The Infernal Optimist

by Linda Jaivin

  Whatever.

  Twelve

  I thought I’d go see what Azad and them were up to. As I left the office, Tip came racing round the corner shouting into his walkie-talkie. From the other direction this Korean bloke, Kim, shot out onto the path followed by a pack a Chinamen. Noor was wandering round like she did every night looking for some mum to sleep with, cuz they still hadn’t brung her own mum to Villawood like they said they would. I scooped her up so she wouldn’t be run over. She was shaking all over, and buried her messy little head on me shoulder. That’s when I noticed some a them Chinese had forks and knives in their hands. I thought they ate with chopsticks. But I didn’t think they was rushing to dinner. One a them shouted in English that they was gonna kill the Korean if he didn’t pay up. Just then the Korean tripped and fell on his face. The Chinamen was about to leap on top a him when Tip threw himself on the guy first. The Chinese knew they’d have to fight Tip to get to the Korean. They’d get into too much trouble if they did that, so they turned and peeled off, swearing under their breath ‘tomato, tomato’, what one a them once told me means ‘fuck your mother’ in them language—pardon me Chinese. Tip stood up and pulled Kim to his feet what immediately bowed, thanking him for saving his life. Tip just told him to go easy on the gambling.

  Kim hobbled over to Medical to get some sticking plasters for the cuts on his knees and hands. I put Noor down and she ran off towards the room what is for Abeer and her family. ‘Thanks for looking after Noor, bro,’ said Tip.

  ‘No worries. Didn’t want her to end up in the sweet and sour.’

  He handed me a ciggie. Tip was a good man.

  ‘Pity about Kim’s nose, eh?’ I said.

  ‘What d’ya mean?’

  ‘Got flattened.’

  Tip rolled his eyes. ‘You’re bad, Zeki.’ We weren’t even halfway through our smokes when this cat-a-wailing began. Tip and I looked over to see this little Nepalese dude, an asylum what mostly kept to himself, curled up in a ball, sobbing and hitting his head against the paving. Tip chucked his ciggie on the ground and rushed off to get someone from Medical. An old Iraqi man hurried over and scooped up the butt, put it out by pinching it, stuck it in his shirt pocket and scurried off. The whole place was a fucken looney bin, pardon me French. At that minute, I felt that if I stayed in one more day I was gonna lose it meself big time.

  But what were me chances a getting out now? I’d been devotioning a lotta thought to the problem. I had nine days left to organise me appeal. At first I’d thought a defending meself. But you gotta prove the AAT made a mistake a law. I knew lots about the wrong side a the law. Ask me anything about that. But I didn’t know much about the right side. As for getting another lawyer, I learned that the free ones was just for asylums and chicks like Angel. What was fair enough, I spose, even if it didn’t help me much. No one but them lawyers what charged lotsa money like Gubba was interested in helping five-oh-ones. The two and a half grand I had in me video wouldn’t buy much a their time. And I owed Gubba four times that, what got me over a barrel like a poofter in a keg room. I’d have asked me brother Attila for help but he had a mortgage and kids, the full catastrophe, so he was bloody useless. Mum wanted to ask me uncle Baris if he could come up with the cash but I told her to forget it. She didn’t know about that problem with the bookie over that dog what me mate swore was gonna pike. I already owed Baris about ten grand.

  On the other hand, if the government thought they was gonna get away with deporting me to the Old Country, what wasn’t my country like Australia was my country, they had another thing coming. I’d deport meself first—right over that fucken fence.

  That’s when it occurred to me.

  The thing what was the thing what I hated the most, what scratched me eyeballs, what broke me world in half, what turned everybody and everything into In and Out, that might just be the thing what was me way out.

  I went to me room. I had some thinking to do, and while I was at it I counted me money again. It weren’t enough for Gubba, but there are people what cost less than lawyers. Survival Rule Four: Know that there ain’t no one what doesn’t have his price.

  I found some paper and made a list:

  $

  cutters

  allies

  I put a tick next to $ and thought about items two and three. Another of me best treats besides being a good listener is me ability to make mates and allies, though She Who don’t always think this be one a me best treats cuz it sometimes get me into trouble when I make mates and allies what aren’t from respectable people. This was different, but. Even if the government and the media always be dissing them like they was some disease what this whole country caught, the asylums was respectable people. Me time in here learned me that. Besides, you is born alone and you die alone, but it’s fucken near impossible—pardon me French—to escape alone.

  Thirteen

  When I got to Azad’s room, they was all there—Azad, Hamid and Thomas. Hamid was looking worser than usual and the others weren’t too jolly neither. Hamid was rubbing his arms like he wanted to wipe the skin clear off. Azad was flicking his lighter and Thomas was digging his toes into the floor.

  ‘Bastards,’ said Hamid, what don’t usually swear.

  ‘They caught Angel in Hamid’s room earlier,’ Azad explained. ‘They sent her back to Lima, and won’t even let her come into Stage Two to be with Hamid any more.’

  ‘My body is still weak from hunger strike. She just looking after me.’ Like Azad, Hamid’s a real gentleman. He never told us about him and Angel doing the thang, what we knew anyway cuz this place be too small for secrets.

  ‘Shit, eh?’ I go.

  ‘What do I have to live for?’ Hamid goes. ‘When Taliban kill, at least they do it fast. Here, they kill us little bit each day, we die drop by drop. Why they separate us? Angel needs me. And I need her. It be different if she were Outside, if they gave her Bridging Visa. I’d be happy for her then. But she is Inside. Why can’t we be together?’ Hamid put his head in his hands and wept like a girl. I stood there, humeliorated for him and angry too, me hands in me pockets.

  There was a knock on the door. This Sudanese dude popped his head in. ‘Hear about Chaim?’ Chaim was the Israeli bloke what got deported.

  We shook our heads.

  ‘You know that bus in Tel Aviv that got blown up?’ It had been on the news. ‘He was on it.’

  ‘Dead?’ Azad asked. His voice was shaking.

  ‘Critical. Lost one arm. Burns and cuts everywhere. They don’t know if he’s going to survive. If he does, he’ll be blind. The blast blew his eyes clear out of his sockets.’

  I thought about Chaim’s eyes, what was green. I thought about them not being in his head. I wanted to puke.

  ‘How’d you hear?’ Somehow even Thomas was looking pale, I swear.

  ‘Abdullah.’ Abdullah was a Palestinian nurse what was born in Israel and had an Israeli passport, what they called an Israeli Arab. He overstayed his visa and was in Detention for about three weeks at the same time Chaim was here. ‘Abdullah was working at the hospital in Tel Aviv when they brought him in. He recognised him. He just called to tell me.’

  Hamid’s eyes was going red again. Thomas looked at the corner a the room like he was angry with it and Azad picked up a ruler and slapped it against his wrist like he wanted to break it. I just kept thinking a Chaim’s green eyes not being in his head. We didn’t even notice the Sudanese guy leave.

  ‘I can’t take it any more,’ Azad goes after a while.

  Thomas nodded, still staring at that corner.

  ‘We’ve all had a gutful,’ I go.

  ‘I need freedom,’ said Azad.

  ‘Me too,’ Hamid agreed.

  ‘Me too,’ Thomas said.

  Like I just thought a something, I snapped me fingers. ‘I got an idea.’

  Fourteen

  ‘But what about Angel? I can’t leave without her.’ This meant Hamid wasn’t going. Even sneaking into Lima Dorm be like sneak
ing outta Alcatraz. Getting outta Lima—what Angel would have to do to come with—was impossible. ‘She is my life.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said, what I believed to be true even if it didn’t exactly suit me own purposes.

  ‘You will never get away with it.’ Thomas the Infernal Pessimist. ‘Not after what happened six months ago.’

  Thomas was talking about this mass escape what was already a legend. The camp mosque, what is in factuality a room for prayer and not a building with domes on, used to be at ground level and near to the fence. When people went to pray, what the strict ones do five times a day, they dug a hole, a little at a time, covering it up with a prayer rug and taking the dirt outside. A friendly guard gave them a map a the works, so they knew where the drainage pipes was. More than twenty detainees got out through them pipes. Even though they went through the mosque, the escapees wasn’t all Muslim. It was an ecological effort, with Christians and others in. There were some they still hadn’t caught. Immigration punished the Shit House, fining them for every detainee what escaped. That meant the Shit House was looking sharp to make sure it didn’t happen again. They moved the mosque to a room what was upstairs.

  ‘They are watching closely these days,’ Azad said, but he sounded interested.

  ‘That’s their job, mate. To watch,’ I said. ‘Ours is to escape. And I got a plan.’

  Someone pushed open the door. We froze like peas.

  It was only crazy Bilal coming for his coffee. When he left we breathed like we was blowing up balloons.

  ‘So, say we skip,’ goes Azad, what said ‘skip’ instead of ‘escape’ what is something they all said when they meaned ‘escape’. It was part a the Villawood language. ‘You need people to help on the Outside.’

  ‘Easy peasie Japonesie. You all know heaps a people what wants to help asylums.’ They looked at me like I just farted, what I didn’t do in factuality for once. ‘Wha?’ I opened me hands. ‘Wha?’

  Thomas screwed up his mouth. ‘So you’re an asylum seeker now.’

  ‘Nah, nah. I didn’t say that. Anyway. How about April?’

  ‘No, you’re not asking April.’ Thomas shook his head.

  ‘What are you, her father?’

  ‘Fuck off, Zeki. I’ve finally got a chance at a visa. But it’s only because April has got her husband to help me. If she gets involved in something like that, I’m fucked, as you would say. Do what you like, but don’t involve her.’

  ‘You know,’ Azad said, ‘they asked me to sign a paper the other day. For voluntary deportation.’

  We stared at him, horrorfied. He hadn’t said nuffin about this before.

  ‘But you know what the joke is?’

  ‘What, mate?’ I said, hoping it’d be funny. I didn’t like me chances.

  ‘They can’t do it. See, because Kurds like me, called Fayli, are Shi’a, Saddam says we belong to Iran, but Iran doesn’t want us either. No one will take a stateless man.’ He flicked his lighter on and off. ‘Some lawyers are talking about running a case for people like me—stateless people. That would include Palestinians from Gaza, and Bedoons from Kuwait. They say it can’t be legal to keep us in Detention indefinitely. They say they can argue on the basis of something called habeas corpus. But it could take a long time. Who knows if they’ll win. If they don’t…I can’t stand the thought of living inside a cage for the rest of my life. I’d kill myself first.’ For some reason, I thought about all them feathers what Azad be collecting.

  ‘Bruvva,’ I said. ‘So you’re in?’ Everyone was looking at Azad now.

  ‘I don’t know, Zek. I want real freedom. Papers. The right to work. Study. I feel like I’ve been running my whole life. I’m tired of running. I should to wait on this court case, this habeas corpus.’

  ‘Looks like you’re on your own, Zeki,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said, feeling da jection, what is da sadness you get when no one wants to play with you.

  ‘But, Zek, good luck, eh?’ Hamid said.

  Fifteen

  There was only one path left if I was gonna skip on me lonesome. The following afternoon, I approached Tip. ‘A word in yer shell-like, mate?’ I said.

  A few minutes later, he came to me room. ‘Whassup, Zek?’ We did the bruvvas’ handshake. ‘How you going, bro?’

  ‘Still breathing.’ I was saying this now too, what be Villawood for ‘good, thanks’.

  ‘You’re looking healthy.’ He smiled and play-punched me gut.

  ‘You too, mate.’ I play-punched his. I gestated for him to sit down and passed over a handful a pistachios.

  ‘Happy Australia Day,’ he said, what it was. ‘Did you hear? They named Pat Rafter Australian of the Year.’

  ‘Pat Rafter? Tennis player?’ I shook me head. ‘Mate, I reckon Australian a the Year oughta be someone who plays a real sport—soccer or rugby league.’

  ‘Oath.’

  ‘So. How’re the wife and kids?’

  ‘Not bad,’ he said, cracking a pistachio. ‘Joey’s starting Year Nine next year.’

  ‘Smart kid, eh? Takes after him dad, I spose.’

  ‘Flattery’ll get you nowhere,’ Tip goes. ‘He’s a smart luttle bugger, though.’ He shook his head. ‘But of a worry, to tell you the truth. School fees and all being what they are.’

  I nodded. This was going better than expectorated. ‘What’d be the fees for a good school?’ I reached into the slot a me video and pulled out a neat stack a bills. ‘One thou? Two thou?’ I counted out two and a half. ‘Take it, bro. For Joey’s education. It’s on me. What’s a loser like me gonna use it for anyway?’

  ‘Whoa, whoa, Togan.’ Tip sat up straight and frowned, swatting the air like the money was flies what be bothering him. ‘Let’s just prutund I never saw that, okay? What’s thus all about anyway?’

  ‘Mate, I’m not gonna beat about the George W. I got a business proposal,’ I said.

  In the end he promised he’d ‘thunk’ about it. He said he was rostered off for a few days but he’d give me an answer when he got back. I knew he be a quiet person what didn’t like trouble, but he also be a person what needed money—and a need for money could make people change their attitude to trouble.

  Sixteen

  That Monday was the twenty-eighth a January. I’d been Inside three and a half months. I’d lost me case. I’d lost me girl. I thought there was nuffin else to lose. I was wrong.

  After lunch, I looked through me CDs but there wasn’t nuffin I felt like listening to. I opened the journal what April gave me, thinking I might try writing a song, but I couldn’t think of nuffin to say. Me room felt like a T-shirt what had grown tight and uncomfortable, what you had to take off even if people could see your man-boobs, what isn’t a good look but was what I was getting in factuality.

  I reminded meself a me Survival Rule Number One, what is that when times is tough and you can do bugger all about it, the best thing to do is to kick back.

  I was feeling so stressed that I couldn’t even remember how that worked, I swear.

  At one-thirty, when visits started, I got Anna to let me out into the yard even though no one had called me. Not many visitors was in yet. Most a the chairs was still tipped forward over the tables, like they was so done in by the sadness in the place they had to put them heads down.

  It was hot as buggery. I watched a Chinese gang, what they brung in the other day, file into the Yard from the Stage Three gate. Tip had told me they shoulda been put in Stage One but there wasn’t enough beds. Waiting for them was a pack a visitors, about thirty in all. Funny thing was, both the gang members and them visitors was all wearing black Tshirts and black jeans. It seemed strange given the heat. And it made the Yard look like the set a one a them kung fu gangster flicks what has Chow Yun-Fat in. They had chicks with them too.

  Angel and Hamid was already out and sitting with Sue, what was going through some papers with them, so I didn’t wanna interrupt. I looked around for some detraction, and spotted Edward, anothe
r five-oh-one and a Leb what I met first when we was both doing time. He’d been brought into Villawood about two weeks earlier. His woman was visiting. She was sitting on his lap and they was doing big sloppy tongueys, what made Najah and some a the other women move their chairs so they didn’t have to look. I didn’t really wanna look either, cuz it was making me miss She Who something bad. It’d been more than three weeks since she last spoke to me.

  I smoked the last ciggie in me pack. There was more in me room. But it was hot and I couldn’t be stuffed getting me ID back from the blues, being let through the two locked gates, going to me room and then repeating the whole fucked-up routine to get back in, pardon me French. I thought about getting Bashir to do it in exchange for jelly snakes but he had his little head buried in his mum’s lap and wasn’t even looking up at a visitor what was waving a toy monkey at him. I never seen a kid so depressed. No one had seen him smile for days. I thought he was catching the depression from his dad, Mohammed, what hadn’t come out of the room for a week. Najah looked like she was catching it too. Abeer was the last one standing in that family and she was only eight.

  I glanced back at Edward and his woman. They was twined up like rope and she was sucking his face like it be a Chupa Chup. He was facing me and he had him eyes open, what is something you learn in prison, what is never close your eyes around other people. That and always sit with your back to the wall or the fence so no one can stab it when you’re not looking.