Dark Dreams

by Sonja Dechian

  On his arrival in Australia in 1998, Chol was sent to Hobart, Tasmania, with his wife and child. Soon afterwards, he moved to Launceston, where he could pursue a nursing degree at the University of Tasmania, fulfilling his lifelong dream to work in medicine. Two years on, with the help of a Launceston church, Chol was again reunited with three of his brothers, after successfully petitioning for their processing on compelling compassionate grounds.

  With the support of his church and friends, Chol, a self-motivated student, quickly picked up English, his fourth language, and will soon finish his nursing degree. He hopes to remain in Launceston, his home, where Chol and Ariet have had three more delightful children—all of whom are proud to call Australia home.

  Even now, Chol’s life is clouded by uncertainty. Recently, he learnt of a devastating militia attack at Kakuma refugee camp. After several painful weeks of not knowing, and desperately trying to contact foreign embassies and family, it was confirmed that Ariet’s sister was killed in the senseless massacre.

  Chol’s next challenge is to achieve reunion with Ariet’s children from her first marriage, who are still in Africa. They have not yet been processed by the UNHCR for consideration for refugee status in Australia since they are not living in a refugee camp. The problem is complicated by Ariet’s father’s determination to prevent them from entering a refugee camp, since the inherent danger is just too great.

  In spite of all he has experienced, Chol is remarkably optimistic in his approach to life, and his commitment to asylum seekers and wider community is a testament to his burning desire to live, and make a difference in the world. Chol’s story is one of survival over immense circumstantial forces against it, and today, Chol feels immeasurably grateful to the Australian government for the opportunities they have afforded him and his family. His only wish is that the privilege of sharing in his new country—our country—could be extended to more people, who like him, have suffered beyond most people’s comprehension.

  Life

  by Ghulam-e-Ali, aged 19

  Life is defined as ‘the period when a person is born, till his/her death.’ It means the time starts when a person is born and the time stops or finishes on death. In this period many difficulties, problems, and hard times come like the waves. To pass or to face all of these problems, difficulties, and hard times successfully is called life.

  Life is not to turn off your head from all of these problems, difficulties and hard times. We are in a cycle of time. Those are not run with the time, time crossed them it never stops. In addition time passes ‘Good’ or ‘Bad.’ It is unstoppable. So it’s better to pass the time well and poorly than bad. To stand bravely with courage and face the challenge is life.

  I am an Afghan refugee. I am the eldest of five children. I was born on 1st January 1983 in a village of Ghazni. I came to Australia on 7th March 2001. I was in Curtin Detention Centre for approximately thirteen months and then came to Brisbane. I am very keen to study so I gained admission to high school. From there I finished my English, Maths and Science with high achievements, on 27th March 2002. I would like to be a software engineer.

  I can speak seven languages, which are Hazargi, Dari, Farsi, Pashtoo, Urdu, Hindi and English. I was the best athlete of my district. I like Kung fu and boxing.

  The story which I wrote is about my own life.

  Today is the 105th golden day of my life that I have enjoyed free, physical and mental freedom. I came to Brisbane from Curtin Detention Centre, WA, on 20th March 2002. I have two brothers and two sisters. My father, Mohammad Hussain, was the professor of English literature in Kabul University, and my mother, Zahra, was a busy housewife. I came to Australia in 2001, although my journey of struggling started when I was only three years old.

  In the beginning of 1979, the Soviet Union came to Afghanistan. While passing through Ghazni, they tried to conquer Jaghori (one of the literate, populated and advanced areas of Hazara-jat, the area occupied by Hazara people) but they failed. The Soviet army diverted their way at that time but they came again and attacked Jaghori in 1986 (according to the Afghan calendar, by the end of 1364).

  The Soviet army had advanced artillery, while against them, the locals of the district had nothing. The entire district had nothing. So before taking any further action, the elders of the township decided to surrender, because all they had to fight with were wooden bars and some rusted rifles from the World War II era. So to save the maximum damage the group of elders held a table talk with the Russian military leaders. From that day till now no one knew where they went. Villagers think that the Russian military killed them.

  A few days after that tragedy, the Soviet army started the fearful fighting. They killed hundreds of innocent people. They spread thousands of mines around the town. Till now on the Loman Mountains (a series of high mountains in central Jaghori district) no one likes to go there, even for their lost animals, because of mines. Unwillingly, the local people, for their defence, came out and made a ‘Hezb’ (group or party) by the name of Hezb-e-Sholly. Hundreds of locals were killed. From my village, Baba, west of Sang-e-Masha (major town of Jaghori and magistrate office area) tens of people were killed. Among them the first shaheed (killed) was my paternal uncle Mohammad Ali, who was buried near the main mosque of Baba village.

  Hundreds of families escaped from town to other countries to protect their lives. The tanks even came to my sub village. They destroyed many houses and a part of our house was also destroyed. At that I was time only three years old with my brother Abbas, approximately one year old, and my little sister Mariyam, only two months. My father decided because of these circumstances to leave the country. So my family moved to Pakistan.

  It was the winter of 1986, when we came to Quetta city, which is near to the border of our country. Thousands of Afghan refugees were already there. My father first went to one of the refugee camps, but instead of helping, the workers totally ignored us. They mistreated my father, and did not give us any kind of shelter or food. Why? Because, overwhelmingly important in their mind, we were Hazara and Shia Muslim and they were Pashtun and Sunni. So unwillingly, like others, we went to Barori (ten kilometres west of the city and one of the muddy and backward areas with a majority of refugees). We rented a room and small shop with the money that my father had taken in a hurry from Afghanistan. My father bought some foodstuffs and started a grocery shop.

  For the moment we thought that we had saved our lives and we could spend some relaxing time with sleepy nights. But after a few days many problems hit us. On one side were the owner of the house and neighbours, and on the other side were the policemen. The locals thought that due to the Afghan people their country was going backward, that drugs were being spread in their country due to Afghans, and God knows, many things more. They looked at us like shouther (the Untouchables of the Hindu religion), worked us like animals and even their children were not allowed to play with us. The police also harassed us. We had no choice except to survive.

  Time passed and we spent many years there. I helped my father in the shop and my father taught me our religion as well as some English and Maths. We hardly survived on the income of the shop and suffered from every day tensions. Many times when anyone abused my mother or father, I started fighting with them. A question came to my mind every time about why these things were happening. We were also human and of equal value like others.

  In 1991 the Pashtuns attacked our village and killed more then two hundred villagers. They destroyed almost half of our village and farms. In this brutal war it was clear that Pashtuns would never be friendly throughout their lives.

  We had left in our village our maternal uncle to look after our lands and home. He was a member of Hezb-e-Wahdad party (the biggest Hazara party). So when the Taliban came and attacked Bamiyan (a province in Afghanistan and the major area of Hazara-jat), he was shaheed (killed) by the Taliban while defending the Bamiyan province. He was the only man left in Afghanistan from our family and after he was killed, his family was
alone there. So for that family, our lands, and our situation in Pakistan, my father decided to go back. That was a very difficult decision, but I think my father had no choice again and we went back.

  I was back with my family in my village after eight years. I was very happy because for the first time in my life I saw respect, sincerity and prosperity. I was going to the Shohada School. I saw pure hearts full of sincere feelings. But that would not last forever. This time the Taliban regime came to our district in early 1996. Once again the elders decided to surrender and not to fight with them. It was the only district of Hazara-jat that surrendered to the Taliban. After the surrender and control of the district the Taliban collected the weapons from villagers. They promised not to interfere with religious and personal affairs. But after eight months the Taliban extremists started their rule. They even killed those people who did not obey them in different ways like tying them to rockets and firing them, and hammering large metals spikes in their heads.

  Their respect for women was zero. The Taliban perfected subjugation. In his day, the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) was a support for women’s rights. The doctrine he laid out as the revealed word of God considerably improved the status of women in 7th century Arabia. Islamic law made the education of girls a sacred duty and gave women the right to own and inherit property. Mohammad (peace be upon him) even decreed that sexual satisfaction was a woman’s entitlement.

  Of course, ancient advances do not mean that much to women fourteen centuries later if reform is, rather than a process, a historical blip subject to reversal. While it is impossible, given their diversity, to paint one picture of women living under Islam today, it is clear that the religion has been used in most Muslim countries not to liberate but entrench inequality. The Taliban represents an extreme.

  They insisted that we do everything according to their will and wishes. They monitored key persons like doctors, engineers, and scholars, and accused them in different ways, believing the basic danger was due to these people. Then they requested a donation of young people from every sub-village. No one liked to go and fight against their own Hazara, and kill them or be killed by them and by the Taliban. If some fortunately survived, the Taliban would kill them straight away just so that news of their deaths came to the area. In addition, the Taliban stopped people getting an education for their younger generation and did not allow the Hazara people to follow and practice their religion.

  When the Taliban came to my house, they accused my father of being involved with and supporting Hezb-e-Wahdad, because they knew that my maternal uncle was the key member. Hezb-e-Wahdad was supported financially by my family and the Taliban were compelling us to pay them a large amount of money, otherwise they would take me away and send me to the frontline to fight. My father paid them several times, but a few months later they started to harm and mistreat my father too. It was inconvenient to pay them every few weeks to save my life and my father managed with difficulty to keep me. So he decided to send me out to a safe country.

  My father managed to find a smuggler and I was told to go to Australia, I came to Pakistan by car, and from Pakistan to Singapore and Indonesia by aeroplane. I faced many problems and difficulties during this long journey but all of them are nothing compared to the sixteen days at sea.

  On 28th February 2001 I started my risky journey by boat to Australia. That night the thunder roared, the rain started and the waves smashed the boat. Due to darkness on the boat I did not understand the situation fully and sat in one of the corners. I didn’t sleep the whole night due to engine pollution too. I vomited many times.

  Next day when the sky cleared up, the sun shone again. I was shocked to see the condition and size of the boat and the number of people on it. There were probably 190 people in that boat and the length of the boat was not more than thirteen metres. That boat was eighty years old. Most of the wooden strips of the boat were damaged and while moving on the boat’s entire skeleton moved up and down. The boat was already half sunk. Food and water was in very short supply. The stoves were catching on fire and we put them into the sea. After that we ate raw food. We even lost the direction. It was really a miracle when we reached Ashmore Island.

  Ken Arkwright ... His Story

  by Karen Motta, aged 12

  Mr Arkwright is sitting beside me, retelling his life story. He speaks confidently, has an incredible amount of knowledge and has obviously told his story before to other inquisitive journalists and students. He is a successful married man with two children and he lives in a large apartment overlooking the Swan River.

  However, life was not always this easy.

  I was born on the 16th of April 1929 to Rudolf and Frida Aufrichtig in Breslau, Germany (now called Wroclaw). I had a pleasant childhood, living in a thirteen room apartment with a number of servants and maids. I went to kindergarten in Germany and always had a lot of friends. I was only four years old when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.

  One of the first things that Hitler did in 1934 was to shut down all Jewish businesses. My father ended up building roads, which was the fate of many Jewish businessmen.

  In 1935 Hitler passed a law which prohibited Jews and non-Jews from mixing. My current school was in a Jewish community in the city of Breslau. Life became tough for Jews, especially the children who lost their childhood. They spent their early years looking over their shoulders. Trying not to stand out—that could cost a life.

  I remember a Jewish school friend of mine who went to buy an ice cream in a shop which had ‘No Jews’ written on the front. He disappeared and after a few days his parents were called to come and collect his ashes from the Gestapo. He had been arrested and had died in prison. Life took on new dimensions.

  On November 1938 Kristallnacht occurred. Twenty thousand Jewish men were picked up off the street and sent to concentration camps. It was only temporary, they came out with instructions to leave Germany. All Jewish property was confiscated, every Jewish organization and every Jew was penniless. On that same night every Jewish Synagogue in Germany was either burnt or vandalised and every remaining Jewish business destroyed.

  In 1939 when the war started we were gradually placed in ghettos. We moved from our spacious family apartment and lived in around sixteen different houses until we settled into a five room apartment. In each room lived one family. The whole house, the whole street, even the whole block was only Jewish.

  Also in 1939 Hitler invaded Poland. If the Polish Jews got in the way of the German Army they shot them down.

  Whatever happened to Jews before 1939 was immoral but not illegal since the necessary laws had been passed.

  In 1942 schooling was prohibited for Jews. The children were locked up in a large Jewish cemetery from morning to night because our parents were already in forced labour. While we were there we cleaned up the cemetery and it actually began to look very nice. One day we got truckloads of paper bags with feet sticking out. These were Polish Jews who had not been shot or gassed but worked to death. Most of the bags didn’t have names so we just buried them nameless. It was a foretaste of what was to come.

  It wasn’t long before I too was drafted into forced labour.

  Before 1933 the Jewish community of Breslau had around twenty seven thousand Jews. Those who were still in Breslau in 1942 were just picked up off the street and deported. The first transport was of around thirteen hundred Jews. They had to dig their own graves when they got to Kaunas in Lithuania and then were shot. That was an ongoing process. Because my father had served for Germany in World War 1 we were deported fairly late. We were first sent to a labour camp.

  When Hitler lost the Battle of Stalingrad he tried to build a trench from the Baltic to the Caucasus. It was meant to stop the Russian tanks from entering Germany. It was similar to Australia’s rabbit proof fence. If you were Jewish or a POW then you dug from morning to night. When the tanks came I was moved to a concentration camp. We marched on foot for 400 km, around the same distance from Perth to Albany. It wa
s a cold winter in November 1944 and quite a few people died. Then the Russians overran the camp and I escaped and lived underground under a false name, Klaus Shneider, until May 1945 when the war ended.

  During my time in hiding I also visited a medieval city in the middle of Germany where I had friends who were pleased to see me. The city was still totally preserved, it had not yet been bombed. They gave me something to eat, dressed me and then there was an air raid. Around 80% of the city was destroyed in a few hours. I couldn’t go to the air raid shelter because I would have been picked up by the Gestapo. I stood on the first floor of a building, only sixteen years old, watching the city die.

  After that event most of the German citizens had no papers, no home and had lost some of their closest relatives. So the German Nazi Administration put some trains together and people queued up. They asked your name, your religion, your birthplace, where you lived and gave you a temporary Identification Card. They then told you to board the train. People had no idea where they were going. I was taken to a small city where I worked with non-Jewish peasants who did not know I was Jewish. At that time I was still with my father but had no idea where my mother was.

  After the war I returned to Breslau and tried to find my mother. By that time the city I had been born in had been taken away from Germany and given to Poland. Germany was divided and part of it was administered by France, Britain and America. The Russians looked after the rest. The Russian and Poles were not interested in getting me into Eastern Europe. So I had to walk from the place I had been liberated in to the border between the Western and Russian Zone of Germany. I walked and hitchhiked for around five months and was delayed slightly after I caught typhoid and was taken in by American troops. I went over the border (that was a river) in a canoe with the Americans and Russians shooting at me from both sides. From there I had to go to the Polish border. The Russians were taking furniture from Germany. They loaded it into trains and took it home. I hid in a cupboard on a freight truck. When they got moving I opened the door and the closet next to me opened too. There was another man who was doing the same. I only spoke German and I didn’t know what he spoke. We didn’t say one word to each other.