My life has been a bit of a whirlwind since last Friday.
Kevin Rudd announced his announcement. After I clued on to what was going on (inebriated, 3am that night/morning) something exploded inside me. I spent the night pacing my room before I turned to my laptop and the world in it.
Like everyone else, I too changed my profile picture to “seeking asylum is a human right". I changed my cover photo and I made a status post on the issue. Then, I spent ten minutes 'liking' every other relevant profile picture, cover photo and status. I wrote a tumblr post. This is all behaviour I would usually consider rather tacky but it seemed like the only thing to do! After a semester of idleness, I even decided to write for Honi Soit. In my email pitching the article, I apologised that I hadn’t written all year- because I "forgot I was a reporter". That's not true. I've been too scared... but in that moment I was so emotionally overwhelmed that all my hesitation dissolved (it's come back but I'm committed now eee).
A few days ago, I went to the city with a pair of young, recently resettled refugee girls. Their story is awful but they requested me not to repeat it to other Afghan people (after I already had, oops! ERASE IT FROM YOUR MINDS). Just trust me, It’s bad. I spent the morning teaching them how to get to the rally on Sunday. It was the first time they'd been out in public since they lived in Indonesia. It was also the first time catching public transport! They didn’t know anything about Sydney, except that it’s a city in Australia and it has an Opera House (?).
The girls weren’t impressed with the suburb in Western Sydney, where they're housed : “it’s very quiet". When we got on the bus I could feel them watching me very closely. "You must give money to the driver?" “Do you have to tell him where you’re going?" At the train station, they not-so-surreptitiously studied every person who crossed our path. Sometimes their innocent curiosity got a little awkward: “There are so many Chinese people!" they noted loudly. We walked through Wynyard, Pitt Street, George Street and Hyde Park. They loved it.
I felt for a long time (Because they’ve had a terrible past? Because they’re wearing hijabs?) like I needed to guard or protect them. I really, really, reeeeeally didn’t. These girls have seen and done ten times more that I ever will. They have spent their whole lives buffeted from one shitty predicament to another. By the end of our excursion, their quiet strength left me astounded.
At 17 and 18, they are essentially in charge of fending for a family which more than doubles mine. They need to work out housing, schooling, food, everything. Their proficiency in English is remarkable, within just a year. The older one isn’t allowed to do anything for the foreseeable future but she’s determined to acquire skills to assist her family. She was particularly insistent on learning how to drive. I need to find her a cheapish instructor (anyone?).
I was so impressed that they found their way home alone: catching a train, a bus and then walking a few streets. That might sound silly but each of those steps is a HUGE deal if you have absolutely no familiarity with the concept of public transport. Inundated with information and technology as we usually are, it's impossible to imagine how vast the world must seem to these girls. When I met them again at the rally on Sunday, they had made plans to go to visit their only friend at Silverwater. I don't even know where that is.
The family used to be on Manus Island. I tried to ask what it was like but they were hesitant to say much beyond “it is such a very terrible place". Later, I mentioned it again in passing but they could only insist that it was really, "so terrible". The girls were able to open up about real horrors in their past before they came to Australia... but this clamped them up. That is terrifying.
On Saturday, I went to Villawood. When I arrived, everyone was intently sketching someone I hadn't met before. I joined in, pushing a blue biro across lined paper.
"so uh, this is what my article is about… do you have something to say?"
"the Australian image of us is not correct"
"yeah uhh, can you say why?"
"we are not like that!"
It was pretty hard but I got the hang of it eventually. What they told me blew my mind. I only hope that I can do it justice in the article. edit: maybe you liked the article but I still don't think I did justice. I lost all my notes :(
more edit: the following was meant to be in the paper but didn't make it ( 'twas for the better)
The threat that refugees apparently pose oscillates between xenophobic concerns of national security, to making us “too full”, to what must be an attempt at human compassion: the threat invited into their own lives when venturing across the Indian Ocean. Jessica Watson did the same thing in 2011 for leisure but she was youthful and blonde so… Kevin Rudd made her Young Australian of the Year. Narratives which nonetheless do acknowledge the incredible challenges asylum seekers have overcome, sit comfortably alongside portrayals of opportunistic, dole-bludging leeches.
Amidst the clamour, it seems to pass largely unnoticed that the various images conjured of asylum seekers completely contradict each other- even from the same side. Sometimes, it’s in the very same sentence: Kevin Rudd claimed that that his Pacific solution version 3.0 addresses needs for “border security and orderly migration” (protecting us from them) but also “fulfilling our legal and compassionate obligations under the refugees convention” (we need to protect them). In any case, that is a sick, strange fulfillment of compassionate obligation… politicians say the darnedest things!
At the heart of our confusion is a caricature of the asylum seeker, whose voice has drowned.
Because journalists are actively prevented by the government from entering detention centres, refugees with histories and personalities are melted into a puddle of statistics. Regardless of whether political predilections conjure images of evil “boat people” or innocents withering behind bars, this means what we are presented is an abstracted caricature. It invites benign, paternalistic attitudes from some sections of society and from others, resentment against the “burden”. Such reductionism actually holds asylum seekers at the periphery of discourse. It’s all about us. I too, was amazed when I realised these people have actual faces with names. They brush their teeth in the morning and laugh at my bad jokes. This is what terrified me the most: that refugees are real people, not victims of a sweeping Shakespearean tragedy.
Kevin Rudd announced his announcement. After I clued on to what was going on (inebriated, 3am that night/morning) something exploded inside me. I spent the night pacing my room before I turned to my laptop and the world in it.
Like everyone else, I too changed my profile picture to “seeking asylum is a human right". I changed my cover photo and I made a status post on the issue. Then, I spent ten minutes 'liking' every other relevant profile picture, cover photo and status. I wrote a tumblr post. This is all behaviour I would usually consider rather tacky but it seemed like the only thing to do! After a semester of idleness, I even decided to write for Honi Soit. In my email pitching the article, I apologised that I hadn’t written all year- because I "forgot I was a reporter". That's not true. I've been too scared... but in that moment I was so emotionally overwhelmed that all my hesitation dissolved (it's come back but I'm committed now eee).
(In between, other stuff happened including: watching Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, spending lots of time with my darlingest nephews, bumping into half my extended family separately at Aroma festival, rally in support of Jonathon Moylan, being asked out by random Georgian tourist on the street who now keeps pestering me, some *cough* study)
A few days ago, I went to the city with a pair of young, recently resettled refugee girls. Their story is awful but they requested me not to repeat it to other Afghan people (after I already had, oops! ERASE IT FROM YOUR MINDS). Just trust me, It’s bad. I spent the morning teaching them how to get to the rally on Sunday. It was the first time they'd been out in public since they lived in Indonesia. It was also the first time catching public transport! They didn’t know anything about Sydney, except that it’s a city in Australia and it has an Opera House (?).
The girls weren’t impressed with the suburb in Western Sydney, where they're housed : “it’s very quiet". When we got on the bus I could feel them watching me very closely. "You must give money to the driver?" “Do you have to tell him where you’re going?" At the train station, they not-so-surreptitiously studied every person who crossed our path. Sometimes their innocent curiosity got a little awkward: “There are so many Chinese people!" they noted loudly. We walked through Wynyard, Pitt Street, George Street and Hyde Park. They loved it.
I felt for a long time (Because they’ve had a terrible past? Because they’re wearing hijabs?) like I needed to guard or protect them. I really, really, reeeeeally didn’t. These girls have seen and done ten times more that I ever will. They have spent their whole lives buffeted from one shitty predicament to another. By the end of our excursion, their quiet strength left me astounded.
At 17 and 18, they are essentially in charge of fending for a family which more than doubles mine. They need to work out housing, schooling, food, everything. Their proficiency in English is remarkable, within just a year. The older one isn’t allowed to do anything for the foreseeable future but she’s determined to acquire skills to assist her family. She was particularly insistent on learning how to drive. I need to find her a cheapish instructor (anyone?).
I was so impressed that they found their way home alone: catching a train, a bus and then walking a few streets. That might sound silly but each of those steps is a HUGE deal if you have absolutely no familiarity with the concept of public transport. Inundated with information and technology as we usually are, it's impossible to imagine how vast the world must seem to these girls. When I met them again at the rally on Sunday, they had made plans to go to visit their only friend at Silverwater. I don't even know where that is.
The family used to be on Manus Island. I tried to ask what it was like but they were hesitant to say much beyond “it is such a very terrible place". Later, I mentioned it again in passing but they could only insist that it was really, "so terrible". The girls were able to open up about real horrors in their past before they came to Australia... but this clamped them up. That is terrifying.
On Saturday, I went to Villawood. When I arrived, everyone was intently sketching someone I hadn't met before. I joined in, pushing a blue biro across lined paper.
"so uh, this is what my article is about… do you have something to say?"
"the Australian image of us is not correct"
"yeah uhh, can you say why?"
"we are not like that!"
It was pretty hard but I got the hang of it eventually. What they told me blew my mind. I only hope that I can do it justice in the article. edit: maybe you liked the article but I still don't think I did justice. I lost all my notes :(
more edit: the following was meant to be in the paper but didn't make it ( 'twas for the better)
The threat that refugees apparently pose oscillates between xenophobic concerns of national security, to making us “too full”, to what must be an attempt at human compassion: the threat invited into their own lives when venturing across the Indian Ocean. Jessica Watson did the same thing in 2011 for leisure but she was youthful and blonde so… Kevin Rudd made her Young Australian of the Year. Narratives which nonetheless do acknowledge the incredible challenges asylum seekers have overcome, sit comfortably alongside portrayals of opportunistic, dole-bludging leeches.
Amidst the clamour, it seems to pass largely unnoticed that the various images conjured of asylum seekers completely contradict each other- even from the same side. Sometimes, it’s in the very same sentence: Kevin Rudd claimed that that his Pacific solution version 3.0 addresses needs for “border security and orderly migration” (protecting us from them) but also “fulfilling our legal and compassionate obligations under the refugees convention” (we need to protect them). In any case, that is a sick, strange fulfillment of compassionate obligation… politicians say the darnedest things!
At the heart of our confusion is a caricature of the asylum seeker, whose voice has drowned.
Because journalists are actively prevented by the government from entering detention centres, refugees with histories and personalities are melted into a puddle of statistics. Regardless of whether political predilections conjure images of evil “boat people” or innocents withering behind bars, this means what we are presented is an abstracted caricature. It invites benign, paternalistic attitudes from some sections of society and from others, resentment against the “burden”. Such reductionism actually holds asylum seekers at the periphery of discourse. It’s all about us. I too, was amazed when I realised these people have actual faces with names. They brush their teeth in the morning and laugh at my bad jokes. This is what terrified me the most: that refugees are real people, not victims of a sweeping Shakespearean tragedy.
