Although many of the asylum seekers in the building had children, only Youssef had brought his with him. (The others expected to be reunited with their families in Australia.) It’s difficult to imagine how Anoush and Shahla processed the whole experience. My sense was that the thrill of the adventure eclipsed its hardships and hassles. With nothing and no one, except each other, to play with, they kept themselves remarkably well entertained. A feather duster found beneath the sink made for a superb tickling instrument; plastic grocery bags were turned into balloons; the hot-sauce packets, included in every ration of instant noodles, could be squirted on the tabletop to create interesting designs. There was also much to explore. The tower block was a kind of self-sufficient microcity, its four lofty wings flanking a private courtyard with shops and fish fries servicing outdoor tables clustered around a concrete bandstand. Every night, wizened Indonesian men belted out karaoke covers of John Denver and Johnny Cash. There was a Muslim mosque, a Christian church, a Buddhist temple. There were giant roaches and tailless cats to chase. And most delightfully, there was a pool.
As neither of the kids had swimming trunks or a spare pair of clothes, underwear had to suffice. Applying their talents for improvisation, Shahla found a used dish rag they could both share for a towel, while Anoush, with a kitchen knife, removed a length of flexible tubing from the back of our air conditioner (which was broken anyway), repurposing it as a snorkel. Their resourcefulness continued at the pool itself: each day, they seemed to come into possession of some new equipment—a pair of goggles, a bar of soap, an inflatable flotation ring.
While Youssef made the rounds of the rooms, Joel and I would end up watching them at the pool. We were both distressed to see that neither Anoush nor Shahla could really swim.
When I asked Anoush, who had never been on a boat before, whether he was nervous about the journey, he clucked his tongue. “I have no fear,” he said. “I’ll be smiling.”
Their father was less carefree. Not long after we joined them, it became clear that Youssef had no money, and if Joel and I didn’t buy food and water, they would simply go without. Whenever the fleas or heat would wake me in the night, I would find Youssef sitting by the window, staring out at the fires—bright islands of flame and eerily colored smoke—where the slum dwellers were burning trash. Everyone was stressed; the strain of two kids and no cash, however, rendered Youssef especially edgy. He was given to fits of anger and with the slightest provocation could fly into rages at Anoush, as well as at the other asylum seekers, many of whom avoided him.
Then one day Youssef’s family wired money. I was sitting with him in the apartment, smoking, when he got the call. The news transformed him. Beaming with joy, Youssef leapt into the air and began to sing and dance.
That night Joel and I found him in the courtyard drinking with Rashid. Anoush and Shahla ran from shop to shop, swinging bags of candy. When he saw us, Youssef insisted we sit down, then shouted loudly, at no one in particular, for more beer. A group of elderly Indonesian men, playing dominoes nearby, regarded him impatiently. Youssef didn’t notice. He was slumped over the table, doodling on its surface with a permanent marker.
Rashid seemed embarrassed for his friend. “His head is messed up,” he explained. “Waiting here, with his kids, not knowing when we’ll go. It’s hard.”
Youssef nodded glumly.
“My head is messed up, too,” Rashid said. “I’m going crazy. I have two sons in Iran. I haven’t seen them or my wife in a year.”
Rashid said that before Australia, he tried to get to Europe via Greece. He made it from Turkey to Athens, where he was fleeced by a smuggler. Rather than return to Iran, he came to Indonesia. “Every day, they tell us, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow,’” Rashid said. “But tomorrow never arrives.”
Anoush and Shahla appeared and asked Youssef for money. They wanted chips. Youssef pulled out a wad of bills and threw some in their direction. Several fluttered to the ground.
“Beer!” Youssef yelled at a woman passing by. Then he looked guiltily at Rashid, and added: “Please! Thank you!”
Australia’s decision to send all boat people to Papua New Guinea or the Republic of Nauru only compounded everyone’s anxiety. Although no one allowed himself to take it seriously (if he did, he would have no option but to do the unthinkable—give up, go home), the news was never decisively explained away. “It’s a lie to scare people so that they don’t come,” Youssef told me when I brought it up. Another man became agitated when I asked him what he thought. “How can they turn you away?” he demanded. “You put yourself in danger, you take your life in your hand? They can’t.” A third asylum seeker dismissed the policy with a shrug. “It’s a political game,” he told me.
In many ways, he was right. It’s hard to overstate how contentious an issue boat people are in Australian politics. From an American perspective, zealousness on the subject of immigration is nothing unfamiliar. But what makes Australia unique is the disconnect between how prominently boat people feature in the national dialogue, on the one hand, and the actual scale of the problem, on the other. Over the past four years, most European countries have absorbed more asylum seekers, per capita, than Australia—some of them, like Sweden and Liechtenstein, seven times as many. All the same, for more than a decade now, successive Australian governments have fixated on boat people, making them a centerpiece of their agendas.
In the summer of 2001, a Norwegian freighter, the MV Tampa, rescued 433 asylum seekers, almost all of them Afghan, from a stranded fishing boat. Rather than return them to Indonesia, the captain of the Tampa, Arne Rinnan, consented to their demands to be taken to Christmas Island. Australia forbade the ship to enter its territory, and the standoff that ensued led to Australia’s threatening to prosecute Rinnan and Norway’s complaining to the United Nations. John Howard, a conservative prime minister, who, in the midst of a re-election campaign, was trailing his opponent in most of the polls, declared, “It remains our very strong determination not to allow this vessel or its occupants to land in Australia.” When Rinnan, concerned over the welfare of the asylum seekers on his ship, proceeded toward the island anyway, Howard dispatched Australian commandos to board the Tampa and stop it from continuing. The impasse was resolved only when New Zealand and Nauru agreed to accept the asylum seekers instead. Howard’s action was widely popular with voters, and two months later he was re-elected.
Diverting boat people to third countries for processing—albeit with the possibility of someday being resettled in Australia—was subsequently adopted as an official strategy. Under an arrangement popularly known as the Pacific Solution, asylum seekers trying to get to Christmas Island were interdicted by the navy and taken to detention centers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea (both of which rely heavily on Australian aid). The Pacific Solution was denounced by refugee and human rights advocates, who criticized the harsh conditions of the centers and the prolonged periods of time—many years, in some cases—that asylum seekers had to spend in them while their applications were considered. Depression and other mental disorders proliferated; incidents of self-harm were common. In 2003, detainees on Nauru protested with a weekslong hunger strike, during which some of them sewed their lips together. Last September, Arne Rinnan, the captain of the Tampa, told an interviewer that he had recently received a letter from Nauru, written by one of the Afghans he had rescued. According to Rinnan, the man said that “I should have let him die in the Indian Ocean, instead of picking him up.”
After the Labor Party regained control of Parliament in 2007, and the new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, abolished the Pacific Solution—his immigration minister condemning it as “neither humane nor fair”—the U.N. and just about every other organization involved with refugees lauded the move. Rudd lost his leadership of the Labor Party in 2010, and his successor, Julia Gillard, resurrected the offshore-processing strategy. When Rudd returned to power in 2013, apparently having learned his lesson, he kept Gillard’s policies in place. It was in the context of a
nother re-election bid in July that Rudd eliminated the possibility of any boat person ever settling in Australia. “I understand that this is a very hard-line decision,” he acknowledged in a national address. He seemed anxious to make sure that voters understood it too.
Rudd’s conservative opponent, Tony Abbott, would not be outdone. One of the two rallying cries that had come to define Abbott’s campaign was “Stop the boats!” (The other, referring to carbon-emissions penalties, was “Axe the tax!”) Proclaiming the influx of boat people a “national emergency,” Abbott proposed an even tougher scheme than Rudd’s, dubbed “Operation Sovereign Borders.” Among other proactive measures, this militaristic plan called for deploying warships to turn asylum seekers back at sea, before they reached Australian shores.
The elections were scheduled to be held less than a week after the night I found Youssef and Rashid drinking in the courtyard. Whichever candidate prevailed, one thing was certain: neither Youssef nor Rashid, nor Anoush nor Shahla, were going to get to the place they believed they were going. Rashid would never be reunited with his wife and sons in some quaint Australian suburb; Youssef would never see his children “get a position” there; Anoush would never become an Australian policeman; Shahla would never benefit from a secular, Western education. What they had to look forward to instead—after the perilous voyage, and after months, maybe years, locked up in an isolated detention center—was resettlement on the barren carcass of a defunct strip mine, more than 70 percent of which is uninhabitable (Nauru), or resettlement on a destitute and crime-ridden island nation known for its high rates of murder and sexual violence (Papua New Guinea).
How do you tell that to someone who has severed himself utterly from his country, in order to reach another? It was impossible. They wouldn’t believe it.
Joel and I were walking along the bay, where dozens of residents from the slums had gathered to watch backhoes on floating barges scoop refuse out of the shallows and deposit it onto the banks, when Youssef called my cellphone and shouted at us to get back to the tower—we were leaving. In the apartment, we found two young Iranian women, Farah and Rima, sitting at the table with large backpacks, while Youssef hurriedly shoved dates and lemons—thought to alleviate seasickness—into a canvas messenger bag. I noticed, too, that he was bringing the inflatable flotation ring Anoush and Shahla had found at the pool.
An Iranian man named Ayoub appeared and told us our car was waiting. By the deferential way Youssef and the women treated him—and by his assertive self-possession, in contrast to our rather panicky excitement—I gathered that Ayoub was a smuggler. He wore a military haircut and a handlebar mustache, and his sleeveless shirt displayed the words “Life is hard” tattooed in English across an impressively sculptured left deltoid.
We all crammed into a new car with tinted windows, driven by a squat Indonesian man with long rapier-like pinkie nails that tapered into points, who belched every couple of minutes and chain-smoked flavored cigarettes. Anoush and Shahla were elated. As we pulled onto the highway, they could not stop talking about the boat and the sea. The women adored them instantly. Farah hauled Anoush onto her lap, while Rima set to braiding Shahla’s wild hair. The kids received this affection like sustenance, with a kind of delirious gratitude and appetite. It made me remember that since arriving in Jakarta, they had not only been without their mother but without any mother.
We stopped at three gas stations along the way and linked up with other drivers. By the time we made it out of the city, several hours later, we led a convoy of six identical cars, all packed with asylum seekers. It seemed a bit conspicuous, and sure enough, as we climbed a narrow, winding road up a densely forested mountain, people came out to watch whenever we passed a shop or village. It was maybe 8 or 9 at night when our driver got a call that caused him to accelerate abruptly and career down a side road that led into the woods. The other cars followed. Pulling to a stop, shutting off the lights and engine, our driver spun around and hissed: “Shh! Police.”
He got out to confer with his colleagues, and when he returned, it was in a hurry. Recklessly whipping around blind turns, we retreated down the mountain in the direction from which we came. Emerging from one sharp bend, we encountered a dark SUV blocking the way. A siren whined; blue lights flashed. We slammed to a halt. A police officer in civilian clothes and a black baseball cap approached the driver’s side. He peered in through the open window, registering the women and children. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he reeled back and smacked our driver hard and square in the face.
With the SUV behind us, we returned to the turnoff for the side road. The other five cars were there, surrounded by several police vehicles and a four-wheel-drive truck. A crowd had gathered. It was hard to tell what was happening. Some of the officers were taking pictures of the license plates and asylum seekers, others appeared to be joking affably with the drivers. Everyone was making calls on cellphones. At one point, our driver stuck his head in the window and rubbed his thumb and fingers together. “Money, money,” he said. But the next instant he disappeared again.
Eventually, with a police car ahead of us and the truck bringing up the rear, we continued along the road. It was useless to try to get an explanation from our driver, who, in a torpor of self-pity, only muttered to himself and stroked a red mark on his cheek. When Rima got hold of Ayoub, he said not to worry, Hajji Sahib was taking care of it.
We were taken to a police station, in the city of Sukabumi. There, an older, bespectacled man in army fatigues and a beret seemed to be in charge. Once more, all the drivers were pulled out of their cars, pictures were taken, phone calls were made. After about an hour, with the same escort in front and behind, our convoy was on the move again. It’s hard to say for how long we drove or where we finally stopped: all I could make out were a couple of shuttered storefronts on an otherwise empty road. Curiously, when I looked out the rear window, every police vehicle save one was turning around and heading back toward Sukabumi.
The sole remaining officer, a young man in a tan uniform, leaned against a chain-link fence, smoking a cigarette, apparently uninterested in us. Soon the asylum seekers began getting out of their cars. After the officer watched with indifference as a group of Afghan teenagers briskly walked away, everyone started flagging down trucks and hopping into communal passenger vans. When a large commuter bus happened by, the officer signaled for it to stop. Those of us who hadn’t yet absconded piled on.
I found myself sitting toward the front of the bus with an Iraqi family from Baghdad—a young woman in a hijab, her husband, father-in-law, and three children.
“Where are we going?” the Iraqi woman said in English.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Someone asked the driver.
“Bogor,” he said.
“Where’s Bogor?” the Iraqi woman said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
It turned out to be the end of the line. When the bus stopped, about 30 asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan got out. No one quite knew what to do. It was nearly dawn, and everything in Bogor was closed. We all walked to the highway—a motley, exhausted crew, carrying backpacks and plastic bags with food and clothes—and started hailing taxis. Youssef, the children, Rima, Farah, Joel, and I managed to persuade a commuter with a minivan to take us back to the tower block for $20. The sun was coming up by the time we got there. The apartment was still filthy. It still stunk. It was still hot. Youssef lit a pot of water for the noodles.
A few days later, Joel and I were on our way to one of the shops downstairs when a young Middle Eastern man we had never seen before approached us. “Come with me,” he said.
We followed him to the courtyard, where we found Ayoub sitting at one of the tables, absorbed in a hearty lunch.
“Get your bags and the apartment key,” Ayoub told me, dropping a chicken bone onto his plate and loudly sucking the grease off his fingers, one at a time, from thumb to pinkie.
When we got up to the a
partment and I told Youssef the news, he only nodded. The reaction was not what I expected. “Ayoub is here,” I repeated. “We’re leaving.”
“Did he say us too?” Youssef asked. “Or just you?”
I didn’t understand. “We’re all going together, of course.”
Youssef seemed unconvinced and made no move to pack. A few minutes later, Hajji Sahib called me. I stepped into the hall.
“Are you with the Iranian family?” he said.
“Yes. We’re almost ready.”
“Ayoub is already gone,” Hajji Sahib said. “You have to take a taxi to another place. And you have to leave the Iranians there. They can’t come. There is a problem with their money.”
Back in the apartment, I found Youssef at the stove. He had put Shahla in the shower. Anoush was watching cartoons.
“What’s going on?” I said.
Youssef shook his head. When I told him Joel and I had to go alone, without them, there was no objection or rebuke; however miserable, Youssef was reconciled to what was happening, and I realized he must have seen it coming. He lit a cigarette and lay down on the mattress. Shahla was still in the shower. Anoush, I could tell, hadn’t missed a thing. His eyes, though, stayed fastened on the TV.
We took a taxi to a much nicer building on the opposite side of Jakarta. A tall, skinny Iranian in his early 20s met us in the lobby and took us to the top floor. In the apartment, we found Farah and Rima sitting with three Iranian men around a coffee table with a row of cellphones on it. The women greeted us warmly and introduced one of the men, Siya, as the “boss.” Muscular and shirtless, with intricate tattoos of feathered wings spread across his chest, Siya was busy fashioning a sheath for a long wood-handled knife out of folded magazine pages and rubber bands.
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