When I hear the expression Fortress Europe, I shiver. We build fortresses against enemy invaders, fortresses are besieged and people die of starvation and disease, fortresses are stormed, people put to the sword, the women raped. All the gruesome illustrations of my childhood history books come hurtling back in my imagination. Why are we suggesting we build such a place, this Fortress Europe? What hordes of barbarians are galloping towards us?

Fortress Europe is specifically used when we talk of asylum seekers. It seems they are the barbarian hordes from which we must protect our goods, our chattels, our children and our women.

Fortress Europe means of course, fortress western Europe. Many of the asylum seekers are Europeans themselves, but not part of the EU. Fortress Europe, a besieged castle of pure western Europeans protected by Brussels. Obviously this is a definition of Europe that appeals to some.

When I was researching my play Credible Witness, I gradually got to know another Europe. I’d like to call it Café Europe. Cafés are half inside, half outside, they mingle with the street, and in a good café you sit for hours and talk. You don’t even have to sit in a café, you can play music in front of one, you can stand around, looking for a friend.

One of the best things that’s happened to London recently is the proliferation of cafés. It’s a mark of civilisation, of valuing conversation more than drink, the passage of time more than the rushing of it. Cafés mark European differences: a French café is different from a Bulgarian one – for me it’s the inimitable smell of a café crême in one and the darkness of the chocolate cakes in the other – but the similarities are stronger: people are sitting around talking, watching, or just reading a paper; it’s part of city life, the give and take of a world at ease with itself, and which wants to communicate with itself.

When I wanted to check something about Algeria, I looked for an Algerian café. There are many. In every corner of London there is, if not an open café, a community centre into which you can walk and talk to people: from your own community if you’re an exile or just for information if, like me, you’re a writer in search of material or an actor looking for a gesture, an expression. And always a welcome, a cup of something and conversation, stories.

Public space for free exchange

I am not talking about happiness. The talk is often sad, it''s of the pain of exile, homesickness, of lack of funds (I spoke to one woman from Sri Lanka who crossed London every day on foot to reach her community centre because she couldn’t afford the bus). Sometimes you see people hunched over, depressed — but they have a public space, a little café, sometimes no more than a room, sometimes, as with the Kurds, a vast and beautifully organised hall with musical evenings, records for sale, theatrical events. And as a western European, a Fortress European, you will be welcomed, spoken to.

Fortress Europeans are suspicious of everyone (“Careless talk costs lives”). Café Europeans talk freely and exchange information all the time. I learned about Kosovo long before the war had come into the newspapers by having the history of that area explained to me by the charming and well-spoken manager of one of the Café Rouges in North London. When I wanted to check whether Alexander the Great had a Gujarat name, my husband and I went down the Stroud Green road to our local vegetable shops. “Anybody heard of Alexander the Great?” called out my husband, John, somewhat bolder than I am in these situations. “Ask him,” said someone, pointing to an old man sitting contemplatively at the back of the shop. “Alexander the Great, Sikandra-Sikandra Bhasha, yes, yes, he’s an Indian God.” The man wrote it out for us. Not exactly the kind of help you get at Fortress Europe’s Tescos.

When our very old washing machine has one of its many strokes, we call in an Iranian exile, who once was happy to accept a book instead of a cheque. This is the Europe I like, the Europe of exchange, of mutual curiosity, of conversation and of music.

I heard a Radio Four programme about Afghan music. Banned by the Taliban, you can now find it in London, where it will be preserved until it can migrate back to its land. But as the haunting sounds of this music filtered into my study, I marvelled at the treasure we’ve been loaned. When I was looking for a Macedonian dance for Credible Witness, we traced an English woman who had been taught by a German man who had been taught by the Macedonians. This does not happen in fortresses.

My daughter was about four when I took her to the Young Vic to see a fairy tale play. At the interval she skipped slightly ahead of me and disappeared from sight. I had a moment''s panic and then found her walking very carefully with a girl of about ten, a girl with a jet-black face who had put an arm around her. I approached the girl who couldn’t speak much English but was keeping her arm firmly around my daughter. My daughter, meanwhile, thrilled at the attention of an “older” girl, pretended not to know me. The teacher came over and explained that the girl was from the Congo and would have been used to looking after smaller children. Her instinct had been to look after my daughter. The girl had been in England a few months, one of many unaccompanied refugee children; she was looked after by a distant relative.

I had a feeling the teacher was asking for some sort of help: come and read to the children, do something – I had fantasies later of bringing this beautiful girl to our house, but we were living in Dorset at the time, I didn’t make the effort, it seemed too complicated, I’d forgotten the name of the school – I behaved with the typical laziness of the Fortress Europe citizen.

Locking ourselves away

Will my daughter have that instinct of putting her arm around a smaller girl who seems lost? Or will she be educated into a Fortress European, locking herself away from any contact, unaware of this large human community she belongs to, which is so rich?

I am not saying that the influx of immigrants doesn’t bring its problems. I remember some very aggressive women begging outside a theatre in St. Martin’s Lane. They were really awful. I had to clamp my mouth shut, not quite to say “go back where you came from”, but “why can''t you learn to beg in a proper English way?” Of course many have learned. You write a sign: “I am a Bosnian, Kosovan, I am hungry, please help”. You look humble.

Beggars, people who muddy your windshield at stoplights, people who play music, people who have information you cannot read in books, people who make wonderful films like Beautiful People, the kids who get astonishing best grades... My dear Tea, the actress who played a Bosnian girl in my play, was a refugee from Croatia, working so hard, so bright, so warm and fragile, trying to cope with her new country and culture. “I understand every word of your play,” she said to me on the first day of rehearsals, “because I am an exile. And by the way, I''m also going to get the best A-levels of my class.”

Of course cafés can be irritating: you get jostled, bumped, so many different conversations and languages can give you a headache, your bag might get stolen, and sometimes you can’t find a table because there are too many people. But isn’t that better than looking down from the battlements in fear and solitude? I don’t want to be imprisoned in the silence of Fortress Europe. Let me walk out into the pavements and sit somewhere, maybe to talk about history, maybe just to watch a city teeming with stories, interest, languages and cultures. Let’s not build high, expensive and hostile towers, let’s put up instead with the noise, the life, the annoyance, the openness and the music of our Café Europe.