The Infernal Optimist (14 page)

On the way back to me room, I ran into Angel and Hamid. They wanted to know how Thomas was, and I told them what I knew, what wasn’t much. They said April had called on the public phone to find out if everyone was okay. She’d spoken to both of them already and Azad was talking to her now.

After I said goodbye to them I saw Farshid and Reza. They was still arguing with Clarence. The prick looked at his watch and goes, ‘In five minutes, I’m leaving here and going to the pub. You losers, on the other hand, are stuck in here.’ I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. I mean, they was only teenagers. They’d already been locked up for years, and Reza still had the marks on his neck from the noose. Then, like it wasn’t already perfectly clear, Clarence added, ‘Youse not going nowhere.’

I stepped up. ‘Shut yer cakehole and fuck off outta their faces,’ I advised him.

‘Whoa. It’s Big Girl. Got a knock on the melon today, did ya? Gotta be careful, there couldn’t be too many brain cells in there to start with.’

I raised me fist, and I swear I’d a gone him, but Farshid grabbed me before I could swing. ‘Forget it, Zeki,’ he goes, ‘He’s not verth it.’ Farshid spat on the ground like it be Clarence’s face.

Clarence looked at his watch again. ‘Have a great night, suckers.’ He turned and left.

Reza mumbled ‘dickhead’ under his breath.

Clarence turned his head. ‘Oh. And thanks for a great day.’

Me and the boys stood there bagging Clarence and this whole fucken place until something nagged me. I knew I had something to do, just couldn’t remember exactly what it was. ‘Catch youse later,’ I said, giving them the bruvvas’ handshake as I went. Reza put two fingers to his lips like he was smoking and made a question mark with his face.

I gave them each a ciggie. ‘No charge tonight,’ I said when Farshid pulled some coins outta his pocket.

‘Thanks, Zek.’ They gave me the thumbs up.

‘No worries, mateys,’ I said, feeling all truistic like I was Mother Teresa her good self.

Just as I got to me block, Ching jumped outta the shadows. ‘Boo!’

‘I’m not in the mood.’ I wasn’t, neither.

‘Guess what? Guess what?’ She was bubbling over like a warm tinnie a VB.

The Christian dude from the Philippines stuck his head out the window.

I wasn’t too happy to see Ching but didn’t wanna be the night’s entertainment either so I pushed open the door and gestated for her to follow what she’d a done anyway.

‘My boyfriend is posting bond. I released on Bridging Visa tomorrow!’

‘Good for Wing Wong. Good for you,’ I said, sitting down. I didn’t feel too bad being rude under the circumstances.

‘His name is not Wing Wong.’ She slapped my arm and giggled.

‘Whatever. Ting-a-ling. Bing Bat.’ I admit it. I was pissed off she never told me about him. ‘Won Ton. Long Dong.’

She was shaking her head like she was annoyed but she couldn’t help giggling. ‘You naughty, Zeki.’ She jumped onto me lap.

‘Cut it out,’ I said. ‘I’m not in the mood.’

She slid up and down me leg and stuck her tongue in me ear. She threw her shirt over her head. She wasn’t wearing no bra and her cute tits with them brown nips was looking straight at me. She grabbed one in each hand and made them talk. ‘C’mon, Zeki,’ said the right. ‘One for road,’ goes the left. Then she slid onto to her cute knees and started pulling down me trackies with her teeth.

Hey, it wasn’t like I had nuffin better to do.

I did get annoyed when she started moaning and shrieking like one of them Chinese opera shows what they broadcast sometimes on Channel 31. She didn’t make no effort to keep the levels down neither. Flora banged on the door. ‘Togan!’ she shouted. ‘How many times have I said,
no sex on my shift
!’ Great. Now everyone was in on the secret. Oh maaan. Ching
did that special trick with her fingernails and the bit behind me goolies and I was off like an exploding Space Shuttle.

I walked her to the door and she bounced off into the mist like Bambi. It had started to rain. Me neighbour poked his head outta the window again and told me the rain was the tears a Jesus. ‘He died for your sins, you know.’ He put the emphasis on
your.

‘If I wanna feel guilty, I got me mum and me girlfriend,’ I informed him. ‘I don’t need Jesus in on the act as well.’ I went back inside. Something was nagging me worse than Marlena. Like I was forgetting something important.

Marlena
.

I shoved me hand in me pocket and pulled out me mobile, what said me last call be forty-six minutes long what just ended. Oh maaan. Oh fuck.
Fuck
. I was in big fucken trouble now.

‘Hello ba—’

The dial tone bleated in me ear like a sheep with a stuck horn. I tried again.

‘Babydoll, I—’

She banged the phone down so hard it almost busted me eardrums. I gritted me teeth, wiped the sweat off a me forehead and tried again.

‘Please, darl—’

Azad sat on the chair in me room, eating pistachios. ‘Maybe she needs some time.’

‘What would you know about it, mate?’ I glared at him.

‘Nothing. Obviously.’ He got up and walked out.

I tore open a pack a biscuits and ate every one. I felt sick. I was sick a Detention. I was sick a the other detainees. Mostly, I was sick a meself.

A few days later, April came to visit. ‘Two hours,’ she complained. ‘It took two hours to get in today.’ She crapped on and on about all the new visitors in the queue, how they didn’t know anything about anything, not even how to fill out them forms, what was apparently one a the reasons it was taking so long for everyone to get in. She didn’t know what most a them was doing there, neither. Some of them was comparing things they’d brought as gifts—CDs, books and magazines, home-baked cakes, curries with rice. ‘It’s not a picnic,’ she said with a little
hmph
, putting juice and nuts and biscuits on the table. There was a lipstick what Angel asked for too, and a pack a cards. She also had a clipping from the newspaper the day after the protest. It had a photo what had Azad and all the kids with their moustaches and beards, seen through coils a razor wire.

‘It is not easy for anyone to visit,’ Azad said, after he looked at the clipping. ‘This place is far from everywhere, we know that.’

‘It usually takes me an hour? Depends on traffic.’

‘We are very…what is the word? Grateful.’

That cheered her up.

‘To
everyone
who visits us. You are all good people.’ He was saying it like it was a lesson she needed to learn.

Her face dropped a little. I don’t reckon April liked sharing the glory. But Azad, what normally looked after everyone’s feelings, was doing so less and less. I think it was on a count a the depression, what was growing in him like a mushroom, except not one a them fun ones, and not even one for cooking. A mushroom what got poison in.

‘Some people have been visiting for many months.’ He wasn’t letting it go either.

But Angel got female instincts the way I got criminal ones. She put her hand on April’s. ‘You very good to us, April,’ Angel said. ‘You help us a lot.’

April glowed like Homer Simpson after one a them accidents in the nuclear power station, I swear. She gave Angel a big hug. Azad pulled his lighter out and flicked it on and off, even though it didn’t have no fluid. April watched him, looking worried.

When Thomas didn’t come out, Hamid explained that sometimes people didn’t hear their names being called and went back into the compound to look for him. I knew that in factuality, Thomas had heard, cuz a few minutes earlier I’d seen him go to the fence and look into the Yard. But I wasn’t gonna say nuffin. Didn’t have the energy. It was clear he just didn’t want to see April.

‘So how are you, Zeki?’ April asked. ‘You’re looking uncharacteristically glum.’

I shrugged. ‘I’m okay.’

‘Zeki in big trouble with his girlfriend,’ Angel informed her.

‘Oh no! What happened?’

I made a face. I didn’t wanna talk about it.

‘He was naughty,’ Angel said. ‘She found out. Now she not talking to him.’

April stared at me with her eyebrows up. ‘You know, Zeki, maybe the Universe is trying to teach you a lesson. Everything in life happens for a reason? What you get is what
you ask for?’ She started to say something about a book what was also chicken soup, what I didn’t get, or care about much, when Azad interrupted. ‘What do you mean “you get what you ask for”?’ Azad asked. ‘Do you think a refugee asks to suffer?’ he goes. ‘Do you think we asked to come to Australia so that we could rot in Detention? To see ourselves dying a little bit every day? Excuse me.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘Have a nice day.’

‘Wait,’ April said. Her eyes had tears in. Women be pure drama, I’m telling you. ‘Please wait.’

‘Yes?’ Azad was talking through him teeth.

‘Before you go…This is for you.’ She handed him a sealed envelope, what looked like it had a card in. She tried to smile. ‘I’m sorry.’

Without looking at the envelope, he stuffed it into his pocket. ‘Thank you,’ he said. Then he walked away.

Angel bit her lip and looked at Hamid.

‘Everyone here too stressed,’ Hamid said. Then, to prove the point, he dropped his head down like it be too heavy to hold up any more and blew out some air.

Angel looked at him, and me, and April, like she be deciding who needed the most help. ‘I know,’ she said, cracking the deck, ‘let’s play cards.’

April gave a little smile. ‘I can’t believe
you’re
trying to cheer
me
up now,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Angel.’

‘Go Fish or Poker?’ Angel said, nudging Hamid, what was still staring at his feet.

‘Poker,’ Hamid said after a while. ‘I get used to gambling. It’s like life.’

‘
Word
,’ I said, what be hip-hop for to agree with something, but even more so.

‘Pro-ee-ung Tevy from Cambodia, come to DIMIA. Pro-ee-ung Tevy from Cambodia, come to DIMIA.’

Proeung Tevy be Angel’s name in her own language. Even I knew the rule by then that they only called you in to give you bad news, but we all gave her the thumbs up what was for hoping it be good news anyway.

‘Sue thinks Angel should get her Bridging Visa,’ April said after Angel left to go to the office. ‘She said that her age and the evidence of her physical and psychological trauma matched the guidelines to a T. You know everything that happened when she was—’ I didn’t think April was ever gonna get the point about keeping people’s confidentials. She looked like she was about to launch into a discussion a the traumatics when Hamid pointed at the cards.

‘Your turn, April.’

Angel returned a few minutes later. We read the answer on her face.

‘Maybe…maybe there’s some other way?’ April put a hand on Angel’s arm. Angel just hung her pretty head.

The asylums’ cause was getting more famous by the minute. It was on the news all the time now. Some Members a Parliament and human rights groups was kicking up a fuss about the children in particulate. What didn’t mean the kids was allowed to go to school or that any more asylums was getting visas. But it did mean they was getting lotsa visitors.

Azad and them was talking to this lady what had a notebook and what was writing down everything they said. I wandered over cuz I figured she be a reporter. DIMIA didn’t allow reporters into Detention. Some came anyway, pretending to be visitors. I reckoned if this lady reporter really wanted to shock her readers, she should tell them how someone virtuosically Australian like me own good self was locked up like an asylum. But she didn’t act too interested in my story, even though I told it with lotsa gestations and wicked impersonations of the coppers on the train and the Immigration guys and even of Gubba with his hair and his tan.

It turned out she wasn’t a reporter after all. She was a famous play-writer what was gonna write a play what was gonna change people’s opinions about asylums. The next day we met a famous novelist what was gonna write a novel what was gonna change people’s opinions about asylums, and a few days after that, a famous director what was gonna make a movie what was gonna do the same thing. I don’t know much about plays or books, but I reckon a movie about asylums in Detention would be pretty boring, cuz nuffin much ever happens Inside. So I told the famous director that if he wanted people to go see his movie, it should have car chases and kung fu and Angelina Jolie in.

‘Hmmm,’ he said, stroking his funny little beard and looking at me outta his square black glasses. ‘Interesting.’ He said he’d ‘workshop the concept’, whatever that is when it’s at home.

Some a the visitors cried, what put a strainer on us all. Others talked about feeling ‘this amazing connection’ with the asylums, like they all got cordless phones with no static on. They said things like ‘you’re not terrorists’ and ‘you’re not bad people’ like they was telling the asylums something new. They all promised they was gonna visit all the time, every week at least. We never saw most a them again. Some a the asylums was disappointed at this. I insured them that in the case a the famous ones, it was probably cuz they was busy making them famous books and plays and movies and stuff.

The visitors what came regular, meanwhile, was getting more organised. They was making lists of all the asylums so that everyone was getting called to Visits now, not just the
popular ones like Farshid and Reza and Azad. Once, even crazy Bilal got called. He only went out that one time. He said he’d never go back again. He said he felt like a monkey in the zoo or a bear what was in a circus and what had to perform. He figured that a lot a the visitors just wanted to be able to tell their friends they’d been to a detention centre and met the people what was on the news all the time. This made some a the detainees say crazy Bilal wasn’t so crazy after all.

Days passed. Azad was still dark with mushrooms in. He told me he was getting nightmares every night what had snakes and spiders. He was afraid to fall asleep. Even though he was real tired, what you could see in his eyes, he was only getting a couple hours a night, starting around six in the morning and ending when the PA announcements began two hours later. He had a mobile now, too, what one a the visitors smuggled in. Once, around four in the morning, when I couldn’t sleep, I went round to see if he was up and felt like a game a cards. I could hear him talking into his mobile. I wondered who he be having conversationals with at that hour, but forgot to ask when I saw him later on.

The fifteenth a January was Reza’s fourteenth birthday. The visitors brought lotsa food and juice, and he had three birthday cakes, one what was chocolate with dark chocolate icing on, and one what had lemon icing, and one what had black cherries in, what I liked the best. Reza was in the
Visiting Yard from the start of visits at one-thirty. Around four o’clock he excused himself, saying he’d be back in a minute. Cuz there wasn’t no toilets in the Yard, we always had to go back into the compound if we needed to take a piss. Visitors had to go back to the office. But there was Muster at four, and the blues wasn’t letting no one go in or out till they finished. Reza had been holding it in for hours, and begged them to let him through. In the end the poor little bugger pissed his pants. That made him feel humeliorated cuz there was young girl visitors his age at the birthday party. Before anyone could stop him, Reza shoved his hand through one a the gaps in the fence and slammed it down on the razor wire. Blood spurted, people screamed, them young girls was crying, and everyone was real upset, specially the little kids like Abeer and Noor, what saw it happen. Nassrin took two steps and passed out. Lucky for her, Farshid caught her before she hit the ground. I helped him get her back into a chair.

Nadia came racing outta the compound. Her eyebrows, what were small like her feet and shaped like them too, was trying to escape into her hair. ‘Reza, honey, now what are you doing to yourself?’

‘Vat’s it look like!’ he screamed.

The little feets on her forehead pointed their toes down at her nose. ‘This is not rational behaviour.’ The words ‘rational behaviour’ went all the way up the scales and then down again.

‘You saying I’m crazy?’ he shouted. ‘I’m not crazy! I just need my freedom!’

The blues dragged him in to Medical. The doctor told him he was lucky he didn’t sever a tendon. That just set him off
again. ‘Lucky!’ he yelled. ‘You think I’m lucky!’ They gave him a needle, what he didn’t want, but what put him out for a few hours. Happy birthday, eh.

On the sixteenth, some a the asylums in Woomera began a hunger strike. On the news, the government called the strikers ‘rejectees’, ‘attention seekers’ and worse. It was putting everyone on edge. The air felt heavy, like just before a thunderstorm breaks. You could almost see the sky getting darker and darker with it.

Me own skies wasn’t what you’d call bright. I still hadn’t come up with a plan for the appeal. Me dad reckoned I should just go to Turkey. This was giving me Anxiety with a capital T, what wasn’t helped by the fact that She Who still wasn’t speaking to me.

I hadn’t given up trying, but. On the nineteenth a January, I was waiting in the queue for the public phones. I remember the date cuz me watch—you know the one—had a calendar on. I’d already used up me mobile credit. I was using a normal phone card, what I got from Hamid, what got it from a church lady what helped the refugees. I didn’t like scabbing from the asylums, but they did get a lotta phone cards. Azad was in the queue behind me.

The Woomera hunger strike was in its third day. Everyone was edgy. The temperature had hit forty. You could see the heat bouncing off the fences and razor wire. And the bushfires was going off again. The air was
yellow and smoky and thick with ash like God be smoking a big cigar up there what be the flavour of eucalyptus. The guys in the queue grumbled and flicked the corners a them phone cards and kicked stones across the dirt and swore.

Nadia rushed past. She was pulling on her hair and muttering to herself.

‘G’day, Nadia,’ I said.

‘Oh.’ She stopped short, like she be braking. Her chassis wobbled. ‘Oh. Oh. Zeki. Hellooo. Hellooo, Azad.’

‘Where’s the fire?’

She stared at me. I saw she had rings under her eyes. ‘Everywhere. Everywhere.’ She rushed off again.

I was about two people away from the front a the queue when Angel appeared. ‘You see Hamid?’ We hadn’t. She told us she be worried about him. He had friends on the hunger strike. ‘He thinking too much. Thinking, thinking, thinking. He get crazy.’

It was my turn for the phone.

I stuck the phone card in and pressed them buttons like I did every day, several times a day.
Binkbinkbinkbink binkbinkbinkbink.
Marlena answered.

‘Hello, darl.’

‘Stop calling, Zeki. I mean it.’

‘Sweet—’

She Who Just Gotta Take Me Back Come Hills or High Water slammed down the receiver in me ear.

I was still working the redial when Azad tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Zek, you mind? I have to call my lawyer.’

‘No worries.’ I sighed. ‘All yours, mate.’

Azad patted me on the back like I was a good dog instead of the bad dog what I knew I was really.

I leaned up against the wall a the laundry and had a smoke, feeling sorry for meself. I was disconnected from the life like a telephone what hadn’t got its bills paid. I tried to picture Marlena’s face what was only eyes and fading away like some a Mum and Dad’s photos a the Old Country. It wasn’t just Marlena. All a me life on the Outside was slipping away.

‘What do you mean?’ Azad’s voice caught me attention cuz it was loud. That was unusual with Azad, what is normally very soft-spoken like me aunt Elma, except me aunt Elma only been that way since she had them noodles removed from her vocal cords. ‘When did this…’ His face tightened up, like a fist. ‘So what now?’ The person what he was talking to jabbered in his ear for a few more minutes while Azad ate his lower lip. ‘Okay, okay. I speak to you soon.’ He hanged up and kicked the grass, what went flying up in a clomp. The Chinese guy behind him pounced on the phone like a cat on a rat.

‘What’s happening, bruvva?’

‘I can’t believe this.’

‘What?’

‘The barrister forgot to file some of my papers for court. The deadline passed. I’m stuffed, as they say here. How could he do that to me?’

‘Muvvafucker!’ I didn’t say ‘pardon me French’ out loud cuz I was talking to another bloke. I lowered me voice and gave him a look a signification. ‘Want me to get one a me old mates to pay your barrister a visit?’

Azad looked at me like he didn’t know what I be getting at.

‘You know, give him the old what-for. Make sure he doesn’t forget next time?’ I left-jabbed and right-hooked the air.

‘No, no, no, Zek. Don’t do that.’ He looked at me like I farted or something.

I shrugged. ‘Whatever. But if you change your mind…’

Azad put his head in his hands and, with his back against the wall, slid down to sit on the ground. I did the same except me own hands was cross me chest. We sat next to each other thinking about our own troubles, though I thought about Azad’s troubles as well cuz I be sick a me own.

‘You know, Zek, I was so innocent. I thought, only I reach this country, I can find justice, peace and protection.’

‘That’s what me mate be in—protection,’ I go, but Azad didn’t seem to be listening. He did take a ciggie, though.

He put his head in his hands again. I smoked me ciggie down to the butt and lit up another one. Azad took a second one from me and did the same.

‘I’ve reached my limit,’ he goes, real soft and then coughed for a while cuz he was only just getting used to smoking again.

‘I know what you mean, bro,’ I said and it was true. Even I was getting depressed and dark and untalkable. I what was naturally a bulient, what April told me be a word for a cheerful person. That made me realise she hadn’t been back to visit for a while. ‘April should be coming to see us again soon, eh.’ Azad raised one corner of his mouth and jerked his head up, like maybe that way he’d get his lips to come down in a smile. It didn’t work. ‘Maybe she’ll even bring
her daughter with her next time.’ Something like a smile lit up his face for half a second. I elbowed him in the ribs.

‘Cut it out,’ he said.

‘Don’t know about you,’ I go, ‘but women what have handcuffs on always does it for me.’

Azad almost laughed.

The sound of running footsteps made us look up. It was Hamid. He looked spun out, like he be at the end of his wash cycle.

‘What’s up, bro?’ I asked.

‘The hunger strike in Woomera,’ he goes. ‘They’re sewing their lips together.’ Me and Azad stood up. Hamid named some asylums what they both knew from Port Hedland. One guy what been in Detention four years swallowed painkillers and shampoo to try to top himself. They put him in hospital in Adelaide. He wasn’t feeling too good and was apparently pissing streams a bubbles.

‘At least his pubes’ll be clean and shiny,’ I go, but it was kinda lame for a joke what no one was in the mood for. So I didn’t take it personal when they didn’t laugh.

‘They have to listen to us now,’ Hamid goes. ‘They have to give us visas.’

Me mobile vibrated in me pocket. There wasn’t no blues in sight, so I sneaked a look at the number as I pressed the button, hoping it be Marlena. ‘It’s April,’ I go. ‘She must a heard me saying her name. I’m going back to me room to take the call. You guys wanna come and have a word with her?’ They waved me off like they didn’t even hear the question.