In 2021 I set out to write about the darkness of the London metropolis and to reveal the untold lives of young and vulnerable people who are exposed to violence by virtue of where they live and who they go to school with. I wanted to ask who belongs in this city: is it the tweed-jacketed politicians who roam the Palace of Westminster or the vulnerable, voiceless communities who live in its shadow?
This collection of stories intends to tells how migrants who find safety in our cities can too often become victims and perpetrators of violence. I dig deep to understand faith, sex, sexuality and morality in migrant communities. I investigate how dark stigma and suicide can tear families and communities apart, and how the unspoken culture of honour killings lingers among some young British women.
I share my own story of being a migrant who started at the bottom of the heap, as a cleaner in a hospital in Edinburgh. We get a bird’s-eye view of the true colours of London society: how the institutions that are there to protect us can also claim our lives.
In 2013 I was asked to fill a role created by the Mayor of London, working with young people and families affected by gang violence in the city. My role would explore the mental health needs of young people affected by knife crime, sexual exploitation and human or drug trafficking. Many had been excluded from school, some were from a neuro-divergent background, and most were from minority backgrounds. London is a multi-cultural city: many of my clients were children of migrant communities who had come to London in search of safety only to lose their children to gang violence. I was the migrant nurse who went where most would not dare to tread
My book, Street Clinic, seeks to explain why young men who have been stabbed in the streets of Westminster, where I nursed, continue to recycle violence. They are vulnerable; their trauma is never really addressed because our mental health services are not designed with them in mind. My own experience of racism and exclusion has brought me closer to the experiences that my patients face
Britain has a colourful, conflicted history marked by slavery and structural racism that often exists in the most discreet forms. Class and unconscious bias are significant in defining who belongs in this great country and who does not. It is a country that recruits migrant workers to work in its institutions yet pays little attention to the discrimination faced by the very migrants it recruits or those who arrive on its shores seeking peace from conflict countries.
I want to share stories of vulnerability, resilience and strength. My writing honours the might of the NHS and sheds light on the everyday experiences of minority groups working and accessing services within it. Where I have castigated the system, it is precisely because I adore it and want it to work for everyone, including our migrant communities.
Street Clinic is out in 2025.
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