My Heart

I remember on warm September nights riding to Napier St in Fitzroy and thinking I'd entered some kind of fairy land. It's an old suburb with quaint little houses and oldschool hotels on the corners. It was different from Brunswick, this is probably no real news at all to people who lived in Melbourne all their lives, but when you move here from Ballarat to go to Uni you don't really take time to explore all the hoods.

Plus my normal cocktail of brain chemicals was ascue because I'd just really got a handle on my grieving process. At that time I felt like a worthless bug just waiting to be crushed. I remember listening to 'Smaller and Smaller' by Faith No More over and over again. On top of that when you spent 9-5 in a drab office under flourescent lighting McDonalds upholstery is going to seem like Disneyland.

I spent every Thursday night with a group of cool people learning how to tutor refugees with the Fitzroy Learning Networks 'Community Networker' program. I think it was like 6 weeks of 3 hour training, police checks etc.

We learned how people deal with the trauma of being tortured, about how men are often too old to get work in Australia when they bring their families here and the problems of having the wife become the major bread winner while the man just stayed at home becoming chronically depressed.

We had a Sudanese lady from the community come and speak to us, and I was blown away when she talked about the jobs her and her friends got 'cleaning, driving taxis...' pretty much every bottom rung ladder job you could name - I realised unlike my parents 'sacrifices' to give me a good education, these refugees were working to give their kids a chance at a shitty education so they could get better jobs so that their grandchildren may have a chance at a decent education. These people were looking forward to their grandkids, it blew me away.

Also the vegetarian pizza they ordered was amazingly delicious.

So training was great and eye opening. And then I got assigned to Zaman, I had assumed my student would be somebody close to my age. I was informed by Sara the coordinator an amazing person that as far as anyone could guess Zaman was between 50 and 60, he had no idea of his age but his papers said he was 40. At any rate I was immediately terrified of having to teach somebody twice my age.

Zaman was somewhat of a local celebrity at the network so they showed me his picture before I met him in the flesh. I remember at our first meeting he cleared space on the seat by flicking this cat really hard in the ear that was sitting there. I had instantly forgotten every single lesson plan I'd prepared in case he wanted to know something and he pulled out a Fork Lift Drivers instruction manual as part of his scheme to get a better job and hopefully get off the cursed Temporary Protection Visa.

I met Zaman when most of the hard work had been done, he had been detained on Nauru as part of Howards' Pacific solution, where the only way to call his anxious family was via Telstra phone cards that cost about $7 per minute. It was brutal and inhumane, and fortunately there are wonderful people in the world that care enough to help out complete strangers like Zaman by writing them letters and sending them phone cards.

Apparantly he'd been suicidal when he first came to Fitzroy and found out he was on a temporary protection visa which meant he was stuck in Limbo for 5 years before he could be reunited with his family who were moved constantly between Jordanian and Pakistani refugee camps. When he got work and could send money to his family he improved dramatically.

So Zaman ironically put me at ease really quickly, he turned out to be quite hilarious and describes everything as 'beautiful' even when I write a word out for him like 'accelerator'. From the get go he pretty much runs all our lessons. I just turn up, listen and try to explain how english works, often discovering that I don't really know.

Saying bye to Zaman when I went travelling was the only farewell that moved me to tears. I'd just discovered he'd never actually met his youngest daughter, and had attempted to cook me dinner, we ended up drinking tea and eating mandarins.

Yet beautiful as Zaman is, he is but one of thousands upon thousands of refugees created each year by discrimination and neglect the world over. The whole of Fitzroy plays host to a community that has become my heart.

Nowadays Zaman and I meet up in the library and walk home to his place in the Atherton Gardens housing complex. We often run into his kids, and thats the amazing thing about this corner of Melbourne. Kids are everywhere, outdoors in winter playing in the parks. Indoors at Fitzroy Learning Network playing on the computers until the teacher turns the lights out and pushes them out the door.

The community is vibrant, not without problems which happens when you've been raised to believe the police are only there to beat and brutalise you and that nobody looks out for you but yourself. But to be honest, I never see these. I feel safe wandering those streets at night and I feel welcome in refugees homes.

I admire these people like no others, because they are nobodies and they are everybody. They have nothing I don't possess in my basic humanity, a will to survive, infinite capacity to love. They are put in positions so horrible I can't concieve of them and survive. So many have walked away from their family homes, the towns their ancestors lived in for generations to escape persecution and deprevation. They have done it not for themselves but for their children and their childrens children.

They have given everything they own to people smugglers for a dangerous and inhumane journey by boat to the shores of Australia. Australia's 'Boatpeople' policy under Howard was condemned by the UN. Temporary protection visa's are a nightmare, holding people in limbo in one of the worst situations of their life and prevent them from becoming settled and constructive members of the community. Mandatory detention is frowned upon, and mandatory detention of children was a direct breach of UN conventions. It is a sad indictment of the Australian community that these policies lasted so long.

Yet these people stood it all, in pursuit of a dream. They made the kind of sacrifices the world requires right now, above and beyond what needs doing in fact. Reducing our carbon footprint is a breeze compared to the depravity with which a safe and civilized country treats 'boat people'.

They take it, stand firm and do what they can. Study english, work shitty jobs and cope with hours and hours of loneliness and depression. Beautiful people like those at FLN help them, and I guess frauds like me and you can see the result walking through the towers of the Atherton Gardens, my heart, you see kids being just kids running and playing and getting in fight and backchatting old clowns like Zaman and me. I saw a kid pick a fight with a chicken, a literal chicken.

And sure they can be annoying and demanding in the library, but these kids man, its like they are oblivious to what their parents have been through. And they are, I remember fondly Zaman complaining that his kids 'have been to Zoo, have been to Aquarium, have been to Farm... nobody takes me anywhere.' Which is true, I never managed to get him to the Parliament house tour for his citizenship test preparation, not that that is as fun as the zoo.

And then there's stories that break my heart too. Like his friend who was sent to Perth whose kid dived off a bridge into a river and broke his neck becoming a quadraplegic right when he'd just gotten safe to Australia. Or his old housemate that gambled away his earnings and never spoke to his wife or bothered to apply for citizenship.

But there's nothing really dangerous about refugees, I don't even understand how its a fucking issue. The only problems to me stem from the lack of resources available to help new Australians feel welcome and integrate into our evolving community. Its when a refugee is isolated, socially, financially and by language barriers that they are going to do what any person would do, try and survive by whatever means necessary.

By contrast, the temporary protection Visas meant Zaman's eldest daughter had to recieve chemotherapy in Pakistan in the poor quality healthcare available to refugees, she has suffered complications as a result and been in and out of hospital almost constantly. The delay in bringing her to Australia was unneccessary and inhumane, and I sincerely hope it doesn't cost her her life.

But seeing fucking twerps and cunts like Abbott and Gillard working ignorant and irrelevant members of the general public into a frenzy to 'stop the boats' and subsequently make these human beings suffer more. I mean what are they fucking talking about? less than one percent of refugees arrive by boats with the vast majority flying in. Those that do arrive by boats are overwhelmingly found to have legitimate claims to seeking refuge. The 'queue' they are supposedly jumping doesn't really exist, furthermore the queues that do exist, like Australia's interview process and the UN refugee charter process less than 10% of the demand. The vast majority of Refugees are offered refuge by the worlds poorest countries. Why is this an issue? Why do people fucking care? Why do we have to be so distrustful and uncharitable to some of the neediest people in the world?

These people are capable of building a beautiful community. I see it every week, its my fucking heart and its one I really don't want broken.