The Women of Grenfell

The inquiry into the Grenfell fire ended on 21 July, more than five years after the disaster. But for survivors and next of kin, the grief is still raw and questions remain unanswered. Sian Norris reports

Above nine-year-old Kyle’s bed, the wall is covered in certificates. Some are decorated with illustrations of trophies and medals. Some simply praise in bold type his academic achievements, his enthusiasm in class, his kindness for his fellow pupils and respect for his teachers. His mum Rhea Rojo beams with pride at her son’s success, gesturing to the advanced reading list of books on his shelf. 

How different from five years ago. 

Back then, Rhea was sofa-surfing in Grenfell Tower and Kyle was in the care system. She was undocumented, doing cleaning jobs across two flats.

“It is in our nature to do something in return,” she explains. “They gave me a roof over my head so I cleaned, walked the dog, and I am grateful.”

When the fire started on 14 June 2017, Rhea escaped into a lift with four other people. Only she and one other came out alive. She was captured on CCTV when she eventually fled the building, her face black with smoke.

When asked what life was like before the fire, she says “there is no life before Grenfell”. 

In the chaotic aftermath of the tragedy, Rhea was told not to ask for support by the people who she had stayed with – the then Home Secretary Amber Rudd would soon declare an amnesty for undocumented people living in the tower. She was made to feel, too, that she was not deserving of help – that her status meant she was not equal to other survivors. Such comments would come to haunt her. 

But right then, Rhea had another crisis to focus on. She was due to attend her psychological assessment with social services, as part of her fight to bring Kyle home. The psychologist saw a dishevelled woman in dirty clothes – not a traumatised survivor of the worst disaster on British soil since the Second World War.

Not long after, the courts decided that Kyle should be adopted. 

Rhea had no status, no home, and no son. But her life started to turn around when she met a volunteer who listened to her concerns. Their support gave her the glimmer of hope that had been missing from her life for so long. 

There was no time to lose. New barristers did not even have time to apply for legal aid before they started working to reunite mother and son. At the same time, the amnesty allowed Rhea to find a house, as well as a job in a care home. Finally, she got the news she was waiting for: Kyle was coming home and, even better, he had a scholarship to attend one of London’s leading private schools. 

A home, a job and reunited with her son. But Rhea’s ordeal was still not over. Her undocumented status and her struggles to access support in the aftermath of the fire led to accusations that she was a Grenfell fraud.

“It was very lonely,” she says. “I survived the fire and then was treated this way, I was fighting for my son, I had personal issues and it was all coming at once”. 

“I would have been worth more dead than alive,” she adds. “If I had died, they would have all been claiming me, saying I was a lovely Filipino cleaner and holding my picture at St Paul’s”. 

A police investigation found no evidence of fraud.

Life is still a struggle. It took Rhea a huge amount of effort to rebuild her confidence and self-esteem after the fire, having been dehumanised and made to feel like a second-class citizen for so long. This was compounded by the guilt she felt for managing to escape after those in the lift with her perished – “I feel guilty for surviving,” she says.  

Despite everything she has faced, Rhea’s love for Kyle and her pride in his achievements gives her life. At the end of our interview, he sings us a song by his favourite band Imagine Dragons, his voice ringing clear as a bell over the west London traffic outside. 

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‘Our Mother and Aunty Died Holding Hands’

It was the traces of ash left on the floor of a neighbour’s flat that told Massomeh and Raheleh Samimi how their mother Fatemeh Afrasiabi and aunt Sakineh Afrasiabi had died at Grenfell Tower. 

The pair had been told to go up the tower, where they sought sanctuary with a neighbour on the 23rd floor. Here, a few recovered body parts were DNA-matched with the family. The pattern of the ash, the investigators explained, meant the two women had been holding hands at the end. 

“My mother was a very happy and positive person,” says Massomeh. “She had an incredible energy and wherever she went she would uplift people. She was appreciative of everything beautiful.”

When the fire broke out, Massomeh and Raheleh were at home in Iran watching the news. They assumed everything would be okay – this was the UK after all, if a building was on fire it would either be empty or evacuated swiftly. But, just to be safe, they tried calling their mum. No answer. They called again. No answer.

“I had a sense then that something was wrong,” says Massomeh. 

Eventually they got in touch with a cousin living in London who explained he was looking for the two sisters. He told the family to pray.

“We were screaming and crying, we couldn’t make sense of it all,” explains Massomeh. Although they didn’t yet have confirmation of their mother’s death, they knew at that moment there was no hope.

After 10 days, the police told the family they suspected the sisters had died in the fire. It was another three months before DNA evidence confirmed this was the case.

“It was difficult because there was no body to bury, there was no place to mourn,” Massomeh says. “We were just at home mourning, looking at the sky.” 

Massomeh and Raheleh relocated to the UK so they could fight for justice for their mother. They soon came up against the UK’s hostile immigration environment, forced to reapply for a visa every six months, unable to send Massomeh’s children to school or access public funds. “We realised we had no power, no voice,” says Raheleh.

The hopes and dreams they had once treasured for their lives were lost, as everything became about Grenfell.

“I had wanted to go to university, to marry the man I loved, to one day have children,” says Raheleh. “Everything was taken from me when my mother died. My life feels over.” 

With grief came anger – anger at the failures of the authorities, of those who were meant to help, and of the inquiry that came to close at the end of July, five years after the fire. 

“I feel the inquiry was designed to keep us distracted and occupied, and it was completely pointless,” insists Raheleh. “There are still no answers. We are more angry now. We are like the embers of a fire that hasn’t gone out and those embers are igniting again.

“The inquiry was not for our justice, it was not for the people who lost family members, and even after all this time we have not had a proper apology from the council, the fire brigade, the Government or anyone.” 

As Iranian women, Raheleh also believes their voices were silenced in the aftermath of Grenfell.

“In this country it feels as though women have more rights and are protected more,” she explains. “But the big players in the meetings, they don’t let women speak. We felt we could not speak our truth and we were not allowed to speak our truth. Sometimes it would be subtle, but it was definitely the case that we should be quiet and our voices mattered less than the men.” 

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‘Tell Her You Love Her’

As Massomeh and Raheleh watched Grenfell burn from 3,400 miles away, Francis Dean was outside the tower on the phone to 32-year-old Zainab Deen, urging her to take her toddler son Jeremiah and leave their flat – to escape the inferno and come to the safety of the ground below. But, like many of her neighbours, Zainab followed the fire brigade’s instructions to remain in the flat. Soon, it was too late to escape. 

Zainab told Francis that Jeremiah had died and she would be next. He gave the phone to a nearby firefighter Christopher Batchelor, who described to the inquiry how he had listened to her screams. Before she died, Batchelor passed the phone back to Francis, saying “tell her you love her”.

“I don’t know how I am still alive,” Francis says. “There were times when I wanted to take my own life.”

The grief he feels for Zainab remains raw. His eyes well up when he talks about her, recalling her love of perfumes, how she kept her home so clean and tidy. “She was a vibrant lady,” he says. “She was so bubbly and so fun to be around. She was always cracking jokes”.