The Infernal Optimist (5 page)

Like I told you, I never knew much about asylums before I came here, though I heard about them on the news like everyone else. I didn’t think much about them situation neither. I had enough a me own troubles. Besides, lotsa people what be immigrants—like me own family—they figured the asylums was giving everyone else a bad name what came here legally. Everything you heard about the asylums in the media was bad. When I first got in here, Mum was afraid they’d be even worse than the crims I was mixing with in Silverwater. I had to insure her the ones I was meeting was better than some a the people I knew what was living on the Outside. What is true, specially the people I tended to know, on a count a me old profession.

What I learned about the asylums was that they was only here cuz they was running from heavy shit, like ethical cleansing and Saddam and torture, what be real torture like with electrical shocks and sensible deprivation and broken
bottles up the Khyber, and not torture like what I say She Who be putting me through all the time.

Take this dude Babak what had a room not far from mine in Shoalhaven. Back in Iran, Babak owned thirty-six thousand chickens and wore silk shirts made in France. Babak got real pissed off each time the government here said the asylums only came for a better life, what was a lotta times. Each time one a them ministers got on the TV and said that, Babak spat on the ground and told us all again about his thirty-six thousand chickens and his silk shirts from France. He’d still be in Iran, what he says got better food and better mountains and better everything than Australia, except for his cousin what was a dissonant what criticised the government and then hid on Babak’s farm. The security forces raided the place and shot the cousin and a whole lotta chickens and Babak’s young son too. Babak was lucky he wasn’t home or he’d be dead as well, though he says he’d rather be. His wife, what was pregnant, and his five-year-old daughter was on that boat what sunk on the way here from Innonesia last month and they drowned to death.

I was learning lots about the world, and what I was learning made me even more fucken determined—pardon me French—to stay in Australia where I belonged. As I said, I immigrated with me family when I was six months old. Only time I ever travelled back to the Old Country in me twenty-nine years was when I was five. The first thing they did over there was cut half me boy off. It wasn’t even that big in the first place. I couldn’t wait to get back home before they took a knife to anything else.

See? I said ‘back home’. Even then I thought of Australia as home. I reckon spending most a me life in Oz makes me fair dinkum, even if I never got me papers. So what if I got a bit of a past, what was the basis of this five-oh-one problem? We was taught in school how the nation was built by convicts. Well, that’s just another name for crims. I reckon being a crim makes me more Aussie than people what was born here but what never broke the law even once in their life.

Angel came into our lives in the beginning of December. I don’t got words for how beautiful Angel was, except that it was like light was always coming off her. She came from Cambodia and her skin was kinda gold in colour. Azad said her eyes were ‘like liquid sadness’, what just proves he’s a poet. She was only seventeen, though she told DIMIA she was older cuz she didn’t wanna get into more trouble for being a minor.

Oh, that’s right. DIMA had become DIMIA by then. Late in November the government added Indigenous to Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. The detainees joked that was so the government could have just one department to deal with everyone what was not coloured white.

Anyway, the day they brung Angel in, me and Azad and Hamid, we’d just been to Muster. According to the human rights groups what care about asylums, the blues were sposed to call it ‘roll call’ cuz we was human beings not
sheep, but they never did, even though they got the chance five times a day.

The three of us was heading back to our rooms. It was Ramadan, so we was fasting from dawn to sunset every day. I know I’m not a very good Muslim, but Ramadan is the one time a year when I try to be. One month for God, the rest for me. I reckon that isn’t too bad a deal. The days were getting hotter. Azad and me had just stopped to let Hamid catch up. He was having one a his bad days. He was trailing head down and floppy-pawed like one a them puppies what always got beat up instead a loved.

Even though he perked up some after he and Azad got to hang out again, Hamid suffered the depression pretty bad. He could never sleep at night even with the pills they got him on, and he was tired all day. And observing Ramadan in detention wasn’t great. They made arrangements for us to be able to have
sohour
before dawn and
iftar
after sunset, and they let the community from Outside bring in special foods, like dates and juice for breaking the fast. Mum brought in lots a good Turkish food too. But it wasn’t the same. Everyone talked about how, in their countries, everything kinda stopped for Ramadan. It’s a special time, and each night, after
iftar,
everyone goes visiting, sometimes till it was time for
sohour
and morning prayers. There were good TV shows and a great atmosphere. I told them it was kinda like that in Auburn too.

One thing that made it harder Inside was that lotsa shit was always going down what no one should be seeing during Ramadan when your thoughts gotta be pure.
Like what had happened the day before. We was sitting in the Yard with some visitors what came for the first time. They was Christians. They’d brought all this food and juice cuz they didn’t know about us fasting. We was sitting at this table, smelling the food what we couldn’t eat till later and some of it not even then cuz it wasn’t
halal
. They was asking questions about people’s cases, and about the situation in Detention. We answered even though we knew they weren’t gonna be able to help. We was polite, cuz we knew they meant well. All around us, people what wasn’t Muslim were eating and drinking juice and water, smoking cigarettes and laughing, and some a the women visitors were wearing short skirts and tops what showed off their tits what was hard not to look at. Thomas, what was a Catholic, was in another part of the yard with a whitehaired Father from the church what helped asylums. They had their chairs pulled up close and was deep in conversation, what is what we was struggling for at our table. Suddenly one a the lady visitors looked up and cried out, ‘Shivers!’

We looked where she was looking. Someone had dragged one of the longer tables over by the fence. There was a bed sheet draped over it like a tablecloth. The sheet hung down to the ground. The table had some food on but no people, and it was shaking like the coins on a bellydancer’s hips. A table with a cloth on was the Villawood equivalent of a shaggin’ wagon.

‘
La ilaha illallah
,’ Azad said under his breath—There is no God but Allah—and he quickly looked away from the
sight. Him and Hamid and Bhajan excused themselves and went back inside soon after that. I felt sorry for the visitors, what felt bad, even though they hadn’t done nuffin wrong. So I sat talking with them for a while till they left, what they did soon after they learned that I was a five-oh-one and not an asylum.

The worst thing about Ramadan on the Inside was that everyone missed their families, what was worser still for people like Hamid what didn’t even know if he still had one and Azad, what saw his dad taken away and his mum and sisters killed when they was trying to get across the border to Iran.

Anyway, there we was the next day, walking back from Muster. Azad and me stopped to let Hamid catch up. That’s when we noticed her, this skinny chick sitting in a corner, all twisted up on herself, long black hair hanging over her face like a curtain. She was shaking all over. ‘Are you all right?’ Azad called out. She didn’t seem to hear the question. Azad angled his head to say we should go over.

‘Hello?’ Hamid kneeled down by her side. ‘Are you okay?’

She looked up then and her hair fell back and their eyes met, and I swear it was like one a them romantic movies what Marlena likes what goes into slo-mo at just the point where I wanna hit the fast-forward. Or maybe it just seemed like that later. Anyway, Angel raised her hand to brush the rest of her hair away from her face. That’s when I noticed the bruises on her arms. It was like someone had scraped some a that gold off her skin so you could see she was just made a flesh and blood like the rest of us. She
musta caught me staring, cuz she tugged her sleeves down and wrapped her arms around her chest. I was pretty sure I seen something else on her arms too what she might be wanting to cover up.

She looked up at Hamid again and made her lips into something like a smile. Then she reached out to touch his face, like she wanted to comfort him instead. He jumped like she’d given him a shock. Suddenly she pulled her hand back, clamped it over her mouth, spun around and started dry heaving like she was trying to turn herself inside out. This was getting way too heavy for me. I tried to catch Azad’s eye, but he was staring at her and biting his lip.

Finally, she stopped heaving, but she looked pale and was shaking again. She looked over with half-closed eyes to see Hamid still kneeling there.

‘Come,’ Hamid said, real gentle. ‘We’re going to take you to Medical. You need a doctor.’ She nodded. Turns out she was on her way there when she got too sick to continue. He handed her a clean tissue from his pocket. She dabbed at her face with it. Hamid helped her up and put her arm around his shoulder. Her head flopped down against his neck. Azad put her other arm around his shoulder and they slowly took her to Medical.

I felt a tug on me sleeve. I looked down. Abeer, a little Palestinian girl, looked up at me. She motioned for me to squat down. She cupped her little hands around me ear. ‘What’s wrong with the new girl, Zeki?’ she whispered. ‘And is she Hamid’s girlfriend?’

‘You’re asking a lot a questions today, mate.’

‘Grown-ups always say that when they don’t want to tell you the answers.’ She stuck out her tongue at me. ‘Come on, Zeki, come see my new pet.’

I figured the others had the situation under control. I followed Abeer to the building where she and her family had their rooms. They’d been in detention for two and a half years. She brung out a gecko, what she held in her hands.

‘What’s the little fella’s name?’ I asked.

‘Visa.’

‘Cute.’

Later, I caught up with Azad and Hamid in Hamid’s room. They told me Angel was back in Lima Dorm. Lima was the female-only dorm, what was next to Shoalhaven and what got locked down. All single females got put in Lima. You could see them in the kitchen and the rec room and in Visits, but after five o’clock if you wasn’t in Visits and you wanted to talk to a Lima girl, you hadda do it through the fence. The officers said it was to protect them. But the detainees said it was so no babies got made and born in detention, cuz babies born in detention gave Immigration even bigger headaches than even the asylums did. But the detainees said it wouldn’t a been such a problem if they didn’t keep people here for long enough to make babies and then have them in the first place.

‘What’d they say at Medical?’ I asked.

Azad rolled his eyes. ‘The usual. They gave her a Panadol and said she should to drink lots of water.’

‘Donkey doctors,’ Hamid said, and he sounded angry. But it was true. The Medical in Villawood was bullshit. I never seen anything so dodgy even in prison. A few weeks ago Hamdi, this old Lebanese bloke, broke his arm. They told him to rest and gave him a Panadol, no joke. They didn’t like taking people to hospital cuz they hadda pay for it. They only took Hamdi to hospital after his arm got infected and swollen and he was screaming with the pain. Another time, this Nigerian woman, Vanessa, had a miscarriage. The whole baby didn’t come out, what I don’t like thinking about. They didn’t let her go to hospital neither until she got toxic with it and nearly died. The point was, Medical wasn’t looking after much besides its own arse, what was tight. It made Hamid, what wanted to be a doctor himself, crazy to see it. He said that if he got to be a doctor, he’d come back to Detention and treat the detainees proper.

‘So what’s her story?’

Hamid bit his lips. Azad frowned like I shouldn’t a been asking. I kinda guessed anyway. See, they was always bringing in girls from brothels what worked illegal. And I’d been keeping bad company long enough to recognise cold turkey, what was not a sandwich meat.

I could see they wasn’t in a talkable mood. ‘Catch youse later, eh?’

‘Eh,’ said Azad.

‘Eh,’ said Hamid.

I was feeling kinda unsettled and in need a some detraction. I looked at me watch. It was a long way to
iftar.
I went to see what Thomas was up to. He was with Abeer’s little brother, Bashir, teaching him how to draw. They was into it. I watched for a while but then I got bored. I was missing She Who pretty bad. I joined the queue at the payphones. It took forty minutes to get to the front a the queue, what was annoying but at least it killed time, what was good.

Finally I got to the front. I wiped the mouthpiece on me trackies and dialled. It only rang twice when she picked up.

‘Hey, babydoll. Any chance of a visit?’

‘I dunno about today, Zeki. I have to work at four.’ Visits began at one-thirty but people had to start queueing by twelve-thirty if they wanted to be in by two, and even then they might not get in till two-thirty or later. They made people line up outside the fence in the sun, what was hot. They took so much time processing the visiting forms, She Who reckoned they was learning to read and write at the same time. We was just talking about this when she said something what took me heart by the balls.

‘Um, Zek. You know Peter?’

‘Peter Pink-nuts? Peter the poofter from church what your parents think you should go with?’ I knew I shouldn’t be talking like that when I be fasting, but I couldn’t help meself.

‘It’s Peter Pinknett. He’s not a poofter.’

‘Now you’re defending him?’

There was a long sigh. ‘I’m not
defending
him. I’m just saying he’s not a poofter. Anyway, I think you should say “gay”. You know My Le hates it when you call gay people “poofters”.’ My Le was Marlena’s best friend. She was a beauty therapist what worked with poofters.

‘What, is this a conference call with My Le now? Look, darl, you know I got nuffin against poofters. So long as they not be moving in on me own best girl.’

‘Can we start this conversation again?’

‘Ten minutes!’ someone shouted from a back a the queue.

‘Yeah, ten minutes!’ someone else joined in.

‘Shut up,’ I said.

‘Did you just tell me to shut up?’ Marlena asked.

‘No, no, darl, I was talking to some dickheads in the queue.’ I gave them the finger over me shoulder.

‘Time!’ Dickhead Number One shouted.

‘Finish up!’ Dickhead Number Two added.

I ignored them. She Who blew out some air. ‘I’m starting again. You know Peter?’

‘Yeah, and what about the pink-nutted poofter?’

Another silence. ‘He asked me to the movies. And my parents think I should go. I don’t want to, Zeki, I really don’t, but I just…’

For years now, Marlena’s folks been pressurising her to ditch me for good. What they didn’t think I be. They always had these stooges what they thought be better for her than me. But she never even thought a giving in before.

‘I still haven’t told them you’re Inside. But if you’re not out by Christmas…’

‘Babydoll, you know I’m gonna win at the AAT. I’m gonna be outta here by Christmas, no wucken furries. Gubba was that confidential about it…Fuck. You’re not really thinking a going to the movies with Pink-nuts, are you, darl?’

‘Zeki, you’re not supposed to swear during Ramadan.’

Maaan. Sometimes she’s like me own personal lady cop
and
the religious police, all rolled into one. ‘You’re right. I shouldn’t. C’mon, darl, you’re not really thinking a doing it, are you?’

She took a few quiet breaths what I could barely hear, me heart was banging that loud in me chest. ‘No, not really.’

‘Time! Time! Off the phone!’ Every dickhead in the queue was shouting by now.