After the Tampa by Abbas Nazari

Author:Abbas Nazari [Nazari, Abbas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781988547640
Google: ANhqzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2021-08-17T23:19:06.868952+00:00

16.

DAY 35

THE MANOORA DROPPED anchor a few kilometres from Nauru, and a barge was used to transport small groups at a time. This process took several days because many were still suspicious of the Australian government’s motivations and reluctant to go ashore. Major Dunn assured them the processing centres provided accommodation facilities of the highest quality. They would be staying in private air-conditioned rooms while their claims were being processed. As previously, if they refused to leave they would be forced. In the absence of any choice, a group of the men bid us farewell.

I hugged the man who had given me the candy on the Palapa. I wondered if I would ever see him again.

A media throng awaited these men. For the first time since the Tampa had appeared in newspapers and on the nightly television news, the outside world could finally put some faces to the story. They were questioned on how they felt about 9/11. With little English, the men expressed their sympathy for the victims and explained that they themselves were fleeing from the perpetrators.

They were bussed from the shore to the ‘prime hotel rooms’ they had been promised. In the three weeks since the Manoora had left Christmas Island, the Australian government had flown scores of contractors to Nauru. They had arrived to a barren patch of land on the site of a former phosphate mine and set to erecting dozens of tents in neat rows, surrounding them with a razor-wire fence. This was the offshore processing centre Howard had been proud to declare open for business.

Upon seeing the makeshift prison the first group stopped in their tracks, only to be herded behind the wire. With no idea of what awaited them, the rest followed and met the same fate. Of the 433 asylum seekers who had boarded the Palapa, 302 men became the first inmates of Australia’s first offshore detention centre.

We were in the last group to come ashore. The hangar was almost empty now and the crew seemed a little more relaxed. While parents talked eagerly about what the future held, we watched a final episode of Teletubbies. Having been sheltered, fed and watered for the past three weeks, we had a bit more colour in our faces, and some meat on our bones. The ulcers, sunburn, skin lesions, headlice and diarrhoea were gone. We were ready for the next chapter of our journey.

The cargo doors at the stern of the Manoora slowly opened like a drawbridge. It struck me that besides the water seeping into the Palapa, this was the closest we had come to touching the sea since we had left Indonesia. Many chose to wade through the water lapping at the ramp, a small act of rebellion against the infinite ocean that had been a darkness bearing down on our minds for the past month.

The crew were there for the farewell, adjusting our lifejackets and doing their best to calm the children unnerved by the noise of the machinery. In all our time aboard the Manoora, my family had not one single bad experience with the crew.

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