The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society by Chris Stewart Page B

getting stuff to and from the bridge.’  
    ‘There’s another one up the hill there. Why?’ The civiles were getting infuriated.  
    ‘That’s for spares for the one that runs to the bridge and back,’ I replied.
    ‘Well, let me tell you, señores , that it’s illegal to have old cars lying about in the countryside. Get rid of them, and quick. If they’re still here next week, I’m denouncing you and there’s a big fine.’ And with that, the duo marched off to their car.

 
    G RANADA W ELCOMES
    T HE PLIGHT OF THE Y OUNG M OROCCAN men brought home to me just how vulnerable immigrants can become when forced to live and work outside the legal sector. I felt that I had to try and do something to help. But I wasn’t at all sure what that something should be; I’m a bit of a non-starter as an activist, possessing none of the qualities I presumed essential: I can’t hold the attention of a meeting, and my administrative skills are hopelessly poor. Yet what did aptitude matter? The point, surely, was to try. So, grasping the bull by the horns, I signed myself up as a volunteer in an organisation called Granada Acoge .
    Granada Acoge – ‘Granada Welcomes’ – is the local branch of an immigrants’ welfare organisation that exists throughout Andalucía to look after the interests of immigrants, legal or illegal, wherever they have come from. In Granada,you can find them – a largely voluntary, part-time team of lawyers, social workers, doctors, translators and teachers – in a cramped office, really just a small house, in a back alley called Aguas de Cartuja. Three telephone lines or more ring constantly, the waiting room is crammed to bursting with hopeful newcomers from all corners of the globe, and every ninety seconds the doorbell rings and someone comes in. Somebody leaves about every half-hour, so by the end of the morning the place is bursting at the seams.
    I was to work as a general-purpose volunteer, and the first morning I turned up bright and eager and was placed under the tutelage of Mati, the rather sexy woman who ran the telephone and the door. Mati chain-smoked and spoke in a husky drawl, and I could tell by the way that she peered sideways at me through sultry-lidded eyes that she was wondering what a middle-aged Englishman was doing in a place like this. At length she decided that I was like some kind of foreign child and began to establish a way of dealing with me. She spoke slowly, enunciating her words with care and regarding me closely to see if I had understood.
    Usually, I hadn’t. The system they had, and there had to be a system, was so utterly impenetrable that, no matter how many times she repeated it, it still lay way beyond my grasp. I had been too long outside the orbit of offices, organisations, routines and fitting in with established patterns of work. Indeed, my last ‘proper job’ (‘proper’, I suspect, disallows farming or writing), was half a lifetime ago, in my twenties, working night shifts in a paper-clip factory in Utrecht.
    ‘ Bueno ,’ enunciated Mati slowly. ‘Your first job is to answer the telephone…’ I heaved a sigh of relief. Surely I could make the grade as a telephone receptionist. I didn’ttell Mati that I once spent ten minutes trying to phone Spain from my sister’s house in London before my fiveyear-old niece took the ‘phone’ out of my hands, pointed it at the telly and switched channels.
    ‘First’, Mati continued, ‘you must establish if a client has been here before, then if they already have an appointment, then what their problem is, and, according to what they tell you, you must do one of the following: If they have not been here before you must put them through to Juanma. That’s number six… unless of course it’s his illegal day, when it’s line four… or if he’s not here – he might be in court, for example – then put the call through to Inma. Inma will be on Juanma’s line – four that is – until coffee break,