MORE THAN A REFUGEE

BEAUTY WITHIN TRAGEDY                     

Life is uncertain everywhere but Cisarua is extreme. Unlike most Indonesian boroughs the locals are wary.  Greetings are rare. For the Bogor hill town is no longer a cool climate retreat for the well-known regulars fleeing the filthy Jakarta sauna, but an open jail for despairing foreigners on the run.

In decaying overcrowded flats the reluctant residents have a persistent question: Will I die here in exile or go mad first?

There are no threatening black-clads clicking safety catches to intimidate. The walls aren’t scarred by shrapnel. People come and go; there’s public transport to just about anywhere, though still no escape.  This is where thousands of refugees rot.

Trapped in this limbo for almost a decade was journalist Abdul Samad Haidari. Like most squatters a refugee from Afghanistan where the Taliban has been ruthlessly persecuting the Hazara ethnic minority and oppressing writers with dissident voices.

Abdul fled his homeland when he was seven and wandered Pakistan and Iran.  He got to Indonesia through people smugglers promising settlement in Australia even while knowing that portcullis had been dropped by former Immigration and then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. 

The tough-talking former cop and his colleagues had declared the seekers for safety “would never set foot in Australia”. That included the internationally famous Kurdish-Iranian writer and film-maker Behrouz Boochani, held for six years in Papua New Guinea.

After Dutton’s demotion to Opposition Leader, Behrouz stamped hard on the red dirt, raising dust by lambasting Australia’s approach to human rights and praising Abdul’s work.

Both men found freedom in green Aotearoa which has shown compassion by taking 150 refugees a year. Abdul says NZ’s “glad landscapes speak with God and the reviving fragrance of oceans clears the lungs.” 

Much personal damage is probably irreparable: “I survived the genocide but how should I survive the traumas?”

Abdul’s second book The Unsent Condolences has been published in Australia by Palaver. In a foreword Behrouz writes:

“Each and every poem builds the unconquered fortress within the human who has endured the atrocities of evil. (Abdul’s) erudite vision reverberates our hearts, harmonises our minds, ignites our humanity to stand up and take action. In our history, there are only a few poems that have inspired marches against injustice, here we have an entire collection.”

Unable to practice journalism in Cisarua, Abdul turned to poetry.  His first collection The Red Ribbon was published in 2019 by Gramedia, promoted as a search for “peace and hope in a country that has offered him a sanctuary of human love – Indonesia.” 

That’s generous; the Republic hasn’t signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention so the stateless can’t work, get health care or education, only temporary sanctuary.  Abdul couldn’t even sign a publisher's contract for his book that became a best-seller.

Asylum-seekers get small support from the UN High Commission for Refugees.  There are more than 12,000 of these homeless strugglers from 50 countries – mainly Afghanistan.

Abdul told an interviewer in NZ that The Unsent Condolences was: “a form of resistance against the confiscation of our lands, culture, religious beliefs, language, and history … these poems bear witness to the bitter affliction of persecution, colonization, discrimination, and dehumanization faced by the Hazara people.”

His memories are raw.  He writes about his birthplace Dahmardah “where the glorious orchards were full of vibrant dreams, the magnificent mountains stood tall as God’s height, and the rivers flew like veins, singing in rhymes as though God and nature were in an eternal dialogue about life.”

Then roaring down the road comes reality: “Hilux vehicles sprouting white flags — two at the front; two held at the back.

 “Machine guns and loudspeakers up on rooftops, shouting Taliban Zindabad. Long live the Taliban.

“They march in the village; some head down to madrasa (an Islamic school) and some to Khanju (an area in Dahmardah) searching house to house, Kalashnikovs, their necklace of carnage; rockets rank their shanks.

“They hunt down adults, forcing them to submit, elders are ejected — ‘a waste of space’. Women are silenced, shut off, guns on their heads;

“Sharia Law is enforced to carry out the slow grindings. Mothers hush children to fall asleep with Taliban’s myth. I will call the Taliban if you don’t go to sleep”.

The Australian philosopher Professor Raimond Gaita (famous for his biography and film Romulus, My Father writes of Abdul’s work:

"As Australians, we should know that our governments have shamed us with their ruthlessly devised and enforced policy against refugees fleeing their homes by land and sea. Had we understood what Abdul tries to make us understand no government would have dared implement those policies.”

The Unsent Condolences is dedicated to family and backers impressed with his talent, like former NZ High Commissioner to Indonesia Pam Dunn: “You helped me overcome the feelings of darkness during the last five years. You have been the light guiding me to find the direction to home where my soul found comfort.”

His passion won’t move the concreted minds who mix Islamic refugees with terrorism, job losses and high rents.  But for the rational rest here are insights, language to stimulate, and wisdoms that transcend politics and lines on maps:

“I am but a journalist, the lord of my own words, giving volumes to moral and righteous voices which carry the truthful hymns of the voiceless.  I am engaged, remain curious, firm and utterly prepared. 

“Because I am more than a refugee.”

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First published in Inside Indonesia, 9 September 2024:

 https://www.insideindonesia.org/archive/articles/book-review-beauty-within-tragedy