Last week I was rung to say my dog was missing. I finished at work as soon as I could, ringing the local council and neighbourhood vet on the way home. Neither had seen anything of him but suggested we post on social media. As my husband and I drove and walked the streets, the messages came in. People were concerned. He was missing from an enclosed yard. Some offered to look, others from further away, shared hope and the Facebook post. The post went everywhere, the last I saw was in Western Australia.
Mid-afternoon, the Vet called. The person who brought him in didn’t leave their name. He was brought from his warm cosy area of safe-keeping towards us. I was ecstatic. He was unperturbed. At the beginning of this year, my 31-year old son moved interstate. Despite the fact he has lived independently from me for 14 years, I still had the yearning to see him safe in his new abode. When he was five years old, I would sometimes hide behind the bushes staring into the school yard hoping that he’d found a friend. I suppose that is what I still hope for him, the kind of friend he could drop in on in the bad times and drop in on in the good.
During the same week, on Manus Island, another mother’s 31-year-old son went missing. He was a man known to have been living with trauma, who had been recommended to have medical attention. His own friends had posted messages to alert Australians to his desperation.
In the last four years, my son became engaged and married. Together he and his wife took on the adventure of moving interstate to new jobs, creating their home and now they’re spending time in Europe. Some of his photos and posts from these years depict a young man working hard, providing enjoyment and leadership. Others depict a young man mad for the girl he has married, at ease in his own skin and having a hell of a good time.
In the last four years, Hamed Shamshiripour had been detained in the prison of the Australian detention system. He was denied the care he needed. A week ago he died.
I think of what he and the other young men imprisoned in off-shore detention centres could have been contributing to our country. I think of what they could have created in their own families and their new communities. But it is not just the waste of these years, it is the awfulness to which these men have been subjected.
I listened to Hamed’s father describing his healthy, adventurous son as he had known him prior to detention. Few things speak so poignantly of the waste of these four years for the men on Manus. I watched the Al Jazeera news with images of the detention centre beaming around the world. I remember when I felt so proud to be Australian. In this system, I feel deep shame.
I am considering how people might have reacted when my dog was taken to the vet clinic if he were denied the treatment he needed, if he were beaten and tormented and kept in isolation from our family for four years. He wasn’t. People joined in the search, the concern was palpable. Once found, he was welcomed and kept safe and reunited with us as soon as possible.
"Hamed Shamshiripour had been detained in the prison of the Australian detention system. He was denied the care he needed. A week ago he died."
If only the same level of concern and care had been shown to Hamed Shamshiripour. A week has gone by; people continue to check how my dog is. I wonder who is checking on the young men on Manus? Hamed’s death has shifted a long way from front page news.
As I read the reports and watched the detention centre footage being beamed around the world, I felt embarrassed, a deep-rooted humiliation, what kind of an Australia are we projecting to the world?
Now I check the news fearfully. Grief and anger and fear of the unknown are a volatile combination. I am looking at the images of children and parents, and desperate young men. I am shocked by the violence of the people in security. I learn that a man has been put in jail for having a camera; another has been moved for medical reasons.
I am watching young teenagers and children who are entitled to be in school, entitled to a childhood. My questions are shifting. I am wanting to know the same answer to the question so many ask of other crimes against humanity, how could this be allowed to happen? How could it continue? But as more days go by, the question I now ask of my country is, what kind of an Australia are we choosing to be?
Poet, Essayist and Funeral Director, Anne Gleeson lives in Terang in the South-West of Victoria. Her third poetry collection Small Acts of Purpose will be released in November.