No More Boats

by Felicity Castagna

  He touched the gun in his coat pocket and moved through the door until he was standing two feet behind the captain, who hadn’t noticed him yet. Antonio watched the captain from behind, the way he carried his body and he was thinking that something there reminded him of his brother whom he had walked out on all those years ago, and then right at that moment Nico appeared standing next to him in that tinny box of a room and Nico said, ‘You know life doesn’t really bring you into the future, it just throws you further and further into the past.’

  And Antonio nodded and said, ‘I know. It’s something I’m just now beginning to understand.’

  And it was that conversation that made the captain turn around suddenly to see who was behind him, and it was then that Antonio pulled out the gun and placed it firmly between the captain’s eyes.

  Antonio at that moment had a serene look on his face, that’s what the security cameras showed later on, and that’s what puzzled people so much, even the captain, at that moment, about why this man was here and what he was trying to achieve. It was this image that would appear in all the newspapers the following day: the one with Antonio, his lips slightly open, the gun held firmly at the captain’s forehead. Curiously, in that image he didn’t appear to actually be looking at the captain at all but at the empty piece of air beside him, as if he was caught mid-conversation with someone who wasn’t there. One of the headlines read: ‘No More Boats’, with the subheading, ‘From Tampa to Parramatta, Australians want the boats turned around’. The pull-out quote was the words of John Howard, the ones Antonio had been thinking about so much of late: We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come. For the roughly twelve hours between early morning when people got their papers and late evening when every TV station interrupted what they were playing to show the footage of the planes crashing into the twin towers, the picture was everywhere. Before all the news stories that made us draw all those connections between Muslims in planes and Muslims in boats, there was Antonio Martone, the Italian immigrant who was trying to stop all those ferries coming up the Parramatta River with his plastic gun.

  Notes on Sources

  The creation of this fictional work has involved spending time with a lot of fascinating books, people, archival material, websites, magazines, and a lot of time walking around my neighbourhood. My research has taken me off in directions too numerous to account for, but I would like to acknowledge some of the sources that have helped form the bulk of ideas I have explored creatively here. I would particularly like to pay my respects to some of the brave, challenging and in-depth research being done in the area of Australian cultural studies and asylum seeker policy.

  For my research into Tampa I have primarily referred to Dark Victory, by David Marr and Marian Wilkinson (Allen and Unwin, 2004), as well as Frank Brennan’s Tampering with Asylum: A Universal Humanitarian Problem (UQP, 2003). The latter is where I found Solicitor General David Bennett’s quote, which has also been widely cited elsewhere.

  Fiona Allon’s Renovation Nation: Our Obsession with Home (UNSW Press, 2008) helped to shape much of my novel’s discussion about building, McMansions and the meaning of home in the era of John Howard. The notes that the anti-McMansion protesters leave around the estate Francis and Antonio work on are adapted from similar notes quoted in Allon’s book.

  I have read and reread both of Anthony Burke’s landmark texts, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War Against the Other (Routledge, 2007), and Fear of Security: Australia’s Invasion Anxiety (Cambridge University Press, 2008), both of which have shaped many of the overarching themes about anxiety in this work.

  Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge Azadeh Dastyari, whose work I’ve been following over twenty years of friendship, conversation and questioning, and whom I never fail to admire for her incredible humanity and unwavering commitment to the important job of researching and publishing work on asylum seekers.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to sincerely thank the staff and students at the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University for their support in writing this book. I would particularly like to thank Gail Jones and Ivor Indyk who both supervised my PhD thesis, where much of the research and writing of this book was undertaken. Ivor, thank you in addition for taking this book all the way through to its publication and for continuing to teach me so much about writing.

  I would also like to acknowledge the continued support that I have received from Parramatta Council. Undertaking a residency at the Parramatta Artists Studios for two years during the writing of this book has provided me with both the physical and mental space I needed to finish it as well as the privilege of working alongside so many inspiring artists. I would particularly like to thank the coordinator, Sophia Kouyoumdjian, for her unwavering support and commitment to both myself and the arts in my community.

  Thank you to my husband, Michael, for always encouraging my writing and to our son, Zain, who would prefer I play with him. Thank you to my parents and to my brother for their support over a lifetime.

  The Giramondo Publishing Company acknowledges the support of Western Sydney University in the implementation of its book publishing program.

  This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.