March 28, ____.

I went to see my G.P. today.

I needed someone to talk to.

I couldn’t talk to any of my friends or relatives. In the past, each time I tried talking to them, all I managed to do was to cause them a lot of distress.

I showed Dr Croft the letter I'd received from the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and I showed him the eviction notice.

“What are these?” he asked.

“They are letters,” I said. “This one’s from the AIT telling me my asylum application has been rejected. And this one’s from the Home Office telling me I have got to leave the hostel and return to my country of origin.”

“Which country are you from?”

“Zimbabwe.”

“The SAS should go in there and blast Moyo," Dr Croft said. "That’s what I’d do if I were Prime Minster. I’d tell the army to go in there and take out the tyrant.”

My face and cheeks felt hot. I was itching all over.

Last week, the Ugandan-born Church of England Archbishop, David Bantariza had been in the news. He'd been saying the British army should invade Zimbabwe and remove President Moyo from office and a week before that, the Zimbabwean Roman Catholic Archbishop, Blessed Ndlovu had also been in the news and he'd been saying Britain and America should invade Zimbabwe and remove the President from office.

I could see burning houses. I could hear buses being riddled with bullets. I could smell burning cars and trucks. I could see streets littered with the dead bodies of innocent people.

“The reason why so many Muslims and black people are claiming asylum in this country is because we've got a generous welfare system," Dr Croft was saying. “The Prime Minister and his government made a mistake when they relaxed immigration controls.

"You people now want to rule this country. You want to take our jobs. You don’t want to start at the bottom like we had to do when we started working. When you start work, you want to start right at the top and with all the perks... company car... company house... an allowance for your children to study at the best schools in the country ...

“I know why the Prime Minister is allowing so many of you into the country. It’s because he wants you to vote for him and his party ... but I'll tell you this, he’s going to lose the next elections specifically because he’s allowed too many of you into the country.”

I was sweating.

“You should put two signs on your door,” I said. “One should say, ‘Black People Not Allowed’ and the other one should say, ‘Asylum Seekers Not Allowed.’ Or, better still, you could represent it graphically.”

I took a notebook and two pens from his side of the desk and drew a large red circle. I put a large X in the middle of the circle with the ends of the X touching the circumference of the circle so that the whole thing looked like a pie chart. In the middle, from one end of the circle to the other, using the black pen, I wrote, ‘Black People.’ Immediately below that I drew another sign representing that asylum seekers were not allowed in the surgery and I put the pens on the notebook and pushed the notebook to him.

For a moment, he looked like he was about to call a sign maker to ask him to make the posters.

When I got back to the hostel, I went straight to bed and slept. I missed supper. I couldn’t wake up.

I don’t think I’ll be seeing Dr Croft again. I doubt that he can see me as a person. When he looks at me, he sees a black person and an asylum seeker. And black people and asylum seekers are like pigeons, there are too many of them in the UK.