Postscript
Coroner Hanrahan ordered Ali Khan’s body to be held for six months after he was formally declared dead at the scene of the Surf City siege, primarily to allow for any relatives to come forward.
Samples of his blood, bone and DNA were taken, lest another inquiry be necessary further down the track. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some medical tests done, to see exactly why he looked so strange.
When his body was finally released, it was for a pauper’s funeral. It’s an old-fashioned word, pauper – the way it sounds, like something from Dickens. There’s some dignity about it, I think anyway – or maybe just about the idea that if you die here in Australia and you are poor, no matter who you are or what you’ve done, we won’t just leave you to rot on the tip.
We will bury you.
I was one of only seven people who attended the funeral, not counting the undertaker. Five others were paid by various government departments to be there, DIMIA included. Cate wasn’t there: she’d only just had another new baby with the French husband she picked up in Africa. She told me she was going to send flowers but I didn’t see any flowers anywhere, which probably means that somebody pinched them as opposed to she didn’t send them.
The Rookwood cemetery in Sydney’s west offered a plot to DIMIA for $300, in the section where other paupers had already been buried. They accepted and paid for it with taxpayer dollars. Most people who get a pauper’s funeral are buried in graves that hold six basic, wooden coffins, but Ali Khan was buried alone. I don’t know who made that decision or why, but it struck me as interesting: as a pauper, Ali Khan would normally have been expected to share his plot, but for reasons nobody explained, he was finally given a place of his own.
The council worker picked to fill the hole over Ali Khan’s coffin was two days past his last shave. He was wearing a fluorescent orange safety vest. He kept one boot on his shovel, and smoked a cigarette while the officials from DIMIA made sure the body went into the ground. He seemed to be waiting for everyone to leave before he got started on filling in the hole. That’s actually graveyard protocol: nobody wants to see the diggers move in; mourners are encouraged to go in for their tea and sandwiches before the men with shovels turn up.
Having done their duty, the government officials got into their white cars and drove slowly down the gravel road, back onto the freeway. The council digger took one last drag, butted the cigarette into the dirt and then got to work, one mound of dirt after the other, pausing every few minutes to stretch what must have been his aching back.
I turned to make my own way home, and it was then that I noticed a woman sitting on a park bench. She seemed familiar to me although I couldn’t quite place her face. I gave her a bit of a nod and a smile, and she said, ‘Hello, Father.’
I said, ‘I’m sorry, do I know you?’
‘I saw you at the inquest,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, again. ‘There were so many witnesses . . . did you know Ali Khan?’
She shook her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really. And I didn’t come here to see you . . . but now that you’re here . . . could you sit down?’ she said, shuffling up on her bench to make room for me. ‘I need to tell you something.’
I sighed. I hadn’t yet been to see the bishop but I was getting close to the point of pulling the pin on the priesthood.
‘Is it a formal confession you want to make?’ I said.
‘Not a confession. I just want to tell somebody something. It’s been playing on my mind.’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘what’s wrong?’
‘I used to live next door to him.’
‘To Ali Khan?’
‘To Ali Khan, yes – the one they just buried.’
‘You mean when he was in the share house? In Auburn?’
‘No. In Glebe.’
I was momentarily confused. Ali had lived in Glebe, but only for a nano-second, at the home of Marjorie Devlin.
‘I’m Marj’s neighbour,’ the lady said. ‘We’re not close. I won’t bore you with it. She likes to grow things – fruit and vegetables, herbs. I don’t mind so much – but the passionfruit vine – it’s hopelessly overgrown. Glebe’s not the countryside. We’re inner-west. Marj can’t eat all that food. It falls down and rots. So she gets rats. They run along the top of the fence. I told her, “You’ve got to lay traps or you’ve got to put down poison.” She told me, “I don’t believe in that. All creatures great and small.” I said, “What do you mean, “all creatures great and small”?’ And she said, “I don’t believe in killing things.” The way she said it, you’d have thought I was a serial killer. I was talking about rats, Father.’
‘I’m not that fond of them myself.’
‘Oh, who is? Marj is. Or so she says. I think she was just being difficult. But anyway, a few years ago, she made a big song and dance about having an African come to stay and how she expected the neighbourhood to make him welcome. I knew what she was getting at. It was offensive. We – my Gavin and me – we couldn’t have cared less. Black, white, brindle, I don’t care. But you could tell the way Marj was going on about it, she was thinking, you’re all going try to stop me because you’re racist but don’t even try to stop me, because I’m the one with the good heart.
‘I told her, “I don’t mind who you have share with you, Marj. They might even eat some of that food that goes to waste!” That was probably a bit mean. But anyway, this kid came. I knew pretty much when to expect him because we’d all been warned – not just me and Gavin; everyone in the neighbourhood. So I was waiting to get formally introduced. The way Marj had gone on about it – this young African boy, no idea how old he was, no family to speak of, she’d be taking him in – I was sure we were going to get the big introduction. But then it never came. He came – and he wasn’t what we expected. I’ll bet he wasn’t what Marj expected, either. I’ve seen people from Africa. They’re tall, aren’t they? Tall and black. Nothing wrong with saying that: they are.
‘This young man, he wasn’t black. He was small and grey. I said to my husband, he’s albino. Because to look at him, it was like looking at an African boy – but one that had gotten covered in talcum powder. He had the right nose, the right lips – big lips, they have – he just wasn’t the right colour. And he looked like he’d been in a fight. Not a fist fight, a knife fight. My husband said, “They hack at each other with machetes. I saw it on the news.”
‘I was still curious to meet him – but, like I say, the big introduction never came. I wondered if Marj was maybe a bit disappointed that he wasn’t one of the tall black ones. She couldn’t wave him in our face. And so, in the end, I only saw him twice: once when he was getting out of the car with Marj, and then a few days later, when I was on my back deck.
‘It’s a raised deck. When I’m sitting there, I can look over Marj’s fence. She was never too happy about that. I told her, “I have no interest in looking over your back fence, Marj. We want to elevate the deck so we can put a little laundry – a washing machine, a dryer – underneath.” She still took us to council. We won, but anyway.’
I was wondering what the point of all this was. I said, ‘Did Ali Khan speak to you before he left Marj’s? Did he say something that troubled you?’
‘No, no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘That’s not it. I never spoke to him. I just feel bad about what happened, Father. I don’t think this young man was as bad as people are saying.’
We were still sitting side by side on the bench. The man who had been throwing dirt upon Ali Khan’s coffin had stopped to light another cigarette.
I said, ‘He gave Marj quite a fright, you know. With the corkscrew.’
‘Oh, I know!’ she said. ‘We didn’t talk much, but Marj gave me that whole story over the fence. How she’d come home and couldn’t find her waiter’s friend. How she thought he must have been drinking alcohol because where had the corkscrew gone? How she’d had DIMIA out to investigate and how they’d found the
corkscrew on top of the pine wardrobe in Ali Khan’s room, and how she was scared to death and he had to be made to leave and so on.
‘I always meant to set her straight, Father, but what would have been the point? My feeling was, she was glad to see the back of him. He hadn’t been quite what she wanted in the first place because he wasn’t black enough, exotic enough, for show-off points. He was a sickly looking person who wouldn’t come out of his room.’
I was confused. I said, ‘What do you mean, you felt like “setting her straight”?’
‘Oh, because she was a silly old bat!’ she said. ‘Like I said before: I only saw the young boy twice – the first time when he got out of the car and I was having a stickybeak out the window, and the second time, when I was on the back deck.
‘I looked down and he was in Marj’s backyard. He had what looked like underpants in his hands. They were crumpled up, wet, like he’d taken them from the washing machine or washed them in the sink. Marj had a dryer – for all her claims to being green, she seemed to use it quite a lot – but I don’t suppose Ali Khan knew what a dryer was.
‘He was looking around for something to hang the underpants on. I could have told him where the clothes line was – it was one of those retractable ones in a box on the side of the house.
‘On the other hand, I didn’t want to interfere. I just watched. He looked around and he obviously couldn’t see a line anywhere and so he went and hung his underpants over the back fence. But they were only there for a second before he snatched them back up again. They were pretty big pants for a little person: Y-fronts, sort of a grey colour, and they did stand out on the back fence. My feeling was, he didn’t want to hang them there, in full view of Marj’s back door.
‘He went back inside and, next thing I saw, he was opening the window in his bedroom. He was up on the second floor. Marj slept downstairs. Marj has got those awning windows that wind out. He was winding his window open and then he was reaching out, and putting his underpants in the branches of a tree – right near the top of the tree, just outside his window.
‘Of course they billowed off and landed in the garden, so the next thing I knew, he was scrambling downstairs to pick them up again. And then he was back inside, and then he was leaning out the window again, but this time, he had the corkscrew with him.
‘Thinking about it later, I suppose it was the only thing he could find in the house that worked like a peg. He had opened it up, and he put his underpants on the tree branch, and closed the corkscrew over them, like a clamp. Then he kind of moved the branches around, so the foliage was covering the underpants.
‘He didn’t want anyone to see his underpants. That’s all it was. He was hand-washing his underpants, and he was trying to dry them out of sight. He was a modest person. That’s all it was. I thought it was sweet. Better than those louts you see down the street who want to show off their underpants. I made a note to tell Marj, “Your new tenant needs to be shown how to use the clothes line,” but then I never got around to it – the poor kid was gone before I got the chance.’
Reading Group Questions
1. No Place Like Home is written as a thriller but it is also a book about secrets and lies, about strangers, and the dangers of trusting only in what we know. In our hearts, we know that our day-to-day happiness is much more likely to be impacted by a betrayal by somebody we love or by the loss of somebody dear than by a stranger – yet it is strangers we fear. Why?
2. Ali Khan is the stranger at the heart of this book. Who or what does he symbolise?
3. What argument do you think the author was trying to make about our fear of the unknown and our comfort with the familiar when she wrote this book?
4. Why do you think the author decided to make the stranger in this story a refugee? Is there any significance in the fact that he is outcast in his own country as well as in Australia?
5. Do the challenges that Ali Khan faced upon arrival in Australia ring true? Is Australia a welcoming country? Does it need to be?
6. No Place Like Home also raises questions about moral courage, particularly in times of crisis. What significance do you put on the fact that the greatest courage is shown by the youngest people in the group?
7. The book is narrated by a former priest, presumably of the Catholic church. Do priests still have moral authority in Australia? What significance, if any, do you give to the fact that the author decided to make the narrator a former priest?
8. Why did Father Paul have to leave the priesthood after the siege at Surf City? Was it a decision that was coming for him anyway?
9. How well did police on the scene handle the drama? What was the risk in taking a shot at Ali Khan?
10. In the book, Roger Callaghan appears to stand for material success. What is the author saying about appearances in this regard?
11. Who or what does Kimmi K stand for? Is there a statement about class being made here?
12. From start to finish, the author does not give Ali Khan a voice. Why do you think she made that decision?
Also by Caroline Overington
Fiction
Ghost Child
I Came to Say Goodbye
Matilda is Missing
Sisters of Mercy
Can You Keep a Secret?
Non-fiction
Only in New York
Kickback
Last Woman Hanged
Also by Caroline Overington
CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?
‘Why do some people decide to get married when everyone around them would seem to agree that marriage, at least for the two people in question, is a terrifically bad idea?’
The year is 1999, and Lachlan Colbert – Colby – has the world at his feet. He’s got a big job on Wall Street and a sleek bachelor pad in the heart of Manhattan.
With money no object, he and his friends take a trip to Australia to see in the new millennium. And it’s there, on a hired yacht sailing the Whitsundays, that he meets Caitlin.
Caitlin Hourigan has got wild hair and torn shorts – and has barely ever left the small patch of Queensland where she grew up. But Colby is smitten and for Caitlin, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, a blissful future awaits – marriage, a big house, a beautiful little boy.
But nothing is ever as perfect as it seems. And for Lachlan and Caitlin the nightmare is only just beginning . . .
GHOST CHILD
In 1982 Victorian police were called to a home on a housing estate an hour west of Melbourne. There, they found a five-year-old boy lying still and silent on the carpet. There were no obvious signs of trauma, but the child, Jacob, died the next day.
The story made the headlines and hundreds attended the funeral. Few people were surprised when the boy’s mother and her boyfriend went to prison for the crime. Police declared themselves satisfied with the result, saying there was no doubt that justice had been done.
And yet, for years rumours swept the estate and clung like cobwebs to the long-vacant house: there had been a cover-up. The real perpetrator, at least according to local gossip, was the boy’s six-year-old sister, Lauren . . .
Twenty years on, Lauren has created a new life for herself, but details of Jacob’s death begin to resurface and the story again makes the newspapers. As Lauren struggles with the ghosts of her childhood, it seems only a matter of time before the past catches up with her.
I CAME TO SAY GOODBYE
It was four o’clock in the morning. A young woman pushed through the hospital doors. Staff would later say they thought the woman was a new mother, returning to her child – and in a way, she was.
She walked into the nursery, where a baby girl lay sleeping. The infant didn’t wake when the woman placed her gently in the shopping bag she had brought with her. There is CCTV footage of what happened next, and most Australians would have seen it, either on the internet or the news.
The woman walked out to the car park, towards an old Corolla. For a moment, she held the child gently against her brea
st and, with her eyes closed, she smelled her. She then clipped the infant into the car, got in and drove off.
That is where the footage ends. It isn’t where the story ends, however. It’s not even where the story starts.
MATILDA IS MISSING
Garry Hartshorn and Softie Monaghan were never love’s young dream. Not even on their wedding day.
Softie was sophisticated, a career woman, who owned a nice apartment overlooking St Kilda Beach. Garry had a few rough edges, plus one failed marriage and an assortment of jobs under his belt. But Softie’s body clock was ticking, and Garry wanted children . . .
So they got married, and produced the only thing they ever had in common. Matilda.
Now, two years later, their golden-haired child is at the centre of a bitter bitter divorce and custody battle. Both parents insist that her well-being is the only thing they care about. Yet, in truth, Matilda was always the one most likely to become lost.
SISTERS OF MERCY
Snow Delaney was born a generation and a world away from her sister, Agnes.
Until recently, neither even knew of the other’s existence. They came together only for the reading of their father’s will – when Snow discovered, to her horror, that she was not the sole beneficiary of his large estate.
Now Snow is in prison and Agnes is missing, disappeared in the eerie red dust that blanketed Sydney from dawn on 23 September 2009.
With no other family left, Snow turns to crime journalist Jack Fawcett, protesting her innocence in a series of defiant letters from prison. Has she been unfairly judged? Or will Jack’s own research reveal a story even more shocking than the one Snow wants to tell?
Caroline Overington is the Associate Editor of the iconic magazine The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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