Welcome to Ord City. Adrian Deans

heading for Australia. The prices charged were crippling – the equivalent of two years wages in Bangladesh – but the family had provided the means and were depending on him.

      He managed to find a berth on a ramshackle fishing boat which left the port of Surabaya with nearly seventy refugees aboard, including families with young children. The boat should probably have carried no more than twenty so was dangerously overloaded and very low in the water with the bilge pumps straining to keep the vessel afloat. Fortunately the sea was mild but there were dark clouds to the south.

      An hour after departure, when it was impossible to leave the ship and swim back to shore, the captain addressed them all. His friendly pre-departure demeanour was entirely gone and, with an evil grin, he held up a hessian sack.

      ‘I have here your passports,’ he said, then, without another word, tossed the sack overboard.

      Immediately the boat was filled with wails of outrage and despair but the captain just laughed as his two colleagues produced automatic pistols, and the wailing ceased.

      ‘You learn quickly,’ he approved. ‘That augurs well for your chances of survival.’

      He went on to explain that if the Australians knew their true identities and nationalities it made it much easier to send them home. He told them all to choose new names and invent themselves a history. It was simple enough to tell a story of persecution – none of them needed to invent such a story – but the harder it was for the Australians to check their stories the longer they would stay in the country. And with so much international condemnation over Australia’s treatment of refugees, there were rumours that the Australians were about to change their laws.

      ‘It might soon be easier … it might soon be harder to get residency … who knows? But unless you’re actually in the country you have no chance.’

      Asif had brought adequate food and water for the voyage but it was stolen on the first night, so he was obliged to survive on handouts which were grudgingly given and very poor. There was no toilet aboard (except for the crew) so the passengers all pissed and shat over the sides – fathers clutching their children with an eye on the following sharks.

      ‘Sharks in the water, sharks on board … and sharks at home,’ said Noor, an Afghan Asif had befriended in Jakarta.

      ‘And sharks in Australia, no doubt,’ said Asif.

      ‘Perhaps,’ said Noor, ‘but from what I hear they are fat and slow … we will make a good life there, my friend.’

      ‘So much effort and danger,’ laughed Asif, ‘to get to the happy land of the fat sharks.’

      The Australian sharks were not fat and slow. On the third day out from Surabaya a patrol boat had appeared out of the storm murk from the south, as the waves freshened and the wind and the children started howling. The patrol boat sliced through the water as the sharks had done, circled the boat once with two large machine guns trained on them, then a voice thundered from a loudhailer like a shout from hell.

      At that moment the fishing boat shuddered and seemed to stop.

      ‘The captain has scuttled us,’ said a white-faced Noor. ‘Let’s hope the Australians are merciful.’

      The captain, wearing an inflatable jacket, fired a distress flare, laughing as the heavens suddenly opened and panic swept the sinking boat.

      ‘Listen to me,’ shouted the captain. ‘I am not the captain of this boat. The captain was Bamban Sulo who lost his life trying to save this ship. Is that clear?’

      There was confusion among the passengers, so the captain explained again, emphasising his words with a pistol.

      ‘The brave captain, Bamban Sulo, fell overboard while trying to repair the hull. Anyone who tells a different story will receive their punishment in the camps where I already have friends and weapons. Is that understood?’

      Waves were beginning to wash over the gunnels and a large fat woman went shrieking over the side, pulling a small child in with her. Without thinking, Asif leapt into the water, swam hard for the panicking woman and tried to calm her as she clutched frantically at his head and shoulders. The child was fine, clinging to her mother’s neck, and just as Asif remembered the sharks and his foolishness in entering their domain, a black rubber dinghy appeared next to them and hands reached down to pull them to safety. It took nearly a minute to get the woman into the lifeboat, even with Asif pushing from below, and that was the time he felt most vulnerable – moments from safety but feet kicking madly to attract evil from the depths.

      On board the Australian warship they were given blankets and a hot meal and taken to Christmas Island, which he expected to be just a respite, but they were there for many months. Always there were rumours that they would be sent to Nauru, or New Guinea, or even a camp on the Australian mainland. They spoke occasionally with officials and lawyers – always the same questions, as though being tested for consistency to reveal a lie. Asif, despite the warnings of the captain had told the truth about himself. Noor had told the truth about everything, including the captain. This was a serious mistake. Noor may have hoped that his revelation of the captain’s behaviour might stay secret, but the captain found out almost immediately and stared at Noor with black-eyed vengeance. Two days later, Noor was found in his cot with his throat cut, but the captain had been in the discipline wing and was clearly innocent. Of course, everyone knew he had ordered the killing, and when he was released from discipline a few days later he was immediately established as king of the camp.

      It was in the camp that Asif discovered Habal Tong. HT wasn’t really a religion – it welcomed members of any religion. It was more a set of precepts and values that, on one level, encouraged tolerance and unity. But on another level, effectively radicalised and galvanised anyone who felt slighted, insulted or in any way disadvantaged by the Australian mainstream.

      The HT group were aloof from the rest of the camp, including the captain’s thugs. In fact, they were the only ones the captain’s thugs left alone and despite the fact that Asif wanted, desperately, to embrace all things Australian to improve his chances of staying permanently, he found himself inexorably drawn to them. ‘All is nothing and nothing is all,’ was the most profound and fundamental maxim of Habal Tong and Asif reflected on it constantly – reconciling it with all his previous beliefs and feeling its empowerment.

      Somehow the maxim was also interpreted to mean that Australia, as a wealthy first world nation, owed all refugees a living. ‘It is the so-called first world,’ sneered Tee Tee, the head of the Tong in the camp, ‘that caused the sea levels to rise with their industrial exhalations. If they take away your land then by all that is just and right they must provide an alternative. And if they will not do so willingly then we will take what is rightfully ours.’

      It was a powerful argument but unpopular with the Australian officials who had made life so difficult for Asif – never believing him but always lying to him about his status and his prospects for staying in Australia.

      ‘I call on you, brothers,’ Tee Tee would say. ‘I call on Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Tamils, Muslims, Buddhists, Shinto, Confucianists, Falun Gong and Bahai … even Christians … to embrace the Tong with all your heart. This is no apostasy to replace your birth religion. No. It is a prism to focus the elements of all religions and fuse them into something more … to strengthen your own faith and bring you into a wider brotherhood!’

      The turning point came in 2023 when the law changed. After so much international and domestic criticism, the Australian government simply gave up on their various policies to scare refugees away. All in the camps were given seven year temporary visas with a major restriction. They were not allowed to leave the Temporary Citizenship Zone (the TCZ) for the whole of the seven years. If they did, they would immediately be deported. And if they returned the seven year clock would start from scratch.

      By the time Asif received his visa, he had been in the camps nearly two years and had been radicalised into hating Australians with their wealth and their privilege and their different rules for different people. He was a hardened member of the Tong and one year later had been easily recruited into a deep cell – biding