No Place Like Home by Sonja Dechian

Author:Sonja Dechian [Sonja Dechian, Jenni Devereaux, Heather Millar and Eva Sallis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: book, BT, BIO000000
ISBN: 9781743052235
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Published: 2018-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

As a Boy: Aziz Asghar’s Story

by Caitlin Gardiner, aged 15

Born: Afghanistan

Age: fifteen

Gender: male

Education: little

Religion: minority

Taliban: legal for them to kill us

They were taking lots of people, back then. Guns were familiar to us and so our skills were valuable for use in the army. They came for my eldest brother. He went and hid in the mountains and when the people came for him, he wasn’t there. They wanted the next eldest—me. My father paid them money. He bribed them to keep me safe. But he knew he couldn’t hold them off for long. They were going to come back for either money or me, and one day we’d run out of money.

My father woke me in the middle of the night. He told me he was sending me away with my uncle. I didn’t know where we were going, but I didn’t question them. Respecting and obeying our elders is something deeply ingrained in our culture. Without even a goodbye to the rest of my family, I was hidden in the back of a wood truck and we fled.

People complain that plane trips or long car rides are uncomfortable, but they have never travelled in the back of a wood truck for three days, their legs and back cramping from the tiny space, dust and wood shavings filling their mouth, the uncomfortable jolting of the truck over rocky dirt roads making it impossible to occupy your mind and forget about your situation for even a moment.

For three days I travelled like this across sparsely inhabited country between Afghanistan and Pakistan, holed up in the back of the truck like a sheep or cow being transported to the ­abattoirs. I first realised we had reached the border into Pakistan when I heard the rough voice of a Pakistani border official asking for my uncle and the driver’s IDs. I hadn’t begun to feel nervous until this moment—my mind had been occupied with unanswer­able questions about where I was headed—but now my heart was pounding. I felt that adrenaline-induced nervousness fluttering in my stomach every time I took a breath. What if he turned the truck back into Afghanistan? What if he decided to search the truck? I waited for one tortured moment, motionless amongst the wood, afraid to breathe for fear of making a sound. The official glanced at the documents, decided everything was in order, and let us go. I peered through the gaps in the wood at the back of the truck, watching as the border officers got smaller and smaller, further and further away from me.

The week in Pakistan passed in a confusion-fuelled blur. Before I knew it I was sitting on a plane to Indonesia.

But Indonesia was not to be my final destination. Here, in Indonesia, I learnt that the country we were headed for, the country that would offer me safety and freedom and unimag­inable opportunities, was the magical and mysterious land of Australia.

The boat I came over on was one of the last boats to take refugees from Indonesia to Australia.

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