Women's Nook
One morning I was fascinated listening to the Conversation Hour on ABC Radio. Selma Masson was telling of her chilling, private encounter with Saddam Hussein as she pleaded for her husband’s life. After his release from an Iraqi prison, Selma and her husband Mohammed were refugees to Australia and have since become Australian citizens.
As the interview continued I also became increasingly curious about the other woman sitting beside Selma and occasionally making comments. She had recently written Selma’s memoir, The Kiss of Saddam, and was obviously very involved with the plight of refugees in Australia. Who was she? What was her story? How did she and Selma meet? What was it like to write such a personal account of someone else’s grief, terror and displacement?
That woman is Michelle MacDonald. I approached Michelle in the hope that she would share her story with us and she was more than happy to do so. You’ll get to know Michelle and understand that her passion to do something for the plight of refugees in Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney ultimately led her to write her first book, The Kiss of Saddam.
Once again the theme of having a passion in one’s life seems to rise to the surface. Grace Pundyk speaks of it and Lynneeta Darmody too. There’s something about discovering or following a passion, sometimes an unexpected path in life, which connects with the self in a powerful way. As these women have found, being open to the challenges and opportunities that come with this passion often lead you to all sorts of unexpected but interesting places, both geographical and spiritual.
In August of 2001, my London-based daughter, a lawyer, rang me. She was disturbed by the bad press Australia was receiving in the UK. She asked me over the phone; ‘What is Australia doing? They’re breaking every international law of the sea! It’s embarrassing to be an Aussi in London at the moment.’
As many Australians will remember, a Norwegian freighter ‘The Tampa’ rescued 438 Afghans from a distressed fishing vessel in international waters off the coast of Western Australia. The Captain of the Tampa followed the written and unwritten law of the sea: he rescued people in distress and took them to the nearest place of safety; Christmas Island.
For his efforts, Captain Arne Rinnan received the highest civil honour in Norway and his ship received commendations from mercantile and shipping organisations around the world. All the companies who had cargo on Tampa congratulated Captain Rinnan for the stand he took, even though their cargo was delayed 10 days by the episode.
Australia, however, threatened to prosecute Captain Rinnan as a people smuggler.
My daughter had focused my attention on a topic I was not particularly following. I started to read about what was happening and to listen to the ongoing commentary. I was horrified. I decided that as an Australian citizen I had to do something. I had been so proud of my Aussi citizenship. Now I was ashamed. I went to the internet and found a contact who could introduce me to people in the Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney.
My first visit there shocked me. Villawood, the ‘five star’ detention centre, is hidden from the eyes of all but the most curious, deep in Sydney’s multicultural western suburbs. You go past piles of bricks, once dormitories for refugees during the Second World War; past a desultory wasteland of factories; a weed-cluttered train line and a few orphaned eucalypts. There, before you, are double-wire fences, four metres high, crowned by coiled razor wire.
It was a hot summer’s day early in 2002 when I arrived outside the detention centre. I had not anticipated waiting in the hot sun for nearly two hours - over the years I learned to organise my arrival time to avoid the worst of the waiting. Nonetheless, at least half an hour would pass before I presented myself, with my completed entry form and ID, to a guard. After what seemed an eternity I was approved and was told to step through a metal detector. A bag of magazines and snacks I had bought with me were searched, my hand was stamped and I entered what seemed to be an enormous safe.
The door locked behind me while yet another guard checked the ultraviolet stamp on my wrist. After a claustrophobic moment, the heavy door in front of me opened and I was ejected into a small concrete yard with high wire fences and a locked wire gate. When half a dozen visitors had gathered in what could be best described as a pen, the gate was opened and we were allowed into the visitor area. A square of concrete with a tin roof provided a little shade and a couple of trees were surrounded by bare earth as detainees crowded under them. Plastic chairs and tables were scattered around this hideous yard. Eddies of wind raised dust. There was nothing pleasant about this place.
At that time Villawood imprisoned visa over-stayers and people seeking asylum, many of whom were from
the Middle East and Africa. I, and others like me, became their lifeline to the outside world. We contacted their lawyers, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and lobbied parliamentarians and anyone else we thought could help.
We bought food, magazines, video cassettes, soft drinks and small gifts, specially for the children. We worked to make these afternoon visits as much fun as possible. The asylum seekers would bring hot water, teabags and instant coffee from their room and everyone tried to make believe it was a pleasant social occasion. But at least twice during the afternoon and early evening, there would be a ‘muster’, where each inmate was checked. I never could work out why. It’s not as if they could go anywhere.
One cold July evening I met a young Afghani woman, who had arrived with her little boy from Nauru because she was unwell. (You may remember that Nauru was where Australia kept some refugees whilst their claims were processed). Her husband and family, it transpired, had been killed by the Taliban. Her brother-in-law had bought her and her two little boys a passage with a people smuggler. There had been an accident at sea and her youngest son drowned.
She was dressed, on this bitter evening, in light summer clothes and thongs. Phone calls were made and within an hour, some of our friends arrived with warm clothes for her and her boy. I will never, never forget her sad eyes. Nor the resilience of her five year old son who entertained himself by offering visitors a chocolate and giggling when he took off the lid and the box was empty. ‘I tricked you, I tricked you.’
Occasionally, when someone was released we (the volunteers) would swing into action to help them find accommodation, clothing and basic household items. There were several organisations which provided help and we supported them as best we could.
Sometimes finding accommodation was very difficult. On one occasion I had a young Iraqi man stay in my house until we could find private affordable board for him; board was eventually provided by a sympathetic woman who halved the usual price of her room.
While visiting Villawood I met many other people, mostly women, who had become involved. A lot found the going too tough and only lasted a few weeks. Others, like myself became regulars and also became involved with particular asylum seekers, taking on their welfare, both while in detention, and after their release.
There were times when interaction between our ’special person’ and ourselves could be extremely traumatic. These ’special people’ had experienced extraordinary tragedy, were traumatised, depressed, frustrated by the Australian government’s lack of compassion, and indeed at times, demonisation. They were good people who, through no fault of their own, were treated like criminals by our government. Sometimes their frustration would overcome them, they would become angry, or depressed, or even suicidal.
For my friends and I, who had hitherto no experience in psychology, social work or trauma, it was difficult to understand and cope, but on top of that were cultural differences, particularly for young Muslim men, released into a free, secular society where every second billboard uses sex to sell its product.
Our learning curve was the steepest any of us had ever experienced. People who weren’t involved simply didn’t understand. After all, the media was telling them these people were ‘illegal’. They were not illegal because Australia had signed the UN Convention for Refugees which allows for people who are escaping religious or political persecution in their homeland, to come legally to our shores and ask for asylum. The media was calling these people ‘queue jumpers’. Where is the queue when you escape at night, sneaking across borders in fear of your life? They were not in the situation of being able to visit an Australian embassy, fill in forms and sign up. And finally, these people had experienced horrors that none of us could every have imagined. These horrors can, and often do, leave deep psychological scars. All very difficult to deal with.
There were three of us who became friends. We would debrief often, cry on each others’ shoulders and laugh at some of our charges’ crazier interactions: one young man who had gone to Kings Cross was shocked when a ‘transaction’ showed him a great deal of attention. The word he was looking for was ‘transexual’.
The three of us still meet with news of our charges, all of whom have gone on to make good lives for themselves in their new country, Australia.
In the next post Michelle will tells us about meeting Selma Masson, writing The Kiss of Saddam and how the whole experience has affected her life.
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