Panic attacks and refugee advocacy in Australia: a boat with two sails
Half a crumbed fish and eleven thousand words
by Jessica Perini
As a child and teenager I treated writing like a life boat; if the rest of my life sank I could always get on the little vessel and cast my sails in the direction of dry land. Life on my vessel was quiet and safe, and I could scribble to this sensitive heart’s delight. In 1996 I went to the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival and heard Helen Garner speak. In front of a room full of budding writers she said that as a writer, up until the age of 25, she spent her time wandering through the fields of her discontent, or perhaps she said wallowing in. At the time I was 25, and I definitely heard the words wallowing in. I felt much the same way. Countless crumbling books, diaries, folders and scrap-paper housed the words of my wallowing soul: school angst, teen angst, university angst. Not many revelations there. I’d published a novella and some poetry, just because I fostered a romantic image of being a writer, and felt I had to say something; even though I really didn’t have anything to say. Within the year a large wave tipped over my life boat and it began to sink, no shore in sight, and no buoys to mark the way. I didn’t know it at the time but that trip to Byron Bay would be my last real holiday (to this day), and that angst would be replaced by feelings I couldn’t have imagined, that day sitting in a room full of writers, in a cabin filled with light.
Several months later panic attacks, acute agoraphobia and depression hit me. Suddenly, dispassionately. I could write a novel about this, but the pages of this website could not house it.
When the wave struck, I could not eat, sleep, nor stop my body’s relentless shaking. I remember seeing fire engines, their whirling lights six storeys below my window, I didn’t care if the place burned down, I was not leaving the apartment. I read prayers all the way to the hospital, demands I had written when imagining this terrifying journey. They were loud shameless prayers mixed with affirmations, Please God stop me shaking, please God I am courageous, please God I am well. In my small private hospital room I felt crowded: my writing pad, myself, my huge fears swelling the walls. The greatest fear elbowing the rest was my fear of starving to death, and my second greatest fear was eating. That night with each tiny spoon of crumbed fish placed gingerly in my mouth I would run to my writing pad and scrawl several thousand words: You are so courageous, excellent work Jessica. One more spoon, just one more. Eating is so good for you, eating makes you well. Three hours and eleven thousand words later I had eaten a tiny part of my now-cold crumbed fish, and went on to survive the next few years.
Over the years I charted my treatments, techniques, prayers, Cognitive behavioural therapy, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, herbal treatments, meditations, medications, and positive thinking seminars with psychiatrists who had given up psychiatry. These records kept me afloat, focused, gave me a sense of control of my environment, when it appeared that everything I had learned about up until that point was untrue. All logic left me when panic hit, it was no longer safe to eat, leave home, see friends, go on holidays. The only thing that could help me tame the hurricane of my thoughts was writing.
Today life is different. I write for other reasons. Mainly I write so that others who have no voices may be heard. I still have panic attacks and agoraphobia, but all those treatments and writing have helped me come to terms with it, and each day is easier than the rest. I can’t say I’ve had a lot published, but I can say I’ve done some significant writing.
When the Tampa rescued refugees off the coast of Australia, I watched in disbelief as soldiers stormed the Norwegian vessel. Women, men and children, most likely dazed by their near drowning were then forced onto an island made of bird droppings, the island of Nauru. As things got worse in detention centres and women, men and children started sewing their lips together and dehydrating in the rays of the harsh Woomera sun, I felt that something had to be done. I scanned the papers for something, anything. Misinformation abounded, some of the papers seemed to be writing to someone’s agenda, someone other than the asylum seekers. I joined a group of people called ChilOut (Children Out of Detention), and day-by-day their emails kept me informed. Stories that read like war-time Germany abounded; families being woken in the middle of the night and being taken to the airport, women being handcuffed during labour. Is this still Australia? I thought. All the facts were in front of me: names, phone numbers and signed affidavits.
Still the papers weren’t publishing even half the stories I read in these emails. By co-incidence, or perhaps divine intervention, a publisher contacted me and asked if I wanted to write a book about refugees in Australia. After a night of turbulent dreams I said Yes.
I started to call the numbers on those emails, and word spread. When refugee advocates heard I was writing a book they spoke to me at length about their visits to detention facilities. They were stretched, and some seemed almost bursting with the burden of all the stories they knew.
I wanted contact with these courageous asylum seekers. I wanted to know what would make a person travel thousands of kilometres across the world to a place they knew nothing about. I contacted Bellingen Rural Australians for Refugees, who had a long list of people from Nauru requiring penpals, often their only source of contact with the outside world. I got the name of my penpal and wrote. I waited one month, then two. I wrote to Bellingen again. Something was wrong, my penpal had not replied. Give it another month they said. The mail is slow. Meanwhile, thousands of kilometres away my penpal waited for word from me. He had sent three letters and had received no reply. Perhaps they got lost, accidentally dropped from the postie's pack? Somehow I doubt it. Eventually we got in contact, I told him I had received nothing, and feared for his safety, feared they had sent him back to his war-torn home of Afghanistan. But he was there on Nauru still. Coping with two hours of water a day and classes so overcrowded and under-resourced that one of his fellow asylum seekers (who also had limited English skills) was teaching them. There he waited, without recourse to a court of law, and waited and waited.
One story, a little closer to home, will never fade. A 10 year old girl had spent six months of her life in Villawood Detention Centre, west of Sydney. One day a refugee advocate visiting the Centre happened upon her in the yard. Where are your parents? the advocate asked. The little girl replied that they no longer came outside, for month after month as their hope faded they retreated to their darkened room. Standing in the barren yard the little girl asked the refugee advocate, Are there any flowers in Australia?
When the advocate told me about this my first impulse was to call Interflora and deliver to this child the biggest bunch of Australian natives I could afford.
But I knew after a few days they would brown and die. This young child didn’t need a cut bunch of flowers. She needed help to see the flowers, help to see everything on the other side of the fence.
I started to write letters to every newspaper I knew, I bombarded them with emails, I sent postcards to politicians. A Current Affair, always looking for new stories, was on my list. Media Watch was well informed.
In late 2003 the Family Court decided that it was illegal to keep children in detention. This was met with abuse from the public. It is hard to imagine why anyone would want to keep a child behind bars, our own fears of this would be intolerable. But a child's fears, unimaginable. But some do want children in detention, and are willing to sign names to publicly declare their opinion. ChilOut encouraged people to write to the Family Court in appreciation of their judgment, at this time the only court in Australia to rule in favour of the best interests of all the children. In response people littered the Court with letters of thanks. The children and some families now slowly trickle out of detention. Our letters, emails and phone calls have, I'm sure, helped change the tide of opinion. The children and families slowly step out into the sunshine, and shield their eyes.
But it is not all over yet. My penpal from Nauru, was whisked away on a midnight plane back to Afghanistan. He had twenty-fours hours' notice in which to write me a last note, "Thank you. I will never forget what you've done." No arivederci, no au revoir. He wasn't expecting to write to me, or see me, that was plain. He wasn't expecting to get very far in Kabul; the place of his original persecution. I don't know where he is today; or if he managed to escape to Syria, to grease the palms of official men.
I don’t need to be heard for my own sake any more. Being published is great but only because I have something to say which desperately needs to be said. I know it's not me drowning any more, it’s men, women and children, on perilous boat journeys, at risk of bad weather, pirates and the sea. And when they get here, they are at even greater risk of being swamped by depression, and public opinion tempered by fears of terrorism, and months if not years of waiting for relief from detention. The ocean is far larger than I imagined in 1996, and the boat has a rusty-holed hull and is filled with people to overflowing. But it is no longer my boat, or my life that I am fighting for. It is their lives. But one thing remains the same, no-matter how tough this battle gets, writing, and the compassion it elicits, I believe, is still the key.
Postscript
On 29 April 2004 the High Court dealt a crushing blow to the battle to get children out of detention. It ruled that the Family Court had no jurisdiction over the children's welfare. In other words, on a legal technicality, the Government won the case; the children in this particular case were immediately re-instated as detainees. Guards were ordered to the house where the children lived. Their custodians were appointed to be their gaolers. The phones went mad, the emails flew. Radio and news teams scrambled for quotes from refugee advocates, 15 second grabs for tv. What is going on? Everyone wanted to know. So we scrambled together press releases and talked to the stations, yet again wrote letters to editors and sent out emails.
The High Court has since confirmed that it is legal under Australian domestic law to keep children and their families in detention indefinitely. Children stare towards our free Australia from behind the fences of Baxter, Villawood, Nauru and Christmas island and others; their little fingers creased around the wire. These are not places for children, and I will continue to use the only tool I know how to wield, the pen, until no one can claim lack of knowledge, and someone turns the key to set them free.
23 June 2005
Things are changing rapidly this week. Children are being freed by the hour. This time next week maybe no children will remain in detention. To be continued...
First published in NewsWrite, the newsletter of the NSW Writers’ Centre 2004.
by Jessica Perini
As a child and teenager I treated writing like a life boat; if the rest of my life sank I could always get on the little vessel and cast my sails in the direction of dry land. Life on my vessel was quiet and safe, and I could scribble to this sensitive heart’s delight. In 1996 I went to the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival and heard Helen Garner speak. In front of a room full of budding writers she said that as a writer, up until the age of 25, she spent her time wandering through the fields of her discontent, or perhaps she said wallowing in. At the time I was 25, and I definitely heard the words wallowing in. I felt much the same way. Countless crumbling books, diaries, folders and scrap-paper housed the words of my wallowing soul: school angst, teen angst, university angst. Not many revelations there. I’d published a novella and some poetry, just because I fostered a romantic image of being a writer, and felt I had to say something; even though I really didn’t have anything to say. Within the year a large wave tipped over my life boat and it began to sink, no shore in sight, and no buoys to mark the way. I didn’t know it at the time but that trip to Byron Bay would be my last real holiday (to this day), and that angst would be replaced by feelings I couldn’t have imagined, that day sitting in a room full of writers, in a cabin filled with light.
Several months later panic attacks, acute agoraphobia and depression hit me. Suddenly, dispassionately. I could write a novel about this, but the pages of this website could not house it.
When the wave struck, I could not eat, sleep, nor stop my body’s relentless shaking. I remember seeing fire engines, their whirling lights six storeys below my window, I didn’t care if the place burned down, I was not leaving the apartment. I read prayers all the way to the hospital, demands I had written when imagining this terrifying journey. They were loud shameless prayers mixed with affirmations, Please God stop me shaking, please God I am courageous, please God I am well. In my small private hospital room I felt crowded: my writing pad, myself, my huge fears swelling the walls. The greatest fear elbowing the rest was my fear of starving to death, and my second greatest fear was eating. That night with each tiny spoon of crumbed fish placed gingerly in my mouth I would run to my writing pad and scrawl several thousand words: You are so courageous, excellent work Jessica. One more spoon, just one more. Eating is so good for you, eating makes you well. Three hours and eleven thousand words later I had eaten a tiny part of my now-cold crumbed fish, and went on to survive the next few years.
Over the years I charted my treatments, techniques, prayers, Cognitive behavioural therapy, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, herbal treatments, meditations, medications, and positive thinking seminars with psychiatrists who had given up psychiatry. These records kept me afloat, focused, gave me a sense of control of my environment, when it appeared that everything I had learned about up until that point was untrue. All logic left me when panic hit, it was no longer safe to eat, leave home, see friends, go on holidays. The only thing that could help me tame the hurricane of my thoughts was writing.
Today life is different. I write for other reasons. Mainly I write so that others who have no voices may be heard. I still have panic attacks and agoraphobia, but all those treatments and writing have helped me come to terms with it, and each day is easier than the rest. I can’t say I’ve had a lot published, but I can say I’ve done some significant writing.
When the Tampa rescued refugees off the coast of Australia, I watched in disbelief as soldiers stormed the Norwegian vessel. Women, men and children, most likely dazed by their near drowning were then forced onto an island made of bird droppings, the island of Nauru. As things got worse in detention centres and women, men and children started sewing their lips together and dehydrating in the rays of the harsh Woomera sun, I felt that something had to be done. I scanned the papers for something, anything. Misinformation abounded, some of the papers seemed to be writing to someone’s agenda, someone other than the asylum seekers. I joined a group of people called ChilOut (Children Out of Detention), and day-by-day their emails kept me informed. Stories that read like war-time Germany abounded; families being woken in the middle of the night and being taken to the airport, women being handcuffed during labour. Is this still Australia? I thought. All the facts were in front of me: names, phone numbers and signed affidavits.
Still the papers weren’t publishing even half the stories I read in these emails. By co-incidence, or perhaps divine intervention, a publisher contacted me and asked if I wanted to write a book about refugees in Australia. After a night of turbulent dreams I said Yes.
I started to call the numbers on those emails, and word spread. When refugee advocates heard I was writing a book they spoke to me at length about their visits to detention facilities. They were stretched, and some seemed almost bursting with the burden of all the stories they knew.
I wanted contact with these courageous asylum seekers. I wanted to know what would make a person travel thousands of kilometres across the world to a place they knew nothing about. I contacted Bellingen Rural Australians for Refugees, who had a long list of people from Nauru requiring penpals, often their only source of contact with the outside world. I got the name of my penpal and wrote. I waited one month, then two. I wrote to Bellingen again. Something was wrong, my penpal had not replied. Give it another month they said. The mail is slow. Meanwhile, thousands of kilometres away my penpal waited for word from me. He had sent three letters and had received no reply. Perhaps they got lost, accidentally dropped from the postie's pack? Somehow I doubt it. Eventually we got in contact, I told him I had received nothing, and feared for his safety, feared they had sent him back to his war-torn home of Afghanistan. But he was there on Nauru still. Coping with two hours of water a day and classes so overcrowded and under-resourced that one of his fellow asylum seekers (who also had limited English skills) was teaching them. There he waited, without recourse to a court of law, and waited and waited.
One story, a little closer to home, will never fade. A 10 year old girl had spent six months of her life in Villawood Detention Centre, west of Sydney. One day a refugee advocate visiting the Centre happened upon her in the yard. Where are your parents? the advocate asked. The little girl replied that they no longer came outside, for month after month as their hope faded they retreated to their darkened room. Standing in the barren yard the little girl asked the refugee advocate, Are there any flowers in Australia?
When the advocate told me about this my first impulse was to call Interflora and deliver to this child the biggest bunch of Australian natives I could afford.
But I knew after a few days they would brown and die. This young child didn’t need a cut bunch of flowers. She needed help to see the flowers, help to see everything on the other side of the fence.
I started to write letters to every newspaper I knew, I bombarded them with emails, I sent postcards to politicians. A Current Affair, always looking for new stories, was on my list. Media Watch was well informed.
In late 2003 the Family Court decided that it was illegal to keep children in detention. This was met with abuse from the public. It is hard to imagine why anyone would want to keep a child behind bars, our own fears of this would be intolerable. But a child's fears, unimaginable. But some do want children in detention, and are willing to sign names to publicly declare their opinion. ChilOut encouraged people to write to the Family Court in appreciation of their judgment, at this time the only court in Australia to rule in favour of the best interests of all the children. In response people littered the Court with letters of thanks. The children and some families now slowly trickle out of detention. Our letters, emails and phone calls have, I'm sure, helped change the tide of opinion. The children and families slowly step out into the sunshine, and shield their eyes.
But it is not all over yet. My penpal from Nauru, was whisked away on a midnight plane back to Afghanistan. He had twenty-fours hours' notice in which to write me a last note, "Thank you. I will never forget what you've done." No arivederci, no au revoir. He wasn't expecting to write to me, or see me, that was plain. He wasn't expecting to get very far in Kabul; the place of his original persecution. I don't know where he is today; or if he managed to escape to Syria, to grease the palms of official men.
I don’t need to be heard for my own sake any more. Being published is great but only because I have something to say which desperately needs to be said. I know it's not me drowning any more, it’s men, women and children, on perilous boat journeys, at risk of bad weather, pirates and the sea. And when they get here, they are at even greater risk of being swamped by depression, and public opinion tempered by fears of terrorism, and months if not years of waiting for relief from detention. The ocean is far larger than I imagined in 1996, and the boat has a rusty-holed hull and is filled with people to overflowing. But it is no longer my boat, or my life that I am fighting for. It is their lives. But one thing remains the same, no-matter how tough this battle gets, writing, and the compassion it elicits, I believe, is still the key.
Postscript
On 29 April 2004 the High Court dealt a crushing blow to the battle to get children out of detention. It ruled that the Family Court had no jurisdiction over the children's welfare. In other words, on a legal technicality, the Government won the case; the children in this particular case were immediately re-instated as detainees. Guards were ordered to the house where the children lived. Their custodians were appointed to be their gaolers. The phones went mad, the emails flew. Radio and news teams scrambled for quotes from refugee advocates, 15 second grabs for tv. What is going on? Everyone wanted to know. So we scrambled together press releases and talked to the stations, yet again wrote letters to editors and sent out emails.
The High Court has since confirmed that it is legal under Australian domestic law to keep children and their families in detention indefinitely. Children stare towards our free Australia from behind the fences of Baxter, Villawood, Nauru and Christmas island and others; their little fingers creased around the wire. These are not places for children, and I will continue to use the only tool I know how to wield, the pen, until no one can claim lack of knowledge, and someone turns the key to set them free.
23 June 2005
Things are changing rapidly this week. Children are being freed by the hour. This time next week maybe no children will remain in detention. To be continued...
First published in NewsWrite, the newsletter of the NSW Writers’ Centre 2004.
posted by Jessica at 6:03 pm
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