I’ve never done grey before, but I suspect it’s one of those things that, tried once, you can never resile from.
Mina
Mum drives me to Paula’s house on Saturday afternoon. We pull into a boulevard of contemporary architect-designed mansions, Victorian terraces and old, grand estates. The last are the kinds of houses that aren’t content to be identified by street number but have names like Chelsea Manor and Evergreen Hall. Mum clucks her tongue in admiration as she drives under school-zone speed, gazing in awe at each house. Then, to my mortification, she grabs her phone and starts taking photos, arm stretched out of the window.
‘Mum!’
She withdraws her arm and puts the phone in her lap. She juts out her chin, dismissive of my reaction. ‘I want to show Baba.’
I groan.
But then my phone navigator instructs us we’ve arrived at our destination and I become a little bit silly myself.
‘Oh. My. God. Whoa!’
Paula’s house is like something you see in one of those home decor magazines you only ever flick through in a doctor’s waiting room. A masterpiece of glass and steel and bays and roofs at different heights. I take it all in and suddenly I feel like a kid again, playing Lego for the first time after we were released from the detention centre and I’d started school. I built crazy, extravagant houses. I still remember the intense longing that came with those houses. How badly I wanted my make-believe world to be real.
‘This Paula friend,’ Mum says in an authoritative tone, ‘is very high status. Very high status,’ she repeats for emphasis.
I don’t know how to break it to her that status doesn’t operate like an airborne virus.
I kiss her goodbye, jump out of the car and run up the front steps. Before I’ve had a chance to ring the bell, the door swings open and Paula’s there, grinning at me. I start to take off my shoes. She tells me not to. I tell her my mum would have a fit if she found out. She promises she won’t tell her. I explain that I’m quite happy to make up stories to extend my curfew, or manipulate library closing times to stay out late, but not taking my shoes off would be the ultimate betrayal. She rolls her eyes and says, ‘You were made to be loved not understood.’
‘Don’t Wilde me at this hour. I want a tour.’
She laughs. ‘You’ve been studying Good Quotes haven’t you?’
‘Obviously. How else will I understand half of what you say?’
I step in, and to my right is a lift. A freaking glass Willy Wonka type lift.
‘I feel like I’m in David Jones,’ I say. ‘And not the Parramatta one. The city store.’
Her house takes my breath away: white marble floors, white walls and furnishings, with modern art pieces and family photos providing splashes of colour. A sweeping staircase leads to a gallery area on the second floor with views of a sparkling blue pool in a manicured garden.
‘This place is incredible,’ I whisper, taking it all in as Paula leads me into a kitchen fit for a five-star hotel. There’s a television built into one of the walls in the kitchen, and a fish tank in another wall. I feel slightly overwhelmed by it all. Not by Paula’s house in particular. I saw mansions in Kabul and Pakistan too. But spending most of my life since then in Western Sydney – happy and contented – I’d forgotten about how truly uneven the world is. Some people get marble and luxury and urban chic; others get slums and open sewerage and payday-to-payday.
I hear a sound from the butler’s pantry and Paula’s mother emerges. I was expecting to see an incarnation of Barbie in the Dreamhouse. Perhaps a cascade of blonde, loose curls, designer outfit hugging an impossibly slim physique and a matching Tiffany’s set. The kind of person whose appearance leaves nothing to chance.
Instead, a woman in a simple knee-length linen dress and slip-on sandals steps out. Her face is bare of makeup, and her hair is piled up onto her head in a messy bun. If there was a TED Check Your Assumptions talk, she’d be on the promotional material.
I feel slightly sheepish and hope my face doesn’t reveal my surprise.
She sees me and gives me a warm smile. ‘Hi, Mina! It’s so lovely to meet you. Paula talks about you all the time.’
I smile at her. ‘Thanks for having me.’
‘Are you kidding? It’s so good to have somebody over to keep Paula company! I’ve cooked up some pasta for you both. I made sure it’s vegetarian.’
‘Oh, thanks,’ I say, touched.
‘There’s a Banoffee pie in the fridge that I picked up from Bell’s.’
Paula, who’s tapping food into the fish tank, cheers and does a fist pump.
‘If you need me, I’m in my study. I’ve got a fifty-five page statement of claim to finish by Monday.’
We dish up our food and take it to the cinema room. I become a kid in a pet store when I enter. I make myself comfortable on one of the reclining cinema chairs, putting my hands behind my head and stretching my legs out.
‘Can I move in? Please?’
She laughs, waving away my comment. ‘They’re just things.’
‘Pretty things. Nice things. Things that make me all warm and fuzzy inside. Being materialistic is seriously underrated. You should try it some time.’
‘Meh,’ she shrugs.
I notice a family portrait in a frame on the wall next to me and I chuckle. ‘How old were you in that photo?’
She grins. ‘Awful, hey? Those were my pre-hair-product, pre-GHD days. Thirteen.’
‘It’s really nice,’ I joke. ‘I love when hair looks like brown steel wool.’
She hits me on the arm. ‘Excuse me? That’s mahogany with a touch of sun-kissed highlights steel wool to you.’
I grin at her.
‘Anyway, we can’t all be beauty queens.’
‘Please,’ I say, rolling my eyes at her. ‘At thirteen I had one eyebrow and hair on my upper lip. You discovered hair straighteners. I discovered laser.’
After we eat, I follow her through the house as she wants to introduce me to her personal zoo.
‘Sorry, my turtles are so antisocial. Come on! Let me introduce you to K4. He’s in my room.’
K4 is lying down on a large cushion in the bay window in her bedroom. As soon as he sees Paula he leaps off, ecstatic. She leans down and starts to sweet talk and baby him.
‘This little guy is my soulmate,’ she says, giving him a kiss on top of his head. ‘I’d swap all this for him any day.’
I watch her fondly. I’ve seen all kinds of people in my life. As a kid in Kabul. Then en route to Pakistan. In the camps, the boat to Australia, in the detention centre. I’ve only known Paula for a few weeks but it’s enough. She’s one of the good ones.
We sit down on her bed and K4 jumps up beside us, bunkers down next to Paula and closes his eyes.
It doesn’t take long before I’m opening up to her about Michael.
‘I’m angry that I’m angry.’ I lean back against the bottle-green suede bedhead. ‘I’m angry that I fell for his that’s not what I meant excuses. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid, stupid!’
Paula’s too sharp and honest to let me off the hook. Like a seagull sweeping down on my big, chunky, crinkle cut chip of a comment, she says: ‘Did you fall for his excuses? Or him?’
*
Paula grabs her laptop. Her fingers dance across the keyboard and then she whips it around so we can both see the screen. ‘Okay, cyber stalking time. I’ve found him. He’s into the same weird music you’re into –’
‘Paula, I just can’t do techno.’
‘Your loss . . . He goes for the Roosters, likes Jennifer Hawkins – disappointing, Michael, I’m a Megan Gale girl myself – and, here we go, Aussie Values.’
I groan, and put my face in my hands.
‘Okay, let’s see what Aussie Values is all about. It’s a public page and . . . Hello rednecks!’
&nbs
p; We pour over the page. We can’t look away no matter how terrible the comments are. Abos and slit-eyes and Mozlems and curry-munchers. We grew here, you flew here. Fuck Off We’re Full. No to tabouli.
Oddly enough it gets us giggling.
‘Tabouli?’ I shake my head. ‘Now I’m really offended. I can’t believe he likes this,’ I say.
‘Well, what does a Facebook like mean, really?’ Paula asks.
‘Don’t get philosophical on me now. Facebook doesn’t do ambiguity or nuance. You click like, you freaking well better own it.’
‘I never even knew Aussie Values existed until that program,’ Paula says. ‘I still can’t believe Michael’s dad is the president.’
Paula does an internet search on Aussie Values and finds their website, parts of which are under construction. She reads out their mission statement because if you’re going to be a masochist you might as well be a perfectionist about it.
I peer down at K4, snuggled up next to Paula, feeling envious, the quiet rhythm of his breathing telling the story of his blissful ignorance.
Paula opens the website’s gallery page. There’s the guy from News Tonight but in this photo he’s in weird gladiator-type get-up. He’s standing with a bunch of other people at what looks like a protest. Michael’s dad is in the middle of the shot, grinning at the camera, an Aussie flag draped around him. And there’s Michael, standing beside him. He’s grinning too.
I feel like I know exactly who he is now.
And it makes no sense that it should affect me this much.
Michael
Dad returns home to a hero’s welcome. He has an uneven tan and has lost weight. He looks haggard, dark circles under his eyes. He sleeps for twenty-hours straight and emerges the next day, weak-legged and dazed, like a newly born foal trying to take its first steps. But after some coffee and pottering in the garden with Nathan, he tells Mum he’s up to seeing some of their friends.
Mum cooks up a feast. Andrew, Carolina, Li and Kahn arrive that evening, bearing gifts of bottles of wine and dessert.
‘There are people whose grandchildren have been born in the same refugee camp they were born in,’ Dad tells us over dinner. ‘So anything we do will merely be a drop in the ocean. If it’s not going to solve anything, it’s really a numbers game in the end. Politicians just fighting about how many we can accept. All we’re saying is that the numbers should be reasonable and we should be bringing in the right kind of people. People who will fit in with our values. Surely that will make their transition to our society easier too?’
What he says kind of makes sense.
But Mina’s words do too.
‘It hit me hard when we were on the plane back to Australia from Jakarta,’ he continues. ‘How does every safety demonstration start? No matter which airline you’re on?’
‘Wear a seatbelt,’ Nathan says instantly.
Dad smiles at him. ‘That’s right, Nathan.’
‘Then it says adults –’
Nathan cuts him off. ‘The first recorded use of a seatbelt in an aircraft was in 1913 by Adolphe Pegoud, a French aviator.’
‘Boy, did I miss your brain while I was away, Nathan,’ Dad says.
Nathan beams.
‘So,’ Dad says, addressing us all again. ‘They always advise adults to put the oxygen mask on themselves first, and then small children. You have to look after yourself first before you can help others.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I say.
‘It’s simple economics, Michael,’ Dad says. ‘Refugees take jobs from Australians. They cost a lot in welfare, they compete for our resources and then they bring over their families so the situation is exacerbated. We have an unemployment crisis in this country and accepting more refugees will make it worse.’
‘It’s simple. The country’s going to the dogs, Michael,’ Li answers gruffly.
‘It’s not just about the economy,’ my mum says wistfully. ‘Cultural compatibility is an issue too.’
Dad nods furiously. ‘Here we have gender equality and yet we’re allowing people with degrading attitudes to women into this country.’
‘Is that what you mean by cultural compatibility?’ I ask, my head beginning to hurt.
‘We’re letting in people with different values, and that’s dangerous,’ Carolina pipes up.
‘Because there’s a dominant culture, Michael,’ Dad explains. ‘We’re an Anglo nation based on Judeo-Christian values. People are free to practise their culture and religion so long as it doesn’t undermine the foundational identity of this country.’
‘That’s really the heart of the issue, Michael,’ Mum says. ‘Ultimately this is about protecting our core identity from which everything else stems.’
*
There’s a persistent, nagging feeling that’s lodged inside me, like a squatter that’s suddenly taken up residence and refuses to budge.
After dinner, I grab my iPad and make myself comfortable in the hammock on our back porch. I drink in the cool, fresh breeze as I trawl through different websites on refugees and asylum seekers. There are masses of fact files and myth busters from all sides of the debate. Words flash at me: sovereignty. Border protection. Floodgates. People smugglers. Deaths at sea.
Things are only going to get worse. If Mina hates me now, what will she think when Don’t Jump the Queue airs? What will she think when she sees me on the screen with my parents and Nathan, one big happy Aussie Values family?
I feel sick to the stomach, like I’m on a roller-coaster that’s slowly climbing the hill but is about to drop me down a vertical fall at high speed. And no matter how loudly I scream, there will be nothing I can do to stop it.
I allow the hammock to gently sway as I navigate through one of the pro-refugee websites. I must be there for some time because Dad comes looking for me, telling me the guests have left.
Passing me a can of Coke, he sinks into an outdoor chair and lets out a contented sigh.
‘God, it’s good to be under an Aussie sky again.’
I raise my drink. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers.’ He takes a swig of his beer, and then looks at me and chuckles. ‘Andrew sure can chew the fat. Thought he’d never leave. So, how are things with you?’
‘Good.’ We haven’t had a chance to talk one-on-one yet. ‘How was it, Dad?’
‘Where to start?’ he smiles. ‘There were some truly awful moments. Terrifying. It was tougher than I expected, especially roughing it in Iraq and Indonesia.’
‘Was it as bad as they say?’
‘Worse, Michael,’ he says soberly. He closes his eyes and shakes his head.
His response takes me by surprise. ‘Really?’
‘Human misery on a scale I’ve never seen before.’
‘So where does that leave the organisation now?’
He looks at me, confused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Have things changed for you now that you’ve, you know, seen that stuff?’
‘Once you see the sheer size of the crisis you realise this isn’t a problem for us to fix, Michael.’
I think about the things I’ve just read. ‘But Dad, don’t we have to help them? Legally, I mean.’
‘It’s not that simple, Michael. Everybody’s always focusing on our legal obligations towards people who are coming from countries who have no respect for international law. Do you see the irony?’
I shrug. ‘But isn’t that the point of law? That you can’t bow out?’
‘Sometimes laws are used as blunt instruments and become oppressive and unjust. People are suffering, Michael. No doubt about it. But it’s all relative. Like I said, we can take in some of them, provided the numbers make sense. But not the ones who come here by boat. If they’re wealthy enough to pay people smugglers then they’re not genuinely in need. The laws and conventions are there for peop
le fleeing persecution, not a better life.’ He studies my face closely and smiles gently. ‘You’re not convinced?’
‘Throwing every last cent to a people smuggler and risking your life at sea seems pretty desperate and needy to me,’ I say. ‘But what you’re saying is that if your life’s in danger, and you can afford to get out of the camp and try to reach us, then you don’t deserve to be helped. I thought we judged people as refugees based on whether their life is in danger, not their financial status?’
‘We should be taking a tough stance so that we stop the people smuggler industry. They’re the real scumbags.’
‘So we punish people desperate for our protection? Anyway, aren’t a lot of the people coming from countries where there’s war?’
He nods. ‘Hmm.’
‘Like, for example, Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria?’
‘They’re killing each other. Tribal cultures, Michael. And some will try and leave because their lives are in danger. And like I said, we can take in some, but only a small amount because we have our own to look after. But others exploit refugee laws. They want to escape these war zones not because their lives are in particular danger but because their countries are in a state of war and there are no jobs, no school, little food. They’re not technically fleeing persecution, but a state of war. So how do you solve that? The Middle East should stop its bloodlust and focus on peace, not conflict. That’s not our problem to fix.’
‘But all the countries these people want to go to, like ours, or America, or in Europe, haven’t they all been part of those wars?’
Something still doesn’t sit right. I wish I’d paid more attention to what was happening in the world.
‘Yes.’
‘So . . .’ I pause, trying to articulate my thoughts. ‘I don’t know. Isn’t it like starting a fire in a building, walking away and then being surprised when people try to escape the flames?’
Dad gives me a questioning look. Then he smiles broadly. ‘I’m proud of you, Michael.’
‘Huh?’
‘You’ve changed since I left.’