April 2, ____.

A man attacked me in the pub today. I’d gone there because Ali likes to play snooker on weekends. I don’t like snooker but I go to the pub with Ali because Ali is a good player and sometimes there’s lots of beer to be won. Ali doesn’t drink. When he wins, he passes the drinks on to me.

We were standing by the edge of the snooker table, and I was telling Ali about the trouble I was having finding a solicitor to take up my case.

A man on the other side of the table interjected, “We don’t want people like you here. You come into our country, you steal our benefits and you jump the housing queue. People are homeless because of the likes of you. ”

I told him I wasn’t on any housing list and that I was also going to be homeless very soon.

“Why don’t you go out there and get jobs and earn your own money and pay your way like the rest of us?” a second man asked.

I tried to explain that the government doesn’t allow asylum seekers to work.

“It’s because of people like you that decent British people can’t get jobs,” a third man said.

“Go back to your own bloody countries,” another man said.

“I think we should leave,” I said to Ali.

But before we could go, one of the men grabbed me by the collar and head-butted me. I tripped and fell, and the man kicked me while I was lying on the floor. I couldn’t do anything except coil up and try to protect my face.

It was only when the bartender and another man intervened, that I was able to get off the floor.

They asked me if I was alright and I said I was fine. They asked me if I wanted them to call the police, but I said no.

What good would the police do? How would they help?

Ali had disappeared as soon as the man started attacking me. He didn’t want to be there when the police arrived. Two of his friends had been stopped by the police last week and they hadn’t been heard from since. Ali is convinced they’re either in a detention centre somewhere here in the UK or they’ve already been sent back to Pakistan.

At the hostel, I washed my face, rinsed my mouth and went to bed.