for the next 3 months and 10 days.
MASSOUD - No problem for me. For 3 months I am sleeping in the mountain.
TINA It wouldn’t bother me if I was sleeping in the bloody mountain.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Who’s going to give in first?
TINA We won’t give in, neither of us will give in but we might come pretty well close to it.
SEAN MCALLISTER It had been a long strange journey with Tina but at the end I felt that she’d found happiness with Massoud and that it was going to work but I could guess what her mother was going to say.
10:47:15
MOTHER She’ll get hurt as sure as God made little apples she’ll get hurt.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Do you think she’ll get hurt with Massoud?
MOTHER Well I don’t know, cause I don’t know enough about him. He’s so young, lets be honest he’ll eventually want a young woman won’t he?
SEAN OFF CAMERA He says not.
MOTHER Well I know he says not now.
SEAN OFF CAMERA I said why do you love Tina, he says because he wants to help her.
MOTHER Tina can’t bear to live on her own. That’s her problem. She should stand on her own 2 feet.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Has she ever been on her own since Dave?
MOTHER Off and on, she’s had boyfriends. None of them was any good. She always seemed to pick the wrong one.
10:47:55
C/U TINA WEDDING PHOTO
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why does she always pick the wrong man do you think?
MOTHER I don’t know, she falls for their stories, never looks beyond them.
SEAN OFF CAMERA I think she’s looking for her mother’s approval all the time.
MOTHER Oh she does, I know that.
SEAN OFF CAMERA She wants your approval?
MOTHER Oh I know she does.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Have you ever given her it?
MOTHER Oh yeah.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Are you going to give her it with this one?
MOTHER I reserve judgement on that. Well it’s her life at her age there’s nothing much I can do about it.
10:48:25
TINA/MASSOUD ON BED
NICOLA Me Mam’s got her own life. She isn’t just me Mam she has a life as Tina and I want her to enjoy it and get in there and do all the stuff she wants to do.
10:48:44
NIC/MO WALKING The fight in Hulls’ finished and that’s it but the rest of the world and the torment that’s going on, that fight will never end. And we are starting to get our lives back together; that’s why we’re decorating and things. Its all spring is in the air.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Its like a new start?
NICOLA TO CAMERA
NICOLA Yeah, it’s nice being sat with the door open and go to the shops if you want. Just stupid things like that.
SEAN OFF CAMERA It’s real nice here isn’t it?
NICOLA Yeah I love it. Come and live in Dewsbury it’s lovely. This is our home now. This is where our kid’s are going to be born, where the rest of our family are going to live, hopefully.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Are you thinking like that now?
NICOLA I said ‘No kids until this house is done’ so he’s off like the clappers!
10:49:39
MASSOUD HOOVERING
SEAN MCALLISTER I wondered if Tina’s views on asylum seekers had changed, after all she’d been through with Khaled and the violence in Hull. Did she still think we should let everyone into Britain?
SEAN OFF CAMERA So have you changed your opinion of asylum seekers?
10:50:03
TINA I’ve learnt a bit more.
SEAN OFF CAMERA What have you learnt?
TINA I learnt that there’s far more economic refugees here than I first thought.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Does that bother you?
TINA No.
SEAN OFF CAMERA Why not?
TINA Because if my only way out of poverty was to either go fight my own people or escape to a country that’s affluent then I’d be escaping, I would be earning the money and sending it home. In England we’ve had quite a cosseted life, we don’t have kalashnikovs behind the back door and front door, we’ve not been bombed, we’ve not been told to move from our cities. If people actually sit down and think what it must be like to leave your family, the most important thing.
SEAN OFF CAMERA How do you feel about your home town?
TINA I’m sad, I’m sad that it’s splitting my family up because I’ve moved, Nicola and Mohammeds’ moved
TINA/MASSOUD EATING ICE CREAM
10:51:10 and sometimes I feel a bit ashamed that we all copped out and left. Like the asylum seekers, we’ve copped out and left Hull and not stayed there and spoke to more people and tried to put the message across.
TINA 88 days, not too long.
MASSOUD - No tomorrow 87.
SEAN OFF CAMERA 87 days.
End card
10:51:37
‘87 Days later Tina and Massoud were married in Bradford’.
CREDITS.
TRANSLATOR
MAHDI SALIH
MUSIC
BIGHAND PRODUCTIONS
COLOURIST
PERRY GIBBS
DUBBING MIXER
BOB JACKSON
ONLINE EDITOR
IAN BIRCHALL
ASSISTANT PRODUCER
RUTH TILLEY
PRODUCER
ALICE HENTY
FILM EDITOR
OLLIE HUDDLESTON
FILMED & DIRECTED BY
SEAN MCALLISTER