The Infernal Optimist

by Linda Jaivin

  April glowed like Homer Simpson after one a them accidents in the nuclear power station, I swear. She gave Angel a big hug. Azad pulled his lighter out and flicked it on and off, even though it didn’t have no fluid. April watched him, looking worried.

  When Thomas didn’t come out, Hamid explained that sometimes people didn’t hear their names being called and went back into the compound to look for him. I knew that in factuality, Thomas had heard, cuz a few minutes earlier I’d seen him go to the fence and look into the Yard. But I wasn’t gonna say nuffin. Didn’t have the energy. It was clear he just didn’t want to see April.

  ‘So how are you, Zeki?’ April asked. ‘You’re looking uncharacteristically glum.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘Zeki in big trouble with his girlfriend,’ Angel informed her.

  ‘Oh no! What happened?’

  I made a face. I didn’t wanna talk about it.

  ‘He was naughty,’ Angel said. ‘She found out. Now she not talking to him.’

  April stared at me with her eyebrows up. ‘You know, Zeki, maybe the Universe is trying to teach you a lesson. Everything in life happens for a reason? What you get is what you ask for?’ She started to say something about a book what was also chicken soup, what I didn’t get, or care about much, when Azad interrupted. ‘What do you mean “you get what you ask for”?’ Azad asked. ‘Do you think a refugee asks to suffer?’ he goes. ‘Do you think we asked to come to Australia so that we could rot in Detention? To see ourselves dying a little bit every day? Excuse me.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘Have a nice day.’

  ‘Wait,’ April said. Her eyes had tears in. Women be pure drama, I’m telling you. ‘Please wait.’

  ‘Yes?’ Azad was talking through him teeth.

  ‘Before you go…This is for you.’ She handed him a sealed envelope, what looked like it had a card in. She tried to smile. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Without looking at the envelope, he stuffed it into his pocket. ‘Thank you,’ he said. Then he walked away.

  Angel bit her lip and looked at Hamid.

  ‘Everyone here too stressed,’ Hamid said. Then, to prove the point, he dropped his head down like it be too heavy to hold up any more and blew out some air.

  Angel looked at him, and me, and April, like she be deciding who needed the most help. ‘I know,’ she said, cracking the deck, ‘let’s play cards.’

  April gave a little smile. ‘I can’t believe you’re trying to cheer me up now,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Angel.’

  ‘Go Fish or Poker?’ Angel said, nudging Hamid, what was still staring at his feet.

  ‘Poker,’ Hamid said after a while. ‘I get used to gambling. It’s like life.’

  ‘Word,’ I said, what be hip-hop for to agree with something, but even more so.

  ‘Pro-ee-ung Tevy from Cambodia, come to DIMIA. Pro-ee-ung Tevy from Cambodia, come to DIMIA.’

  Proeung Tevy be Angel’s name in her own language. Even I knew the rule by then that they only called you in to give you bad news, but we all gave her the thumbs up what was for hoping it be good news anyway.

  ‘Sue thinks Angel should get her Bridging Visa,’ April said after Angel left to go to the office. ‘She said that her age and the evidence of her physical and psychological trauma matched the guidelines to a T. You know everything that happened when she was—’ I didn’t think April was ever gonna get the point about keeping people’s confidentials. She looked like she was about to launch into a discussion a the traumatics when Hamid pointed at the cards.

  ‘Your turn, April.’

  Angel returned a few minutes later. We read the answer on her face.

  ‘Maybe…maybe there’s some other way?’ April put a hand on Angel’s arm. Angel just hung her pretty head.

  Seven

  The asylums’ cause was getting more famous by the minute. It was on the news all the time now. Some Members a Parliament and human rights groups was kicking up a fuss about the children in particulate. What didn’t mean the kids was allowed to go to school or that any more asylums was getting visas. But it did mean they was getting lotsa visitors.

  Azad and them was talking to this lady what had a notebook and what was writing down everything they said. I wandered over cuz I figured she be a reporter. DIMIA didn’t allow reporters into Detention. Some came anyway, pretending to be visitors. I reckoned if this lady reporter really wanted to shock her readers, she should tell them how someone virtuosically Australian like me own good self was locked up like an asylum. But she didn’t act too interested in my story, even though I told it with lotsa gestations and wicked impersonations of the coppers on the train and the Immigration guys and even of Gubba with his hair and his tan.

  It turned out she wasn’t a reporter after all. She was a famous play-writer what was gonna write a play what was gonna change people’s opinions about asylums. The next day we met a famous novelist what was gonna write a novel what was gonna change people’s opinions about asylums, and a few days after that, a famous director what was gonna make a movie what was gonna do the same thing. I don’t know much about plays or books, but I reckon a movie about asylums in Detention would be pretty boring, cuz nuffin much ever happens Inside. So I told the famous director that if he wanted people to go see his movie, it should have car chases and kung fu and Angelina Jolie in.

  ‘Hmmm,’ he said, stroking his funny little beard and looking at me outta his square black glasses. ‘Interesting.’ He said he’d ‘workshop the concept’, whatever that is when it’s at home.

  Some a the visitors cried, what put a strainer on us all. Others talked about feeling ‘this amazing connection’ with the asylums, like they all got cordless phones with no static on. They said things like ‘you’re not terrorists’ and ‘you’re not bad people’ like they was telling the asylums something new. They all promised they was gonna visit all the time, every week at least. We never saw most a them again. Some a the asylums was disappointed at this. I insured them that in the case a the famous ones, it was probably cuz they was busy making them famous books and plays and movies and stuff.

  The visitors what came regular, meanwhile, was getting more organised. They was making lists of all the asylums so that everyone was getting called to Visits now, not just the popular ones like Farshid and Reza and Azad. Once, even crazy Bilal got called. He only went out that one time. He said he’d never go back again. He said he felt like a monkey in the zoo or a bear what was in a circus and what had to perform. He figured that a lot a the visitors just wanted to be able to tell their friends they’d been to a detention centre and met the people what was on the news all the time. This made some a the detainees say crazy Bilal wasn’t so crazy after all.

  Eight

  Days passed. Azad was still dark with mushrooms in. He told me he was getting nightmares every night what had snakes and spiders. He was afraid to fall asleep. Even though he was real tired, what you could see in his eyes, he was only getting a couple hours a night, starting around six in the morning and ending when the PA announcements began two hours later. He had a mobile now, too, what one a the visitors smuggled in. Once, around four in the morning, when I couldn’t sleep, I went round to see if he was up and felt like a game a cards. I could hear him talking into his mobile. I wondered who he be having conversationals with at that hour, but forgot to ask when I saw him later on.

  The fifteenth a January was Reza’s fourteenth birthday. The visitors brought lotsa food and juice, and he had three birthday cakes, one what was chocolate with dark chocolate icing on, and one what had lemon icing, and one what had black cherries in, what I liked the best. Reza was in the Visiting Yard from the start of visits at one-thirty. Around four o’clock he excused himself, saying he’d be back in a minute. Cuz there wasn’t no toilets in the Yard, we always had to go back into the compound if we needed to take a piss. Visitors had to go back to the office. But there was Muster at four, and the blues wasn’t letting no one go in or out till they finished. Reza had bee
n holding it in for hours, and begged them to let him through. In the end the poor little bugger pissed his pants. That made him feel humeliorated cuz there was young girl visitors his age at the birthday party. Before anyone could stop him, Reza shoved his hand through one a the gaps in the fence and slammed it down on the razor wire. Blood spurted, people screamed, them young girls was crying, and everyone was real upset, specially the little kids like Abeer and Noor, what saw it happen. Nassrin took two steps and passed out. Lucky for her, Farshid caught her before she hit the ground. I helped him get her back into a chair.

  Nadia came racing outta the compound. Her eyebrows, what were small like her feet and shaped like them too, was trying to escape into her hair. ‘Reza, honey, now what are you doing to yourself?’

  ‘Vat’s it look like!’ he screamed.

  The little feets on her forehead pointed their toes down at her nose. ‘This is not rational behaviour.’ The words ‘rational behaviour’ went all the way up the scales and then down again.

  ‘You saying I’m crazy?’ he shouted. ‘I’m not crazy! I just need my freedom!’

  The blues dragged him in to Medical. The doctor told him he was lucky he didn’t sever a tendon. That just set him off again. ‘Lucky!’ he yelled. ‘You think I’m lucky!’ They gave him a needle, what he didn’t want, but what put him out for a few hours. Happy birthday, eh.

  On the sixteenth, some a the asylums in Woomera began a hunger strike. On the news, the government called the strikers ‘rejectees’, ‘attention seekers’ and worse. It was putting everyone on edge. The air felt heavy, like just before a thunderstorm breaks. You could almost see the sky getting darker and darker with it.

  Me own skies wasn’t what you’d call bright. I still hadn’t come up with a plan for the appeal. Me dad reckoned I should just go to Turkey. This was giving me Anxiety with a capital T, what wasn’t helped by the fact that She Who still wasn’t speaking to me.

  I hadn’t given up trying, but. On the nineteenth a January, I was waiting in the queue for the public phones. I remember the date cuz me watch—you know the one—had a calendar on. I’d already used up me mobile credit. I was using a normal phone card, what I got from Hamid, what got it from a church lady what helped the refugees. I didn’t like scabbing from the asylums, but they did get a lotta phone cards. Azad was in the queue behind me.

  The Woomera hunger strike was in its third day. Everyone was edgy. The temperature had hit forty. You could see the heat bouncing off the fences and razor wire. And the bushfires was going off again. The air was yellow and smoky and thick with ash like God be smoking a big cigar up there what be the flavour of eucalyptus. The guys in the queue grumbled and flicked the corners a them phone cards and kicked stones across the dirt and swore.

  Nadia rushed past. She was pulling on her hair and muttering to herself.

  ‘G’day, Nadia,’ I said.

  ‘Oh.’ She stopped short, like she be braking. Her chassis wobbled. ‘Oh. Oh. Zeki. Hellooo. Hellooo, Azad.’

  ‘Where’s the fire?’

  She stared at me. I saw she had rings under her eyes. ‘Everywhere. Everywhere.’ She rushed off again.

  I was about two people away from the front a the queue when Angel appeared. ‘You see Hamid?’ We hadn’t. She told us she be worried about him. He had friends on the hunger strike. ‘He thinking too much. Thinking, thinking, thinking. He get crazy.’

  It was my turn for the phone.

  I stuck the phone card in and pressed them buttons like I did every day, several times a day. Binkbinkbinkbink binkbinkbinkbink. Marlena answered.

  ‘Hello, darl.’

  ‘Stop calling, Zeki. I mean it.’

  ‘Sweet—’

  She Who Just Gotta Take Me Back Come Hills or High Water slammed down the receiver in me ear.

  I was still working the redial when Azad tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Zek, you mind? I have to call my lawyer.’

  ‘No worries.’ I sighed. ‘All yours, mate.’

  Azad patted me on the back like I was a good dog instead of the bad dog what I knew I was really.

  I leaned up against the wall a the laundry and had a smoke, feeling sorry for meself. I was disconnected from the life like a telephone what hadn’t got its bills paid. I tried to picture Marlena’s face what was only eyes and fading away like some a Mum and Dad’s photos a the Old Country. It wasn’t just Marlena. All a me life on the Outside was slipping away.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Azad’s voice caught me attention cuz it was loud. That was unusual with Azad, what is normally very soft-spoken like me aunt Elma, except me aunt Elma only been that way since she had them noodles removed from her vocal cords. ‘When did this…’ His face tightened up, like a fist. ‘So what now?’ The person what he was talking to jabbered in his ear for a few more minutes while Azad ate his lower lip. ‘Okay, okay. I speak to you soon.’ He hanged up and kicked the grass, what went flying up in a clomp. The Chinese guy behind him pounced on the phone like a cat on a rat.

  ‘What’s happening, bruvva?’

  ‘I can’t believe this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The barrister forgot to file some of my papers for court. The deadline passed. I’m stuffed, as they say here. How could he do that to me?’

  ‘Muvvafucker!’ I didn’t say ‘pardon me French’ out loud cuz I was talking to another bloke. I lowered me voice and gave him a look a signification. ‘Want me to get one a me old mates to pay your barrister a visit?’

  Azad looked at me like he didn’t know what I be getting at.

  ‘You know, give him the old what-for. Make sure he doesn’t forget next time?’ I left-jabbed and right-hooked the air.

  ‘No, no, no, Zek. Don’t do that.’ He looked at me like I farted or something.

  I shrugged. ‘Whatever. But if you change your mind…’

  Azad put his head in his hands and, with his back against the wall, slid down to sit on the ground. I did the same except me own hands was cross me chest. We sat next to each other thinking about our own troubles, though I thought about Azad’s troubles as well cuz I be sick a me own.

  ‘You know, Zek, I was so innocent. I thought, only I reach this country, I can find justice, peace and protection.’

  ‘That’s what me mate be in—protection,’ I go, but Azad didn’t seem to be listening. He did take a ciggie, though.

  He put his head in his hands again. I smoked me ciggie down to the butt and lit up another one. Azad took a second one from me and did the same.

  ‘I’ve reached my limit,’ he goes, real soft and then coughed for a while cuz he was only just getting used to smoking again.

  ‘I know what you mean, bro,’ I said and it was true. Even I was getting depressed and dark and untalkable. I what was naturally a bulient, what April told me be a word for a cheerful person. That made me realise she hadn’t been back to visit for a while. ‘April should be coming to see us again soon, eh.’ Azad raised one corner of his mouth and jerked his head up, like maybe that way he’d get his lips to come down in a smile. It didn’t work. ‘Maybe she’ll even bring her daughter with her next time.’ Something like a smile lit up his face for half a second. I elbowed him in the ribs.

  ‘Cut it out,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t know about you,’ I go, ‘but women what have handcuffs on always does it for me.’

  Azad almost laughed.

  The sound of running footsteps made us look up. It was Hamid. He looked spun out, like he be at the end of his wash cycle.

  ‘What’s up, bro?’ I asked.

  ‘The hunger strike in Woomera,’ he goes. ‘They’re sewing their lips together.’ Me and Azad stood up. Hamid named some asylums what they both knew from Port Hedland. One guy what been in Detention four years swallowed painkillers and shampoo to try to top himself. They put him in hospital in Adelaide. He wasn’t feeling too good and was apparently pissing streams a bubbles.

  ‘At least his pubes’ll be clean and shiny,’ I go, but it was kinda l
ame for a joke what no one was in the mood for. So I didn’t take it personal when they didn’t laugh.

  ‘They have to listen to us now,’ Hamid goes. ‘They have to give us visas.’

  Me mobile vibrated in me pocket. There wasn’t no blues in sight, so I sneaked a look at the number as I pressed the button, hoping it be Marlena. ‘It’s April,’ I go. ‘She must a heard me saying her name. I’m going back to me room to take the call. You guys wanna come and have a word with her?’ They waved me off like they didn’t even hear the question.

  Nine

  ‘Zek,’ April goes, ‘have you heard the news? About the lipsewing?’

  ‘Yeah. How are you, anyway?’

  ‘Terrible. I can’t think of anything but asylum seekers.’

  ‘And me, of course.’

  ‘Ha. Of course. But seriously, it’s like…I’m not even living my life any more? I don’t enjoy anything I used to. I’ve only played tennis twice in the last month. I can’t focus on my work. I haven’t…haven’t even had a single Me Day. I go to dinner parties and all I can talk about is refugees? Even when I see people rolling their eyes? I’m having trouble sleeping, too. When I do sleep, I have this recurring dream. It starts out normally. Then suddenly something forces my mouth open and all this razor wire comes coiling out. I can’t stop it. I can’t breathe. It hurts. It’s horrible. I wake up sweating, knowing it was a nightmare but convinced I’m in Villawood.’

  ‘Me too. Then I look around and I really is.’

  ‘I shouldn’t…you know, I walked to the post office today to buy a stamp for a letter? I had forty-five cents exactly in my pocket. They told me that stamps had gone up to fifty cents. I burst out in tears. I was so embarrassed.’

  A silence came up and sat between us, like Marlena’s mum when we was younger and sitting on the sofa at them house.