"Git on down from there! We got better things to do than scrape your remains up from offa the floor."
Sandra Buckley, one of the 'nicer' guards at the Baxter Detention Centre, was talking to a prisoner who had managed to scale the compound wall, using the roof of the canteen to get there. It was obviously not an escape attempt, as there were other walls beyond it, and a lot of razor wire in between. It was, instead, another suicide attempt.
Sandra, like all of the other guards, saw such actions only as attempts to get attention... empty threats from people who were not prepared to play by the rules of the Department of Immigration.
"I want meeting with my lawyer," the distraught man cried. "Why you stopping him from visits? I will break my head on the concrete if you do not bring him here."
It was Mahmoud Aziz. Like all of the detainees, he was not officially entitled to legal representation. Some lawyers and solicitors had offered to represent them pro bono, and Mahmoud had a particularly good lawyer who had agreed to act on his behalf. But last week, the lawyer had been 'caught' bringing a small photo in for Mahmoud... a photo of his family in Afghanistan. The photo itself was not the problem; but it had been sent in a small frame with a glass front. The glass could have been used to cause self harm. Mahmoud's lawyer had failed to mention this before entering the prison, and for that he had been barred from returning.
Ironically, the same system that insisted suicide threats were childish temper tantrums--best ignored--had outlawed everything from disposable razors to liquid detergent, for fear these items would be used to inflict self harm.
"Please, you let me talk to him," said a short, quiet inmate named Mashallah. He was respected by guards and prisoners alike, and several times previously he had prevented prisoners from committing suicide. Sandra backed off to let him work his magic. All she could think of was how ridiculously selfish Mahmoud's behaviour was, in light of the really serious news from America. In her eyes, Mahmoud was probably connected to those who had destroyed America anyway. He didn't deserve all the care he was getting there at Baxter.
Mashallah spoke quietly with Mahmoud for a few minutes, asking about his family, listening to his concerns, and then reminding him of his faith in Allah.
"All ah loves you, Mahmoud," Mashallah said with deep conviction. "I think he will not love you less if you do this awful thing to yourself. He knows what we go through here. But I think he has other plans too... good plans. Please wait with me and wait with the others. We need you."
A few minutes later, Mashallah and a few of the other detainees were helping Mahmoud down from the wall, watched cautiously by Sandra Buckley and two other guards.
For eight long years Mashallah had lived as a prisoner here at the Baxter Immigration Detention Centre, outside of Port Augusta, South Australia.
Mashallah was no closer to being released now, than he had been when he was first taken into custody.
Nine years earlier, back home in Iran, when he was barely twenty years old, he had seen his father and uncle killed by the authorities there because of their involvement in an outlawed political group. He himself had been forced to flee for his life. While in hiding, he had learned that his two sisters had been taken away to be interrogated by the authorities, and had never returned.
His mother had smuggled all of the family's savings to him, and begged him to use it to flee the country. Up to that point she had been spared by the Iranian authorities, and she said that if he was successful in finding refuge in another country, she would be happy to face whatever fate awaited her in Iran.
With the money, Mashallah had been able to get a ticket and a false passport, to bribe an airport official, and to fly out of the country to Singapore.
In Singapore, he had located a people smuggler who had promised him freedom and a new life in Australia. Mashallah had paid the exorbitant fare and was put on a small boat that would take him and 150 other refugees to a larger ship for the journey to Australia and political freedom.
When the tiny boat was far out to sea, the people crowded into it discovered that there was no larger ship. They had been ripped off. This leaky craft was their only means of escape to Australia. They spent weeks of deprivation on the open seas, with rations that were barely sufficient to keep them alive before they landed on a remote beach in Western Australia. Good fortune had prevented them from being stopped by authorities before they landed, but as soon as locals learned of their existence, the refugees were rounded up and put into detention.
Over the years, Mashallah had seen most of the other refugees released, though often only after lengthy appeals to the Department of Immigration. But his case was different. His real name was not on his papers, and he had resolved not to disclose his true identity. He and his mother might be executed if he returned to Iran, or she could suffer further problems if the authorities there learned about his existence in Australia. When the Department of Immigration treacherously tried to verify his identity with authorities in Iran, using the false papers, it became clear that Mashallah was not whom he had claimed to be, and this threatened his status as a legitimate refugee. Ironically, at the same time, the government's use of his false papers (rather than his real identity, if he had provided it) protected his mother. He vowed never to give in and tell them his real name after that.
Others around him had been able to enlist public sympathy by converting to Christianity and arguing that they would be killed if they were sent back to Iran.
The Australian Government, at first suspicious of their motives, sent a few back, but the deported refugees were taken into custody by Iranian authorities on arrival and were not heard from again. This brought angry protests from many churches in Australia, and after that, Iranian refugees who claimed to have converted to Christianity were given slow and begrudging assistance from the Department of Immigration.
But claiming conversion to Christianity was not an option as far as Mashallah was concerned. It was true that even as a student in Iran he had faced persecution for defending Christians, and it was true that his appreciation for at least some aspects of Christianity had increased as a result of his time in Australia; but his official position was that Islam and the kingdom of heaven were his religion. In his mind, he had not converted to anything; he had only discovered in Christianity a greater appreciation for his Muslim roots. Despite advice from his lawyer and other refugee advocates, he had stuck to this position.
"I have lost everything but my faith," he explained to them. "Not even to save my life can I change what I believe. I try here in Australia to follow the truth in both religions, but I pray in Arabic, and I was born a Muslim. Allah will be with me, I know, but only if I am true to him."
As a consequence, Mashallah was a man without a country. He had applied for refuge in almost forty other countries, but they all argued that he was Australia's responsibility now. The Australian position was that he would remain in detention until he revealed his true identity (after which he would still face the possibility of being deported to Iran).
In the meantime, Mashallah had set about making the best of his situation.
He continued to pray five times a day, and to follow other Muslim religious rules.
He saw his role as that of a humble servant to others in the detention centre. His refusal to react to the callous treatment of the guards won him their approval as well. More than once he had been able, like today, to instill hope into the heart of a fellow detainee, and he had come to think of this as his primary purpose for being alive.
Shortly after Mahmoud touched the ground, the poor man was roughly seized by the guards and taken away, to be locked up in Red One compound, where all potential y suicidal inmates were placed for round the clock observation. The inmates themselves knew that Red One was really the detention centre's version of solitary confinement. Mahmoud would have no access to normal amenities or recreation; he would be allowed no visitors; and he would be forced to sleep on the floor as punishment for having upset the status quo of the prison cum detention centre.
It was time for Mashallah's afternoon prayers by the time Mahmoud was led away, and so he quickly retreated to the privacy of his room, where he bowed on the floor, facing Mecca. Unlike the other Muslims at Baxter, he said his prayers privately now. He had learned this from his readings of the Bible. Jesus said to pray secretly, and not to be seen of others. This made sense to Mashallah, and he had put it into practice in his own prayer rituals.
Perhaps it was the stress of Mahmoud's rescue, or the fact that he had lost another friend that afternoon who (fortunately for the friend) had won release and been taken to Adelaide. Maybe it was because the previous day had been the eighth anniversary of his arrival at Baxter. For whatever reasons, in the middle of his prayer, Mashallah broke down and began to cry quietly. He tried to stifle the sobs and to refocus his attention on the words of his prayer, but he was having little success.
It was then that he heard a voice, not quite audible... but very distinct, inside his head. It said, in Arabic, "This year, freedom! But only if you use it for me."
"Yes, yes, certainly! I will do anything you ask," he responded. "Allah be praised! You are so good to me!"
That started a fervent and deeply sincere search for what he must do for God if the Voice was right about freedom coming to him in the near future.