Determination is the debut novel from Tawseef Khan, which is out now in hardback. In Determination, we follow Jamila Shah, a young in immigration solicitor tasked with running the precious family law firm. Working under the shadow of the government’s ‘hostile environment’, she constantly prays and hopes that their ‘determinations’ will result in her clients being allowed to stay.

In this polyphonic, assured and character-driven debut, we meet the staff of Shah & Co Solicitors, who themselves arrived in the UK not too long ago, and their clients, more recent arrivals who are made to jump through hoops to create a life for themselves whilst trying to achieve some semblance of normality.

‘Help me, Mrs Shah!’
That Sunday, Jamila lay in bed with her eyes half-closed, phone pressed to her ear, mind tangled in her dreams. Moments ago, she had been eating a sandwich of metal spoons, her teeth shattering into pieces like in a cartoon.
‘Please help me. They take my husband and I don’t know what to do,’ said the woman on the end of the line. She began sobbing.
‘I can’t understand you. Take a minute. Compose yourself.’
Jamila sat up, pushed her hair from her face. The world was blurry. Morning fought through the linen curtains.
The woman on the phone sniffled, attempted to breathe in deeply.
‘Now, tell me from the top, what happened? Who took your husband?’ Jamila’s voice was dull and thick with sleep. The wintry November air goosebumped her skin. She put on her glasses, slipped her arm back under the duvet and stared ahead at the clock.
For God’s sake. It wasn’t even 9am, and on her day off too.
‘Immigration Enforcement. One hour ago, they force their way in. My children screaming, my husband telling them we have application, but they don’t care. They grab and hurt him. They take him away.’
Jamila could hear their children wailing in the background. Children who had witnessed ten men enter their home and overpower their father, shouldering him through the house and into a van parked out on the street. Immigration raids at dawn; four times in the last three months. Desperate calls when the sun had barely risen. She closed her eyes.
‘Did they say where they were taking him?’
‘Huh?’
‘Did they give you any papers?’
‘They break our door . . . we still sleeping. They grab him so
quick, shouting, shouting . . . ’
So the woman couldn’t help – she’d have to start from scratch.
‘Please help, Mrs Shah. I’m going crazy.’
Jamila had stopped telling clients that she wasn’t a Mrs; they could think what they wanted. Even when she had tried explaining, most persisted anyway, insisting that Mrs was a mark of respect, and with time she resigned herself to a title and authority that wasn’t completely hers. She was twenty-nine and unmarried by choice. She had no time for sleep, let alone a needy partner.
‘What’s your husband’s name again?’
‘John. John Kulasingam.’
‘Kulasingam, of course.’ She remembered John. He was a quiet, thoughtful man, with a warm sense of humour. Gold filaments in his eyes and silver specks in his goatee. She was less fond of his wife, however. Jamila had been turned off the moment she had hightailed it into the office one afternoon and sat down while Jamila was shovelling in a quick lunch between consultations. Impossible to silence, she spoke more than she listened, and that was annoying too, being cut off while explaining the same thing again and again.
‘When will you get him out? Today? Tomorrow?’
The eternal question. The one she had no clear answer to.
‘If not tomorrow, then a day or two.’
‘Mrs Shah, I need him here. He helps with the children.’
They had three children: two girls and a boy, who accompanied them to Jamila’s office after school, sweet in their matching uniforms, the girls with braided hair and ribbons. The youngest had Williams syndrome, a rare developmental disorder. She remembered running into the family at Bruntwood Park over the summer. She had gone there with Jahida and her kids, and two cousins and their kids. While supervising the older children on the zip line, Jamila had spotted John sitting in the sandpit with his youngest, filling her bucket, turning it out to make a sandcastle. Even at the office, he sat with his daughter, feeding her bananas as his wife held court. The image made her ache, momentarily, surprisingly, for something – she didn’t know what – before she cut it off.
‘I’ll go to the office and see what’s happening.’

TAWSEEF KHAN is a qualified immigration solicitor and holds a doctoral degree from the University of Liverpool, where he examined the fairness of the British asylum system. He is also a graduate of the creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia, where he received the Seth Donaldson Memorial Bursary. His fiction has appeared in Lighthouse and Test Signal: a Northern anthology; his non-fiction in the New York Times, The Face and Hyphen. His debut non-fiction book Muslim, Actually was published by Atlantic in 2021. He lives in Manchester. Follow him @itsmetawseef