The Infernal Optimist (11 page)

April returned two days later. She said it was on a count of all the paperwork she had to sort through for Thomas. ‘You know, Zeki, nothing in my life is as important to me now as asylum seekers and their freedom.’

‘Huh,’ I said. We was sitting by ourselves. Thomas hadn’t come out yet. ‘Why? If you don’t mind me asking.’

‘Why?’ she repeated. She stole a glance at Azad. He’d already said hello but on this particulate afternoon he was being visited by some uni students what was translating his poetry and gonna publish it in a magazine. Farshid and Bhajan was sitting with them too. They’d spread a blanket on the ground, and brung fizzy drink and chips and cards to play Go Fish. Kids like that didn’t like mixing with overstayers, much less five-oh-ones, even though we was people what needed visits too. ‘Why? I don’t know. It just feels important. Maybe it’s a Jewish thing. We always say that if more ordinary Germans and other Europeans knew what was going on with
the concentration camps and tried to stop it, or made more of an effort to help the Jews, maybe six million wouldn’t have died. I’ve never been an activist or even political before. But I can’t know what’s going on here and then not do anything.’

It was kinda weird. A few nights earlier, we was all sitting round talking about something that happened in Visits when Bhajan shook his head. ‘Imagine this happening back home, in any of our countries. Some foreigners in trouble, locked up even through no fault of their own. Who would visit them? Imagine women taking them food and clothing, lawyers fighting their cases for free, people coming to see them every day, respectable people too.’ No one could. That made me proud to be Australian, even though I wasn’t really, and even though it was also Australians what locked everyone up in the first. Maaaan, I wish I’d gotten pasteurised all them years ago with the rest a the family. If I was a citizen, I’d never a been in this mess. I could even be one a them people what visited asylums—except, in all honesty, I probably wouldn’t be.

April looked over at Azad again.

‘It’s good he’s with other young people,’ she said.

‘No young person could be as young as you, April,’ I said.

‘Zeki.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m forty-one.’

‘No way.’

Azad had his long legs folded up. He was leaning back on his arms, what were lean and brown. One a the girls put her hand on his arm. They laughed at some joke. Another one a the girls, what had a ponytail, pulled off her scrunchie and shook out her long hair. Some strands landed on Azad’s
shoulder. There was another joke and one a the guys put his baseball cap on Azad’s head. Then Azad took it off and put it on another guy’s head. Farshid grabbed it and put it on his own head. One a the girls started to sing a pop song then got embarrassed and collapsed in a heap a giggles. They was all just mucking around but they looked like they was having fun. I was shocked when I realised that it was the first time I seen Azad looking like he be young and normal, what he would be if he was outta there.

‘No, it’s really good he’s with young people,’ she said again, as if I’d said it wasn’t.

I picked up on the subtextuals. ‘You know, April, I reckon older women is the best.’

She shook her head. ‘Zeki, you’re incorrigible.’

‘That’s what She Who…’ Shit. Gotta keep me women separate.

‘Sorry? She who what?’

‘Nuffin. So. You got any kids? Not that you looks more than twenty-one.’

‘Ha. I thought older women were best.’ She glanced over at Azad again.

‘They are, specially when they look twenty-one, like you.’

‘Totally incorrigible, you are. I have one daughter, to answer your question. From my first marriage.’

‘You was married before?’ I was impressed. She was a woman of experience.

‘Yes.’

‘How old’s your daughter?’

‘Marley’s eighteen.’

‘Marley. That’s a nice name.’ It was just like Marlena without the ‘nah’, what I wouldn’t mind. Sometimes, She Who could be too negative.

April smiled. ‘Her father was into reggae.’

‘That’s cool. She as beautiful as you?’

She smiled again. ‘She’s quite pretty, but I don’t know if she gets that from me. She looks a lot like my mother, actually.’

‘Oh, mate. When I get out, you gotta introduce me to your mother.’

‘I thought you had a girlfriend.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That be true, in factuality. But there be twenty-four hours in every day. And Marlena’s gotta go to work sometimes.’

April play-punched me. ‘Keep your hands off my mother.’

‘Okay. But you gotta at least introduce us. And to your daughter, too. She live with you?’

‘No. She lives in Nimbin with her dad. She’s a bit of a free spirit. And she and Josh don’t get along that well.’

‘Did you say Nimbin? Her dad one a them hippies? Were you one too?’

She blushed and scrunched up her nose like the memory had a smell.

I squinted, trying to pitcher her in one a them Indian shirts and bell-bottoms with embroidery on. ‘Far out.’ I reckoned she be more classy the way she was now. I wanted to ask her more questions about her life but Thomas was coming through the gate with another big box a papers. I gave April me mobile number, and told her she could call anytime to speak to any one of us.

I was just wiping down the table with a serviette for the fresh onslaught a papers when there was a flash a white from across the Yard. It was a chair what be flying through the air. The blues began running over to where Farshid was going off like a volcano. ‘I’m not a tourist!’ he screamed, picking up a second plastic chair and waving it around. ‘I just wanna dye my hair!’ Then he hurled the chair at an officer.

Nuffin was weird in Villawood, I swear.

The blue put up his arms to block the chair and got hit with it.

‘He broke my arm!’ the blue shouted like a big wuss. ‘He broke my arm!’

Another blue raced over and they both looked at his arm. In factuality the arm wasn’t broke, only his pride.

Farshid went for another chair, but before he could get to it, Clarence tackled him and pinned him to the ground. He was pulling Farshid’s arms up behind his back.

‘Ow!’ Farshid cried. Clarence pushed his head into the dirt.

‘Let him go! Let him go!’ One a the girls what had been sitting with them was screaming at Clarence. She was so worked up she was pogoing, her fists punching the air every time she got airborne.

‘Let him go, ya fucken fascist goon! Let him go!’ yelled a skinny boy what was wearing one a them shirts with that Latino guy in the beret.

‘Fuck off, Ché Guacamole,’ Clarence said, sitting down on Farshid’s back. ‘I’m just giving our little friend here a chance to cool down.’

Farshid struggled and yelled at Clarence to get off him. Clarence raised one hand to his ear and cocked his head. ‘Sorry? Can’t hear you. Speak up.’

A middle-aged lady stood to one side, wringing her hands like they was a facecloth. ‘It’s all my fault,’ she said to me and April, what had run over too. ‘It’s all my fault.’ Tears poured down her face. I handed her the serviette, forgetting I’d just wiped the table with it. ‘Thanks,’ she whispered, and put it to her eyes before I could say anything, at which point I figured it was better to say nuffin.

I looked around for Farshid’s mum, Nassrin, but someone said she was in Medical. She was pregnant and having a hard time with it, specially since they were still keeping Farshid’s dad over in Port Hedland. I was glad she wasn’t there. I don’t think it woulda helped her blood pressurisation levels what apparently were high.

Everyone was talking at once. It turns out Farshid had asked the lady to bring in some blonding cream so he could put streaks in his hair. The blues at the gate wouldn’t let her take it in. They wouldn’t tell her why, either. When she got into the Yard, she told Farshid what had happened. He’d gone over to an officer and asked why he couldn’t have his hair dye. The officer was one a them real racist dickheads what was always pulling power trips on the asylums. ‘Why?’ the officer said, what wasn’t a question. ‘Maybe because I don’t like the look of your face. Maybe because you people can’t be trusted. That stuff is full of chemicals. If you’re not trying to swallow it and commit suicide, you’ll be making bombs with it.’ That’s when
Farshid exploded like he be a bomb himself and started chucking the chairs around.

He hadn’t been shouting, ‘I’m not a tourist!’ He’d been shouting, ‘I’m not a terrorist!’ I reckoned he better get that one straight if he ever got free and wanted to go on holiday somewhere. ‘Get the fuck off me, you piece of shit officer!’ he yelled now from under Clarence.

Azad stepped forward. ‘Get off him,’ he shouted at Clarence. ‘Get off.’ You could hear the stressation in his voice. He raised his hand like he was going to hit Clarence. Immediately, Clarence pulled back his fist like it was springloaded. April’s hands flapped in the air like butterfly wings.

‘CUT!’ The voice a Flora, big Tongan mama what was the Operations Manager, froze Clarence like a pea. ‘Go to the office and wait for me there,’ she told Clarence. ‘Now.’ Clarence raised himself up off a Farshid, giving him a kick as he brought his foot over.

‘Oh, sorry, Farshid.’

Farshid gave him the finger. Azad helped Farshid to his feet. Farshid brushed off his clothes, what was covered in dirt. His lip was trembling and there was a thin trickle a blood coming outta his nose. He had a small cut above his eyebrow what was bleeding. ‘Show’s over,’ Flora announced. ‘Nothing to see.’ She shooed everyone away and told Farshid to go into the compound to get cleaned up.

It was lucky in a way that all that happened. Because when Farshid got back to the room, what he shared with his brother, he found Reza trying to hang himself with a noose made a socks.

There was so much shit going down that day that we didn’t take all that much notice when they deported Chaim, the Israeli. He was a nice bloke, but it turned out he wasn’t a dissonant against his government after all, just a traveller what overstayed his visa cuz he was having too much fun. I reckon he spun the story about being a refugee and dissonant when he woke up that first morning here and saw he be surrounded by Arabs. I think even he began to believe his own story. He was in for one month before they deported him. He said it was like one year.

When he said that I remembered that time when I’d been in for one month and was complaining to Thomas. I had more wisdom by then. I wasn’t gonna say nuffin stupid like that when I left.

Early the next morning, January fourth, I was in the middle of a fully sick dream what had mag wheels, Marlena
and
Sanna the Bikini Girl in. Suddenly it turned into a nightmare. Marlena, what was sposed to be under Sanna the Bikini Girl, was under the mag wheels, and there was all these people screaming. I sat up in bed like I been electrocutioned. That’s when I realised the screaming was for real. I ran outta me room. What I saw blew me away. I didn’t know what the fuck was going down—pardon me French. I never seen nuffin like it.

Blues what was in riot gear was smashing into Babak’s room through the window. Then they sprayed something through the broken glass. It looked like they was spraying an insect. But if it was an insect, it was screaming and crying in Babak’s voice. Farshid and Reza had come running out from their room. They was hitting the blues and trying to pull them away, but they just got knocked to
the ground. Everyone was yelling. Me hairs stood on end, even worse than when I touched Thomas’s creepy bones that time.

There was blues what I never seen before, in a uniform different from the one the Whacking Co screws wore.

‘Azad, what’s going on, mate?’

‘They’re trying to deport Babak.’ Azad’s hands were in such tight fists that his knuckles had gone all white. He told me that after Babak lost at Federal Court, he’d applied to the Minister directly. The Minister knocked him back. Sue had been trying to get the Minister to look at his case again, but the Minister didn’t like looking twice. He didn’t even like looking once. Mrs Kunt, what was Babak’s case officer too, had asked him to sign the paper for voluntary deportation the day before, but he refused. The blues what wasn’t from Whacking Co was from this South African outfit what DIMIA hired to help with forced deportations.

‘What’s with the spray?’ I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

‘It’s…I don’t know how to say it in English. It stops the blood, bleeding. It’s like…’

‘Anti-coagulant.’ Bhajan, what always knew the words for things, had joined us. He said that when they came to get him, Babak barricaded himself in his room and cut himself all over with a razor. The blues didn’t want to touch the blood themselves, and they didn’t want to call a doctor neither. So they was just spraying him before moving in to take him away. ‘
Fuck them!
’ Bhajan wiped away a tear with the back a his hand. ‘We are not animals.’

Looking fully stressated, Tip came up and tried to get us back into our rooms. ‘Nothing to see, nothing to see.’

But he was wrong. Cuz next thing we knew, there was a shout from the roof, and there was Hamid.

‘You take him, I kill myself!’

Azad jumped like a shock had gone through him. ‘Hamid!’ he yelled. He turned to me, pulling a piece a paper outta his pocket. ‘Zeki, call Sue. This is her number. Tell her what’s happening. She can do something.’ Then he raced over to where Hamid could see him to try to talk him outta jumping.

I ran back into me room. Sue’s line was busy. I didn’t know it, but Farshid was already calling her from the public phone. I looked at me watch. It was three-forty-five ay-em. I kept trying, the whole time thinking a poor Hamid up on the roof.

By this time, they’d forced everyone back into their rooms, given Babak an injection, slapped on cuffs and dragged him away. Azad talked Hamid, what was crying and shaking, down from the roof. The blues put Hamid into the Management Unit, what was for isolation and punishment, but Azad was arguing with them to let him go.

Sue tried to get an injunction against the deportation, but it was too late. Babak was halfway to Tehran before the lawyers and magistrates what could do it had their first cuppa. We found out later that the Iranian authorities didn’t kill him like he said they would. They did put him in prison and tortured him pretty bad. Azad told me that Amnesty, what be a group what fights for human rights, made Babak what they call a Prisoner a Conscious, what be kinda ironic considering he was knocked out for the whole
trip home. Sue took it hard, like it be her fault, what we insured her it wasn’t.

The next morning, they deported this other bloke, Jameel, a Pakistani in his early thirties. Jameel and me used to play cards some nights, though like Azad and Hamid he didn’t gamble except with stones, cuz he was strict with religion, what was good for me cuz he usually won.

Jameel came from the border with Afghanistan. Opium was a big deal there, but he hated it cuz he could see what it was doing to people. So he informed on some opium growers to the police. Those particulate police turned out to be the cousins a the opium growers. Like Babak, Jameel told DIMIA they’d kill him if he was sent back. DIMIA didn’t buy it. They said even if it was true it wasn’t enough to make him a refugee. Jameel went quietly. We didn’t even know he was gone till we woke up and noticed his room was empty. The other Pakis in detention spoke to his family over there three days later. He was already dead.

Then there was Vesna, what had a husband back in Croatia what beat her up and tried to kill her. They said that wasn’t enough to make her a refugee neither so they deported her too. Even the church group what was helping her couldn’t track her down after she left. We never knew what happened to her.

It made me skin crawl. Villawood was full a ghosts. And after a string a deportations like that, everyone got even more depressed, thinking they be next.

Thanks God, for all intensive purposes I was outta there. Gubba, what was back from Noosa, told me he expected good
news any day. He told me to hang on, just wait for a few more days. He was always telling me we hadda wait for this, hadda wait for that. I told him I don’t got the personality of a waiter. I is at least the Mater-D.

For the moment, but, I was nobody, nuffin—a nowhere man like the rest of them.

‘I hear you’re getting out soon.’ Farshid and Reza’s mum, Nassrin, was hanging out some laundry. Her face was a bit red on a count a the effort.

‘Fingers crossed. Wanna hand?’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘I know I don’t have to.’ I shooed her aside, thinking how much me mum and Marlena would be impressed if they could see me. I picked up a wet sheet and slung it over the line.

Nassrin leaned back against a post, her hand over her stomach. ‘Thanks, Zeki.’ She brushed a strand a hair back over her ear. She used to dye her hair light brown and wear make-up every day what the visitors brung her. Lately she was letting things go.

‘No worries, mate,’ I said. ‘How’s Reza?’

‘I’m sick about him. He vasn’t always like this, you know. He vas a happy kid once. It’s all my fault…’

‘Don’t say that.’

She looked down at the ground for a minute. ‘If, God forbid, he’d managed to kill himself the other day, I vouldn’t have a single photograph to remember him by. On the boat
over, there was a big storm. The vaves vere that high’—she lifted her hand high over her head—‘and then the boat started to leak. The captain told us we could only keep one bag per family, he told everyvun to throw their extra bags overboard. Ve thought ve were going to die. Of course, ve did what he said. Only after ve vere rescued, and put in detention, I realised that those bags had all our family photos. It’s like losing all your memories. And now…’ She wiped a tear.

The Shit House didn’t allow any cameras inside. They said it was to protect the privacy a the asylums, but everyone knew it was so no one could send photos a the shit that went down Inside to the media.

‘It’s like ve can’t even document who ve are,’ she said. ‘As if stealing our freedom vasn’t enough, they have to steal our identity too.’ Like Azad, Nassrin could always take the conversationals to a higher level. She used to teach history at uni in Iran but got into trouble all the time. First, she didn’t want to wear the veil. Then she thought her students should know about some books what the government didn’t think they should know about. Farshid had told me all about it.

‘Mate,’ I said. I lowered me voice and looked around to see if there was any blues in the vicinity. ‘After I get out, I’ll come back and smuggle in one a them plastic cameras what don’t get caught in the metal detectors.’

She looked like someone turned up her dimmer switch. ‘Only if it doesn’t get you into trouble.’

‘Trouble is me middle name, what I be in all the time.’

‘That vould be more than kind, Zeki.’

‘It
is
more than kind, mate. It’s a promise.’

Promises. I was making a lotta them. I promised Azad and Hamid and Thomas that I’d visit them every week after I got out, Angel too. I promised She Who Deserved Better that I was gonna get a proper job again, and look after her real good. I promised Gubba, what came to see me the other day, that I’d pay him every cent I owed him, even if I had to beg, borrow or steal to do it. I promised Mum, what was at the meeting with Gubba, that was only a trigger a speech, that I wasn’t actually gonna steal nuffin no more. And I promised me dad that I’d get me citizenship right away even if I had to stand in a fucken queue, except I didn’t use the word ‘fucken’—pardon me French—cuz even though he only got one hand on account a being in the Korean War, he could beat the shit outta me and would do it too if he heard me swearing. And I promised meself I’d never eat another meal a chicken and rice as long as I lived.

I dunno where Whacking Co got its chicken, but I swear they was like no chooks I ever ate before. Meat as grey as ciggie ash and what tasted like a poofter’s leather shorts after Mardi Gras. Not that I ever ate a poofter’s shorts or nuffin. The rice was like flecks a white cardboard what been lying round the tide line at the beach, gritty, salty and tasteless all at the same time.

Azad once told me this story. He was in Port Hedland with this African dude. The African was in Detention for four years
before they twigged he was a real refugee and gave him a visa. In that time he’d gone fully nuts,
loco cabana
, but the people what was helping him, they didn’t know it yet. He was only Out two days when they asked him to speak at this dinner, one a them fundraisers. He stepped up to the mic and said, ‘Chicken and rice.’ He paused. He said it again, louder this time: ‘Chicken and rice!’ Everyone laughed, like he was gonna tell them a joke, like he was gonna turn out to be a Somalian Seinfeld or something. He stared them down. ‘Chicken and rice!’ he goes, raising his voice more each time. ‘CHICKEN and RICE!’ No one knew what to do. He just kept shouting ‘chicken and rice’ until he busted into tears and had to be led down from the stage and back to his seat. Now everyone was feeling real bad, and that’s when they served up the dinner. Chicken and rice. He ran screaming from the restaurant.

All I’m saying is I was looking forward to real food. Kebabs, pizza, Maccas. If it was gonna be chicken, it hadda be KFC.

Yeah. A real meal and a good root with me best girl. She Who Is Staunch When I Need a Staunch Woman.

I got a confession to make. Me and Ching—the Chinese chick, you know, Ching Chong Ping Pong—we’d been getting it on lately. Thing is, you gotta do something to keep the equipment in working order. It’s like a car—you can’t just leave it in the garage for months and months or you might not be able to get it started again when you need it. And Ching was cool. I told her all about Marlena. I didn’t want her falling in love with me or nuffin. Don’t laugh, it
happens. I don’t wanna brag, but I’ve been told I’m a bit of a spud muffin in the sack. Ladies’ satisfaction guaranteed. It’s true. Funny-looking blokes are always better in the sack than good-looking ones. We aim to please and know we don’t always get the chance. And, mate, I can do things with me ears what most blokes can’t even do with their fingers.

Maaan. How was it that Marlena could make me feel so Guilty with a capital T when she didn’t even know what I been doing? The woman’s a witch, I swear.

The loudspeaker, what was right outside me window, hissed into life. ‘Zeki Togan, you have a visitor. Zeki Togan, you have a visitor.’

I looked at me watch what I reckoned was already well and truly me own watch by then. It was two o’clock. I wasn’t expectorating no one. She Who started her shift at four so it was hardly worth her coming, and Mum wasn’t sposed to visit till the weekend. Maybe it was April. I spruced meself up, put a bit a gel in me hair, splashed on some Brut, gave me pits a spray and brushed off the Nikes.