The Infernal Optimist

by Linda Jaivin

  I’m like, ‘Dad. You lost your left hand.’

  ‘It’d be cool, Zek,’ Attila said. He could say that. He was an Australian citizen what had both him hands and didn’t have to go into the Turkish army himself.

  Rain pounded the tin roof a the shelter. It was like the soundtrack to Dad’s war movie, ratatatat ratatatat, with a coupla thunderbolts what be like the bombs.

  I munched down one a Mum’s eraiyes what they brung. ‘So, can we talk about something else?’ I asked, picking the spinach outta me teeth with a fingernail. ‘How’s this weather, eh?’

  ‘Parts of Sydney are flooding,’ Attila said. ‘Trees are down and some houses have been crushed.’

  That was me. A crushed house with all me trees down.

  ‘It’s all experience,’ Dad said, though I didn’t know if he be talking about losing his hand or about people what had them houses crushed or about me going to the Old Country and into the army.

  Me dad didn’t visit as often as Mum, and when he did it was usually on rainy days, cuz he was a builder what took rainy days off. It was always to tell me to pull up me socks, what was an expression Mum liked as well in reference to me what didn’t always wear them.

  Me brother Attila, he had his socks pulled up since he been a boy. Shoelaces tied and everything. When Dad talked some more about me going back to the Old Country, all the while gestating forcefully with him stump, Attila nodded.

  ‘It’s good in the Old Country, Zek,’ Attila said. He only been there on holidays. Of course it was good. ‘The food’s awesome. Like Mum’s but to the max.’

  ‘Great. But what am I sposed to do there besides eat when I finish the army, assuming the army don’t finish me? Sell carpets?’

  ‘What is wrong with selling carpets?’ Dad asked. ‘You could do worse. You have done worse.’ Oh maaan. ‘You know, your old uncle Abi has a kilim shop. He is looking for someone to take it over when he retires.’

  Luckily, me brother had to get back to his own shop before they could start talking about how I could marry me first cousin, the Lady Ninja, and have lotsa little retards while I was at it.

  Twenty-Five

  The war in Afghanistan kinda ended and they got a new president. He was called Hamid too. He told our Prime Minister that the Afghani asylums was welcome to come back. The Taliban what prosecuted them was gone, though it wasn’t clear exactly where they’d gone. But that was good enough for the Australian Government, what froze all Afghani applications for asylum. They told the Afghanis what had been in Detention, some for three years or more, that they’d give them plane tickets and resettlement money if they’d go home. His case officer was putting the pressurisers on our own Hamid, what wasn’t the President a nuffin but Misery, to accept the offer. They told him that other Afghani asylums had already accepted the package. In factuality, they was all ones what had wives and kids back there and was more worried about them families than themselves.

  Hamid was normally a very quiet and gentle bloke. But he hadn’t slept for days. He was worried about Angel, what he was trying to keep an eye on, talking to her every night through the fence and trying to get her to come out to Visits, what she didn’t do every day any more. And he still hadn’t got any news of his family what he was waiting for from the Red Cross. He went off at his case officer. I was next door with Mrs Kunt, talking about the possibility a me own repatriotism, so I heard the whole thing. ‘First you don’t accept me as refugee because you say I not from Afghanistan,’ he shouted. ‘So you keep me here for years while I try to prove I am from Afghanistan. Now you say, okay, you really are Afghani then—now go home. Do you understand how cruel this is? I need to know what happened to my family. I need to know if the people who went after my family, who wanted to go after me, are still around. You think Americans won the war and it’s all over, it’s that easy? That the Taliban are all gone? Then you don’t know my country. And if you don’t know my country, you have no right to tell me what to do.’ We heard a bang. Me and Mrs Kunt ran to the door and looked. Hamid and his case officer, they was both staring at his chair, what was on the ground. ‘I’m scared, don’t you understand? Do you even care?’ he shouted. Then he kicked the wall a the office. ‘Do you even listen?’

  The noise got the attention a the blues. Anna raced in and pulled Hamid’s arm up sharp behind his back. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered as she did it.

  ‘Sorry?’ Hamid yelled. ‘Say sorry after you do something wrong you didn’t know was wrong at the time. Like keeping refugees inside razor wire. Or something you later believe is wrong. Like keeping us there for years and years. But don’t do wrong thing and say sorry at the same time. Doesn’t work!’ He struggled. But before he knew what was going down, the nurse ran over and gave him an injection.

  ‘Shall we talk later, then, Zeki?’ Mrs Kunt called out. I was already halfway to the compound gate.

  When Hamid came to, in his room, his eyelids like they had weights on, we was all sitting there. Azad took his hand. Thomas was pacing. I held out the bag a bite-sized chocolate bars I was eating, one after the other on a count a the stress. I offered them round, but no one was interested.

  Thomas was getting worse migraines, and more often. ‘How long does it take the Minister to read a letter?’ he grumbled. Now that he knew Josh was gonna speak to the Minister, he was even more tense.

  ‘At least you got a connection,’ Bhajan said. ‘April’s the only visitor we know who knows someone who knows someone in the government.’ Bhajan and Thomas and I was sitting outside Shoalhaven having a smoke. Azad joined us. ‘Hamid’s asleep,’ he told us.

  ‘You know,’ Bhajan continued, ‘the visitors always say, if the other Party was in we’d be able to help, no worries. They all tell you who they know in the Opposition, like it matters. They make themselves sound important saying it, but it’s useless.’ Bhajan also had an application in with the Minister, his second one. It was his last chance. This visitor had helped him write the first one. She was full a confidence, saying she knew this person and that person. They all turned out to be in the Greens, what is even more useless than the Opposition. One a the ladies from the Uniting Church, what helps people, looked at his first application when it got turned down and shook her head. She wrote a better one what got some good support from the community, but she warned Bhajan that it was nearly impossible to get the Minister to look twice at an application from the same person. We all remembered what happened to Babak.

  The loudspeaker went off. They was saying Bhajan’s name. ‘…Come to DIMIA…come to DIMIA.’ We gave him the thumbs up for luck. ‘Good luck, bruvva,’ I said. No one said nuffin after that.

  Azad closed his eyes. ‘La ilaha ilallah. La ilaha ilallah,’ he said.

  Bhajan returned, his face blank like it’d been erased. ‘I am a dead man,’ he said. We followed him into his room.

  We’d only just sat ourselves on the bed and floor when there was a cheerful ‘Knock knock!’ A head with a buffet hairdo peered in the door. It was Nadia.

  ‘Hellooo. Hellooo.’ She saw us all in there and stopped. ‘Can I come in?’

  Bhajan gestated with his hand.

  She stepped inside, smiling and nodding the whole time. ‘Azad. Zeki. Thomas. How are you all?’

  Thomas spoke for us all. ‘Still breathing.’

  ‘True,’ she said. ‘True.’ She scrunched up her mouth like she was trying hard to get it closer to her nose. She tapped one little foot, and rubbed her hands together like she was washing them.

  We waited for her to say something. ‘Well. Bhajan. Can we have a little talk?’ she finally asked.

  ‘Any time,’ he said. She looked at us and lowered her chin, what then became two chins, and raised her eyebrows. Them eyebrows suggested we get a move on. We started to get up, but Bhajan put a hand out to tell us not to go. ‘They are my friends,’ Bhajan said. ‘You can say anything in front of them.’

  ‘O-kaaay,’ she went, dragging the word along the ground for a while. ‘So.
How do you feel?’ It was a stupid question.

  ‘Great,’ Bhajan answered. ‘Terrific.’

  ‘Do you understand what they told you?’ she asked. ‘You understand you’ve been rejected? That your application failed?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Bhajan, grinning.

  ‘And you’re feeling okay.’ She frowned like she knew this wasn’t possible.

  ‘I feel great,’ said Bhajan nodding and shaking his head. ‘On top of the world.’

  She put her head to one side and then to the other, like she be checking her hinges. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes, why not?’

  ‘You’re not thinking of…you won’t do anything…’ She was trying hard to can the frown. Them feet were stomping all up and down her forehead.

  ‘Ohhhhhh,’ Bhajan said, like he just got her meaning. ‘You mean like this?’ He sliced at his wrist with the edge a his hand. ‘Or this?’ He made like his hands was a noose what be strangulating his face.

  She looked horrorfied. ‘Yes. Actually.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m fine.’

  It took a while to persuade Nadia to leave after that, but when she finally did we laughed, for about five seconds.

  Nadia was a busy lady that day. Reza, what was back from the loony bin, tried to top himself again and crazy Bilal, what had been growing a mad mullah beard, shaved half of it off. The right half.

  Twenty-Six

  The next day, the Red Cross delivered a letter to Hamid. There was a form on the front what said the letter was from his dad. His hands shook so bad I thought he wasn’t gonna be able to open the letter at all. Azad and me, we was almost as nervous as he was. When Hamid finished reading the letter, his hands went slack. The letter fluttered to the ground. His eyes closed and a tear squeezed out. More tears fell but he still wasn’t making no noise, like he be holding him breath. I felt a chill crawl up me spine and neck and all over me skull like ants. I picked up the letter but it was in his language. Azad shook his head at me, but I wasn’t sure if he be telling me to put it back down or that he couldn’t read it neither.

  It turned out his dad said that after Hamid’s mum’s arrest, he had gone into hiding with Hamid’s little sister and brother. His sister, what was only six, got dysentery and died. When the Taliban fell, his dad rushed back and went straight to the prison to find his wife. He was two days too late. Just before they took to the hills, the Taliban guards killed all their prisoners, including Hamid’s mum. Hamid’s dad, what loved her very much, went crazy for a while. The authorities told Hamid’s dad he could open his school for girls again. But he didn’t know where he’d be getting teachers, or even books or desks or chairs, cuz the old ones had all been burned for firewood. Mostly, he didn’t know how he was gonna do it without Hamid’s mum, what he missed too much. He worked hard to do it anyways, cuz he knew she’d want him to. Then someone burned the new school down cuz they was like the Taliban and didn’t think girls should get education, even though the new government said they could.

  Hamid’s dad told him he hoped he would continue with his medical degree, what he guessed Hamid nearly be through with by now. He said Hamid should stay till it was safe to return, what it still wasn’t.

  His dad didn’t know nuffin about Hamid being in Detention.

  Hamid hadn’t opened his eyes the whole time he was telling us this. ‘I’m sorry about your mum,’ I said. He began to shake all over his body.

  The next day Azad said his lawyers told him something he didn’t know about that Habee’s corpse business, what was that even if he got it, he wouldn’t be able to work or study. ‘All I want is to be able to support myself and make a new life in this country, Zeki. I’m young and healthy. I want to work and I want to study. I want to write poetry again. I just want the chance. It is not a lot to ask.’

  ‘Could you get the dole, mate?’

  ‘No. I’d have to rely on charity. I don’t want charity, and even if they gave me the dole, I would not want it. I am not a beggar.’

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘if you skipped, you could work illegal. It wouldn’t be much different from getting Habee’s corpse, really.’

  ‘I don’t know. It is not my dream.’

  ‘Is this, mate?’ I gestated at the razor wire.

  He put head in his hands. ‘No.’

  Twenty-Seven

  Some a the people what was for the refugees started organising concerts in the Detention Centre. After that time on Boxing Day when those musos came into Visits with them instruments, the Shit House decided that if there was gonna be music, they had to organise it. The concerts could only take place at lunchtime, under the shelter in the Visiting Yard. They had to finish before Visits started. A group a belly dancers once came from the Blue Mountains, what was specially good cuz some a them was babes. There was a rock band what I liked, though Azad said it be too noisy for him, and a gypsy cabaret band what had some a the kids dancing and everyone clapping them hands.

  On this particulate day, what was Monday the eleventh a February, we was getting a choir. I didn’t specially like choirs, not that I ever heard one before except at She Who’s church when I went with her one Sunday. But I didn’t have nuffin else to do so I went out with Azad and Thomas and we got Hamid to come out too, though he said he didn’t feel like it much. Pretty much everyone went out that day, even Reza, what was back from hospital and starting to come good again. At least he wasn’t sewing his lips or eating his hair. The blues stuck rows a chairs under the shelter. There was about thirty kids in detention and they all ran in soon as the blues opened the gate. They sat in the front rows swinging their feets back and forth. Abeer and Noor was holding hands, and on Abeer’s other side Bashir pushed his face into her shoulder.

  The choir had both men and women in. They was all wearing matching yellow T-shirts with the word ‘Peace’ and doves on, and they arranged themselves into two rows what had short and tall people in. Smiling like they was nervous, some a them wiped tears from them eyes, what made me scared that they was gonna break down and we was gonna have to comfort them. Some younger members a the choir went round shaking people’s hands, and then stepped back into line.

  The leader a the choir stepped forward and told us they was a World Music choir. World Music is a word for all the music what be from countries what don’t got mostly white people in, what is a lotta music. They said they was very honoured to be there and jawed on about how terrible the policy a detaining asylums was. I tuned out cuz I don’t like speeches, but it didn’t go on too long, thanks God. The Program Manager coughed and pointed at his watch to tell them they should start. They began the concert with a sad song about refugees, what made everyone sadder. Then they sang a song what was sposed to be Arabic but wasn’t exactly, and another what was sposed to be about the depressed people a the Amazon or something like that. I was glad we was sitting towards the back cuz I was already working out me escape routes. Hamid kept looking round for Angel, what said she was gonna come. The choir said they wrote the next song specially for this concert. ‘Oh the refugees, locked up for years and years, nothing but tears and fears…tears and fears!’ they sang with two-bit harmony. Everyone sank further down into their seats.

  ‘Remember Tears for Fears?’ I asked Azad, what didn’t and was looking glazed like a window.

  Some a the choir had hair stylings what looked like they been locked up since the seventies and not allowed to look at TV what was made after. ‘If there was ever a reason for skipping, this singing got to be it, mate,’ I whispered to Azad, what smiled. ‘It’s no Dire Straits, innit? It’s just the Dire Choir.’

  ‘They are good people,’ he whispered back.

  I thought I’d check out what was happening inside the compound.

  Azad leaned over close. ‘Take this back inside,’ he whispered and dropped a small plastic camera outta his sleeve and into me hands. I quickly stuck it in the waistband a me trackies.

  I couldn’t believe it. ‘Where…?�
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  With his chin he pointed to one a the young choir guys what had come round shaking hands earlier.

  ‘Respect.’

  ‘What, aren’t you enjoying it?’ Anna asked as she handed back me ID and let me through the first gate.

  ‘Mate,’ I said. ‘Maybe when I’s ninety I be into it.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. She slid the second padlock into place behind me.

  It was quiet in the compound. Some Chinaman was standing on the phone arguing with someone in his own language, and crazy Bilal was walking back and forth having a conversation with himself and stroking the beard what covered only half his face. I went to me room and wrote down a few lines for a hip-hop song what came to me while listening to the Dire Choir. I got stuck trying to find words what rhyme with ‘asylums’. But it wasn’t like I was gonna be heading into the studio with Dr Dre any time soon. I tore up the paper into pieces and threw them away. I thought a stashing the camera, but sometimes they did room searches and I didn’t have no hiding places what wasn’t already in use, so I tucked it back in me waistband.

  Outside again, I glanced over at the fence between me own building and Lima Dorm to see if I could see Angel, but no one was around except this lady from Vietnam what was nutso. She called out to me in her language. She was pointing and gestating at the building. I waved back at her and wandered out past the empty school and the playground and hung a left at the path, but then I remembered me smokes so I turned back. As I was exiting me room the second time I noticed Clarence walking real fast outta Lima Dorm. That was strange cuz in normality male officers didn’t go into Lima, and when they did they had to sign in and out and explain what they be doing there and shit. Me criminal instincts told me something was up. I took out the camera and got a quick snap. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think that much about it cuz I was thinking about meself and I was pissed off with the world and bored. And I didn’t wanna waste the film cuz I thought a telling Azad that Nassrin might wanna take a few snaps a the kids with it too.