by Linda Jaivin
The next day, two guards came to escort me to the AAT. They put me in cuffs and then in the van, and we went to someplace in Parramatta. It wasn’t much of an outing, but I could taste that Free World air like it be chocolate. Gubba, me lawyer, was looking more blond and tanned and blow-dried than ever. He was one smooth dude. He told the Member, what be an Indian lady, that I had no home but Australia, and that I’d gone straight, though I swear he glanced at me watch for a second when he said that. After, he told me he thought the hearing went well. He figured I’d be outta there in a week, ten days max. Just in time for Christmas.
Thirteen
Fucken Tribunal had to take their fucken holidays at Christmas before they made their fucken decision, didn’t they? Pardon me fucken French.
I didn’t even get to complain about it proper to Gubba cuz he was going on his hols as well. He phoned to tell me on the twenty-third a December. ‘Sorry, Zeki. It’s not the ideal outcome.’
‘Mate, ya gotta get me outta here—’
‘Sorry, Zeki, can’t chat. Have to catch a plane. I’m off for two weeks myself. Noosa. I’ll speak to you when I get back.’
‘Slip, slop, slap,’ I said.
Fourteen
On Christmas morning, She Who called to say she was coming to visit later that arvo, after the lunch with her folks, and that we had to talk. This is not a sentence what a man wants to hear coming from the mouth a his beloved at the best a times. And this sure wasn’t the best a times.
Eleven ay-em Muster came round. I dragged meself over to the office. I noticed on the way over that some a the blues was wearing Santa hats. I swear they was doing it mostly for themselves. I never knew any prisoner what be cheered up by the sight of a screw in a dumb red hat. In the office there was a blue with a Santa hat on what I didn’t recognise from the back. When he turned round me heart skipped a beat.
Remember what I said about the evil crim in Silverwater, Hadeon, the one what was mates with a screw what be just as evil as him? The screw’s name was Clarence, and that was him.
I swear, Clarence’s mum musta pushed him out at the top a the Ugly Tree—and he hit every branch on the way down. Ugly with a capital E, I swear. Me and the other greens—what be the name for prisoners, what wore green uniforms, not people what hug trees—we used to call him Meat and Two Veg. He had a head like a side a beef, a nose like a potato and hair the colour a carrots what he cut like he thought he was a US Marine. His lips were thin. He had a scar on his cheek where someone once went him with a knife. Someone told me it was from a girlfriend what caught him porking her thirteen-year-old daughter in her bed. His eyes was the creepiest thing about him cuz they was big and pretty like girls’ eyes, with thick lashes. And now, them eyes what I never wanted to see again, they was staring straight at me.
‘If it ain’t Zeki Togan,’ he goes, in a voice greasier than a Kings Cross pizza at three in the morning. ‘How nice to see you again.’ He showed his teeth, what were neat and white, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a smile what he gave me.
‘Likewise, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘What’re you doing here?’
‘Working for the Shit House now. Got assigned here.’ The Shit House was what they called Whacking Co, the private prison management company what ran this place on the half a the government and what had the initials WC. ‘I thought it was just gonna be reffoville. I didn’t think I’d be seeing loser crims like your good self. I guess I was wrong.’
‘You wanna see losers, mate, just look in the mirror a few times a day,’ I advised, holding me fingers against me forehead in the shape of an ‘L’, what spells out ‘loser’ even though it only be one letter.
‘Sign language for “I’m a dickhead”, is it? Anyway, a change is as good as a holiday, eh?’
I didn’t say nuffin.
He smirked, like he just thought a something. ‘I’m assuming that if you’re in here, you’re going back to the Old Country.’
‘After you, mate,’ I went.
‘This is my Old Country.’
‘You Aboriginal, mate?’
He snorted. ‘Yeah, well, they never did much with the place, did they?’
I knew I was gonna get meself into trouble if I kept talking to the muvvafucker. ‘You tick me name off?’ I said, looking pointingly at the list.
‘All done. Happy Christmas, loser.’ He put his third finger on his forehead, what spells something else what is rude.
I walked outta the office in a worser mood than before.
Angel passed me on her way in. ‘Hey, Zek,’ she goes. Her voice was soft and gold and fluttery like the budgie what we used to keep before it got eaten by the neighbour’s cat. ‘Happy Christmas.’
‘You too, Angel.’
She gave me one a them bright smiles. I smiled back and watched as she turned and went into the office, her long black hair swinging along the line a her hips.
I could just make out Clarence’s oily tones as I walked away. ‘Well, well, well. What do we have here?’
When I got back from Muster, I found Thomas sitting on a plastic chair outside our building, hunched over his drawing pad. He’d put in a Detainee Request Form to go to Christmas Mass at a real church, on the Outside. They’d just laughed. Now, he was drawing Christmas wreaths what were made a razor wire and a Jesus what was hanging from the fence instead a the Cross what he usually hangs from. Across the bottom a the pitcher a Jesus, Thomas wrote the words, ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me’.
I read that out loud a few times and scratched me head. ‘What’s that when it’s at home, mate?’
Thomas told me it was words from the Christian Bible. It was about how you’re sposed to look after people even if they be a stranger or locked up or both.
I gave him the knuckles. ‘Respect,’ I said.
‘And they call this a Christian country,’ he said, like he didn’t believe it much. ‘Oh no, here comes Nadia.’ He pretended to be too absorbed in his drawings to see her. It didn’t work cuz Nadia, the Villawood psych, was a big lady what you could see pretty easy.
‘Hellooo, Zeki,’ she sang out. ‘Hellooo, Thomas. Happy Christmas.’
‘Happy Christmas, Nadia,’ I said for both of us, cuz Thomas wasn’t never gonna get round to it.
‘How are we today?’ She smiled and opened her mouth like she was getting ready to catch the answer with it.
Thomas looked up. ‘We are fantastic, Nadia,’ Thomas said. ‘We are terrific. Today is the day when baby Jesus was born. He was a refugee. He was born in a manger. We are refugees. We were born in mangers too. But here, in Villawood, we have food and shelter and medical care. We never even knew what chairs were before coming here. Now we sit in them all the time. We never had it so good in our whole lives.’
Nadia’s smile, what had slipped down her chin, struggled back up to her cheeks. ‘There’s no need for sarcasm,’ she said. ‘It’s not very helpful.’ She said the words ‘very helpful’ like they be a song what had three notes up and one down.
‘Nice to see you, Nadia.’ Thomas bent over his drawing pad.
‘We’ll talk later, Thomas,’ she said and toodled off to find someone else to depress.
After Nadia left, Azad walked over. ‘What’s happening?’ He looked at Thomas’s drawings and gave him the thumbs up. He was putting on a brave face but you could tell he was feeling down too. You didn’t have to be a Christian to be depressed about being Inside on Christmas, what everyone knew was a big holiday in Australia when everyone got with them families and had barbies and went to the beach. So everyone was feeling down that day. Moods on the Inside was like colds or flus. They got passed from person to person just the same, except with moods you saw the sickness in people’s eyes and the way they held themselves, what was not exactly in the direction of up.
It didn’t help that bushfires was making the sky look like the dome a hell. The temperature had been up in the mid-to high-thirties for days. You could
smell the burning gum trees, and the wind made it feel like you was baking in one a them fancy ovens like what She Who wants us to get one day. What with that and the general mood and Clarence’s reappearance in me life and the fact that She Who wanted to talk, I knew it wasn’t gonna be an easy day.
But me, I got a philosophy a life, what I had to remind meself about sometimes. And that is—when times are tough and you can do bugger-all about it, the First Rule a Survival is to kick back. So I took meself out into the Visiting Yard to do just that.
Fifteen
I was shaking a Coke outta the machine when I looked up and saw this lady coming out the vault door from the office where they process the visitors. She was with Sue. Now, I reckoned she was a bit of all right. Classy style, nice eyes, dark wavy hair. Probably about forty. I love older women. I never had one in factuality, but the idea always appealed.
The moment the guard let them through the gate to the Yard, Babak—he of the thirty-six thousand chickens—raced up. He tugged Sue off to one side like she be a barge, what he moored at his table. On the table was a stack a papers tall enough to kill a man. They’d barely sat down when he was shoving them in her direction.
This left Sue’s friend on her lonesome. She was looking nervously at the fences and the razor wire, then round the Yard.
I soiréed over to her. ‘G’day,’ I said, ‘how ya goin?’
‘Hello. Happy Christmas,’ she said. ‘I’m Sue’s cousin? April?’
‘April. That’s a pretty name. What is only suitable.’ I held out me hand. ‘Zeki.’
Her eyes ran down me forearm. Them eyes was as blue as the sapphires I once found in this lady’s jewellery box. It was them sapphires what led to me first stint in the nick. April looked at both me arms. I clenched me fists so me muscles showed. I wasn’t that fit—in fact, I was getting a gut—but me arms were ripped. Didn’t mind showing off me arms at all.
I noticed she be growing beads a sweat on her upper lip.
‘Hot as buggery, innit?’ I went, then added, ‘Pardon me French’, so she’d know I was a gentleman what don’t usually swear in front a ladies.
She touched her own wrist and the snap-on band they put on visitors. She looked at me arms again. She hadn’t been admiring me muscles after all. She was trying to work out if I had a wristband. ‘You sound so…Australian.’
‘A happy li’l Vegemite, that’s me.’
Thomas appeared just then, shaking her hand and looking at her like she was vanilla ice cream. ‘You must be April. I saw you come in with Sue. I’m Thomas.’
‘Ah, so you’re Thomas! Great. Nice to meet you. Happy Christmas.’ She held out a bag with some candy canes and gingerbread men. ‘You too…Zeki, was it?’
‘Still is. Thank you.’ I chose a gingerbread man and bit its head off. I always do that first cuz I don’t like it looking at me all accusing while I eat the rest of it. I got enough in the life to feel guilty about without worrying about the feelings a gingerbread man.
‘Happy Christmas to you too,’ Thomas said. He didn’t take nuffin from the bag. ‘Sue told me you were coming today. She said maybe you can help me.’
‘Oh, did she?…Uh, look, I…I’d like to help. But…This is my first visit. I’m still in a bit of shock.’
A gulping sound from somewhere below our knees made us all look down. This little Iraqi girl, Noor, snot all over her face and one pigtail undone, was crying for her mum. Abeer, me little Palestinian mate, ran over. ‘Come,’ she said, pulling Noor over to her own mum, Najah, what put Noor in her lap and held her till she stopped crying.
April’s eyes went very round. ‘Is that her mum?’
‘No. Her mum is in Woomera,’ Thomas said. Woomera was another detention centre what be thousands a kilometres away, in the desert. ‘They brought her here two days ago by herself.’
‘But separating a little girl from…that’s…outrageous,’ April said. ‘It’s too cruel.’
Thomas shrugged. ‘We’re used to it,’ he goes, what wasn’t exactly true.
April glanced over at Sue. She was already lost in the forest a Babak’s paperwork. Babak saw April looking and tapped Sue on the shoulder. Sue looked over like she just woke up and didn’t know what bed she be in. ‘Sorry, April!’ she called out. ‘You all right there?’ Pointing at Babak’s papers, she said, ‘It’s a bit of an emergency. I just have to…’
‘No worries,’ April said. ‘Do what you need to do. I’m with these two gentlemen.’ Then she blushed, like she’d said we’d all just hooked up, like we was at some club.
‘Good-o,’ said Sue, giving her the thumbs up, and went back to it.
April wore one a them smiles people wear at a party where they don’t know no one and they don’t reckon they’re gonna have a great time, but they know they ain’t getting a lift home till midnight so they better make the best of it.
‘Let’s go sit over there,’ Thomas suggested. His tone made it clear to me that no part a the word ‘let’s’ be spelled with the letter Zeki. Sometimes the asylums was like that with them visitors.
You know, for one crazy moment I wished I was one a them. The asylums. They was in this country—what—two, three years, not a day of it outside the razor wire and they knew every classy lady and cute chick from the Blue Mountains to the North Shore, I swear. Some of them had women writing to them from Perth and Adelaide and country towns all over Australia. Me, I lived in Sydney me whole life and who did I know? She Who Busts Me Balls. Oh maaan. I was feeling fully apprehensible about her visit.
April, what didn’t know any a the subtextuals, turned and gave me a join-us type wave. I didn’t wanna seem too eager. It’s never good to let the ladies think you’re keen. I looked round like I was considering me options. I nodded to some other Turks, and winked at that cute new Chinese girl what overstayed her visa—Ching or Chong or something like that. You know, one a them names that sounds like what happens when you drop a tray a cutlery down the steps. Ping pong ting tong. I waved to Bhajan, what was with some lady what visited him every week.
Finally, I strolled up to where April and Thomas was sitting, me Nikes kicking up little clouds a dust. I was glad I was wearing a clean T-shirt, me gold chains and me best trackies—the nylon blue-and-orange ones with the white stripes and the zips what start at the ankle and go up to the knee. They was unzipped to show off the Nikes. I’d put some product in me hair, what takes after Mum’s not Dad’s, thanks God, and it was standing up in spikes. I reckon in that gear I could almost pass for the good-looking one in Pizza.
For all that, me arrival didn’t make much of an impact. April’s eyes were glued to Thomas’s face. I pulled up a chair. He was telling her his story. When he got to the point where he tried to hang himself in the refugee camp, April’s eyes was leaking like taps what had worn-out washers.
Thomas’s story was too full-on for me, even if I heard it before. I needed to focus on something else or I was gonna stress out. April’s chest heaved. That was one excellent set. I focused.
‘I can’t believe they didn’t give you a visa,’ April said.
Thomas leaned forward and locked his eyes onto April’s. ‘Sue told me about your husband.’
‘She…Gee. What did she say?’ April frowned and glanced over in Sue’s direction.
‘She said your husband is the Minister’s doctor. And that they are friends too. April, I have a letter in with the Minister for a four-one-seven. Sue helped me write it.’
‘A…sorry?’
‘A four-one-seven. It’s when the Minister himself decides to give you a visa. Which he rarely does. But a connection could make a difference. Sue said your husband could be that connection.’
Talk about putting on the pressurisers.
‘Surely once the Minister hears your story, he’ll give you a visa anyway.’
‘April.’ Thomas shook his head. ‘If this Minister was locked in detention by some accident, he wouldn’t give himself a visa to get out.’
‘Ha.’
April laughed. Thomas wasn’t smiling. ‘Oh, look,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. But…’
Thomas put his head in his hands. ‘Forget it. I wish I’d never stepped foot in this stupid country.’
‘Oh, God, don’t say that.’ She reached out to touch him on the shoulder. She must’ve touched what I touched that time cuz her hand came straight off like she been electrocutioned. He raised his head and looked at her with red eyes.
‘Maybe I can…’ April blew her nose on a serviette with a honk. ‘Pardon me.’ I handed her another serviette. ‘Thanks. Uh, when is the Minister supposed to make a decision?’
‘Who knows. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe one year from tomorrow. Maybe when hell freezes over.’ Thomas squinted up at the sky, what was full a burning.
‘Maybe.’ April spoke in a small furry voice like a kitten, what was deep too, like the kitten be at the bottom a the ocean. ‘Maybe you should look at this as your journey. We say when things happen to you, bad things or good, it’s your journey…’
Thomas looked at her with his eyes still narrow. ‘A journey,’ he repeated, flat as a tyre with nails in.
‘I just meant there are ways of looking at things…like trying to accentuate the positive…’
‘April, this is your first visit. I don’t want to be rude. But I’ve been Inside two years now. For nothing. That’s on top of three years lost in the refugee camp. My home was burned to the ground. My family is dead. I want to study—I’m not allowed. I want to walk for more than a hundred metres without running into a fence—I’m not allowed. I’m only twenty-three. I should be enjoying the best years of my life—I’m not allowed. There’s nothing positive about any of that.’ Thomas finished speaking and moved his baseball cap round so the beak, what usually covered the machete scar at the back of his neck, was covering his eyes. Then he lowered his head and crossed his skinny arms over his chest.