Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons: A Midrash Methodology 9811635706, 9789811635700

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Devorah Wainer

Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons A Midrash Methodology

Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons

Devorah Wainer

Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons A Midrash Methodology

Devorah Wainer University of Sydney Sydney, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-981-16-3570-0 ISBN 978-981-16-3571-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Dedicated to my sister, Hilary Wainer, who embodies being for the other with kindness, integrity and generosity.

Acknowledgements

I want to acknowledge that this book was written on the unceded land of the Gadigal People of the Eora nation. As such I am paying my respects to the traditional custodians of the country on which I work. It takes a village to raise a child—and also to grow a book. In the beginning, there was Stevan Segal who, in your profound, quiet manner, urged me to write this book even when my confidence floundered. Bill Simmons, friend and academic extraordinaire, with whom I connected at a Levinas conference almost 2 decades ago. Thank you for trusting me with your students during my visits to Arizona and believing in me when I lost faith in my own abilities. Also to Monica Casper, a prodigious scholar in her own right, and your daughters for so generously opening your home to me. Susan Banki, I am so glad I know you, for championing the Midrash methodology when it was a fledgling, and mostly because you are a total mensch. I am deeply grateful to my reviewers for your time reading and your valuable feedback. When I questioned the potential value of this book, I re-read your words that energised and gave me purpose. Rav Girji Mordechai, I am grateful for the spaces you opened for me to extend my passion for and commitment to Levinas. On the topic of Levinas, I extend huge gratitude to Richard Cohen for including me in the Levinas Summer Schools. They have been akin to a hybrid of pilgrimages and oases for me. I am indebted to Simone (nee Levinas) and George Hansel for the time we shared in your home in Paris exploring my understandings of the philosopher and my nascent propositions for this book. I want to acknowledge my friend Judy MacLallen who shared her food with me on the pavement outside Villawood Detention Center when we were too tired and downhearted to walk the few meters to our cars. Thanks for our stimulating conversations and our sense of kinship that continues today. Lyn Chaikin, my appreciation for responding to my request to go ‘inside’. Your open heart, cheerful nature and sage wisdom is truly valued by me. My smart, caring GP, Louisa Jones, who assembled a team of specialists and kept me alive at times when my health ebbed low. I say: Thank You. vii

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My family and friends, our Kabbalah study group and the Thursday Circle who for too long and too often have heard me say: ‘I can’t … I’m writing’. I adore all of you, and am grateful for your love, understanding, patience and the many ways you’ve supported and encouraged me. With wisdom you knew exactly when to encourage me from my writing bubble—my hobbit hole. My appreciation goes to Shoshy Brenner for our writing retreats that gave me the opportunity for immersion and to Donna Sife-Jacobs and Eve Reed for our writing group that contained and sustained my writing rhythm. Thank you Ros Horin for your devotion and work that included me and for your generosity in permitting me to use your scripts. Thanks Ngarita and Hassan for your deeply moving poems and your permission to publish. My gratitude goes to two Angelas. Angela Gormley who read and commented with insight on the first draft and Angela Drury for editing the first draft with verve and your excellent command of language. My appreciation goes to my students who have contributed directly to this book. Neha Samantha D’Souza, Hugh Tuckfield, Matt Warren and Benji Samuels. You rock! Together with my Human Rights and Social Justice students, local and global who inspire and challenge me to my better self. Your eyes shine brightly with the vision for beings to flourish in a finer life. This book is for you. Alexander Massey my brother (in-law), Charles Foster and Helen Beer my Oxford academic clan, your insightful conversations and delightful attitudes to my ramblings have enabled this project to surge and be better than it would have been without you. My deep gratitude goes to my magnificent daughter, Chanah Wainer, for her own inspiring research, who is the family foody and happily feeds me, who is unfailingly curious about my work and inadvertently teaches me to continuously open my heart in being with the Other. And my daughter Kim Wainer—in your absence I continue learning how to love. I miss you! I want to acknowledge those persons who are present in this book. Rather than be further tortured, traumatised and die, you leave home, family and country, some of you set out as young children without family or friends. Your life stories are my impulse for which I daily get out of bed. I wish you had never suffered a day in your lives and that Human Rights wasn’t a necessary thing. But then we would never have met each other. We shared dark, painful hours, as well as light laughter-filled moments that bear testimony to friendship itself. This book is for you in the hope that scholars, researchers and students will use it to improve the outcomes of your journeys and new lives. In the words of Emmanuel Levinas z”l: One has to think of the worlds which are evoked by each image of the text, and it is in this way that the text begins to speak.

Prelude

Prelude Abstract Setting the Scene—A Taster of the Pages to Come This prelude introduces the reader to the style of narrative that is interwoven within an interdisciplinary theoretical frame. Bridges between philosophy, methodology, human rights including migration and refugee studies offer diverse frames of knowledge with which the reader, scholar and teacher may choose to engage. Together the narratives, epistemology and theory are crafted to be the research methodology. Like a tapestry is complete only after the last stitch is knotted to form the whole picture, so too is the coherent picture and pattern of the Midrash methodology complete, only after the last page of the book is read. Such a tapestry as and of research may enchant and inspire the reader. A small component of the research data that follows speaks truth to power. As such some pages may be disturbing. C. S. Lewis says that he reads to know he is not alone. I write to know that we, every actor in this complex global multi-spatial human rights drama, are not alone.

Setting the Scene—A Taster of the Pages to Come This prelude introduces you, the reader, to the style of narrative that will be interwoven with the theoretical framing for this book. Like a tapestry is complete only after the last stitch is knotted to form the whole picture, so too is the coherent picture of the Midrash methodology complete only after the last page is read. The complete terrain of this interdisciplinary book includes bridges between philosophy, methodology, migration and refugee studies, thereby offering diverse frames of knowledge with which the reader, scholar and teacher may choose to engage.

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I write this book not only about the Midrash methodology; mostly, it is to tell the truth as well as I can. You may be touched in a way that leaves you feeling deeply connected to the theory, poetry and stories on the pages. The movements between the three are like movements of a symphony or a dance to which you are invited. The tapestry may enchant and inspire you. Some of the material will disturb you; not all are explicated. Metaphoric spaces are left for the reader to bring personal interpretation, meaning and understanding. A brilliant author can make the mundane world exquisitely interesting. I am not that author. Instead, given to me are the worlds in this book that are already interesting, wise and beautiful. C. S. Lewis reads to know that he is not alone. I write to know that we are not alone. This method of research is alchemical. To be ethical and creative is to include the author-researcher and, in this book, the asylum-seeking-refugees,1 who have never asked me to write about them. I research and write for myself. It would be too patronising to write about or for any invisibilised and silenced other. These stories are not self-indulgent. They purposefully and rigorously lead us to knowledge that otherwise would have remained hidden—lost to policy, education, citizens and archival collections.

Talking of Terrain … Every asylum-seeking refugee I meet—behind the wires, on the islands, in the deserts— is like my Lampedusa. They open spaces I did not know were within, traversing them, unmasking myself.

I have recently returned home from the island of Lampedusa: the last trace of Italian terrain before the African coast. Asylum seekers leaving the African coast via Libya crowd onto inadequate boats and cross the treacherous Mediterranean Sea to reach Lampedusa, the gateway to Europe. Those who live to make the crossing are received with medical attention and taken to an open reception centre. The mayor of that already economically declining Italian municipality embodied the ethical ‘welcome’ or ‘hospitality’ by resisting Rome’s policy of returning them or sending them to lock-up detention centres elsewhere in Italy. I was compelled to know what made her so different from other leaders, such as those in Australia, who were so punitive and who reviled asylum-seeking-refugees. Australia incarcerates men, women and children who arrive by boat. How does Madam Mayor engender the 1

In the face of cruel and punishing policies and treatment to which asylum seekers are subjected, a brief delineation of terminology and context is required. First, my corrective linguistic turn. The designation asylum seeker has become a misnomer loaded with negative register. An asylum seeker is a person looking for protection because they fear persecution or they have experienced torture, trauma or human rights violations. Not every asylum seeker meets the legal criteria to be considered a refugee. However, within the context of international refugee law, every refugee is initially to be an asylum seeker. To create language that is ethically sensitive to asylum seekers, I instantiate the hyphenated term asylum-seeking refugee. This newly created word is used throughout this book.

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political will of her citizens, find the budget and make possible the open reception centre? The islanders told me their stories of responsibility, healing and care, as did the new arrivals. The 21 square kilometres of island has opened space for the most disenfranchised of humans. Engaging with the Lampedusian hearts that welcome the strangers soothed my soul that ached from the punitive Australian politics. Now it is time to make sense of, to integrate, to witness, by writing. Here I am, in an ecovillage not far from Sydney. Discreet pathways between the luscious vegetation of acacias, grevilleas and banksias together with stringybark and scribbly gum trees have the effect of gathering me into their peaceful orb. I have been away too long from dwelling in the orb. Here, I am coming back to my natural self. The deeper into myself I shift, the more expansive I feel. I am filling up inside, becoming the Oros Man. In South Africa, he was the Oros Man. It took me a while, and many blank faces, after migrating to Australia to learn that here he is the Michelin Man. In fact, I am a woman. Is my expanded self the Michelin Woman? Maybe I am Po, the Teletubby children’s TV character? The warmth of today is still promissory in the early morning. Air moving, not quite a breeze, around my bare arms has me undecided if I am chilly or delighting in the fresh temperatures before the heat. Either way, I am not writing. And I came here to write. In my treehouse-like chalet, all is quiet except for the bird calls. Earlier, I heard the kookaburras laughing. Now, I am enchanted by the flash of the rosella’s bright colours as the sun catches their wings. The birds here are immanent. Floating towards me, from afar, I hear a child’s voice—transcendent. The white sands and the azure and royal blue ocean are out of sight. Yet I know they are just over the road. I can smell both sea and sand. My mind’s eye brings the alluring beach into clear focus. ‘Stop it’, I say. ‘Stop calling to me’, as if it is nature’s fault that I can hear the crunching virgin beach sand. I imagine myself strolling, feeling the waves come to me and licking my ankles before they recede again. I move in deeper, lifting one foot after the other. Now my thighs tighten against the morning cool water. ‘Stop it!’ I berate my wandering mind. I came here to write. In spring this year, I went to the island to research and write. Life on the island beckoned then, like now, calling me away from my sunlit, air-conditioned room. Willingly, I became riveted to the experience about which I now plan to write. The absence of luxurious foliage made the island feel barren. This island feels desolate until my jet-lagged stroll from the air-conditioned hotel brings me to the colourful, quaint harbour with its bobbing fishing boats. I stand at the edge of the water. In this slow motion, my thoughts are more still than the anchored fishing vessels. Even the ubiquitous iPhone camera is left consigned to my jeans pocket. I am floating in delight; dissolving in the heat; tuning in to the reds, blues and golden yellows of the little vessels on the unbelievably blue waters. Time is other in this living experience. Looking out from my easy, unhurried self, my first impression of the island as barren was melting away. Barren was only an illusion of my limited perception and my way of rushing to judgement. The beauty of the island’s rocky outcrops, pure blue pools and ocean beaches is breathtaking. The paintbox doorways and paths of

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the village inspire my interiority. The vast oceanic canvasses of royal and powder blues, swirling and melding with electric turquoise, invoke my poetic self as would my lover. Quivering with visceral pleasure, I go walkabout. I did not come to this island of Lampedusa intending to relish the sun and sea. I had set out with very different intentions. When our flight from Rome landed on Lampedusa, I had no knowledge of the intrinsic natural beauty awaiting me. Emerging from the plane, clumsily walking down the stairs to the tarmac, I gasped as the heatwaves gagged me. Observing my fellow travellers rushing to enter the small airport building seemed to make sense to me. I took the hint that inside would be well air-conditioned. Like so much that I was about to encounter here, even the rush to the door was for reasons other than I had thought. Everyone continued rushing through the airport. No one seemed to be waiting at the conveyor for their luggage. I knew they had luggage. Earlier today, at a ridiculously early hour, we all stood, some crumpled, some half asleep, in the baggage check-in queue at Fiumicino Airport in Rome. I recognised the young, chic couple from Rome who were following the others to the airport exit. Bemused, desiring to quickly attune to the customs of this small island, I followed. And there they were, a step outside the automated airport exit doors, crowding onto the small pavement. There was the woman who amply filled her very short skirt; the family with adorable kids; the plump, middle-aged man with dyed black hair and gold neck chains; the fashionable, good-looking—very good-looking—young man with a scarf so casually and carefully thrown around his neck. There they stood, chatting or alone. Their urgent need to smoke after the 1-hour, smoke-free flight united them with a common purpose outside the airport on the pavement. I am ashamed to say that in a perfunctory manner, I quickly decided that I had landed on an unhealthy, backward island. Superiority mingled with anxiety about finding the ‘health’ food that I eat preoccupied me as I claim my luggage and return to the hot, smoke-filled pavement. Despite my new concerns, the prearranged vehicle and driver arrived. As we drove to my hotel, panic began to rise. The driver spoke no English. If the driver meeting the ‘tourist’ does not speak English, the newly arrived, silent fear that caused pumping blood to sound in my ears was ‘will anyone speak English’? While planning my research trip to Lampedusa, I was single-minded about finding contacts and a network. Then the logistics of actually getting there overtook the warnings of colleagues and family not to go. I landed with no guidebook or knowledge of the language. Instinct and a pounding heart was all I had as we approached my hotel. In no time at all, I realised I did not need a tourist guidebook to inform me that my hotel was only a bed and breakfast. In fact, no colleagues, language or book could have adequately prepared me. To be on Lampedusa, I needed a guidebook to unmask myself. I needed a smart guide to be open and vulnerable—a directory to dispense with hubristic judgements about places and people.

Mark Tredinnick writes because writing reminds the writer (and the reader) why we live. We write to keep telling the truth. In his wonderful The Little Red Writing Book (Tredinnick 2006), he calls on us to write because it seems like a better thing to do, in every possible way, than rioting or telling a bunch of lies and calling it politics.

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‘Write because, who knows, you may hear and speak a phrase that just may save a life or change a mind’ (149). Lampedusa writes music as it conjures colours of radiant beauty for my soul. Island tracks appear as they open up to spaces I need to traverse. Here, I connect, laugh, embrace and, yes, cry with locals. People who are perfect for my research storying. All that I need and desire are woven into the tapestry of events, people and places that, moment by moment, magically open up to me.

The Tree—Foe or Friend? Within the first few weeks of meeting inside Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, I learned that Rami (name changed) had no preparation at all for his approaching court hearing. Cautious not to distress him further, I asked if he would appreciate some support. If so, still being sensitive to his situation, I asked whether he would like me to help, hastening to add—almost without an interrupting breath—that I had no legal knowledge but would do whatever it takes. With eyes to the ground, the gentle Rami nodded, almost imperceptibly. Three years inside had institutionalised the once feisty Rami. The courageous one-time hospitality student who, after escaping increasing torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein’s secret police, fled on foot from Baghdad through Northern Iraq into oblivion … until he reached Australia and entered the oblivion of the Villawood detention centre. Three—sometimes four—times a week, I undertook the almost intolerable drive to the Villawood detention centre. The queues, the loneliness I felt, the time away from home, the money not spent on my children but used for petrol, food for Rami and tissues for my tears all seemed to culminate in the throat-constricting tension on the day that Rami’s judgement was due to be passed down by the High Court of Australia. Every cell in my body was on high alert. Meditating to stay calm, centred and focused, I knew my role was either to celebrate or to commiserate, always leaving the central stage of the drama to Rami. Misgivings flooded me. Had I explained clearly? Or had I failed the test of courage: making sure he knew that if he failed, he was in the most vulnerable position of all his years in detention. Asylum seekers are most vulnerable to deportation when they are not in the middle of a legal process. The day was long. Tick-tock … tick-tock … tick-tock … And suddenly, unannounced, the phone rang. ‘Oh, no—where had I put my mobile. Please don’t stop ringing’. ‘Devorah’? One word, the tone of his voice, and I knew the result. ‘Would you like me to come now’? ‘No’. ‘WHY’? I ask myself. Rami always wants me to come out whenever I can. ‘No’—from him today—is not good. ‘Is someone else coming to be with you’?

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Prelude ‘No’. This is very not good I thought. Rami was never monosyllabic. His Middle Eastern manners were exquisite, always dancing the ‘hello dance’. ‘How are you? How are your children? How are Mummy and Daddy (my parents)?’ And back to: ‘So, you are good’?

Not today. This is bad. I shivered. ‘I’ll come. By the time I get there it will be visitors time’. ‘I don’t want to make you upset’.

I was wrong. Rami as always was considerate of the other person. Knowing how devastated, how deathly he felt, he did not want me to see him in this state. He did not want to upset me. How could my heart not be pulled? How could I not respect this young man who, in his moment of deepest despair, thought of someone other than himself? And so, I set off on the well-trodden way to the Villawood detention centre,2 one more distressed than ever before by the slow-moving traffic. Trying to control the cascade of questions—no answers possible while driving. How bad is he? Will I be able to cope? Shall I reveal the depth of my disappointment or must I be strong? Driving, and berating myself for the insinuating thought, ‘Now, I will have to continue driving out to Villawood detention centre and going through the wire into the Villawood detention centre’s visitors’ yard of surveillance’.3 I was tired. And then I saw him showing his security identity to the guard at the gate of the wire that divides the visitors’ yard of surveillance and the Stage 2 living—living?— quarters. For the first time in all these years of visits, Rami wanted to sit down at the bottom of the visitors’ yard, indicating the big tree near the fence. Internal alarm bells went off. Rami never wanted to sit down at the bottom of the visitor’s yard, at the big tree near the fence. Had I misinterpreted his ‘I don’t want to upset you’? Did he have some plan? He would not be the first … How long did we sit in silence, the white bucket chairs facing each other, our knees touching? Silence. What could I say? How could I open up the conversation? I waited for a cue from him. None came. Instead, Rami sat looking up at the big tree. I sat facing him, trying not to look too intensely at him.

My nerves were wracked. I had reached the moment when I thought I knew what he was thinking. ‘What are you thinking’? I finally broke the silence, imagining that I knew the words that would follow my question. Silence. His big brown eyes, now sunken so far that they were hardly there, looked at me, momentarily, and then back up at the tree. Silence.

2

Detainees always referred to the detention centre as Villawood detention centre. Keeping faith with their chosen linguistic style ‘Villawood detention centre’ is always written in full. 3 Visitors yard of surveillance is written in full throughout the book to honour the manner in which detainees spoke.

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‘Are you thinking bad thoughts? ... We can work this out ... There are more approaches we can take ... We’ll prepare a submission for the Minister’. I was casting out a line into the abyss, trying to intercept an event that was already taking place. ‘I mean ... I know it’s bad. But … you are precious, Rami. One day this will end, just not today’. I paused, halting to find more words to stop what might be, as my voice scaled the notches of my desperation. ‘No, Devorah’. His very quiet, accented voice sounded for the first time under the big tree, near the fence in the Villawood detention centre’s visitors’ yard of surveillance. ‘No, Devorah. I am not thinking any bad thoughts. I know what you mean. No’. ‘What then’? ‘I am praying to my God. I am asking my God, when it is my time? When will my God remember me’? Spirit is not in the I, but between I and Thou. It is not like the blood that circulates in you, but like the air in which you breathe. Man lives in the spirit, if he is able to respond to his Thou. He is able to if he enters into relation with his whole being. Only in virtue of his power to enter into relation is he able to live in the spirit. (Buber 1958, 23)

References Buber, Martin. 1958. I and Thou, Collectors Edition. Translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Tredinnick, Mark. 2006. The Little Red Writing Book. Sydney.

Contents

1

Introduction: Interweaving Research, Refugees and Rights . . . . . . . Tools for Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stories Taking on Mythical Proportions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Opening for the Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Method, Theory and Substantive Content Are Iteratively Interwoven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 6 6 9 10 12

Part I 2

The Marginalised Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Parallels and Similarities (Only a Few of the Many) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15 17 22

3

History of the Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Hunch and the Idiosyncratic Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aneu Logou—Without Reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Questions Across Ontological Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Writing the Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Wedding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23 23 24 25 28 30 34

4

New Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Critical Theory: The Linguistic Turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ubuntu—To Save a Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . You Gonna Hear from Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chain of Alarm Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Chain of Indifference Continues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical Relating: A Levinasian Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poetry in Supermax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37 37 39 41 43 43 44 46 49

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Contents

Part II 5

Contextualising the Need for a Levinasian Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Other (Autrui)—The Face (Visage) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Australian Detention Regime: Disconnection of Rights from Policy . . . Disconnections in Darwin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Old Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The New Map: Face to Face as Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53 55 56 57 63 65 66

6

The Ethical Interruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ethical Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hineni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘Hineni—Here I am’ Is Not Descriptive; It Is Presentational . . . . . . . ‘Hineni—Here I am’ Is Not a Statement of Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘Hineni—Here I am’ Is Not a Passive Response; It Is a Vital Act . . . ‘Hineni—Here I Am’ Initiates ‘The Face’ From the Wholly Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘Hineni—Here I Am’ as Action-Oriented Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

69 74 76 77 77 77 78 78 80

7

Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meaning, Understanding, Communicating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Hebrew Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81 81 83 84 85

8

Who Is Speaking and Why? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Experiencing Prior to Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Once Upon a Rainy Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

87 87 88 93

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Midrash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Why Midrash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

10 Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Principle One: Midrash Is Relational . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Principle Two: Midrash Is Phenomenological . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Principle Three: Midrash Is Hermeneutical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Principle Four: Midrash Represents the Unpresentable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Principle Five: Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

103 103 103 103 104 104 105 107

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Part III 11 Putting It All Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Midrashic Phenomenological Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Am Bothered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Reflect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Write . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Windmills of My Mind: My Story Becomes Midrash . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

111 111 114 117 118 119 122

12 Sense-Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Simultaneous Iterative Cycles of Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Entering the Villawood Detention Centre: Resonances Across Space and Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Reflect. I Read. I Write-Reflexively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Tension Awakened . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Remember . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Reflect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Write Reflexively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Read . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Dining Room at DAL 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

123 123 125 126 128 128 130 134 138 139 141

Part IV 13 Boundaries, Spaces and Lacuna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Analyse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Space One: Sinister Alarm Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trigger Warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alarm Signal 1: Indifference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alarm Signal 2: Rhetoric and Doublespeak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alarm Signal 3: Mechanisms for Reducing the Human to Mere Existence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alarm Signal 4: Human Commodities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alarm Signal 5: Numbing to All the Alarm Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Space Two: Ethical Signals for Quiet Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical Signal 1: Acting with Moral Conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical Signal 2: Voice … Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical Signal 3: Hineni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical Signal 4: Engaging with the Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical Signal 5: Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethical Signal 6: Responsibility to the Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

145 145 148 148 150 152 156 162 166 171 177 178 179 181 183 187

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Contents

Poetry That Is Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Space Three: The In-Between . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The In-Between is the Liminal Space Where Boundaries Collapse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In-Between . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

190 190 191 194 195

14 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Appendix A: Cherry Ripe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Appendix B: Hineni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Appendix C: The Garden of Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Appendix D: Through the Wire Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Appendix E: Jewish, Muslim Tea for Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Appendix F: Amal Basry’s Testimony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Chapter 1

Introduction: Interweaving Research, Refugees and Rights

This book is about a phenomenological research methodology that allows narrative, creative writing, poetry, witnessing and hermeneutics, with examples from my own research in the fields of human rights, refugees, asylum seekers and philosophy. The Midrash methodology extends the boundaries of traditional qualitative research methods, offering a new pathway for knowledge creation that includes messy text … where all humans are worthy of dignity and sacred status. By extension, the methodology is uniquely suited to actors (research subjects) who have little to no agency: invisible and with no voice. Even before we reach this introduction, the prelude introduces the reader to the narrative style that is the basis of the methodology. On leaving the Theatre is inserted without explication or making connections, as will be other poetry in this book, so that you, the reader, have space to connect and make meaning with the text. ‘On Leaving the Theatre’ by Edward Bond Do not leave the theatre satisfied Do not be reconciled Have you been entertained? Laughter that’s not also an idea Is cruel To make the play the writer used god’s scissors Whose was the pattern? The actors rehearsed with care Have they moulded you to their shape? Has the lighting man blinded you? The designer dressed your ego? You cannot live on our wax fruit Leave the theatre hungry For Change. (Bond) © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_1

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Fig. 1.1 An iconic photo of Levinas with expressive, open face and outstretched arm. Source Photographed by Bracha L. Ettinger in the framework of a project for a book of Coversation. Paris, 1991. https://www.flickr.com/photos/bracha-ettinger/124819601/in/album-720575941 01327264/ (open source)

Alternatively, some poems within the text are performative of the text itself. An example is the poem Summer within the text of the Midrash ‘Cherry Ripe’ (see Appendix A). The research method that will be detailed in this book is for working with marginalised people based on the philosophy of the French–Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) (Fig. 1.1). The thinking of the researcher, when researching, is underpinned by the ethics of Levinas—an ethics for The Other. To fully expand and discuss Levinas’s complex philosophy is outside the ambit of this book. Levinas wrote philosophy for philosophers as if he was in conversation with them. This book extracts from a broad range of his work for the practical purpose of underpinning our research methodology. To simply thematise his work—such as his concepts of face, responsibility, language and even the Other—is impossible. He is a complex thinker whose ideas interconnect and nest within each other. Interconnecting and nesting is the model in which this book has been written and could be read (see Chaps. 6 and 7 for a deep dive into Levinas). As conversation builds organically, as ideas nest and interconnect, so too are the contents of this book scaffolded in a non-linear style. Levinas’s contribution to Western thinking profoundly shifts the first principle of inquiry away from a starting point of ontology to relational ethics with the Other. Consequentially, our method of inquiry shifts from reason and rhetoric, logic and argument to a method of knowledge creation that emerges from human relationships. With our lens focused on relating

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more specifically an ‘inescapable’ relating that is our responsibility with the Stranger, or the Other, the researcher avoids becoming an agent for the invisible and voiceless others. But wait … I am rushing ahead of myself. The focus of this book is relational. What can we learn—come to know—from the relationship between the actors, the spaces, the policies? Narratives, cameos, poetry, theatre, fragments and more-complete stories are heavily relied upon throughout this book to exemplify both the method and the substantive subject. Our theory of a relational phenomenology is intrinsic to the multilayered research methodology that has inspired rich insights into the worlds of asylum-seeking-refugees. We do not start with all the questions that will be addressed in the research. Both questions and answers evolve iteratively, in the case of my research fields, to enlighten the daily lives and experiences of the otherwise inaccessible incarcerated asylum seekers. Traversing boundaries, borders and bridges, answers evolve dynamically at the nexus of theory, method and substantive topics to, in turn, present new knowledge. This book itself is written to model the Midrash methodology. This interdisciplinary method of research is well suited to any discipline, field or topic of inquiry comprising subjects who are othered—strangers; the marginalised. As an example, a former supervisee writes of the Midrash methodology in his thesis titled ‘“Man, I Just Need a Job”: Serving People Experiencing Homelessness in an Economic-Focused Society’: The methodology utilised in this project is not based upon the projected opinions of others. It is based on the writer’s own experiences and focuses primarily on the knowledge and critical perspective to be gleaned from conversation …. It has been developed as a way of critically addressing and researching social justice issues. (Warren, 2011, 22)

I would be fascinated to hear from any scholars, students or authors who choose to use the methodology for a diverse cohort of research subjects. Think broadly about your context and opportunities. Think about that which excites you. As the Midrash methodology is suited to those with little agency, organisations may not readily come to mind. To extend the bridges and pathways of interdisciplinary research, I include two examples from the unlikely suitors in organisation and business. The first vignette is for those readers who perhaps have already conducted more traditional data gathering, such as interviews and/or focus groups. The second is about frontline staff who are invisibilised and feel disenfranchised. The cameo that will follow is of John, a security guard. A major global telecommunication company engaged us to work with its leadership team. Their brief was clear. Yet my initial contact with the leadership team illuminated the complex issues that the brief (from the executives) did not address. After interviewing them in a more traditional method, I wrote Midrashim1 to unfold the complex issues within the leadership of that organisation. The tone of writing is non-confronting and inclusive without judgements or finger-pointing. The writing is 1

Midrashim

is the plural of Midrash

.

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honest, while also pivoting away from a ‘us and them’ dichotomy. As such the team was able to engage with the narratives and each other and, ultimately, the executives’ initial brief could be addressed. Within business schools, behaviour and organisational research methodologies are mostly inclined towards scientific and positivist frames. Breaking with that norm, some business academics have used the Midrash methodology with exciting results. An organisation is not an entity per se, rather a collection of multiple people coming together with one or multiple purposes. As such, Midrashim can provide both an overview and details of, and for, the people comprising a part or the whole of the organisation. I have met frontline staff who, with intense emotions of anger and frustration, tell me, “No one asks me! But I am the one doing the job!” A cameo of John (name changed), the security guard, offers an illuminating instance. John has been with the organisation for about a decade. His somewhat laid-back attitude, ruddy complexion and sandy-coloured hair belie his alert, security-minded blue eyes that are ever looking to passersby on the pavements. John takes his position seriously, not missing drivers that stop to drop off a passenger or simply drive past. He is always friendly and professional, guarding the building and occupants. He stands outside daily, hour upon hour—his cap on in the heat, his big black umbrella held upright in the rain. I notice his boots, shabby and worn at the outer corner of the heels. I wonder about them. Is it the comfort of being well worn that endears him to those nevertheless wellpolished boots? Or is it a meagre salary that precludes purchasing new security guard boots? Or how many other possible reasons that, without offensive asking, I could know why those boots endure. Some in the organisation do not know what he looks like. Some do not know his name. I know both to be true because I ask the staff, management and workers in the organisation. Alternately I have seen others stop to chat with him and bring him coffee as his continually watchful eyes dart here and there. A new (with partial renovations) building for the organisation was envisioned, designed and then built. John stands amid the dust, rubble and detoured pavement traffic, always remaining professionally alert and engaged in his job. Some days, he helps people cross the rubble. Other times, I notice he directs people to the gate when the detour masks the entrance. Years of planning with committees, architects and builders culminate with a great politically and socially correct opening ceremony. Hundreds attend the opening of the new building, including members of federal, state and local government, executives past and present. Together with management, staff and guests, I enter through the smoke of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander smoking ceremony. The haunting call of the digeridoo hidden within the smoke gives me emotional goosebumps and a lump in my throat. Now, at last, John had an aesthetically designed, purpose-built guardhouse. Yet sun, wind or rain, John continues, with cap or umbrella, standing outside. “How are you enjoying your new guardhouse?” I ask, wondering about John continuing outside as before. Is it a habit? Levinas (1969, 1988, 1991) reminds us that

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relating in a face-to-face encounter with the other is my—the self’s—responsibility, showing us the importance of research based on dialogical relating. John, the tough security guard did not need to be asked twice. “It’s useless” he spits out. With no hesitation, hardly a breath between words, he adds: “You are the first person to ask, you know.” And in an almost breathless flurry of speech, “See this angle … if I am inside, it’s a blind corner. See the elevation of the roof … it blocks light at a crucial time of day. See this step [at the entrance] … if I have to run to a critical incident, I will [obscenity] fall over this [obscenity] step.” John enumerates why the fancy new sandstone guardhouse that blended with the new building is useless for a security guard. No one on the architect’s building or renovation team had spoken to John, the professional on the front line. “No one [obscenity] asked me. Did they? No one up there,” he points, indicating the top of a hierarchy. He was invisible to them. John, the security guard who stood outside for about 10 years, no longer stands inside or outside the guard house. He is working for a different organisation. The new guards are always outside. Only their bags, flasks and sandwiches are inside the fancy expensive new guardhouse. This wee vignette illustrates much about most organisations’ hierarchies, privileged entitlement—unconscious or conscious—positional power and the disparity between, in John’s words, “the somebodies and the nobodies”. This is how John feels. He did not feel this before, when there was no guardhouse. But now he feels his ‘less-than’ worth has been made clear to him. These few lines about John and the useless guard house offer a window into the power of Midrash to witness and make visible actors who are devoid of agency. No one ever should be invisible. John felt dehumanised under the gaze of those ‘up there’. Foucault, 1971) addresses issues of power—empowerment and disempowerment—to show how knowledge systems can be extremely oppressive by transforming persons into dehumanised ‘subjects’ through classifications under ‘the gaze’. Disempowered by the organisation’s hierarchy, John lived at the Foucauldian margins without a recognisable identity, lacking agency. My research is in the fields of human rights and social justice. As such, despite the few examples already given, the Midrashim that follow throughout the book are taken from my field of research, primarily the phenomenology of asylum-seekingrefugees, for whom being human is insufficient to ensure agency. The question of agency is foundational and must be asked. How do we inquire and come to know in ways that preclude further marginalising and invisibilising? Semere Kesete, who left his homeland, Eritrea, in 2002, was ultimately in a place to assert his agency. In the foreword to Simmons’ (2019) brilliantly crafted book Joyful Human Rights, Kesete said: If anyone is asked to define human rights, the answer would most probably include words such as victim, survivor, oppression, and tyranny. To many of us the word “joyful” sounds odd in the realm of human rights … Now I embrace myself not as a victim or survivor but as a winner. To consider myself as a victim or survivor feels as if I am still held captive by my oppressor’s long arm. Human Rights is not merely about victims or survivors, it is also about winners. (ix)

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Tools for Teaching That which is to give light must endure burning. Frankl (1959)

Some years ago, before Simmons (2019) had published, I had an event during class. I was teaching a Master of Human Rights unit at university. The context for both theory and praxis was the detention centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG) that was managed by Australian Border Force.2 The students in this class were already working in, or would soon embark on, careers as actors within human rights organisations. Consequential to their lack of awareness, together with their own rescuer mindsets and unreflexive ontological complicities,3 professional human rights workers—particularly volunteers, for example, visitors to incarcerated asylumseeking-refugees—frequently burn out. With this in mind, each week, I scaffold learning awareness and practice of self-care methods, including reflection, to enable the students’ longevity in their chosen careers. My concern is education. I feel conscientious about my role as teacher/lecturer/facilitator of the master’s students with more than just academic theoretical conviction.

Stories Taking on Mythical Proportions We were well into the semester and the students were well grounded in theory, praxis and scholarly argument. In the weeks prior to the event, we had discussed refugees’ stories, some that I could recount with first-hand knowledge, of people fleeing their homes and countries to stay alive. We examined the relationships between the excruciating consequences of the detention regime on families, children and individuals, interfaced with the perpetrators, bystanders, policies and apparatchik. The students had watched a movie of inside a detention centre that was captured by a hidden smart phone. The classes were stimulating. Students were engaged. The next step in the learning scaffold was to examine unconscious biases by examining alternate gazes to the Manus Island detainees.4 To explore an alternate positionality, a student posited, for conversation, the achievements of voice and agency through the alchemy of detention, referring to the detained Iranian academic and journalist Behrouz Boochani who, detainee himself, was for six years the voice for hundreds of men detained in offshore processing on Manus Island. She hastened to add that her observation in no way minimised the decimation of human life by the detention regime for Boochani and all others on Manus Island. 2

The detention centre has since been found illegal by the PNG court and has been closed. Ontological complicity is an unexamined value, assumption or belief that reinforces other ontologies and epistemologies. 4 74% of the men incarcerated on Manus Island are already accepted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as passing all the criteria for refugee status. Even so, Australia refuses to accept them. (Australian Department of Home Affairs statistics). 3

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The class erupted with passionate voices, some polarising, railing against a discussion of refugees as anything more than tragic victims. I was unprepared for their sudden, atypical outrage at considering the alternate lens to be ‘a colonising, appropriation positionality’. Although they were a small group, they held tightly to their positions by loudly addressing any possibility of detainee agency with voracious righteous anger—the antagonistic language of activism. The academic rigour I knew they had and the scholarly conversation of the past weeks dissipated, undermined by their personal positions and passions. The small group of students was unaware that they were trapped in their own ontological complicities and were closed to engaging with their fellow students. I was wholly unprepared for the suddenness of their antagonistic activism. If I had Simmons’ book to hand, perhaps Semere’s words, or Boochani’s (2018) own book, I might have been a better teacher at that moment? Perhaps I could have better facilitated the whole class to hold the tension of opposites, to observe the positionalities when presented with unconscious biases. The students were angsting for an either/or position rather than a both/ and gaze on power, if you will, that might have been explored. Despite five, then six, then seven years of inhuman incarceration in Gulag-style island prisons, some refugees have drawn upon their earlier education and careers to write, paint and film. In a double-bind flip, those students denied themselves the opportunity to open up to the other: an openness that promotes resistance to closure of the self and the other (Levinas, 1969. By imagining they were exercising a ‘duty of care’ by protecting detainees within our learning environment, those students were, in fact, generalising refugees as victims, thereby omitting their ethical responsibility of openness to the Others (Benhabib in Falzon, 1998). The movement, the flow of discourse—dialogical relating—ended, closed up, when I inserted the incarcerated asylum-seeking-refugees as whole humans who can dig deep and find within themselves personal empowerment and some form of personal agency, even a degree of choice. Pivoting to Viktor Frankl (1959) I offered the class his personal observations in the Nazi concentration camps that everything can be taken from a man but one thing. The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. Some students nodded their heads sagely. When the few students pushed back at me, voce alta, “But … No … ”, a psychologist in the class referred to Frankl’s ability to make greater meaning from what generally would be considered to be ‘senseless suffering’. By facing the indescribable ubiquity of suffering in the camps, and finding hope, Frankl reveals the possibility, the capacity, to transcend the horrors of evil. The example the student gave that day of Behrouz Boochani, who risked prisonstyle punishment—isolation—to smuggle his smartphone videos, piece by piece, off the island to producers in Holland who made a full length, award-winning documentary Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time (Boochani & Servastani, 2017). The producers, translators and Boochani kindly gave me permission for my students to view the documentary in class. The pedagogic goal for the viewing was for the students to find the space between incarceration and freedom where Boochani himself asserted his agency as a working journalist. Yet those few students could frame him only as

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the victim. I was the insensitive oppressor who was sorely mistaken—possibly ignorant—to even suggest any position other than crimes perpetrated against the victim. At that time, early in 2018, Boochani’s book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison—also smuggled out, text message by text message—had not yet been published. Had it, I could have read to the students from Richard Flannagan’s foreword: With only the truth on his side and a phone in his hand, one imprisoned refugee alerted the world to Australia’s great crime … This book, though, is something greater than just a J’accuse. It is a profound victory for a young poet who showed us all how much words can still matter. Australia imprisoned his body, but his soul remained that of a free man. (Boochani, 2018, ix)

Or I might have read to them Boochani’s own words: With journalism I have no choice but to use simple language and basic concepts. I need to consider diverse audiences when writing news articles … they’re for the general public so it isn’t possible to delve as deeply as I would like. And this is the problem right here. I can’t analyse and express the extent of the torture in this place. But I think it’s inevitable that for years and years to come I’ll end up opening critical spaces for engaging with the phenomenon of Manus Prison … this work will attract every humanities and social science discipline. (Boochani, 2018, xv)

This is not the language of a victim. Behrouz has agency as he writes, text message by text message. Boochani opens ‘critical spaces for engaging with the phenomenon of Manus Prison’ [2018] using his own language, metaphors and poetry. What selfawareness, personal ownership and agency! But, at that time in class, I became emotional. I care for my students and was not finding a way to offer them that crucial opening beyond their own fixed stories. If I had to hand my brilliant colleague’s book Joyful Human Rights, I would have quickly found the words of Father Michael Lapsley, ‘The journey of healing is to move from being a victim to a survivor to a victor, to take back agency’ (Simmons, 2019, 195). Although only a few in the larger class would not budge, I, the educator, felt inadequate. How could I, respectfully and with scholarly rigour, invite the students to move from their rigid fixed positionalities? Perhaps by inviting them to consider alternative relationships with their ontologies, I was not asking them to change. I encouraged them to theorise their scholarly sources supporting their gaze. The pedagogic stance I take is to invite students to reflect upon their ontological complicity, because being unaware and failing to examine perpetuates and legitimises their existing ontological view of the world (C. Wainer, pers. comm., 2019). Self-knowledge is the enabler of choice. ‘Reason and language are separated by the lie, the fallibility of desire, and the human will’ (Gillan, 1998, 2). So why then, have I introduced the event? Of what benefit is it to readers and scholars? Writing phenomenologically, reflexively, of the event is less about my temporal inadequate self and the immanence of students and wholly about modelling the telling of Midrash (if, at this juncture, you would like to dive deeper into Midrash, see Chaps. 9 and 10).

Opening for the Other

9

Opening for the Other Incarcerated asylum-seeking-refugees are wholly other for most of us. The majority of Australians have no experience of displacement, migration, torture, trauma and prison. Equally, for the most part, we have choice. But what informs our choices? I suggest an ethic of alterity offers the constituted self the possibility to move from the centre of an orthodox epistemology of the self to an opening for the other. Western philosophy and knowledge systems have imbued us with the value of the thinking self, thereby avowing the primacy of thinking. I would have all consider, importantly, that thinking is just that … ‘thinking’. Like the small group of students, sitting in a university classroom, ‘thinking’ they ‘knew’ the detainees as victims without agency. Instead, as Foucault (1971) writes, such classification is oppressive—we cannot know another by thinking about them. We come to know anOther through conversation. Through a structure of language as discourse, in relationship, anOther presents themselves as they are. The Other, the Stranger, is not an object of the self’s vision or thinking. They are within an encounter. The encounter is relational. As must be our process of research, Midrashim are relational. Qualitative research methods have long since left behind the self-conscious inferiority to science yet continue to value evidential facts and certitude above other forms of knowledge. It is generally accepted that empirical research methods relate to knowledge arrived at through reasoning or from observations or experiences. Such a posteriori knowledge is based on known facts, phenomena or events that can be knowable. Ontological complicity arises when the researcher anticipates what is and what is not knowable. Attempts to use research methods that, to the researcher, have become recognised procedures to be followed (e.g., grounded theory, case study, narrative analysis or ethnography), however nuanced, are in danger of being methods in service of the method itself. As highlighted by Lenette (2019), ‘refugee research has traditionally been a complex and sensitive area of inquiry, and far too often, simplistic methods have been used to explore rich, textured and complex phenomena (9). Not only is our methodology about disrupting the traditional research relationships of researcher, author, subject, research field and data but also the relationship the researcher has with their own work. The method of writing raises the inquiry to critical self-awareness or the consciousness, if you will, of the reader. The author, the researcher, is required to reflect and be critically aware of their own consciousness, and bring to light her unconsciousness, ontologies and epistemological worldviews that come to bear in the research.

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Method, Theory and Substantive Content Are Iteratively Interwoven Ontology is what we know. More broadly, it is the study of ‘being’ and is concerned with ‘what is’. One’s ontology informs the self about the nature of existence and structure of reality or what it is possible to know about the world (Crotty, 1998). It may be useful to consider that ontologies—our sense of what is real—depend on the detailed structures of our brains, which are shaped by both evolution and experience (Lackoff, 1999). Thus, by questioning who I am and who I am in relation to the research, we ask relational questions that have the power to disrupt the very structures of our brains’ hold on our ontologies. In that shift, we also have the power to disrupt our epistemological worldviews. That is to say, the very inquiry process, of how we come to know, is transformative. In the writing lies possible healing5 and growth for the researcher. The majority of scholars I know, regardless of culture or country, are enlivened by generative learning of the self. The reader will discover that the methodology is dynamic and is suited to a multitude of research topics, subjects, fields and contexts. The researcher ideally feels wholly themselves when writing. To avoid methodology ossification, we include, in this book, the underlying philosophy and theoretical framing of the research methods for you, the reader, to own and for scholars and teachers to teach regardless of their research field. As increasingly interdisciplinarity is being appreciated, taught and learned, this methodology is timely. The starting point for such research inquiry, while not autoethnography, is the researcher writing their lived experience within the context of the research. Importantly, the researcher is not researching themselves, per se. They are witnessing the voice relating, recounting and accounting in Midrashic form. At the intersection of language, writing and living, the inquiry itself is relationally storied. The researcher becomes a participant in the storied nature of human experience. Phenomena are rendered experiential through a relational approach between and in-between people and their lived experiences. The researcher-author writes Midrashim that form the first wave of data, to be followed by the second wave of research that forms the iterative aspects of the methodology, as will be described in Chaps. 11 and 12. Method, theory and substantive content are iteratively interwoven. For now, let us return to the substantive content: The topic of detained asylum-seeking refugees is typically fraught with the hurdles of contemporary interdisciplinary and global research methods, language and meaning. By diving into the international field of human rights and asylumseeking refugees, we will be demonstrating ways of navigating different new and creative way of inter-thinking.

5

The process of self-inquiry and reflexive writing has the power to provide insights into aspects of ourselves that we may have forgotten or suppressed. Working in this field, with people who are deeply wounded, perhaps grieving and traumatised, requires us to recognise and release any projections or pain that we have taken into ourselves. Thus, we heal ourselves.

Method, Theory and Substantive Content Are Iteratively Interwoven

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Australia indefinitely incarcerates asylum-seeking-refugees in detention centres that are, in fact, maximum security prisons. Today, innocent people, once hidden on mainland Australia, are transported to detention centres on the Australian island of Nauru and Manus Island in PNG, both of which have been likened to Stalinist punishment Gulags. Men, women and children—comprising unaccompanied minors, single men, single women and families—are locked up and locked away for no reason other than that they had the temerity to seek protection and asylum in Australia, as is their legal right. Their claims to be assessed for refugee status show (a) they know Australia has ratified the international conventions relevant to them and (b) they consider themselves worthy of life, worthy of living after fleeing torture, trauma and, for some, certain death if they had remained in their countries of origin. Somehow escaping the sensibilities of successive Australian governments are the international instruments, conventions and laws that agree that such people are legally permitted to seek asylum and refugee status in Australia. Furthermore, by showing up, they (mostly) defy the Australian preferred construction of refugees being helpless and hopeless. I became curious about the vilification of asylum-seeking refugees by Australian politics and policies that had them indefinitely incarcerated in jails euphemistically named detention centres. Questions arose about the tightly and often unconsciously held ontologies of Australian politicians and the media. It all seemed wrong. Equally, my curiosity extended to the citizens who voted for the politicians who are failing asylum-seeking refugees by disregarding international law, treaties and conventions.6 The vast majority of Australians seemed and still seem oblivious. Do they not wonder why parents send their children on death-defying, dangerous journeys? Or how radical it is for people to leave their countries and families? Under what circumstances do they come to Australia? What blocks Australians’ care and interest in the life of innocent people, children and families who are locked away indefinitely? The nature of our sociopolitical worlds is generated by preconceived organising activities that, in turn, generate our policies and activities. Politicians reflect to us those preconceived views of the world that lead to the construction of our sociopolitical environments. Let us call this a cyclical reinforcing pattern. Policies that are the progeny of such governments are producing asylum-seeking-refugees as commodities. Humans become widgets that are labelled and moved around at political will. 6

One hundred and forty-eight countries, including Australia, are party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the ‘1951 Refugee Convention’). As such, Australia has international obligations to protect the human rights of all asylum seekers and refugees who arrive in Australia, regardless of how or where they arrive and whether they arrive with or without a visa. While asylum seekers and refugees are in Australian territory (or otherwise engage Australia’s jurisdiction), the Australian Government has obligations under various international treaties to ensure that their human rights are respected and protected. These treaties include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). These rights include the right not to be arbitrarily detained (https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/asylum-seekers-andrefugees/asylum-seekers-and-refugees-guide#rights).

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The language used by governments, faithfully repeated by media and consequentially spoken by duped citizens may appear innocuous. For example, policies may often appear bizarre or banally callous because they employ misleading language that masks the threat they pose. For instance, in Canada, children are ‘housed’ as ‘guests’ of their parents in immigration detention. In France, Poland, Spain and numerous other countries, children ‘accompany’ their parents in detention centres. Such policy linguistics can make detained children ‘invisible’ to the law, thereby preventing them from accessing the basic legal protections that are offered to other detainees—including hardened criminals—while denying them adequate education, health care and nurturing environments (Flynn and Cecchetti, 2019). To disrupt research methods is to disrupt the relationship between epistemology and knowledge. Disruptive questions are not necessarily Socratic and are not easily relegated to one disciplinary field. To ask disruptive questions is to provocate the sociopolitical worlds we have come to know as almost closed off and separate entities and to reimagine them with new understand through the relationships of language and discourse. Throughout this book, we will scrutinise the linguistic manoeuvring used by governments and media to sway citizens.

References Boochani, B., & Servastani, A. K. (2017). Chauka, please tell us the time. Directed by Behrouz Boochani and Arash Kamali Sarvestani. Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. iPhone, 90 minutes. Boochani, B. (2018). No friend but the mountains: Writing from Manus prison (O. Tofighian, Trans.). Picador by Pan Macmillan. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social Critique of the judgement of taste. Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Polity Press. Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. SAGE Publications. Falzon, C. (1998). Foucault and social dialogue: Beyond fragmentation. Routledge. Flynn, M., & Cecchetti, R. (2019). Global detention project annual report 2018. Foucault, M. (1971). Orders of discourse. Social science information. Sage Journals, 10(issue: 2), 7–30. Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man’s search for meaning. Random House. Gillan, G. (1998). Rising from the ruins: Reason, being, and the good after Auschwitz. State University of New York Press. The Global Detention Project. Retrieved from https:// www.globaldetentionproject.org/global-det ention-project-annual-report-2018

Part I

Chapter 2

The Marginalised Other

What dehumanises you inexorably dehumanises me. Bishop Tutu.

Once upon a time … I volunteered to advocate for detained asylum-seeking-refugees. For five very long years, I entered and exited the Villawood detention centre.1 At that time, the detention centre was not on any GPS or paper map, although it was located in the western suburbs of Sydney, bounded by light industry and suburban homes. Weekly, I lost my way driving there. This increased the one-and-a-half hours of driving time from where I lived and worked. I am neither a lawyer nor a migration agent; instead, by happenstance, I began advocating for the incarcerated asylum seekers to be recognised as refugees and receive visas to exit the hell in which they unwittingly had found themselves. I knew intimately the stories of those men, women and children for whom I advocated. Some weeks, I went inside three or even four times. Usually, I visited twice a week. My first visit was propelled by the media-driven angst about the apparently ‘other than normal human beings’ incarcerated inside the detention centres around Australia. At that time, during the late twentieth century, asylum-seeking-refugees were typically portrayed as lip-sewers, terrorists and criminals. They were, said the prime minister of the time, manipulators and violent abusers of Australian goodwill.2 They dared to arrive on Australian shores in leaky boats and without legal documentation! We certainly don’t want “people like those” in Australia the prime minister incited. As the second decade of the twenty-first century rolled in, asylum-seekingrefugees were hidden away on islands, and the majority of politicians had malevolently spun stories that the general public gobbled up and digested with ease. Earlier spin sequentially rationalised detention as a place to:

1

Villawood detention centre is always written in full to honour the manner in which detainees spoke. 2 For more details on the so-called ‘Children Overboard’ incident, see Glossary. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_2

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• keep asylum seekers safe while being processed; • protect citizens from these terrorists; • thwart the people smugglers business model. More recently, the political argument is about the unfortunate asylum seekers drowning at sea in leaky boats at the hands of criminal people smugglers. The boat crew are often poverty-stricken teenagers and young adults who will take on the dangerous journey in an overcrowded, substandard fishing vessel to provide for their families. Australians seem to demonstrate a consistent lack of curiosity regarding both the smugglers and the factors that drive asylum-seeking-refugees to embark on perilous journeys. We, Australians, too readily agree with politicians asserting the simple causal imperative to stop the drownings3 caused by those criminals at the helm of leaky boats. ‘Stop the boats’ became a political and election war cry in 2016. In this shift of political war crying, the ‘boat people’—asylum-seeking-refugees—are stripped of their personhood. Although they are reasoning adults making decisions and exercising choices, they are portrayed as pathetic lambs-to-the- slaughter at the mercy of the people-smuggling wolves. Humans become the constructed products that are useful to politicians. Their self-determinism is negated with the politicians’ screech that deterrence of people smugglers will save lives. Australians flocked to the feel-good policy that allegedly saved lives without discriminating between the apparent saving of lives at sea and the incarcerated thousands on prison islands that languish dying mental and emotional deaths. In addition to the mental and emotional toll, they are dying from avoidable physical deaths too. Still, the rhetoric of deterrence—to both ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘people smuggler’— continues as the facts are suppressed. Upwards of 90% of the detained asylumseeking refugees already have UNHCR legal determinations of refugee status.4 Yet incarceration and isolation continue. Males, regardless of age, are isolated on one island; women, children and families on another. Conditions on the islands break with international treaties5 and accords. Ongoing political rhetoric, as faithfully reported by the media, continued to be ignorantly, perhaps naively, accepted by the Australian population. Before the byword ‘fake news’ became widespread and mainstream, false or misleading information was constructed and presented, usually with the aim of damaging the reputation of a person, group or entity. Examples such as ‘boat people’/ asylum seeker’ were constructed by the political apparatchiks and presented by the media as synonymous with terrorists to be feared or criminals who intend taking the homes and jobs of “the good Australian people”. Constructed conventions only work within the aura of communal and common agreements. An analogy that illustrates such a constructed convention is money. After 3

People do drown and, of course, the aim would be to avoid such sad deaths. However, my research has revealed that people choose to get on the boats knowing that there is a strong possibility of drowning at sea. They do not make such decisions lightly or through naiveté. 4 To meet the criteria as set out in the 1951 Refugee Convention and later accords. 5 Human and refugee rights conventions, such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the CAT and the CRC.

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bartering goods and objects, money—mostly dirty paper or heavy coins—became the constructed trading convention. The agreed convention has a range of specific values—$20.00 buys this much and $200.00 buys that much. Once the material values of said paper are accepted, the construction is further built upon. Emotions, such as fear of not having enough are politically manipulated so that social recognition, class, self-worth and behaviour are based upon the initially accepted constructions of what constitutes value. We are currently witness to the dismantling of the agreed constructed value of ‘dirty paper’—literally. At first, cryptocurrencies were decried as dangerous and belonging to the black market or dark web. At the time of writing this book, the year 2021, conventional banks are trading in bitcoin and various other cryptocurrencies. The rise of the crypto-economy and success of bitcoin trading are a newer and not yet widely accepted construction of digital wealth. Some banks and organisations have accepted the paradigm shift away from dirty paper and heavy coins. Ultimately, tellers and automated teller machines will disappear as cryptocurrency becomes the agreed construction of trade. In fact, already, this intangible convention of trade is considered safer than its tangible, aged relative: conventional money. What then has this analogy to do with human rights, including refugees, people experiencing homelessness, stateless people and social justice? Our answer lies in the globally agreed constructions that such people present a danger to our economies and civilisations. Australia spends millions to incarcerate, silence and invisibilise asylum-seeking refugees rather than accept and rehabilitate their damages so that they can be productive citizens who live full and generous lives. Instead, we hear the fake mantra that they will take our jobs, so we need the adults (politicians who understand these complex matters) to take care of us (an infantalised population). What are the ontological complicities holding us back? What could be the new construction for asylum-seeking-refugees? As crypto-economies were once unimaginable, what is the new, unimaginable, and yet safer for all, politics of people migrations?

Parallels and Similarities (Only a Few of the Many) Clea Koff, forensic medical anthropologist, writes in The Bone Woman (2004): Imagine witnesses’ stories about particular crimes are denied, derided, or deemed impossible by the witnesses’ own government—the very agencies believed to be responsible for those crime … When we suspect a government of having committed crimes, the evidence isn’t blatant … the surfacing of the sort of evidence I’ve worked with serves to ‘challenge the perceptions of respected institutions’, as the historian Deborah Lipstadt put it. (308)

Here follows an expanded example, from my field, of how reconstructions founded in ontological complicities have formed and re-formed our histories. In the 1990s, Australia was volumising and weaponising the policies of inhumane political voices to criminalise and punish innocent asylum-seeking-refugees. Extraordinarily, at that very time, previously constructed idealistic and linguistic

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conventions were being deconstructed and reimagined in the country of my birth. Nelson Mandela was no longer marked and marketed as a terrorist. F. W. De Klerk, then prime minister, had the vision and courage to counter his political party, the Nationalists. Against the backdrop of increasing African National Congress (ANC) rumblings about a revolution and the efficacy of the economic squeeze by global sanctions, De Klerk knew that the time had come for Mandela to be a partner in the process of South Africa becoming peaceful and prosperous. South Africa would hold the first democratic elections after the release of Nelson Mandela from Robben Island. He, and his ANC comrades, criminalised as terrorists by political voices, the media and dutifully docile “white” citizens in South Africa, had been incarcerated for 27 years on a prison island. The now infamous Robben Island held the future internationally adored and revered Nobel Peace Prize winner with others who would form the first democratically elected government in South Africa. Now, here in Australia, I was absurdly witnessing a democratically elected government punish asylum-seeking-refugees for arriving at the borders. Their punishment? Incarceration on islands! Additional parallels of prison experiences can be drawn. As with the other prisoners on Robben Island, Mandela’s eyesight was permanently damaged by the contrast between the darkness of his prison cell and the blinding exposure from prison work in the lime quarry. On Robben Island, Mandela and his comrades worked hard labour in the limestone quarries: Without dark glasses, many of the prisoners suffered permanent eye damage from the glare of the white lime. … The lime quarry looked like an enormous white crater cut into a rocky hillside. The cliffs and the base of the hillside were blindingly white. … Worse than the heat at the quarry was the light. Our backs were protected from the sun by our shirts, but the sun’s rays would be reflected into our eyes by the lime itself. The glare hurt our eyes and, along with the dust, made it difficult to see. (Mandela, 1995, 240)

Indeed, Mandela has spoken of his permanently damaged eyes. Similarly, eye damage was a theme described by detainees in the Baxter Immigration Detention Facility. Christine Rau, sister of wrongfully incarcerated Australian citizen Cornelia Rau, writes of the damage to the detainees eyesight in Baxter6 —a purpose built maximum security prison: The real tragedy of those in the Baxter detention centre is the sheer waste. I visited Baxter to thank those asylum seekers who had brought the plight of my sister, Cornelia, to the outside world. These shy, mainly Middle Eastern strangers had different stories but similar messages. They asked that their names not be used. Most had had some contact with ‘Anna’, as Cornelia called herself. 6

The Baxter detention centre is purpose built and constructed in a circular fashion with a continuous façade, that is, with no outward looking windows. The detention centre closed when asylum-seeking refugees were transported to the island. That simply shows us the costs the government is willing to spend (waste) on their ‘border’ projects.

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Approaching Baxter after a four-hour drive from Adelaide, what is most striking is how the majestic landscape dwarfs the detention centre. It’s the stuff of classic Australian poetry: ochre, stony soil, stunted shrubs, vast plains and hulking ranges. And, in the middle, a silvery spider web of electrified fence: 9000 V, we were told. The barrack-like structures of the compounds concertina into the distance. Certainly, from the little visitors get to see, it’s hard to imagine it cost $42 million to build. Or that it’ll cost the Government $300 million to run … There are about 100 long-term asylum seekers in Baxter now. Only four of the nine big compounds are in use and they are designed so detainees can look only inwards and up at the sky, not out to the horizon. The effect of the design has caused near blindness for some and short-sightedness for almost all the detainees of which we know. (Rau, 2006) About such wicked cruelty, Camaroonian scholar, Mbembe, exhorts that it is so difficult to get his head around such intentional malevolence and unconscionable destruction of another human. (Mbembe, 2019)

I lived in South Africa where the apartheid regime criminalised Nelson Mandela as a terrorist. During the apartheid regime, ‘Black’ people were portrayed as uneducable—those who will steal or kill for the sake of it, people who do not wash. South African citizens were constantly asked, “Would you want people like those as your neighbours?” During those years, although embodied and constituted, I had not framed or theorised my social justice and human rights consciousness as such. Now, in Australia, that consciousness asserted itself when I saw pictures of a pregnant woman behind the wire and children peering through the wires. Such pictures were generally away from the general population’s gaze. The only images shown clearly by the media were parts of the swollen distorted faces of lip-sewers. “What dreadful people would sew their lips?” ranted the press. “They are trying to hold our government to hostage,” spun the politicians of the day. Together with the ‘people like those’ trope, the narrative sounded and felt like the South African apartheid police state vilifications. Felt-memories and kinaesthetic angst were triggered in me. I had to meet these vilified Others for myself. I had to make sense of the felt-tone in the media. The first time I went inside the Villawood detention centre, I was introduced to a group of men. The youngest was 14. School was prohibited. Boredom was rife. Sitting around on white plastic bucket chairs in the visitors’ yard of surveillance, chatting to them and drinking sodas, I experienced cognitive dissonance. At that specific time, I was not aware of what was causing my head to spin, and the feeling of nausea to creep up. All seemed so casual and normal here. Yet all was neither casual nor normal. I had never been inside a prison before. Some of those young men had been incarcerated for more than three years. They had become institutionalised, problematised, depersonalised. Their sense of self and esteem had been shattered. Most had developed serious mental health pathologies. All were strangers to each other before they were locked up together. Some came from countries at war with each other. Yet here they are, sharing meals, waking moments and information with their fellow detainees.

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Inside the Villawood detention centre’s visitors’ yard, I experienced a ‘multiplicity of persons’ in the context of Levinas’s conception (Wainer, 2007). A multiplicity of persons arises from the presence of someone who has their own separate face expressing them as exterior to any other face. They come as their unique individual self, as separate. Exteriority here is not an identifier for physical appearance. Each detainee is exterior to the other. Each Other is a Stranger.7 Exteriority is the signal to resist reducing unique individual others into groups, totalising individuals’ risks, reducing each person from their own self into an amorphous construction. As such, Levinas urges our awareness for holding dear a deep respect for any individual other. Levinas introduces us to the ethics of alterity that is neither theoretical nor epistemological. In Levinas’s world, the Shoah (Holocaust), the destruction of the Jewish people, is a fact through which he lived. The Nazi schema that led to the Shoah cannot be considered theoretical. The ethical approach to strangers who are different—other than ourselves—is not a theoretical nicety. Levinas is drawing on ancient texts to build his teachings that are consequential to the Holocaust when groups of people— homosexuals (the abbreviation LGBTIQ+ was not used at that time), Gypsies, Jews— were totalised. To avoid such totalisation or universalisation of people’s ‘exteriority’ is taken as the essence of being. A multiplicity of persons as conceived by Levinas raises to consciousness that the unique ‘essence of a being’ is sacred. This sanctity of life, or perhaps in more secular terms, the inviolability of a person, is arguably what drove Australians into the detention centres where they formed lifelong friendships (including a few marriages) despite the Australian Government’s policies and programmes that were conceived to negate the individual human asylum-seeking refugee behind the wires. An unintended consequence of the government’s intentions is resistance. People resisted the reduction of all asylum-seeking refugees to be generalised as an amorphous detainee population. Not only did visitors teach their newly found friends English, and later music, they also learned about the different languages, countries of origin and religions. In turn, detainees learned about Australian (Western) cultures, clothing and religions. The men came to understand that in the heat of summer, a woman showing her arms and legs, was in fact not an indicator of an immoral woman. Equally, men in shorts and thongs bore no relationship to ‘a street person’. Here, behind the wire, ‘exteriority as a marvel’ (Levinas, 1969, 292) was dignified in embodied experience. Further in the book, we expand on Levinas’s philosophy (see Chaps. 5 and 6). Our gaze behind the wire reveals a multiplicity of persons who have been incarcerated in one of the most notoriously harsh detention systems among modern democratic states (Mares, 2001). Here is where I experienced the Other, being wholly Other, with absolutely no possibility of thinking or imagining that I could ‘know’ them.

7 Following Levinas who writes of autrui, meaning the personal ‘other’, I have used the capital ‘O’ to distinguish it from autre, which means otherness in general and a lower case ‘o’ is used for the latter. Likewise, when a personal ascription for Stranger is intended, I have used capital ‘S’.

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Equally, I could not reduce one to be the same as another. As a visitor behind the wire, I became aware of certain unanticipated qualities of interaction between a few Australian visitors and the detainees they were supporting. It is these qualities that I began to examine. Significantly, visitors entering into relationship with detainees encountered the issue of the two I’s of Martin Buber’s signification: I–Thou and I–It. Following Buber’s I–It modality, the intellection of ‘I’ explores no more than the surfaces of the other, not engaging with them as whole beings. There is a focus on and a speaking of , rather than a relating to. Rather than arriving in the country and seeking asylum, the Australian Government (similarly, governments of other developed countries) creates the representation of some-thing,8 thereby totalising the asylum-seeking-refugee and, arguably, all Australians (and global populations). Nothing inside matched the media versions of the asylum-seeking refugee. As I met more detainees, befriending a few, I returned to the Villawood detention centre again and again. I became convinced that I had to tell Australians of my lived experience of inside. If not, I would be a bystander to the government propaganda and spin. It is unethical to lie to citizens to win votes. I riled against the absence of morality … the silencing of injustices … the annihilation of unique individuals. Asylum-seekingrefugees are silenced and invisibilised, but I am an Australian citizen. I can be seen and heard. However, I was acutely aware that usurping their already silenced voices would further remove agency from these already othered people. Furthermore, as a visitor to the detention centre, I was not permitted to conduct research. Our notebooks,9 in which we would write detainee requests or contact details and messages for family or friends, were scrutinised with disdain by security guards with downturned mouths. Pages were flipped, and books were shaken upside down as if to discharge toxic particles. At one stage, even pens and pencils were prohibited as dangerous items. Passionately curious about the public’s ignorance of, or tone-deafness to, the phenomena of vilifying and jailing innocents, I began asking questions. My personal encounters with the criminal justice system, of which I was previously and fortunately ignorant and naïve, made my head spin. I wanted to write about the individual who, innocent of any crime, unfairly encountered punishments of the system, including solitary confinement. How would I unfold, in an almost Foucauldian pass, the devastating outcomes of the detain, deter, deport policies that have existed with differing political rationales for more than three decades? Suspending my righteous indignation, I read theories, methodologies, philosophy and the media. A research project was forming and shaping itself in my mind. I continued to visit and relate with those inside as I became intimately knowledgeable 8

Instead of some-thing, we need to think of Some-one, such as an Iraqi father of six who escaped Iraq after his son was tortured to death because of his father’s political views, or brothers aged four and six who were entrusted to others on a boat in an attempt to save their lives rather than be jailed along with other children in Iran. 9 I took books in to make shopping lists. For example, a child had outgrown their clothes, and the officers refused new clothes. This person had an allergy to the soap they used for body and hair or that person needed sunglasses.

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about the details of each advocate’s story. Detainees for whom I advocated gained refugee status, visas and were released. This is when I encountered a complication. Although a few detainees were outside living in the community and I was no longer constrained by detention centre research policies, their freedom was directly the result of my advocacy. Even if they genuinely were glad to support and participate in the research project, a question arose about informed ethics. Any one of them might agree to participate as a research participant feeling beholden to me. I knew that any permission and agreement to be research participants could not meet the ethical criteria for such a research project. The incipient Midrash methodology would address such ethical constraints. Equally, the methodology, being congruent with Levinas’s ethical stance for the Other—the Stranger—addresses considerations of agency.

References Koff, C. (2004). The bone woman. Hodder Headline. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press. Mandela, N. (1995). The long walk to freedom: The autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Back Bay Books. Mares, P. (2001). Borderline: Australia’s treatment of refugees and Asylum seekers. UNSW Press. Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Duke University Press. Rau, C. (2006). Behind bars, they wait and rot. Sydney Morning Herald, 25 May. https://www.smh. com.au/national/behind-bars-they-wait-and-rot-20050525-gdle20.html Tutu, D. (1999). No future without forgiveness. Rider. Wainer, D. (2007). Multiplicity and the ethics of community. Paper presented at the Second Annual Conference and Meeting on ‘Levinas and Community’, Purdue University, 10–12 June.

Chapter 3

History of the Methodology

The Hunch and the Idiosyncratic Moment How would I address my angst and channel my anger in ways other than self-indulgence? I chose to answer my ever-growing questions with ethical and academically rigorous research. Dance, and your veils which hide the light shall swirl in a heap at your feet. Rumi

I was ‘dancing’ and caught within an intertextual dissonance. Moral philosophy, ethics, ontology and the politics of detention were jumbled or absent from the shrieks about asylum-seeking-refugees. A discursive rationality escaped me. Yet my strong hunch that there was a worthy research project grew stronger. Hunches generally are not the stuff of academia. Accepting this, I pursued a theory that might originate and engender a scholarly approach to ground my hunch. Philosophers within the branches of moral and continental philosophy, the sociologies of prison, phenomenology, Australian history and poetry came to focus for theoretically framing an inquiry into Australia’s detention policies for asylum-seeking refugees and the public response (or absence thereof) to the consequences of those policies. After enthusiastically immersing myself in reading, I was lost. The expanse of my literary endeavours was not the cause for feeling adrift. The breadth of interdisciplinary scholars served to bring me ever closer to a theory with which to frame the public indifference to the lived lives behind the wires. Still, I was unable to find a propositional theory to address the scholarly absence of inquiry into the lacklustre response of citizens to the imprisonment of innocent people. All the while, I was acutely aware that my reading and ways of knowing had little regard for traditional academic disciplinary boundaries. All I read was pas ça et pas ça (not that and not that) with regards to my hunch. On a hot, humid December day, a few colleagues and I were deep in conversation exploring possibilities for this project that continually asserted itself with insistence. I was dancing with a project obscured, like Rumi’s belly dancer, behind © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_3

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veils. Lacking confidence in philosophy as a theoretical framework and any other scholarly approach, three inadequacies became clear: (a) I had no research approach, hypothesis or thesis beyond being profoundly bothered by my experiences inside and outside the Villawood detention centre, (b) I am an interdisciplinary thinker who, at that moment in time, had neither a research question nor a research methodology suited to any of my fields of scholarship—the stories of detainees were methodologically indeterminate and (c) I would not get ethics approval to use the stories because my existing relationships with detained and recently released refugees would be considered, within the politics of power, unequal. Their freedom was directly the result of my advocacy. Determined to follow my hunch and (re)present, with academic rigour, the lived lives and felt-meanings inside the detention centres, I staunchly continued the cogitation with my colleagues. Without forewarning, as I, mid-sentence, transitioned from theorising the possibilities and limitations of Kant’s philosophy to animatedly narrating my colleagues’ stories from inside the detention centre, an idiosyncratic event occurred. One of my colleagues, an experienced and caring professor, jumped up, coffee cups wobbling and tinkling on the table. “THAT’S IT. The stories. Forget the rest.” In that unfathomable moment, all of us in conversation around the table fell silent and looked to her. No coffee had been spilled. She was sitting down again, looking mystified and apologising profusely for interrupting me. Indeed, it was most unlike her usually very considered self. True, I was junior to her in the hierarchy of the academy, definitely less experienced and yet I enjoyed our conversations as equals.

Aneu Logou—Without Reason At that moment, instead of feeling diminished, as was her instantly expressed concern for me, or that maybe my voice would shut down, I was experiencing enormous relief. Kinaesthetically, my body felt shifted. Unimaginable possibilities unlocked in and for me. Leavy (in Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2008) writes that traditional research practices may fail to access or illuminate the aspects of social reality that pique our interest. My professor colleague had seen the shine in my eyes as I began telling the stories of incarcerated asylum seekers who I, by then, knew well. As she later said, she was not consciously aware of my eyes as they came to shimmering life. Her well-controlled and considered academic persona slipped like, on a given beat, the dancer’s veils slide seamlessly to reveal more of her substance. It was her profoundly intuitive moment— perhaps unreasonable moment—that opened a gateway for future knowledge making. In that aneu logou1 idiosyncratic moment, I received the academic nod to go where my eyes sparkled and my heart beat true. Holistic approaches to research are not

1

Greek for the missing piece/without intention/without voice. Credit goes to my friend and colleague Prof. William Simmons for introducing this term to me.

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only about the epistemology—theory—method nexus but also the relationship the researcher has with their work (Leavy, 2009). The mention of hunches and unfathomable moments so early in this book is neither self-indulgent nor incidental. Rather, they are illustrative of holistic moments of intersubjective relating that reveal a vulnerability that connects us where reason cannot, like my colleague whose reasoning mind and meritorious behaviour precluded interrupting. Yet, the reality or the ‘stuff’ (Eacott, 2017) that lies in our ‘in-between’ (Wainer, 2015) requires more, as Gillan in his erudite assessment of reason attests, than lies within the architectonic of reason (1998). Being open to, and even evoking, different ways of knowing and knowledge creation by relating are core to the philosophical underpinnings of this book. The research methodology unfolds phenomenologically in, between and in-between our realities: the researcher and the research subjects; the researcher and themselves; the research topic and the writing. Too often, academic work is compartmentalised and departmentalised while failing a spacious alignment for the researcher—writer—scholar as a whole person. That fortuitous conversation ejected my work to a trajectory requiring me to develop an academically rigorous research methodology that would resonate with who I am historically, relationally and spiritually—holistically. This methodology is for those humans—scholars, researchers and students—who yearn for ways to be creative and congruent within the rigours of the academy—for creating knowledge within and across disciplinary boundaries.

Research Questions Across Ontological Boundaries Set free, with imprimatur, to write the stories seemed to equally free up my mind so that research questions could arise. Research questions jumped off the pages, swirling around, sometimes mesmerising my mind as do flocks of starlings, sometimes gathering and settling like swallows flying freely to find their new seasonal homes. Like the swallows, Sam Harris is a free flyer who has little regard for the imposed boundaries that would be unnatural to certain thinkers. Harris has a philosophy degree from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California Los Angeles. His scholarship includes neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence and rationality. In his podcast, Making Sense (2018), Harris asks Professor Yuval Noah Harari, historian of biology, anthropology, technology, social and political sciences, about his seemingly ‘reckless disregard for disciplinary boundaries’, to which Harari replies: ‘I follow the questions and the questions don’t recognise disciplinary boundaries’. Like both luminaries, I, too, follow the questions with a reckless disregard for disciplinary boundaries. While accepting interdisciplinarity may be unusual for some scholars trained strictly within their fields and disciplines, those who begin right now to pause, breathe and find their deeper curiosities and yearnings will find it liberating to ask a multitude of questions from outside their well-established boundaries. Often language itself is used within the context of an ontology that creates or contributes to

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academic boundaries. Wainer (2019) discuss the differences in theorising that emerge through ontological lenses. Attributing a substantialist framing that conceives of entities in the social world as being isolated, fixed and discrete produces theorising that ontologically separates researchers’ causal reasoning from their everyday experiences. She asserts that she is primarily interested in education, and my examination shows ‘that there is ontologically no such single discrete “cause” that exists as an externally knowable or measurable “entity”’ (p. 61). In contrast to the orthodoxy of substantialism, the relational [emphasis in original] approach invites researchers to consider the underlying generative principles that constitute the notion of cause within their work, with a view of relations rather than entities as constitutive of the social world (p. 36). Language is a system of signs and signals. A set of concepts and categories in a subject area are constituted within and by a linguistic ontology and history: The conditions of languages play a significant role in shaping our causal perception. Language is thus an unfolding condition of the social world that is both shaping of, and shaped by, our underlying ontological causal perception, and consequently reinforcing and legitimizing that perception of causal processes. Our ability to question and reason beyond the normative understanding of cause and causation, and causality, is constrained by the substantialist ontology embedded and embodied in the conditions of the languages that we have produced. (p. 35)

The shift away from researching within academic fields and boundaries requires interdisciplinary methods of research. With my unconstrained interdisciplinary approach, I criss-cross established disciplinary boundaries of political science, philosophy, sociology and law, and I follow the questions back into my writing and back to more focused questions. Research, as life per se, is a dynamic process rather than a static entity. How then does a witness communicate the experiences of incarcerated detainees without totalising, perhaps even of fossilising, them as they too are living, dynamic, ever-changing beings? Locked away out of sight, removed from Australian citizens, detainees have no channel to narratives alternate to those constructed about them by those who have never been inside.2 The following example shows the dangers of categorising and totalising any human as if their life is a frozen, fixed frame rather than contextualised within dynamic time. Jarvis Jay Masters committed horrific crimes, including murder. He first entered the infamous San Quentin State Prison in 1981 to a dark cell with ‘bed bolted into the wall … amidst swarms of cockroaches, filth plastered on the walls … and the awful smell of urine left in the toilet for God knows how long’ (Masters 1997, 4). He wrote Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row from his ‘home’ in an isolation cell on death row. The foreword begins as follows: As one of the defense investigators who prepared Jarvis’s trial, I looked into the details of his life and learned how far he has travelled spiritually in one short lifetime. (xi)

The Epilogue begins as follows: 2

‘Inside’ meaning inside prison in the language of prisoners.

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I began to write stories about my life so I could look into it, understand it more fully. My writing and spiritual practice have become inseparable. It is almost unimaginable to think of what I might be like if I didn’t have the dharma, my teacher, Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, and the love and care of my friends. (175)

On death row, a place where there are virtually no choices that an adult would typically make in a day, he is infantalised by being told when to shower, when and what to eat, what temperature the cell will be and when the lights go out (if they do go out). Contact with the outside, like visitors or phone calls, have no fixed length, times or dates. And yet this sullen, callous, puffy-faced, 19-year-old transforms from a heinous murderer to be a self-reflexive, mature man who continues to wait patiently for appeals and counter appeals to reduce his sentence from death. He enters San Quentin with minimal reading, writing and maths skills and, at the publishing his book, Jarvis Masters is 35 years old. His inner journey and personal transformation within the isolation of death row defies the language ascribed to prisoners, detainees and asylum-seeking refugees as fixed units, frozen within life-defying rhetoric. Other than the politics-serving constructions of asylum-seeking refugees, detainees are mysterious and anonymous to the citizens and society, as was Masters before he announced himself via the published book. The politics-serving constructions of asylum-seeking refugees, already locked out of sight and silenced, further isolates the human as an unchanging discreet unit. The politics of detention mirrors an unexamined ontology born of unquestioned substantialism. In 2018, the United States of America (USA) began their border protection policy of separating migrant, trafficked or asylum-seeking children from their parent or accompanying adult at the border between the USA and Mexico. In 2019, 69,550 children were warehoused in cages, including some who were much too young to take care of themselves. They were without contact with family members or regular access to showers, clean clothes, toothbrushes or proper beds. Many were sick. Many, including children as young as 2–3 years, were separated from adult caretakers without any provisions for their care besides that provided by unrelated older children also being held in detention (Aljazeera, 2019; Associated Press & Reuters, 2018; Long, 2019). It was exactly a decade earlier that Fauziya Kassindja, an asylum seeker to the USA, found herself being treated like an animal. In Do They Hear You When You Cry, she writes about her time in an American jail while her claim to refugee status was being assessed. ‘They were treating me like some kind of wild animal in a cage! I went back to my bed, sat down and started crying. Why were they doing this to me?’ (Kassindja & Bashir, 1998, 129). Her desolate desperation that I feel when reading those words reminds me instantly of Rami, who I met in the Villawood detention centre. The story of the young Iraqi man, Rami, who was ‘thrown’ into the Stage 1 area at the Villawood detention centre, reveals the impersonal operations, by intention, of the detention regime. When Rami, slight of build and gentle of heart, arrived at Sydney airport seeking asylum, he was taken directly to the Villawood detention centre. All seekers of asylum taken to the Villawood detention centre were first locked into the,

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suggestively named, high-security Stage 1 area, which is the section for tried and charged criminals. Rami was accommodated on a mattress in a dormitory of Stage 1, together with convicted criminals who, on expiry of their visas, were removed from Australian jails and placed in Villawood Stage 1 prior to deportation. Knowing that he had committed no crime, unlike the criminals around him, and that Australia was a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, he believed placing him with convicted criminals was an error. He ‘knew’ he did not belong ‘like an animal’ with those ‘hard’ criminals. Despite his total terror, daily he put on the suit in which he arrived ‘to start a new life’ so that he would be ‘right dressed’ when ‘they’ realise ‘their’ mistake and come to release him. He wanted ‘them’ to see he was not a ‘rubbish’ person and so dressed as a ‘gentleman’ (Rami, pers. comm., n.d.).

Writing the Voice Broadly, the guiding principles of a research methodology that one selects for any inquiry are to access the research questions being asked. The research might point to answers and perhaps, in turn, generate further questions. The principal question of all research remains one of knowledge generation. How will knowledge be constructed, generated or emerge? A methodology is selected to align with the theoretical framing of the project, the field of inquiry and the research participants themselves. Seldom is the researcher overtly included within the research field, other than specifically within an autoethnography. Most researchers today, whether from sciences or arts, will acknowledge that implicitly, the individual is not separate from the research, although such connection or relationship to the research remains opaque and unexamined. Implicitly curiosity, or a predilection to a certain field and topic, connects the researcher to the research: ‘research methods are executed in the service of particular research objectives, and research projects are embedded in epistemological positions and theoretical frameworks’ (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2008, 17). The researcher who lives holistically, dynamically, even intuitively, needs to create knowledge with a method that does not truncate from the whole self. I knew that I needed to align my research, writing and teaching. In the words of Leavy, ‘I wanted my work to be unified and resonate with who I am within and beyond the academy’ (Leavy, 2009, viii). I, like Leavy and others, cannot do the splitting of myself and my work! Professor Yuval Noah Harari, historian at Jerusalem University, prolific author and contemporary scholar, has said that his work would have been impossible without his regular meditation practice. In his conversation with neuroscientist Dr. Sam Harris (Harris, 2018), they agree that their experiences in meditation have changed the way they think about problems in the world and how to live. These academics are outing themselves from the meditation closet. Anyone who has not meditated can only accept as theoretical the statement from the two awarded and published academics, one in the sciences and one in the arts, that the practice of meditation has the power

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to change the way we think and how we live in the world. I do not intend to advance a case for meditation (or perhaps I do?). Rather, meditation is the analogy inviting researchers to resonate with who they know themselves to be in their approach to work. I have colleagues who live mindfully—spherically, if you will. One professor arrives for a meeting with soil under her nails. She no longer hides her passion for animals and gardening. Another walks into my office in tears; she no longer knows how to write in the dry, depersonalised style that was initially successful for her career path to the position of professor. Yet another says to me over coffee that he has torn up the syllabus of a unit he inherited for teaching, because it is so theoretical it has lost vitality. Such is the unfolding of their lives that these three professors are no longer suited to amputating one part of themselves from their living selves and felt-senses beyond the academy. As stated by Hesse-Biber and Leavy (2008), ‘new methods emerge in response to large-scale historical, social, and political changes, as well as more specific paradigm shifts, theoretical developments, and epistemological innovations’. (It is a truism that while we set about researching, life continues within and around us. The importance of employing a research approach that is epistemologically aligned with the research topic means that methods more suited to the ‘lived life’ and the ‘told story’ (Leavy, 2009, 33) are being brought into play. Such research methods need to be capable of describing, exploring or discovering (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003; Leavy, 2009). To Leavy, Denzin and Lincoln, I add examining the existent self too. We imagine a form of qualitative inquiry in the 21st century that is simultaneously minimal, existential, autoethnographic, vulnerable [from the Latin vulnus, meaning ‘wound’], performative, and critical. This form of inquiry erases traditional distinctions among epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics; nothing is value-free. It seeks to ground the self in a sense of the sacred, to connect the ethical, respectful self, dialogically to nature and the worldly environment [emphasis added]. (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003, 1052)

Positivist scientific research frameworks employ knowledge, a knowable reality and the truth as separate from the researcher, the research process and the research instruments. To research Others within an ethical, dialogically relating framework, a methodology that moves away from a positivistic model of research is necessary. Here, we are not referring to normative ethics. Normative ethics is the attempt to provide a general theory that tells us how we ought to live in terms of the agent, the act and the consequences of the act. There are three types of normative ethical theories: virtue, deontological and consequentialist (Bagaric et al., 2007). Equally, accountants, for example, have a code of ethics that I would argue is not ethics as we set out to understand non-normative ethics. Perhaps the French–Algerian philosopher, Derrida, most easily explains nonnormative ethics. Ethics, he asserts, begins when you do not know what to do. When there is a gap between knowledge and action, you do not know in advance the outcome of your action. I propose that the guiding ethics of the Midrash methodology requires a deep understanding of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who sees an ethical relation as a fundamental openness to the other that precedes subjective being. Levinas urges us to first be ethical before we allow our ontological positionality to carry us forward.

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Levinas was a philosopher’s philosopher. He wrote in conversation with philosophers. At the time of his opus magnus, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (1969), Europe was shattered from World War II. The Holocaust resulted from totalising others, which, in turn, was consequential to the ontological complicity in the construction of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and others that Hitler and Nazis deemed unworthy of life. They were turned into items for production—widgets—until they dropped or deemed of no value and murdered. Of the notorious cattle car transport, Levi writes: ‘dawn came on us like a betrayer … detail for detail: wagons closed from the outsides with men, women and children pressed together without pity, like cheap merchandise for a journey to nothingness’ (Levi, 1986, 16–17). Such unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust and mass scale murders were the progeny of philosophy—ontological thinking. Breaking with his teacher, Heidegger, Levinas speaks to ethics, ethics of the other and the face-to-face encounter that must precede ontological thought that totalises. This Levinasian impetus and my visits to Australian detention centres bring the Midrash methodology to life. Bursting into consciousness as an epiphany, only to disappear the moment I approach my computer, capturing my nascent thoughts is challenging until thoughts again reappear with the insistence of a screeching yellowcrested cockatoo. Emerging is a research method that refuses to further usurp the agency—voice … visibility—of those who already are silenced and invisible. A research method would not write about others: ‘I write midrashim as witness to the otherwise unpresentable—the indescribable’.

The Wedding We live our lives within the mutual life of the universe. Buber.

I am reminded of the young Iraqi musician I met in the Villawood detention centre. Rami, who we have already met pulled me aside during one of my visits in the visitors’ yard of surveillance. I had been visiting him continually for more than two years. Sometimes I went inside up to three times a week. Still, Rami was never assertive, always placidly, almost discreetly waiting his turn to be with me. Discreet characterises his intention, not the reality of the visitors’ yard of surveillance where all is seen. The space with sparse grass materialising here and there as if to be kind to those enclosed in the otherwise cheerless dusty yard is known to the inmates and their visitors as the visitors’ yard of surveillance. The yard is bound by the harsh metal security fencing that borders Accommodation Stages 2 and 3 and the multiple security locks and gates of the visitors’ security entrance and exit. The visitors’ yard of surveillance is bound on one side by electric wires atop the 10-foot fencing that separates it from the oft muddy, always potholed and furrowed road to the car park. A dusty track to Stage 1—maximum security for convicted criminals—branches away from the car park. Security lighting gleams

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and leers constantly to increase the visibility of all under surveillance—visitors and detainees—who can be seen through the security fencing anyway. Guards pace the yard. “I have something very important to tell you,” he says. His big brown eyes are looking deeply into mine, silently pleading. After three years of incarceration, Rami is institutionalised. He is unaccustomed to being respected and listened to. He has been trained by the prison guards to await orders and follow commands. “What? What do you want to tell me?” “Not here,” his eyes looking about and settling in the direction of the swing set, which is the only bit of colour and equipment for the children who are also imprisoned here. Today there are no children in the visitors’ yard of surveillance. Rami has selected this spot for our private conversation. I am curious and hope I do not seem too eager to hear his important information. He has never pulled me aside before today. What could be worse, more secret, than hearing him whisper in the visitors’ yard of surveillance about his torture by Saddam Hussein’s regime,3 raising his shirt and trouser legs to show me some of the scars on his body? At that time Rami, a student at a university in Baghdad, had refused to spy for the regime with the concomitant result. I was at his side in the visitors’ yard of surveillance as he endured his tender suffering when his dad passed away (“not enough medicine for him in Baghdad”) and he was unable to be with his mum to mourn properly. What now necessitates removing ourselves from the central splintered wooden bench to the unused corner of children’s colour, I ask myself. What could require this imagined form of privacy? We sit on the paint-peeled yellow and blue swing together, steadying the motion with our legs. My arm involuntarily goes around his shoulders. Hesitatingly, almost too softly, more to my ear than my face, Rami confesses he has never told me this thing before. But he now wants me to know. “I want you to know. But I don’t want to make you sad. I have something too much very sad.” He wants to tell me something very sad. He does not want to make me sad. Yet he now must tell me. Must he unburden himself? Or does he want to share? My throat constricts. The immediate tightening of my thighs is definitely not triggered by keeping the child’s swing from swinging. In the Villawood detention centre, partly to allay the boredom of the same daily routine, the loneliness and disconnection from one’s heart, tragedy and dramatic events like miscarriages, self-mutilation and suicide (attempts and successes) and the guards cutting knife for hangings, are stories to hear, retell and mull over. In a detention centre, all is known. Like in the Baxter detention centre when the asylum seekers knew about Christine. But that is another story … What then is Rami’s story? “I was in love …” (pause). 3

Name and details have been changed to protect the person’s identity. He was tortured in a hole in the ground. He had no way of knowing how long he was underground in total darkness; he only knew that it stank, and he could not avoid the bodily functions. When removed from the hole, he was told to go home, wash up and report to an address to begin spying, or face death. He did go home. And then fled the country.

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“We loved each other …” (another maddening pause). What is he telling me? “We planned to marry. We loved each other too much and she was so beautiful. Yes … I loved her. When I had to run from Baghdad I risked my life. I had to see her. You know what love is Devorah. I must respect her. I can’t just go away. I asked her to wait for me and she promised to wait. “My heart was very scary [sic], I mean for running away from home. Do you know what it is to leave everything you know? I knew if I was caught Saddam Hussein would torture me just for his fun and then kill me. But I had her in my heart. Yes. Her name is Miryam. I had her love. “The people smugglers took me into Turkey. It was very, very hard. Walking afraid all the time. Walking. Sometimes hungry. I promise you have never been hungry. I had to be in Turkey hiding. And then to Greece. Can you believe it. Don’t be sad. It was very sad time. But I don’t want to make you sad.” I knew this part of his story. So where were we going with it? I was interested and curious. I had enormous respect for this gentle musician. I also knew not to rush him to the narrative that would be as yet unknown to me. I wanted to say, “You can’t tell me not to be sad. It is a normal response to your story.” But I resisted my urge out of deference for our different cultural ways of being. He did not want to make me sad! I already knew he worked illegally in Greece doing hard labour for long hours. I wondered how this slim, small-bodied young man could carry cement bags on his head or shoulders all day, every day. “You just do it because you want to stay alive,” he had told me. “Of course, it’s too heavy and pain. But you need money and have a dream to be free of all this one day. My brother is in Australia. I know I will join him and my nephews and be free. He has a business there. I will have proper work there—in Australia.” Now on the swing, shoulder to shoulder, Rami looks to the ground. “In Greece I went to a wedding. My community was there. Lots of us had run away because of the kidnappings and killings of my people. Not everyone was illegal like me. I went to the wedding. It is something for community. Do you know why I went to wedding even if I was illegal and in danger? For respect in my people. I even got a suit from a friend I was working with. My body was strong from the hard work then. Not like this body now.” “And it was there Devorah. This sad thing.” Damn! I am thinking. Has he digressed to his body, or is he going round and round before he gets to the essence of sadness? By now, easy breathing had left my body to be replaced with some form of breath holding and sporadic silent in-breath. My out-breath eased through my pursed lips slowly and quietly so as not to interrupt. Rami’s head rises as if pulled by marionette strings. His deep big brown eyes look to me as he asks: “Can you believe such a thing?”. What? What am I to believe? Does he realise he has skipped a chunk of his story? I say nothing. Just look into his eyes. We have both started moving the swing, ever so slightly. I look up, almost unconsciously needing to place my body in time and space, by checking if everything is as usual in the visitors’ yard of surveillance. A couple under a blanket near the big

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tree. A circle of Mandaeans with their rabbi in white robes. The feisty nuns who visit families, bringing clothes for growing children and new detainees, soap, shampoo and phone cards. Close by the cultured, educated Middle Eastern gentleman who lays a tablecloth (actually, a tea towel) and places a mixture of tea bags and his kettle of boiling water, is sitting with his visitors. Over there, on the left, is the beautiful Iranian couple, she now too skinny, he now turned soft and flabby, both with beautiful eyes now masked by the dark rings from anxiety-induced sleeplessness. They have chocolates (a gift from a visitor and, in turn, offered to other visitors). I mentally note that I have to see the couple about their case before I leave today. A visitor arriving has passed through security with cool drinks. Oh, and there is the goodlooking, well-educated, softly spoken stateless Palestinian, with his flask of hot mint tea surrounded by a bunch of young women visitors. They all want to help him. He is so likeable. All is as I have become accustomed and to which I have adjusted in this place where, truthfully, I am actually accustomed to nothing. I am always tense and on edge here. That, too, is normal for me in the visitors’ yard of surveillance of the Villawood detention centre. Paradoxically, at this moment, nothing is usual for Rami. I feel his tension and pain like electricity through my body. I have learned how to protect myself and discharge the pain I absorb from the detainees. I berate myself. My heart opens to hear Rami’s sad story; looking into his eyes, his pain transfers to me like a dart. “I was too happy at the wedding. I forgot myself. Where I am. Illegal labourer. My pain shoulders. My legs sometimes not wanting even to move anymore. No, at the wedding I was a man. I stand up. I dance. It is our music. “You know a man, Devorah. I am Happy. “Devorah, can you believe I saw her. I almost jumped and ran to her. But of course, I know how to behave in my culture. I can’t just go to her and speak. It’s not like here in Australia. People are happy and free. No. At the wedding, I must hold myself. I watch her. Not watch so she and guests can see me watching her. There is a way you can see and not look straight at that person.” I nod. Finally, I can respond to him. I can imagine him in the suit a friend loaned him: ‘a bit too big, but still smart’, as he described to me. His sensitive, discreet self at the wedding is consistent with the young man I have come to know. Rami sees the woman he loves at the wedding in Greece. It could be a romantic story. But he has said it is sad. I muse as he pauses. We are still moving the swing in unison—a gentle rhythm. “I make with my eyes to her so she can come outside to talk to me. My heart Devorah. I am sure even above the music everyone can hear my heart. I had happy thoughts. Maybe we will have our wedding in Greece. “Can you believe the shock Devorah. She comes outside more beautiful even than I remembered. It’s so sad,” Rami says. “She is pregnant. I am shocked. ‘Why didn’t you wait? You promised.’ I try to say this very nice. To not make her unhappy.

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“She married another man because for too long, honestly it was too many years I was running and illegal, she didn’t hear from me. Also my family didn’t hear from me. You know in my country a woman must get married to have her future.” Truncated sentences. He is nodding his head in agreement with himself. “Yes, that is a very sad thing I had to tell you,” as his voice fades to silence. In unison, we keep the swing in gentle motion. Silently, we stop the swing and stand up. We stretch as if choreographed to be in sync. Once again, I marvel at the finely tuned non-verbal communications that develop in the visitors’ yard of surveillance as we walk towards the others. On a separate visit, I asked Rami why the love of his life could not wait for him? It has taken me a long time of relating with him to understand his culture of arranged marriages. He has explained that in Iraq, women get old quickly. A woman can be too old for children in her 30s due to harsh living conditions. Until married, she is nothing. If she gets too old—that is to say, in Iraqi terms of old—no one will want to marry her, leaving her to a fate of single loneliness, unequal to her married sisters and cousins. Her fate is to be kept at home by her father and mother. Maybe even to be strictly controlled, if she is wilfully independent. In war-torn Iraq, a mother is wrinkled, bent over, shrivelled and often in mourning black by her fifth decade. The juice sapped from the older woman is like a contagion for the younger one. No joy, only ageing and duty. I know not only because Rami has told me; I have met them and seen them. His own sister is one such single woman who has come to Australia with his widowed mother, a broken, bent old lady in black. Not yet 60 years of age. Decades apart from us in physical and mental attributes. I am momentarily grateful for my life and my country. Gratitude? Here in the Villawood detention centre? Is this even possible? I make a mental note to never limit spontaneous gratitude with mental boundaries of thought.

References Aljazeera. (2019). US held record 69,550 migrant children in custody in 2019: Report. 12 November. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/12/us-held-record-69550-migrant-chi ldren-in-custody-in-2019-report/ Associated Press and Reuters. (2018). US border patrol: Hundreds of children kept in Cages at facility in Texas. ABC News. 19 June. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-18/us-border-pat rol-facility-in-texas-children-in-cages/9880192 Bagaric, M., Boyd, K., Dimopoulos, P., Tongue, S., & Vrachnas, J. (2007). Migration and refugee law in Australia: Cases and commentary. Cambridge University Press. Buber, M. (1958). I and Thou, collectors edition (R. G. Smith, Trans.). Charles Scribner’s Sons. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2003). The handbook of qualitative research. SAGE Publications. Eacott, S. (2017). Beyond leadership: Towards a “Relational” way of thinking. In G. Lakomski, S. Eacott, & C. W. Evers (Eds.), Questioning leadership: New directions for educational organizations (1st ed., Vol. 212). Routledge. Gillan, G. (1998). Rising from the ruins: Reason, being, and the good after Auschwitz. State University of New York Press.

References

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Harris, S. (2018). ‘#138—The edge of humanity with Yuval Noah Harari’. Making sense with Sam Harris. Podcast audio, 19 September. https://podhero.com/making-sense-with-sam-harris/138the-edge-of-humanity-42d383jq Hesse-Biber, S. N., & Leavy, P. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of emergent methods. Guilford Publications. Kassindja, F., & Bashir, L. M. (1998). Do they hear you when you cry. Random House. Leavy, P. (2009). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Press. Levi, P. (1986). Survival in Auschwitz (S. Woolf, Trans.). Simon and Schuster. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne University Press. Long, C. (2019). ‘Written testimony: “Kids in cages: Inhumane treatment at the border” testimony of Clara long before the U.S. house committee on oversight and reform, Subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties, July 11, 2019’. Human Rights Watch. 11 July. https://www.hrw.org/ news/2019/07/11/written-testimony-kids-cages-inhumane-treatment-border Masters, J. J. (1997). Finding freedom: Writings from death row. Padma Publishing. Wainer, D. (2015). Beyond the wire: Levinas vis-à-vis Villawood: A study of Emmanuel Levinas philosophy as an ethical foundation for Asylum-seeker policy. Boffin Books. Wainer, C. (2016). The process of perceiving: A relational understanding of complex causal reasoning. [Thesis]. University of New South Wales.

Chapter 4

New Knowledge

The way that I live influences the way I think, and the conclusions I reach in my research fit back into the way that I live—because just to reach a theoretical conclusion that has no influence on how you actually live, what’s the point? (Harari in Harris, 2018)

New knowledge requires new thinking. Dotted with intentionality throughout this book is the trope that new thinking is virtually impossible without new research methods—knowledge creation—that give rise to thinking newly. Linked to this trope is the recurrent notion of ontological complicity. The loop is well described by Wainer (2019), who writes about complex causal perceiving in the context of research, learning, education and teaching and emphasises a required shift from substantialism to relationships. She articulates that: [W]e won’t necessarily be able to move beyond being ‘stuck’ (Grotzer, 2012) in terms of our limited causal perception until we question and reassess the underlying ontology generating our normative causal assumptions and beliefs. (Wainer, 2019, 61)

We view the world in terms of ourselves. As such, ‘the world that is meaningful to us increasingly becomes the world that we perceive’ (Grotzer 2005, in Wainer, 2019). It is our unexamined and taken-for-granted assumptions that both frame and are embedded in our very own perception of the world we choose to research (Wainer, 2019).

Critical Theory: The Linguistic Turn Also within the field of education, Nobbs (2017) writes that justice requires emancipation from systems and structures of domination, and critical theory rejects the ‘givenness’ of structures, systems and processes—to this, I add language. Contemporary critical theorists in the humanities and ‘postmodern’ philosophers usually cite epistemological reasons to explain why a turn to linguistic categories is necessary. The Shoah, most notably, together with more recent genocides, have given weight to the linguistic turn. In the area of philosophy, the writings of continental © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_4

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Jewish philosophers such as Buber, Rosenzweig, Fackenheim and Levinas are being reappraised for their relevance to contemporary critical theory. The post-Holocaust critical theory to which I am referring encompasses postmodern thinking as dialogic—relational. As such it seeks no universal or totalising all, encompassing truth and is rather content with particular stories celebrating the multiplicity of narratives without reducing them to the universal. Critical theory as postmodernism aims at repairing and preserving differences through relating and dialogue. (Kepnes et al., 1998, 11–13)

Early, or pre-modern, Kantian thinking that presents God as moral will and humans as free moral agents has no response to the total absence of a moral God at Auschwitz and to the sustained demonic activity of the Nazis and their collaborators. Similarly, Hegelian thought, which presented God as a rational mind and described modern Europe as the perfection of humanity and the culmination of history, is equally baffled by the primitive and archaic forces of hatred that were unleashed throughout Europe during World War II and the utterly irrational and opaque quality that a God who ruled the earth during the Holocaust takes on. The Holocaust represents the ultimate challenge to ethical, moral and rational formulations. Emil Fackenheim poetically and succinctly expresses the Holocaust as a reef upon which waves of rational thought founder. Try as it may, philosophy cannot comprehend the immensity of the evil perpetrated against the Jewish people1 in the Shoah. After Auschwitz, itself a linguistic turn meaning the Shoah, another linguistic turn takes place that informs the approach to the Midrash methodology. Jewish philosophers cannot answer the questions posed by the Holocaust, they can only ask the questions and tell the stories. After Auschwitz, Jewish thought must be fragmentary, paradoxical and dialectical. German philosopher and rabbi, Emil Fackenheim, (1916–2003), who survived Kristallnaght, teaches us that [a]fter Auschwitz, there should be no final solutions. After Auschwitz, Jewish thought must be, Midrashic (Fackenheim, 1994). As Fackenheim summarises the aims and literary forms of Midrash, it becomes obvious why it is so apt as a method for post-Holocaust thought—research. Midrashic thought cannot resolve the contradictions in the root experience, but only express them. This expression is (a) fully conscious of the contradictions expressed (b) is fully deliberate in leaving them unresolved (c) for both reasons, combined, is consciously fragmentary … Seeking adequate literary form, the Midrash content can find it only in story, parable, and metaphor. Fackenheim in Kepnes (1992, x–xi)

The above quotes are from The Text as Thou: Martin Buber’s Dialogical Hermeneutics and Narrative Theology, a book that deeply motivates my work. Kepnes (1992) writes a study on Buber’s dialogical hermeneutics and Chasidic narratives generally, and Buber’s I–Thou specifically. While reading this book, I was struck with the question: How would I research the incarcerated asylum-seeking-refugees as if they were The Text? The Text as Thou. The Text as Other. The Other as Thou. How does a researcher come to know her own desires and self-deceptions in the distance between the intention of inquiry and the act of writing? Further methodology 1

I wish to acknowledge that not only Jewish people were wiped out during the Holocaust. Numbers of Others, too, lost their lives.

Ubuntu—To Save a Life

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questions plagued me as they came into sight. How can a researcher speak in an ethical determination of her relationships with those who are incarcerated? Wherein lies the legal discourse and responsibility when researching behind the wires, walls and waters is illegal? Eschewing the established boundaries of language and semiotics of scholarship fields that determine the separation of researcher and research subject, research field and researcher’s felt-reality, I follow the questions. “What will you do, Devorah?” asked John Kani (per. comm. with author, 2010) I will use the Midrash titled ‘Ubuntu’ to explicate a question I followed—this question you asked me, John Kani—and show how the themes from my personal past (In this chapter) of South Africa and Mandela come to bear in my research today.

Ubuntu—To Save a Life “We thought he had gone soft.” John Kani’s2 mellifluous voice carries the drama of the story. He is telling me about Nelson Mandela. “We thought he had gone soft in jail. We were ready to start the march on Pretoria.”3 In those days, the bad days of apartheid, ‘marching to Pretoria’ was a euphemism for starting the civil revolution. “ ‘But, Nelson, we have the arms. We can render the country ungovernable. We have the AK47s ready.’ We had expected Madiba (the respectfully affectionate name for Nelson Mandela) to say, ‘Take it to the white man. Let’s march on Pretoria’,” Kani says—his eyes saying more than his words. We are in a Sydney city coffee shop. I am hanging on John Kani’s every word as he unfolds this little-known account of the first meeting the handful of trusted leaders and close friends had with Mandela upon his release from captivity. Goosebumps present themselves in ever-intensifying waves upon my arms as I listen, hardly breathing, not noticing our coffee getting cold nor the business people entering and leaving the busy coffee shop. While listening, my mind is flitting here and there, seeking a memory stored long ago that connects to this telling of John’s. Something is feeling familiar. I recall the connection. My friend Frankie—originally from Alexandria township (Johannesburg), smuggled out after years in prison,4 now with two PhDs from Oxford university and the Professor of Development Economics at the University of Oslo— left his position and security, returning to South Africa after Mandela’s release. In my South African home, my legs curled under me on the couch in the lounge room,

2

I have used John Kani intermittently with Kan, not using John, as a respectful tribute to him. Pretoria was the administrative capital of South Africa. As such, Pretoria symbolised apartheid. 4 People were held for 90 days in detention without trial. The 90 days could be repeated, thus, challenging habeas corpus. 3

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Frankie told me quietly: “Devorah, our patience is running out. You Whites have our patience and goodwill now—but for how long?”. John Kani continues; our heads move closer together across the table in conspiratorial proximity. I had met John, the South African legend, activist playwright and actor, in 2005 when he was playing his Nothing but the Truth at the Opera House in Sydney. The play is a tribute to his younger brother, who was shot and killed by police in 1985 when he was reciting a poem at the funeral of a 9-year-old girl who was killed during riots. Our initial meeting was proper. No handshake, no comrade’s greeting either. Simple acknowledgement of each other. My heart thumping in my throat was the result of anxiety and excitement. How would Kani respond to my question, what is ‘ubuntu’?5 At that time, I was reading and writing about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as an alternative to the Nuremburg Trials model for closure between victims and perpetrators. Almost unbelievably, synchronistically, Kani’s season opened in Sydney. The promised half hour became an hour and a half. Here we lived the sacred moment that only appears mundane. Coming together in an interview that turned into deep conversation, recognition of each other beyond Black and White bodies, South African and ex-South African, woman and man, past and future, is the Midrash of the whole otherness of the Other of which Levinas writes. In his book on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, No Future without Forgiveness, Desmond Tutu writes: ‘ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human’ (Tutu, 1999, 34). “So, John, what is ubuntu? How shall I write about ubuntu?”. “When Pontius Pilate washes his hands—in the Bible story—the Xhosa translation is based upon the root stem ntu. Pilate says ‘take umunu’. That means ‘take this human being’. Pilate says this to differentiate Jesus from the oppressors. It’s umntu in Xhosa and umuntu in Zulu. Ubuntu means the essence of being. “Ubuntu is the only thread that seems to weave itself around all of us, connecting each one of us to the other. When that breaks, we become individuals—and individuals care about themselves; they become materialistic. More greed means less care, less respect, less responsibility to the other. Then, I have ceased to be my brother’s keeper.” He continues with his story: “In South Africa, at that time, we had forgotten ubuntu. A massive education was required to learn that right is not the opposite of wrong. Right has no relationship to wrong. Before Mandiba was released, the elders did not say ‘Stop the killing’. They sent out the word to wait. Wait for Nelson. Wait for Nelson Mandela. “And then he was free. And we met with him, expecting him to give the order to take it to Pretoria. Instead, he said: ‘Wait. Please give us time to establish a new South Africa peacefully’. So when Nelson asked us that, we said ‘Alright’.

5

Ubuntu “I am because we are.” In Xhosa, it means “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity”.

You Gonna Hear from Me

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“Because of that respect—a grey-haired elder standing next to all the other grey hairs—we couldn’t tell him to ‘piss off’; they looked so beautiful, the grey hairs … they were entrusted by the ancestors … by the Creator. So we needed to give this a chance and, in so doing, we gave peace a chance. “Madiba asked us to wait. We asked him: ‘Why?’. “‘If it saves one life, it will be worth it’.” We hug and begin farewelling each other. Turning, at 45° we turn again to face each other. Yes, something special did happen in-between us. We hug again, this time holding on a while to the unique sacred that dwelt in our midst. Somewhere, sometime, someplace during our conversation, Kani had asked me: “Where is ubuntu for Australia? What will you do?”.

You Gonna Hear from Me Midrash means exposition, investigation or searching. Commentary, clarification or interpretation of Torah text through exploratory storytelling is Midrash. No longer does Midrash have a univalent meaning as it does in rabbinic Judaism, in connection with the Torah. Although it originated in connection with Torah, contemporaneously, Midrash offers a context for evaluating and re-evaluating various discourses that inform experience. The Midrashim are written as the starting phase of this methodology. Ideally, Midrash helps us to reflect upon and develop an understanding. Midrash uplifts … interprets by telling stories of events (Kepnes, 1992, xi). Albeit now the second decade of the twenty-first century, life inside the Australian Gulags and American cages is worse than in the preceding decades. It seems as if the hubris of politicians and the bureaucracy allow them to feel protected. They enact policies and behave with impunity. I wonder if the ‘ruling classes’ imbibe some form of superiority and righteousness? Or does ignorance prevail decade by decade? Leonard Cohen z’l’6 offers carefully curated, profound and widely recognised responses in his lyrics for.‘You Want It Darker’ (2016) “ the help that never came”, and from Anthem. (1994) “They’re gonna hear from me”. As my children’s mother, as a researcher writing for archives and future generations, and within the current context of my research, ‘you gonna hear from me’ through the Midrashim by shining light on musicians, poets, bankers, students and mothers. The phenomenology behind the wire encapsulates not only the horrors consigned to those to whom the Midrash bears witness. In addition to the Midrashim that are witness to the ongoing cruelty and unimaginable suffering, interwoven like high points of a musical composition, the Midrash highlights, as if through auric emanations, those who remain dignified even as they are broken in Australian detention centres, Gulag islands and prisons. Young children are forgetting their names as they remember only their designated numbers. Adults and children are self-harming 6 z’l’ stands for zichron livracha, which is the Hebrew for ‘May his memory be for a blessing’. It is appended to the name of a person who has passed on.

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and attempting suicide. Unlike substantialist framing and, therefore, the linear genre of writing, not all on these pages is spelled out. Spaces are left for interpretation and integration with prior art, knowledge and dispositions. In this way, you are gonna hear from yourself too. Ignoring the physical and mental health of detainees and delaying treatment until, in some cases, it is too late is the nuanced, sometimes implicit, mostly explicit policy of detainee deterrence for the past 20–25 years. In this time, deterrence has become increasingly punitive and obscure. In September 2018, the BBC news (Harrison, 2018) reported that according to Professor Louise Newman, we are starting to see suicidal behaviour in children as young as eight and 10 years old. Newman is a professor of psychiatry at The University of Melbourne who works with families and children on the island of Nauru. The majority of Australians are indifferent to the young men dying through wilful medical neglect of the Australian regime7 and those who have been killed at the hands of the camp guards and local island citizens. Too many children are being diagnosed with traumatic withdrawal syndrome, also known as resignation syndrome.8 Eleven years earlier, in 2007, Julian Burnside QC, a noted barrister and human rights expert, wrote about a 10-year-old Iranian girl who, in 2000, arrived in Australia with her mother, father (both in their 30 s) and seven-year-old sister. After a terrifying voyage, they were locked into Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, where their condition deteriorated. The 10-year-old deteriorated to such a terrible mental condition but, despite official reports regarding her dire state and the clinical care she required, nothing was done. On a Sunday night, while her parents and her sister were at dinner, she took a bedsheet and hanged herself. She did not know how to tie the knot properly and was still choking when the parents came back to the room. When they took her down she tried to swallow shampoo because she had seen adults kill themselves that way in Woomera. (Burnside, 2007, 26)

Primo Levi prefaces Survival in Auschwitz with the explanation that his book is not intended as an ‘account of atrocities’ (Levi, 1986, 9). Nor, he points out, is it his intention to add accusations—readers already know about the death camps. He was examining the chain of events, or syllogisms, that propel a group of people to the ‘Lager’, and he writes to reveal the chain that paid the way to the cattle cars and death camps (Wainer, 2015, 114).

7

‘The situation is critical. They know about this in Canberra but nothing is happening’. (Doherty, 2018). 8 In resignation syndrome, children refuse to eat, drink, talk, walk or toilet themselves; in some cases, children even refuse to open their eyes.

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Chain of Alarm Signals Like Levi, my aim with ‘you gonna hear from me’ is not to instil shock in the reader or write a list of atrocities. Rather, as Levi writes instructively about a chain of signals that should alarm us, my aim is to link them specifically to the automatic conceiving of a stranger as an enemy. He proposes ‘quiet study’ of documentation of certain aspects to counter indifference. The Australian Government’s indifference to the humanity and anguish of the family about whom Burnside (2007) writes serves to signal the progeny of more suffering, suicides and deaths on the islands in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Significantly, withdrawal syndrome in children, the loss of hope, family, feeling human and, for some, even life itself are all born of the destructive chain of conspired events within the Australian detention regime. The chain itself is filial to the indifference of detain, deter and deport policies is getting stronger decade by decade. A judgment by the High Court of Australia on 8 August 2002 has underscored how far successive Australian Governments have gone to abolish the basic democratic rights of asylum seekers. The ultimate indifference is indifference to the Highest Court in the land. A decision by Australia’s High Court on August 8 … ruled that the procedures that have been used by the federal government’s Refugee Review Tribune (RRT) to reject thousands of asylum applications since 1993 are procedurally unfair and therefore unlawful. (Skeers 2002).

The Chain of Indifference Continues In 2014, the chief immigration psychiatrist responsible for the mental health of people in detention condemned the system, disclosing that the immigration department deliberately harms vulnerable detainees in a process akin to torture. ‘If we take the definition of torture to be the deliberate harming of people in order to coerce them into a desired outcome, I think it does fulfil that definition’ (Marr and Loughland, 2014, X). More recently, in 2019, Vasefi writes comprehensively in an article titled ‘Australia Is a Bigger Cage: The Ongoing Trauma of Nauru’s Child Refugees’: Even after finally being transferred to Australia, the scars remain for many young refugees. “I don’t have to take two-minute showers under the guard’s eyes anymore, no one can invade my privacy here, security officers won’t check my ID all throughout the day anymore. The extreme hostile living environment of Nauru is gone. “However, Australia is a bigger cage”. The years on Nauru in the detention system have taken a devastating toll on their mental health. A teenage Iranian refugee was incarcerated on Nauru at the age of nine. Five years later, she was transferred to Australia at age 14. Her plentiful sketches are so disturbing that under ordinary circumstances they would be “a highly ominous sign” warranting immediate

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And yet, the gross disregard for human life continues, despite knowingly destroying them, with multiple assaults on their whole being by contravening multiple human rights conventions. The Australian Minister of Home Affairs, The Hon. Peter Dutton MP repeated at every opportunity the war cry, they ‘will never set foot on Australia’ until two significant ruptures to the government’s attempts at whitewashing the truth about asylum-seeking-refugees on the Gulags. First, medevac, the medical evacuation law of 2019, gave doctors more power to decide whether asylum seekers should come to Australia for medical treatment. Medical treatments, practitioners, hospitals and supplies are extremely limited and often rudimentary on the islands, to the extent that detainees unnecessarily died or suffered exacerbations of easy to cure conditions that would last their lifetime. Prior to medevac, medical practitioners were flown from Australia to the islands; yet their requests to bring patients to Australia when the Gulags were lacking, for example, dealing with heart attacks, were routinely denied or prolonged by the political apparatchik. Medevac sought to ensure the weight of medical practitioners’ advice and requests. It is estimated that 40 people were initially and urgently moved to Australian detention accommodations in hotels. On 31 October 2020, there were 1,533 people in detention facilities and approximately 200 locked in hotels under medevac. Some medevac detainees are lucky enough to have a small balcony for fresh air while others have interior rooms; some have been detained for more than a year. The second rupture occurred in January 2021, when approximately a dozen refugee men were released from hotel detention. They had been held in the hotels under the medevac regime for a year, making their total period of incarceration seven long years. One declared that after living with ‘torture, trauma and sadness’, he is free. Significantly, he continued to expand on his meaning of freedom, stating he felt ‘like a person who can work, who can pay tax, who can see friends’. However, he is disappointed that he is not allowed to study, adding: ‘I am sure even criminals in jail are supported to study’ (McKim, 2021). If, per Levi’s suggestion, the above offers the reader alarm signals of indifference, then Levinas’s response to indifference is instructive.

Ethical Relating: A Levinasian Response Levinas repeats in different texts his caution against indifference ‘even if indifference is statistically dominant’ (Levinas, 1988, viii), as it is in Australia. I suggest that a Levinasian response needs to be invoked to counter the indifference to asylumseeking-refugees. A response is a personal approach to the life of anOther, a Stranger. Unless we, as individuals and nations, are able to make the internal shift to ethical relating with the Other and the Stranger, as Levinas warns, the worst might happen.

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‘[T]he worst’ for Levinas is the Shoah: the Nazi’s failure to acknowledge the humanity of the other. The philosopher’s prediction is prescient. The political project of consecutive Australian governments is dehumanising and killing those who came here seeking refuge: My pen speaks for the accidental criminal who languishes and waits in a razor wire bind. His Crime? To ask for freedom and humanity’s compassion. But finds a fate much worse than the terror left behind. Alone, afraid, alive but barely breathing … like suffocating crucifiction [sic], a slow and painful death. Historians, historians, where are your pens? … In this century where men will land upon the moon of Venus We cannot find a place for the refugee to live? (Zand, 2006).

Mohsen Saltani Zand, like the 10-year-old girl, also spent time in Woomera. He was a young university student studying English in an Iranian university before events caused him to flee his home and country. He wrote this poem during his fifth year in Australian detention centres. Let us briefly return to Rami in Stage 1—the quietly spoken, stunned student of hospitality at a Baghdadi university who fled from Iraq to save his life, the thickaccented young man who daily donned his suit to show he was not a ‘rubbish person’. Rami regarded himself a ‘gentleman’. After one month of waiting he no longer donned his suit. After two months of sleeping on the floor, he was told to carry his mattress to another dormitory in Stage One to make room for a ‘new rubbish person’.9 No one knew he was there. No one there knew him. After months in Stage One he was so depressed that he no longer cared. Suddenly in a moment the guards told him to be ready for removal. Removal generally meant being returned to the country from which he escaped. Even Rami knew that! But no. Quivering, he clarified that he was immediately to be removed to Stage Two. Quickly he put on his now shabby, crumpled suit, dusting it off as best he could. In Stage Two, he met asylum seekers who had been incarcerated for three, four and five years. His hopes of release were dashed. Feeling ‘forgotten’, Rami threw his suit under his bed. (Wainer, 2015, 46).

9

The detention guards used this language when addressing detainees.

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Poetry in Supermax They had shared their room, the converted shipping container, for six months when we met them. I first noticed Kavan (name changed) when our three university students and I were ushered, with guards in front of and behind us, into the supermax visiting room—another converted shipping container. Despite having our car, number plate and passenger numbers checked by guards at the security gate entrance to the supermax detention centre, despite each person being searched and IDs checked by more guards at the office entrance of the supermax, despite having permission letters from Canberra to visit the specific person, we were still almost frogmarched to what was the visitors’ room. My mouth dried as my heart pounded. Here, yet another guard sat, expressionless, looking at security monitor screens as well as us. A wax imitation of a human imitating a security guard, I thought, and then disastrously, I imagined him reverse-squinting each eye, one at the screens, one at us. And I began to giggle. Have you ever suppressed giggles when you are surrounded by security guards with guns? Not for the first time during our trip to Darwin did my students surround me to save me! Noticing Kavan in the room does not make me a cultural genius. We knew he is from Iran. Moreso, he is the only person other than the guards and ourselves in the visitors’ room. Shadowed by my students, I approached him to ask his name and to identify ourselves. Big mistake! We were menacingly blocked by the frog-marching guards. The reverse-squinting guard continues to sit, poker-faced, at his post. In my role as Fearless Professor, I say: “And your problem is? You know we are here to visit with Kavan. You obviously called and escorted him to this visiting room when were processed at reception.” Puffed up Fearless Professor is showing that she knows the procedures in the detention system. Nothing in the detention regime is for Fearless Professors. All is to keep both visitors and the incarcerated unknowing, unprepared, unsteady. “Yes, you will visit with him after your tour of the facility.” “Tour of the facility?” The students took a step back. I stood firm. “Oh, what a kind surprise you have prepared for us,” I gasped. This time, it was the students’ turn to muffle their giggles. We were feeling ambushed (I know, because we debriefed for two hours after that visit). But at that moment, they are behind me—physically and morally. “We’ll first visit with Kavan because it would be wrong to keep him waiting. Then we will appreciate our tour.” Another big mistake. In jail, the guards rule. You do what they say. All the while Kavan was standing, his cap now removed and scrunched in his nervous hands. As the guards manoeuvred us towards the door, I asked them to please explain to Kavan that we will come back to the visitors’ room to visit him. Of course, he does not speak English, they do not speak Farsi or Kurdish, nor do they care about conveying niceties that may enable Kavan to feel a respected person. I looked back helplessly, trying to reassure him. But how could I achieve such communication when we, visitors, are so obviously being manipulated against our wills. When we are returned to the visitors’ room, which somehow seems tinier and more cramped than before our tour, Kavan is not there. We are agonised. I was smouldering.

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If they treat a detainee like this, messing with him, in front of visitors, including a Fearless Professor, the enormity of their abuse of terrified, already traumatised asylum-seeking-refugees hit us. We were now sad. It was my job to contain the students as they experienced these shocks. I puffed up my fearlessness more than my professorness. I ask, “Where is Kavan?”, checking my voice is deep and soft—menacing, but not too menacing. The students enjoyed my attitude. We now had three somewhatpuffed-up-students. We began joking around, a bit too voce alta. The reverse-squint guard continued sitting at his desk with his poker face. Wide-eyed, Kavan was produced by two guards. A small terrified man. Really? Two guards? Our thinking was easily communicated to each other. In a brilliant move, one of the students offered, with gentle politeness, tea, coffee or water to Kavan. There is a tiny and easy to miss if you have not had time hanging around the server with those few drinks on offer. She checked to see that the reverse-squinting guard has heard her treat Kavan as a human deserving of dignity and respect. Poker-faced, he continued staring at the monitors. Her intuitive move turns out to be more than decency. Kavan’s bewildered face revealed his lack of comprehension. We discovered he does not understand English. I introduced us by name and confirm his name. Much nodding, smiling and headbobbing ensued. We sat together with increasing frustration. Suddenly Kavan jumped up and rushed to the locked door, banging for the guard to open it. The reversesquinting guard opened the door with a click of his maximum-security technology. We remained agonised. The guard offered not a word, despite our questioning. We wait. Pacing and sitting, we all agreed that our visit is not over. Huffed out of breath and triumphant, he returned. The reverse-squinting guard clicked his technology. The door opened. Kavan entered with another detainee. “English … English”. Kavan repeated with an impossibly huge grin. It seems he has not smiled in so long that his face does not quite allow the full expansion of his smile while he thumped the second man on his back. This second detainee, let us respectfully name him Mr English, nodded and grinned, all the while repeating after Kavan “English”. Miraculously, our halting conversation in the language of words, translations, arm-waving, nods and frowns became more fluent, and we began to understand each other. During that uniquely crafted conversation, we learned that Kavan likes to recite poetry. He can recite Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic. With genuine excitement, I asked him to recite any Rumi poem he knows. This man sat up taller, straightening his spine. His eyes slowly came alive and he started a few lines. I was hearing the words of Rumi in what must be the closest to his original language. Goosebumps covered my arms. I forced the tears back into their ducts. A few more words. Inside my head hear: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there” by Rumi. Although I did not actually know which poem he was reciting, I am immersed in an exquisite moment. Time stops. I expand.

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Fig. 4.1 Poetry in Supermax with reverse-squint guard. My deep gratitude to Neha for her permission to reprint her Midrash sketches

Then he stops. Again, he starts. A different poem. He stops. And then the wet behind his eyes. Kavan no longer remembers. “Too much worry. No sleep,” he explains. More of our unique embodied language flows as we turn to Mr English. Until that moment, Mr English had remained mostly invisible as a unique individual. Now, to take the pressure off Kavan, I asked Mr English about himself. The two, strangers when they arrived at the detention centre, were put together in an impossibly tiny room—also a shipping container. We learned a bit about their families, tears flowing as they speak of their sons. How have we moved from sons back to poetry? It seems as if grace was waiting to descend to a Buberian I–Thou among us. Firouz10 offers, “I like to write poetry. But what’s the point here in hell?” Kavan’s eyes light up. Now, one room-mate writes his poetry for the other to read and recite. (See Fig. 4.1).

10

The Buberian moment transforms the assumed anonymous name, Mr English, to a unique individual’s name. His real name is changed.

References

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References Burnside, J. (2007). Watching brief: Reflections on human rights, law and justice. Melbourne: Scribe. Cohen, L. (1992). Anthem [Song] on The Future. Columbia Label. Cohen, L. (2016). You want it darker [Song] on You Want it Darker. Columbia Label. Fackenheim, E. L. (1994). To mend the world (1982) (3rd ed.). Bloomington, Ind. Harris, S. (2018). ‘#138—The Edge of Humanity with Yuval Noah Harari’. Making Sense with Sam Harris. Podcast audio, 19 September. https://podhero.com/making-sense-with-sam-harris/138the-edge-of-humanity-42d383jq. Harrison, V. (2018). Nauru refugees: The Island where children have given up on life. BBC News. 1 September. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45327058. Kepnes, S. (1992). The text as thou: Martin buber’s dialogical hermeneutics and narrative theology. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Kepnes, S., Ochs, P., & Gibbs, R. (1998). Reasoning after revelation: Dialogues in postmodern Jewish philosophy. Westview Press. Levi, P. (1986). Survival in Auschwitz. Translated by S. Woolf. New York: Simon and Schuster. Levinas, E. (1988). Entre nous: On thinking-of-the-other. Translated by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav. New York: Columbia University Press. Marr, D., & Loughland , O. (2014). Australia’s detention regime sets out to make asylum seekers suffer, says chief immigration psychiatrist. The Guardian. 5 August. https://www.theguardian. com/world/2014/aug/05/-sp-australias-detention-regime-sets-out-to-make-asylum-seekers-suf fer-says-chief-immigration-psychiatrist. McKim, N. (2021). Refugees freed from detention. News release. Nobbs, A. G. (2017). Habitus, ontology and misrecognition: Addressing the issue of structural injustice within the university context. Ph.D. thesis, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland. https://openrepository.aut.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10292/10768/NobbsAG.pdf?sequence= 3&isAllowed=y. Skeers, J. (2002). Australian high court ruling highlights denial of refugee rights. International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) World Socialist Web Site. 22 August. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/08/refu-a22.html. Tutu, D. (1999). No future without forgiveness. London: Rider. Vasefi, S. (2019). ‘“Australia is a bigger cage”: The ongoing trauma of Nauru’s child refugees’. The Guardian. 25 August. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/25/australia-is-abigger-cage-the-ongoing-trauma-of-naurus-child-refugees. Wainer, C. (2019). The process of perceiving: a relational understanding of complex causal reasoning. [Thesis] University of New South Wales, Sydney. Wainer, D. (2015). Beyond the wire: levinas vis-à-vis villawood: A study on levinas’s philosophy as an ethical foundation for asylum-seeker policy. Boffin Books. Zand, M. S. (2006). Australian dream. Sticky Label.

Part II

Chapter 5

Contextualising the Need for a Levinasian Approach

The face is a living presence, it is expression … the face speaks. The manifestation of the face is already discourse. Levinas.

In the previous chapter, we witnessed the weaving of distinctions between epistemology, ethics and aesthetics (Denzin & Giardina, 2012). At the heart of the supermax visiting room, between detainees and students, pulsed the heart of Levinas’ phenomenology of ethics, an ethics of alterity. The ethics of the ‘face to face’ encounter, as elucidated by Levinas (1969, 1988, 1991), is inherent in the supermax waiting room—inside Australian detention centres, on islands and in deserts—as the Midrashim in this book reveal. The Midrash methodology is congruent with the philosophy of Levinas. The Midrashim (plural of Midrash) that the researcher-author writes are influenced by the thinking of Levinas, who writes about the Other, the Stranger in the face-to-face encounter. My research aligns with and is enriched by the philosopher’s thinking, yielding a phenomenology of the incarcerated and unwanted others—the asylumseeking-refugees. For Levinas’s conception of responsibility to be practical in our lives, the way we see ourselves or the way we approach concrete situations must reflect the meaning of ethics. Meeting detainees in detention centres—Villawood and Darwin supermax—mobilises the Levinasian approach to concrete situations. Relating face-to-face behind the wire, in the visitors’ yards or containers, stands in stark contrast to the political and media spurning and abandoning of the asylumseeking-refugees on the other side of the wires. The difference between the two positions in relation to the wires—inside and outside—is the concern of ethics, which is located ‘neither in the analysis of specific problems nor in the discovery of universal laws, but in the vulnerable being of flesh and blood’ (Levinas, 1984, 131). Here, he describes his non-normative ethics that is the stuff of humankind. Within the context of philosophy, he is also shifting the locus of knowledge, from analysis and generalisations, that is to say, to knowledge as an emergent property of relating. Levinas becomes the researcher’s invisible yet tangible shepherd to achieve four aims: (1) maintaining and furthering the ethics of alterity; (2) the transformative shift © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_5

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required of us with regard to knowledge that is relational and irreducible to subject– object thought; (3) the face to face is conversation that, according to the philosopher, is justice and (4) the ethical structure of subjectivity as the pivot for inquiry. Philosophers engage with the questions of being, essence, God and knowledge and think through the answers using various methods based on the history of thought. Ontology is located within the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, which seeks answers to questions about being, existence and categorises groups and id entities. Levinas is the first Western philosopher who turns towards a non-normative ethics that calls upon my responsibility to the other unique individual. Beings have their own face. As such, they can present their own message. The opposite of justice is to usurp the Other’s unique self with universalising language that reduces them to the same Their uniqueness is their vulnerability, as expressed by their face (visage). In fact, even before I think about them, I am called upon to attend to, to show up to, their needs. Herein is an example of action that is ethical and must occur prior to an ontology that generates my thoughts about that other person. It is significant at this juncture to add that Levinas’s thinking is born from his personal biography. Born prior to World War II, his ethics for the other matured after being wholly othered during World War II. He was interned in Fallingbostel as a French captain prisoner of war (POW). Yet he was separated from the other officers because he was Jewish. Levinas holds the Shoah as the progeny of an ontology (thought) that totalises and universalises a person. In the Shoah and other genocides, this is double murder. The perpetrator is blinded to the unique individual who is already murdered by generalisations before he is physically killed. An orientation of the thinking required for framing research to be congruent, explicitly or implicitly, with Levinas’s philosophy follows. To elucidate but a few concepts within his corpus may give the impression that each concept is separate from the other. In fact, his work is interconnected at multiple levels of understanding. Levinas is a continental philosopher, writing philosophy for philosophers in French. What follows is not linear per se. Each conceptual explication builds towards the end of this chapter when we discuss the Hebrew project that allows for each unique voice to be presented and valued for itself. The conversational–relational manner of research and languaging will be illuminated. Levinas poses Socratic style questions to stimulate our critical thinking, to penetrate our underlying assumptions in a form of dialogue with us, his readers: Can objectivity and the universality of thought be founded on discourse? Is not universal thought, itself, prior to discourse? Does not a mind in speaking evoke what the other mind already thinks, both of them participating in common ideas? (Levinas, 1969, 72)

Following his questions, Levinas submits his thesis that coherent discourse is one wherein expressive language maintains the other—to whom it is addressed. There is space within the discourse for the other to remain Other, rather than be subsumed by language that universalises the individual. The danger lies in removing the stranger’s presentation of self with language (thought) that makes them, the other, familiar to the self. Invoking the other as a being represented by the self’s thought is

The Other (Autrui)—The Face (Visage)

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unethical. In the previous chapter, we read about asylum-seeking-refugees who are reviled by politicians and the media. The unique asylum-seeking-refugee is totalised and remade in the language of the politician as if they are known, as if they are in totality nothing more than the description ascribed to him. The public are duped by the ontological complicity of their own substantialist lenses. The self that thinks about the other is merely thinking. Knowing is relational. Such relating is irreducible to the subject–object; instead the revelation of the other is allowed to shine through. The other is not something represented, is not a given, is not a particular, open to generalisation. First, there is the unique indivisible Other. The two, the self and the other, are not a representation of the one by the other, nor a participation in universality. Maintaining their unique relational, conversational interaction and activity is designated as ethical.

The Other (Autrui)—The Face (Visage) Levinas writes in French using the word autrui for the other, sometimes capitalising the A ‘a’ and sometimes not, which is the reason I sometimes capitalise Other and sometimes not. Autrui is the person other than oneself; the other person; someone else. The face (of the other) is quintessential in Levinas’s thinking and plays out in ours. Using the French visage, not the English face, he indicates a consciousness of that human as represented by the face, rather than the composite of facial features. That is, not the physical that is the face; rather, we read visage to mean the encounter with the living presence of another person. Accordingly, we come to understand that an encounter with an Other cannot be reduced to a physical presence. The le visage de l’autre is the non-reducible living presence of that Other one. The Other, or Stranger, is a living reality who we must encounter as such. Most usually, we want to rush to the first unreflective instance in which we impossibly think about that one, thereby reducing them to an image or thought in our minds. That other, who comes in front of me, is vulnerable exactly because I can reduce and truncate her with my conception of her. Herein lies the unethical dangers of reduction and destruction of the Other. Such destruction is, as Levinas would have it, the opposite of justice. Justice then lies with our responsibility to dignify and respect the other. Some years ago, I attended an international conference to present a paper on a Midrash illuminating day-by-day life for the incarcerated asylum-seeking-refugee. A phenomenology of ‘inside’, if you will. Briefly setting the context of his story— why the protagonist had to escape from his country and a bit about his journey—I continued reading the Midrash about his encounters with other detainees and the guards in relation to their lived lives behind the wires. Throughout my paper, the woman with stylish spectacles, sitting in the back left corner of the university classroom, was weeping. “How compassionate!” I thought. “How empathetic!” I thought. How wrong was I! As I concluded, amid applause, she waved her arm in the air, stood and exclaimed: “No, no, you’re wrong. It’s not like that.”

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Frowning, I was confused and wondered if we were about to be distracted to a conversation of politics. “Breathe and calm,” I silently prepared myself. “Yes, it is like that. I haven’t sanitised or exaggerated anything. Only I’ve chosen to omit the more disturbing parts of this story. I’ve narrated as close to my truth of what I have witnessed and experienced inside behind the wires. What makes you say it’s not like that?”. Amid breathless sniffing, watery eyes and wiping her nose, June (name changed) claimed in anguished tones, “It can’t be true. I wrote those policies. It was never meant to be like that.” June, an intelligent, funny, warm-hearted woman, and I became firm friends. She left the policy unit and department in Canberra. Like so many of the smart, wellmeaning staff in policy units, she received her brief from the minister, through the department and down the hierarchy to her team. June did her best with positive intentions. Never having been into a prison, never having met a guard, never having met an asylum-seeking-refugee, all June could do was think about, with disastrous unintended consequences. No doubt the minister intended such consequences under the detain, deter, deport theme that was mostly malevolently hidden from the policy writers, citizens and media. I too, at the start of our encounter, incorrectly thought about the source of June’s tears, instead of allowing her to present herself and her meaning. In that, I was unjust.

Australian Detention Regime: Disconnection of Rights from Policy The Australian Government has disconnected the philosophy of the right to rights as represented in the 1951 Refugee Convention, the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (the ‘1967 Protocol’) and other related instruments from ‘on the ground’ policies and operations for asylum-seeking-refugees. The values and principles guiding the conventions have been occluded by the operational practices of the detention regime. ‘Asylum-seeker’ as a legally defined subcategory of ‘refugee’ has been disconnected from its term and is infused with various emotive registers causing the person seeking asylum to be perceived as the Unwanted Other. Constructed to be more strange than a stranger, the life project of the unwanted asylum-seeking refugee goes unrecognised and unheard. While they are incarcerated, invisibilised and silenced in remotely located prisons and detention centres, the cacophony of recycled and polarising politics and opinions about people seeking asylum continues unabated. The visage disappears. The voices which should be empowered by human rights law are often disregarded by human rights law and they are even frequently further silenced by it. They remain in Aristotle’s term, aneu logou (without a voice) (Simmons, 2012, 3).

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Disconnections in Darwin As the students, and I, their teacher/chaperone, approach the demountable structures crammed into a fenced area a word-worm becomes clearer and more insistent in my mind. Disconnected … disconnections … uncoupled. The theme of disconnections, still unclear but taking form in my mind, is apt within the context of the detention regime. In this instance, ‘lodge’ disconnects from any former frame of reference or mental picture of a lodge. Camp David, The Lodge (the Australia Prime Minister’s official residence), a lodge in the forest, a spa lodge, trees … water … relax. Darwin Airport Lodge (DAL) 1 embodies disconnections. DAL1, a disembodied dislodged structure, was originally a Steiner school that once housed keen learners. Parents carefully selected the non-denominational, independent, private school (also known as Waldorf) for their children as a preferred place of learning. Once upon a time, the ethos and environment of the school—now, prison—offered ‘inspiring, creative and quality education’. I can easily imagine the, sometimes, joyful shrieks and screams of young children in the playground of the school. Now, there is a deadly silence behind the fences. Far removed from its past purpose and ethos, this overcrowded structure comprises demountable extensions on the ground level with another level of demountables above. Although there are walkways connecting each section, each part seems separate from the other, a jumbled jungle of separateness. There is a feeling that a child has put together a Lego set structure without taste, design or plan. As many as possible Lego pieces are squeezed in, up and across the available space and enclosed with security fencing. DAL1 and DAL2 are situated several hundred metres from a gate onto the runway at Darwin International Airport. Flights leaving from this particular gate are not announced in the airport or even visible on the electronic board that lists departures. Yet another example for the word-worm in my brain, these flights and airlines are disconnected from the announced departures of regular travellers at the airport. As the four of us approached DAL1, I was shocked anew to be confronted with a prison security regime. Darwin APODs (alternate places of detention) are promoted as ‘low security’. Compared with the state of the art high-security modern intrigue of the Wickham Point in Darwin, Christmas Island and the Villawood detention centres, for example, the APODs are low security. However, they are secured facilities that are run by employees of the criminal penal system. In this case, Serco supplies prison guards with guns and attitudes to run DAL1 as a prison (once inside, the guards are somewhat less rigid and fearsome than those inside the high-security facilities, albeit with the ongoing routines like muster day and night, instructions and tight controls.) These same guards are rostered for duty in both detention centres and regular prisons that incarcerate convicted criminals. The guards do their job, guarding criminals. We were coming to visit mothers, daughters, sons, disabled children, unaccompanied minors and families, not convicted criminals. We are visiting people seeking asylum. Disconnections of language abound within the context of the asylum-seekingrefugee discourse (Every, 2006; Hathaway, 2005; Huysmans et al., 2006). Detaining

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Fig. 5.1 Arriving at Wickham Point Maximum Security Detention Centre. My deep gratitude to Neha (name changed) for her permission to reprint her Midrash sketches

asylum-seeking-refugees in detention centres rather than incarcerating them in prisons seems to suit the apparatchik’s linguistics within the context of the detention regime. These particular prisoners—asylum-seeking-refugees—are not referred to as prisoners. Instead, they are called detainees. To detain is to hold in custody or to imprison1 One of the intentions for the detention of a convicted criminal is isolation from the community. The purpose of prison is to protect society from criminals who intend to harm innocent civilians. Incarceration—detention—provides a way for criminals to be punished and, therefore, pay their debt to society. Subliminal messages about criminal, punishment, debt to society and protection for society are linked to asylum-seeking-refugees without using the words prisoner or prison. Detainees are uncoupled from the concept of asylum—shelter, support, protection from danger—as they are held captive under lock and key. Inside both DAL1 and Wickham Point Maximum Security Immigration Detention Centre (see Fig. 5.1), we heard the detainees referred to as clients! I wondered what the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC)2 and SERCO (the organisation contracted to supply prison the guards) customer service was like? I wondered about the options or recourse for an unsatisfied ‘client’. 1

New Oxford American Dictionary, 3rd ed. (2010), s.v. ‘detain’. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) existed between January 2007 and September 2013. This was preceded by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA), the Department of Immigration, Multicultural Affairs and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA), and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP). In 2017, the department was yet again re-named as The Department of Home Affairs.

2

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We trudged (in the heat) around the perimeter until we located the gate. Almost as if it was a quivering mirage, we first noticed the guardhouse. With relief, we hastened our pace and, as if we were in a normal world, we stepped inside the gates … and immediately we ground to a halt. The security guard’s instruction was clear. We must wait, said the guard, who seemed simultaneously bewildered and somewhat alarmed that we failed to realise this gate’s signals, his command. We were no longer free to behave without instructions. Waiting our turn to be admitted inside the perimeter of the security fencing increased my agitation. Memories of my first and then too many to count visits to the Villawood detention centre flood unwilled, unbidden and unwanted. In the early 2000s, one could stand waiting in the to-be-processed queue at the Villawood detention centre for up to two hours (on a bad or busy day) in the open elements regardless of the heat, cold, wind or rain. The job description of the processing security guards seemed to include humiliating, irritating and frustrating the visitors. Was a bit of bullying, if you can get away with it, in the small print of their job description or was that up to the personal quirks of individual guards? Research shows our experiences of the guards in the Villawood detention centre is the typical behaviour of prison guards (Wainer, 2014). Like the detainees, we too were innocent of any wrongdoing. Yet it seemed that by association, we too were despised and criminalised. My shoulders are assuming their raised tight position, my throat constricts and my thighs tighten as I stand outside the perimeter of the fence, waiting for the guard to signal whatever the next step towards visiting the detainees is to be. Before I was invited to go on the Darwin trip, I thought I had processed the trauma of the treatment I had received from the guards at the Villawood detention centre. In the Midrash ‘Cherry Ripe’ (Wainer, 2011), I wrote that visitors were people who, in the normal course of our lives, had never encountered the criminal penal system. We were stunned and shocked, and some of us traumatised, by the handling meted out to us by the prison guards. Now, I was concerned about the stresses of my earlier experiences resurfacing, and I acutely felt the duty of care for the students. My protective mother-lioness instinct switched to alert. I was confident that we had completed all the required paperwork and had the necessary written permissions to visit inside the prison but, seeing the prison guard wearing their uniforms, including a visible hip holster with gun, I recalled we are at the whims and fancies of that individual. I felt small, disempowered. I rallied and pumped myself up. How much more so must the detainees—prisoners—feel? How does a child prisoner feel when they wait for guards’ instructions over and above mum, dad, older sibling or guardian’s guidance? At least I speak and understand English, I reminded myself. I nodded with feigned authority and confidence to my students. They smiled with less enthusiasm than they had when we first emerged from the hire car—how long ago? Only a five-minute trudge–walk and a 10-min wait, and already I was in an altered state bouncing between alert, tension and some level of numbing. It is hard to know exactly how long we waited. I do not think it was too long. The heat, the mix of rising old and the new anxieties of this place altered my sense of timing. I wondered how this environment alters the embodied experiences, the felt-perceptions, of the people who now are incarcerated here. Then, somewhat unremarkably yet with a pounding heart and a blur, we were inside. We had passed the first security check at the guards’ gate and

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Fig. 5.2 Reception at DAL1. My deep gratitude to Neha (name changed) for her permission to reprint her Darwin sketches

had to proceed to the reception desk for the next security check. Nothing prepared us for the scene inside (see Fig. 5.2).

Without sliding down the rabbit hole, we stepped inside Alice’s Wonderland, complete with the March Hare, who was rushing around (a Serco guard); the Dormouse, sans teapot, who sat quietly, not doing anything—not even sleeping (at the reception desk); and Tweedledum and Tweedledee (Serco or DIAC), who seemed to loom large and make no sense. Amid agitation and confusion, overwhelm seemed to be mixed with a purposeless milling-aroundness. I marched purposefully with the students to the reception desk and placed myself in front of the Dormouse. He just sat. Or was he standing? I stood. Neha stood. James stood. Howard stood (names changed). And no one paid us any attention. More agitation, confusion and millingaroundness all blended with the initial impact. Then we heard it. The groaning. “Ahh! O. Oh! Aghh! AAAH!” And again … a prolonged, low, inarticulate sound uttering from the depths of suffering. Suddenly, there was a hushed whisper that inevitably we all heard: “The ambulance is on its way”. What? What was going on here? From where is this despairing sound of pain coming? Who was in this state? The sound came from deep within and seemed to echo around the room. Still, I stood in front of the Dormouse as time and place again seemed to alternately be suspended and then shape shift. From nowhere appeared the Queen of Hearts (a DIAC officer). Was she behind the reception desk all the time? Did she come from a separate area? Did she walk right past us, and I did not notice? Simultaneously, the groaning became a whimper as attention was paid to the emitter of these dreadfully frightening noises. Where to

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turn? I wanted to locate the source of distress and now attention. Someone was asking for an interpreter. They were trying to say they have called the ambulance. But the Queen of Hearts wanted to process our visitors’ papers and admit us. I certainly did not want the ‘off with their heads’ alternate. So I focused on getting ourselves beyond this chaotic, discombobulating reception area. We had people—detainees—to meet. The Queen of Hearts was actually a pleasant non-officious DIAC officer. While she was checking our papers, we heard a ker-thump behind us. Someone fell. No, someone passed out. Our DIAC officer did not even look up. But the Dormouse suddenly moved. While I focused on getting our papers processed the students were able to see the incident behind me. An ambulance had been called for an elderly woman— detainee—who was feeling very ill. A relative or a friend or just another detainee thought that she was having a heart attack. It was this poor, terrified soul, totally reliant upon her prison guards, who had been groaning. With no right to refuse orders and not understanding English, the ill ‘client’ was brought by a DIAC officer or Serco guard from her room to the reception area to wait for the ambulance. She was alternately trying to wrap her gown around her pyjamas and then trying to hide her hair. Apparently, she was given no time or had no energy to bring a hair covering when she was instructed to come accompanied to the reception area. By the time we had the approval to leave the reception area, I again made the error of behaving as I normally would. I went to the old lady to see if I could be of some help or even offer non-verbal support—maybe just stroke an arm, put a hand on her shoulder or hold her hand. Another detainee who saw we were visitors from outside told me in a hushed and rushed manner that the old lady did not understand what was going on, why she was brought from her room and bed and that she was afraid she was dying. I also learned that despite external appearances, she was not an old lady. She was, maybe, in her 50s, we were told in an accented, hurried whisper. “Why is she hurrying and hushing so?” I wondered as I became aware of something disturbing behind me. Not quite raised hairs on the neck but a bit of an internal alarm went off. Was this my own tension and overwhelm? WHERE ARE THE STUDENTS? Before I could calibrate this newly arrived sensation inside and behind my back, the eyes of the interpreting detainee went wide and then seemed to communicate caution to me. “Come with me,” said a gruff accented voice, which clearly was not for me. I ignored the instruction. My attention was averted from the not-old lady, who was now getting comfort and attention from the ambulance crew, to another woman who looked completely dismal. A guard—or was it an officer?—had brought her in to sit down next to where the really ill lady had been sitting before she collapsed. I was now in a space that not even Alice had entered. “What is going on here?” I repeatedly asked myself. This newly arrived woman wore colourless, shabby, faded, worn-out track pants, sweat top and slippers. Her short, wiry, orangey, dyed hair stood at angles (I later realised that her hair colour was henna.) Most notable was the faded, frayed towel she held to her chin and jaw. Her eyes were dead. An ambulance had been called for her too. “Now,” boomed the voice. I continued to focus on the woman as I learned she had a few hours earlier returned from the dentist and now had excruciating, throbbing

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pain. Indeed, I saw her jaw was swollen. Using all my mental acumen to remain stable and grounded, I worked internally to avoid narratives of judgement. I did not want to jump to conclusions like lack of care … bad dentist … this on top of being a prisoner … Suddenly, an assault on my senses! No, it is an assault on my body. A large hand is pulling my arm, a scary voice: “I said move … now.” I am being pull-spun-pushed around and forward. Wh … wha… what the … “Me?” I am looking up at a guard who wants me to move on. I am disoriented. Move to where? I thought we had the clearances to be inside DAL1—exactly where we were. I was wrong. Yes, we did have clearance to visit, but we had to follow the guard who will take us to where the visit will take place. Suddenly, the students were protectively surrounding me, encouraging me to ‘come’. After, they told me I turned greyish-white when the guard laid his hands on me. In a daze, I followed the guard through the bland dining room with lingering smell of steam pan servers intermingled with disinfected linoleum. Consumed with my attempt to discharge that odour from my nostrils I absent-mindedly followed the guard into a narrow enclosure that must have once been the verandah of the Steiner school. We were told to ‘sit here’. We sat. As I calmed down, the students are telling me that the guard clearly did not want us to be near, to see or to engage with the sick and terrified people. How could anyone not engage with the terror and anxiety in the atmosphere? Like the stink of a schoolboy’s sulphur bomb science prank that wafts into the passages and other classrooms, so too was the confusion and fear of the ill and pain-filled people affecting us. How much more so, and accumulated so, on the other detainees? In his recent book Human Rights Law and the Marginalized Other, Simmons (2012) urges a push to take extraordinary measures to seek out the voice of the Marginalised Other (225), arguing that postmodernism’s growing emphasis on the Marginalised Other, inspired in large part by Levinas’s work, can provide a new foundation or a new normative map that can lead to a reinvigoration of human rights (Simmons, 2012, 9). Of the new normative map, Benhabib (2004) writes: We are like travellers navigating an unknown terrain with the help of old maps, drawn at a different time and in response to different needs. While the terrain we are travelling on, the world society of states, has changed, a normative map has not. (6).

My work is to germinate and generate alternative voices that are vital to assuage the narrow, oppositional political discourse framing asylum-seeking-refugees who come to Australia by boat as well as those attempting to reach other global shores. The new normative map, I suggest, will be resultant from new methodologies, such as the research methodology that initiates Midrashim and includes poetry, theatre and film. The inclusion of the performative arts, as aforementioned, is explicated in this Part of this book. We will see how a multiplicity of voices are included in such research.

The Old Map

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‘Home’ by Warsan Shire (British–Somali poet) no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbours running faster than you … you only leave home when home won’t let you stay … it’s not something you ever thought of doing until the blade burnt threats into your neck and even then you carried the anthem under your breath only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet sobbing as each mouthful of paper made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back … that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land … no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear saying… anywhere is safer than here (Shire, 2021)

The Old Map The well-known Arendtian phrase ‘the right to rights’ (Arendt, 1951) invokes the concept of human rights, based upon the presumption of the existence of the entity ‘human being’. Arendt points out the paradox that once a refugee escapes or is forced from their country of origin, they lose much in addition to the rights of a citizen. Refugees lose not only all their rights but also, more fundamentally, their right to have rights. Arendt is referring to her personal experiences that attest to the conception of human rights breaking down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were confronted with the very people who had indeed lost all, including specific

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relationships—except they were still human. The world ‘found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human’ (Arendt, 1951, 299). The reality for Arendt, after World War II, was that despite the philosophy guiding the 1951 Refugee Convention, the higher, more noble attributes of the Convention were untranslated by those who lived in the receiving countries. Agamben (1998, 1999) goes significantly further than Arendt to claim that when an individual’s rights are no longer the rights of a citizen, they are exposed to ‘bare life’ and are destined to exist in a ‘state of exception’, thereby also—as one without rights—losing control of individual destiny. As Rami whispered to my ear in the visitors’ yard of surveillance at the Villawood detention centre, “I don’t know myself that I am human.” A seismic shift from the twentieth to the twenty-first century occurred as the demographics and countries producing global refugees/forced migrants changed. Initially, the 1951 Refugee Convention (and the 1967 CRC and 1984 CAT) came into operation not only at a time when the refugee challenge was episodic and when, therefore, crisis or ad hoc solutions seemed to be adequate but also at a time when the global numbers of refugees were comparatively small. Furthermore, the countries producing refugees were mainly Europe and Eastern Europe; therefore, unlike the twenty-first century, the breadth and depth of the issues, languages, cultures and geography were significantly less. The refugee/ forced migration contexts were more readily understood by the Anglo-Western cultures. However, the twenty-first century posits radically different challenges. In the first decade of this century, the causes for people fleeing their own countries and seeking refuge were less known and understood by the hegemonic Anglo-European receiving countries. Receiving countries pay no heed to the nuances and complexities of the asylum-seeking-refugees’ specific situations. Like Arendt’s observations in 1951, so too do current politics increasingly strip the asylum-seeking-refugee of agency and humanity. Tuvalu and Kiribati are independent small island states in the South Pacific. In June 2009, at a United Nations General Assembly, leaders stressed the effect that climate change was having on the very existence of inhabitants of very small and vulnerable island nations (Piguet et al., 2012). Climate change is undoubtedly affecting these low-lying atoll states. Driving along the main road on the central Kiribati atoll of Tarawa, with the lagoon on one side and the ocean on the other, the sense of vulnerability to the environment is palpable (McAdam, 2011). In Kiribati and Tuvalu, the notion ‘climate refugee’ is resoundingly rejected both at the official and the personal levels. This is because it is seen as invoking a sense of helplessness and a lack of dignity that contradicts the very strong sense of Pacific pride. Rather than regarding ‘refugees’ as people with resilience, who have actively fled situations of violence or conflict, they are seen as passive victims, waiting helplessly in camps, relying on handouts, with no prospects for the future—failures, on their behalf, to provide for and protect their families. Tuvaluans and I-Kiribati people do not want to be seen in this way. When they speak of their own possible movement to countries like Australia or New Zealand, they describe the importance of being seen as active, valued members of a community who can positively contribute to it.

The New Map: Face to Face as Knowledge

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In part, their discomfort stems from the fact that refugees flee from their own government, whereas the people of Kiribati and Tuvalu have no desire to escape from their countries. They say it is the actions of other States that will ultimately force their movement, not the actions of their own leaders. Indeed, if anything, the persecutor in such cases might be described as the ‘international community’, and industrialized States in particular—the very States to which movement might be sought if the land becomes unsustainable—whose failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions has led to the predicament now being faced. This de-linking of the actor of persecution from the territory from which flight occurs is the opposite to refugee law: it is a complete reversal of the refugee paradigm. (McAdam, 2011, in Piguet et al., 2012, 12)

As the ongoing discourse for the treatment of people who seek asylum is framed by legal conventions and language, the human in the concept human rights is being lost. Political catch cries, such as ‘turn back the boats’ in Australia and ‘separate and lock up the children’ in the USA, exclude the human from the policy discourse. Dehumanising removes asylum-seeking-refugees from the ambit of ethics and promotes social indifference. Identities ascribed to refugees are framed by the politics of fear and arrogance. Strangers are problematised and ignominiously produced as undignified. They are disrespected. On the other side of the oceans, the asylum-seeking-refugee, having made a choice for hope and life, courageously risks all by leaving the zone where their back is to the wall, thereby breaking the constructions of an ignorant, helpless ‘bare life’. By showing up in Australia, they knowledgeably declare their ‘right to rights’. How dare they! Arendt believed that it was possible for the sacred to be restored to the human. The topography of a Benhabian new map must show signposts and signals for the agency and humanity of l’autrui; it must show the way beyond the face to the visage, the sacred being. By framing an examination of the phenomenology of relating inside (the detention centres) with the sensitivity and appreciation for asylum-seeking-refugees, as aligned with the thinking of Emmanuel Levinas, a map of ethical signposts becomes available as research—a new map.

The New Map: Face to Face as Knowledge My effort consists in showing that knowledge is in reality an immanence Levinas Discourse is not simply a modification of intuition (or of thought), an original relation with exterior being … it is the production of meaning Levinas

I have chosen to begin the new map with a slightly fuller quotation from Levinas for those readers who already have studied the philosopher or those who would like to dive deeper into his work: My effort consists in showing that knowledge is an immanence, and that there is no rupture of the isolation of being in knowledge; and on the other hand, that in communication of

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5 Contextualising the Need for a Levinasian Approach knowledge one is found beside the Other, not confronted with him, not the rectitude of the in-front-of-him. But being in direct relation with the Other is not to thematize the Other and consider him in the same manner as one considers a known object, nor to communicate a knowledge to him. In reality, the fact of being is what is most private; existence is the sole thing I cannot communicate; I can tell about it, but I cannot share my existence. Solitude thus appears as the isolation which marks the very event of being. The social is beyond ontology. Through sight, touch, sympathy, and cooperative work, we are with others. All these relationships are transitive. I touch the other, I see the other. But I am not the other. I am all alone. It is thus the being in me, the fact that I exist, my existing, that constitutes the absolutely intransitive element, something without intentionality or relations. One can exchange everything between beings except existing in this sense, to be is to be isolated by existing. Insofar as I am, I am a monad. By existing, and not because of any content that would be immediately within me, I am without a door and without windows. The Same and the Other cannot enter into a cognition that would encompass them; the relations that the separated being maintains with what transcends it are not produced on the ground of totality, do not crystalize into a system. Yet do we not name them together? The formal synthesis of the word that names them together is already part of a discourse that is of a conjuncture of transcendence, that breaks the totality. The conjuncture of the Same and the Other, in which even their verbal proximity is maintained, is irreducible to totality; the ‘face to face’ position is not a modification of the ‘along side ….’ Even when I shall have likened the Other to myself with the conjunction ‘and’ the Other continues to face me, to reveal himself in his face. (Levinas, 1969, 80–81)

References Agamben, G. (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign power and bare life (D. Heller-Roazen, Trans.). Stanford University Press. Agamben, G. (1999). Remnants of Auschwitz: The witness and the archive (D. Heller-Roazen, Trans.). Zone Books. Arendt, H. (1951). Origins of totalitarianism. Harvest. Benhabib, S. (2004). The rights of others: Aliens, residents, and citizens. Cambridge University Press. Denzin, N. K., & Giardina, M. D. (Eds.). (2012). Qualitative inquiry and the politics of advocacy. Left Coast Press. Every, D. (2006). The politics of representation: A discursive analysis of refugee advocacy in the Australian parliament. Ph.D. thesis, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide. Hathaway, J. C. (2005). The rights of refugees under international law. Cambridge University Press. Huysmans, J., Dobson, A., & Prokhovnik, R. (Eds.). (2006). The politics of protection: Sites of insecurity and political agency. Routledge. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (Alphonso, Trans.) Levinas, E. (1988). Entre nous: On thinking-of-the-other (Michael B. Smith & B. Harshav, Trans.). Columbia University Press. Levinas, E. (1991). Otherwise than being or beyond essence (2nd ed.) (A. Lingis, Trans.). Kluwer Academic Publisher. Levinas, E. (1984). Is it righteous to be? Interviews with Emmanuel (Levinas). Jill Robbins. Stanford University Press.

References

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McAdam, J. (2011). Refusing ‘refuge’ in the Pacific: (De)constructing climate-induced displacement in international law. In E. Piguet, A. Pécoud & P. de Guchteneire (Eds.), Migration and climate change. Cambridge Press. Piguet, E., Antoine, P., & de Guchteneire, P. (Eds.). (2012). Refusing ‘Refuge’ in the Pacific: (De) constructing climate-induced displacement in international law. UNESCO. Shire, W. (2021). Freedom from torture: Empowering survivors, rebuilding lives. https://www. freedomfromtorture.org/real-voices/six-refugee-poems-a-unique-insight-into-the-life-of-ref ugees-and-asylum-seekers. Simmons, W. P. (2012). Human rights law and the marginalized other. Cambridge University Press. Stevenson, A., & Lindberg, C. A. (Eds.). (2010). New Oxford American dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. Wainer, D. (2011). Beyond the wire: A study of Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy as an ethical foundation for asylum seekers policy. Ph.D. thesis, University Technology. Wainer, D. (2014). The voice of the silenced in the Australian detention system. In Paper presented at the Refugee Studies Center International Conference—Refugee Voices. Oxford University.

Chapter 6

The Ethical Interruption

Before they call, I will answer Isaiah 65:24 The first question is not Why is there being rather than nothing? But have I the right to be? Levinas

We established, in the preceding chapter, that ontological thought places primacy of the Self over the Other. More so, the primacy of myself cannot be disturbed by any other. We saw how the self—the thinker—is at risk of transmuting others to be the same as the Self’s thoughts in the process of which the Other loses their individuality. The unspeakable horrors of the Shoah, the inhumane treatment of asylum-seeking-refugees and other global genocides and civil wars result from this form of ontological thinking. In this thought act of conception, the uniqueness or singularity of the stranger, the other—the asylum-seeking-refugee—is lost. Levinas goes as far as saying that such undifferentiation is murder. The unique spirit of le visage is killed when I totalise them. This is of essence for the researcher of those who are silenced, invisibilised and are removed from their own agency. In Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (1991) Levinas further develops his thinking to address safeguarding the uniqueness of the other. As the title of his book, so his adjuration— to be ethical, to allow the individuality of another person, to be responsible to the other; we relate, and we relate to that which is otherwise than my own being or my own conception of being. The very humanity of the human is constituted as a moral relation requiring kindness and justice for all. Responsibility and justice lie at the heart of the human self. The ‘I’ is irreplaceable in my assumption of responsibility (Cohen, 2006). No one else can take up my responsibility. The shift required of researcher-selves is to be aware of our own unique moral selves. No one else, even within a team of researchers, can do the work and contribute in place of the self: ‘the welcoming of the Other by the Same, of the Other by Me, is concretely produced … as the ethics that accomplishes the critical essence of knowledge’ (Levinas, 1969, 33). A new philosophy project regarding knowledge is introduced: a radically different framework, one of relation to one another, one based on ethics (Warren, 2011, 26). Knowledge is constituted by and within a relationship; knowledge is an immanence. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_6

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Knowledge is the relation of one to another in conversation. When we are in direct relation with the Other, that is to say, dialogical relating, we do not thematise them and consider them in the same manner as one considers a known object. I do not underestimate the importance of knowledge, but I do not consider it to be the ultimate axiological judgement. The achievement of knowledge consists of grasping the object. Its strangeness is then conquered. Its newness, the opening up of its otherness is reduced to the ‘same’, what has already been seen, already known. In ethical relation, the other man remains other to me. Despite our exchanges, he remains that which I—closed up in myself—am not. (Levinas, 1984, 191)

As earlier mentioned, Levinas’s writing addressed the works of other philosophers. As such, his work includes linguistic, moral, metaphoric and inferential references to other philosophers. In Chap. 5, we established that according to Levinas, the ethics of the ‘face to face’ is equal to justice. To the reader, this may pose questions of context or pique curiosity. Levinas was, in the style of philosophical formulations, addressing Aristotle’s conceptions of justice1 as well as the justice relevant to all humanity in the humanism developed in the Torah and Talmud. Although his work addresses and references philosophers from the early Greeks to those of his time, such as Buber, Bergson, Rosenzweig and Sartre, it was mostly Heidegger that his corpus addresses. Levinas’s quotation at the start of this chapter is actually his response to Heidegger, who raised the ontological question, what is the meaning of being? With his response, Levinas highlights the dangers of ontology, together with ontological complicity by instigating (a) ethics as philosophy, (b) knowledge that is relational and irreducible to the language of subject–object, (c) the ‘face to face’ is dialogical conversation that is justice and (d) the ethical structure of subjectivity as laid out at the start of the previous chapter. The statement that ‘the impossibility of killing is not real,2 but moral’ (Levinas, 1990, 10) encapsulates Levinas’s highest values of morality that stem from his lived experience, his Judaism and his polemic against Heidegger. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), whose main interest was ontology or the study of being, was widely acknowledged as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Together with other young students, Levinas travelled from Strasbourg, France to Germany to study with Heidegger, with whom he had become enraptured. Later, Levinas painfully writes that he cannot forgive Heidegger’s complicity with Hitler. Levinas maintains that philosophy let philosophy itself down when Heidegger, the greatest European philosopher of that time, could not influence Hitler towards life-saving ethics. The Shoah represented to Levinas the ultimate betrayal of the Other. 1

Aristotle defines justice in terms of considerations of moderation, prudence and measure, where the virtuous actor is supposed to demonstrate the aspects of character and perform acts that are neither deficient nor excessive; yet the ethics of Levinas, as instantiated in justice, is a demand that responding to the needs of others not be limited by moderate considerations, but can precisely be realised as an exorbitant and anarchic assumption of responsibility (Bell 2019). 2 Here, ‘real’ means rational, logical, reasoned as per ontological thought/ the subject–object of science.

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Over a quarter of a century ago, our lives were interrupted and doubtless history itself. There was no longer any measure to contain monstrosities. When one has that tumour in the memory, twenty years can do nothing to change it. Soon death will no doubt cancel the unjustified privilege of having survived six million deaths. … Nothing has been able to fill or even cover the gaping chasm (Levinas, 1996, 120).

During World War II, Levinas was incarcerated in Fallingbostel,3 the POW camp for French, German and, later, Russian soldiers, located next to the Bergen-Belsen death camp. Later, in a book he titled Entre Nous: On Thinking-of-the-Other,4 he describes how othered he felt. In Fallingbostel, he felt himself to be ‘no longer part of the world’ (Levinas, 1988). The Shoah remained bitterly with Levinas, as did his lifelong feeling of not belonging (Caygill, 2002). Holding the totalitarianism of the Shoah consequential to the limitations of the ontologic paradigm of philosophy, Levinas’s first major work, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (1969), refutes the universalisation of being that allowed Hitler to generalise and totalise the human and murder multiples of millions. Thereafter, he devotes himself to understanding the nature and meaning of and relationship to the other person. This became the primary philosophy as ethics that is our responsibility to the Other. As such, the philosophy of ethics, as a posteriori knowledge, ruptures the trajectory of traditional Western philosophy. The phenomenology of Levinas’s life as Other, as the Stranger, began during World War I, when the Levinas family moved from Kovno, Lithuania to Karkov, Ukraine. Before the war, the young boy lived in the religiously open city of Kovno (Russian), now known as Kaunas, Lithuania. Kaunas, a major city, second only to Vilnius, was an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic and cultural life. Before World War II, Jews numbered 35% of the total population of Kaunas, one of the main centres of traditional Talmudic scholarship in Europe. The Jewish communities established numerous schools, yeshivot and synagogues and were important for centuries to the culture and business of the city. His father owned the bookshop on the main street and his aunt was the chief librarian. The young Levinas’s primary education was secular, while Hebrew was the first language he learned at home. In an interview, when asked about his relationship with Judaism as a young boy, the mature Levinas said that it was like breathing oxygen—that is to say, entirely natural. However, the family’s move to Ukraine when Levinas was 10 years old marked his lifelong feeling of no longer belonging. Suffering the strangeness of the stranger and being othered became a recurring theme in the life of the philosopher (Levinas, 1984; Malka, 2006). Together with his rejection of Heidegger’s ontological disposition and, thus, his philosophy (i.e., subject-centred conceptions of universal knowledge and truth that privileged the self—the ‘I’) at the expense of relational beingness, he declared that Heidegger’s privileging of language, as the vehicle to address his questions of being leads to violently absorbing difference. Levinas then developed his ground-breaking 3

By Spring 1942, more than 40,000 prisoners had died due to inadequate food, shelter and medical care and the ruthlessness of the Wehrmacht. 4 Entre nous is translated to mean ‘between us’.

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philosophy from his own lived experiences of feeling othered. As such, he can no longer privilege reason—thought—above the human situation. Referring to the language of philosophers as ‘Greek’—the language of intellectual reasoning, the language style mostly used in the Western and Western-influenced academy (and schools) today—the meaning of his work increasingly focused on the person other than himself. Levinas poignantly captures an element, born of his personal suffering, which is profitably taken up in connection with the asylum-seeking-refugees as marginalised persons qua marginalised persons. Parallels between events in Ukraine (and, in the absence of verifiable news, we imagine, Russia) and Levinas’s lived experiences are inescapable, adding an imperative to our attentiveness to his ethical stance for each individual who feels a stranger and is suffering. Regardless of the narratives from Ukraine or Russia, from social media or traditional media, originating in countries supportive of Ukraine or Russia, the tragic destruction of lives rent asunder and the horrifying loss of life, escapes no follower of this war. Indeed, almost every category of human rights is infringed, including crimes against humanity, abduction of Ukrainian citizens to Russia, torture and war crimes. Additional to those who have escaped from Ukraine to be sheltered and accommodated in neighbouring countries, Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia and many more Ukrainians are displaced within their country,5 at the time of writing, in February 2023, the UNHCR recorded 8 million refugees had left Ukraine and more than 5 million people were displaced within Ukraine.6 It is no known how many have left Ukraine for Russia or how many Russians are displaced. Numerically the numbers are incomprehensible. Perhaps comparison with the populations of other cities can engender a passion to go beyond faceless numbers. The most populous city in Australia is Sydney with 4,575,532 and New York in the USA has a population of 8.8 million persons. Unquestionably the overwhelming numbers of dislodged and displaced persons, traumatised and grieving multiple losses together with the complexities of this abominable war can too easily mask ‘the face of the sufferer’. Yet, we are called upon to see the one who suffers. This author knows a mother and 7-year-old daughter who fled from Ukraine with only the clothes they were wearing, leaving behind their husband/father and son/ brother. They were offered accommodation with a family in London. The British family provided absolutely everything a woman and child need, including enrolling both into English language classes and school respectively. Everyone thought it would be a short stay. After 7 months they still had no word from/ or about either of their men, who had stayed in Ukraine as soldiers. The mother had become depressed. Her English was not yet of a standard to work in London. The little girl was taking on an 5

As news from Russia is state controlled, Russians are warning their people, inside and outside their country, to be wary of the Russian media rhetoric. Protestors inside Russia are incarcerated and regular citizens on the streets, who agree to be interviewed, all repeat word for word state sanctioned messages. We can only imagine the trauma to families whose loved ones went to war and have not returned. To date we have no reports of maimed and traumatised Russian soldiers actually returning to their families and homes. 6 UNHCR main page on Ukraine: https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/ukraine/. The figures are updated regularly and may differ from the figure mentioned here.

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adult/caretaker role with negative psychological consequences. The British couple who took them in no longer continued having to support them and felt inadequate to support the growing depression and dysfunction they were witnessing in their home. This story is not unique to the Ukrainian refugees, or any other asylum-seekingrefugees. It is gut-wrenchingly painful to “see the one who suffers”. Regardless of aggressor or defender, we are required to respond with justice. This justice is distinct from charity or law. Rather Levinas urges us to an original awakening of an I responsible for the other. This book returns us frequently to the call, the accession of oneself; to the uniqueness of the I called and elected to responsibility for the other. This is the lived experience of authentic humanity which is the true beginning of the human and of spirituality. To further excavate Levinas’s thinking that is foundational to our methodology, bearing in mind his injunction, unless our social interactions are underpinned by ethical relations to other persons, then the worst might happen. That is the failure to acknowledge the humanity of the other. Writing Midrashim is the researcher’s ethical relation to the humanity of the Other. Levinas includes with ‘the worst’—the Shoah—countless other disasters of his century, where the other person is faceless and their life or death is a matter of indifference. Hansel, Levinas’s granddaughter, writes movingly that such is still the indifference that the other person becomes a faceless face in the crowd, someone whom the passer-by simply passes by (2009). Our response to suffering has to be an intensification of ethics as the responsibility of justice. Our responsibility in the face of the sufferer is to dignify their human decency. Perhaps this brief account of current events, of refugees and displaced persons, brings to focus Levinas’s designation of responsibility. In the face of the sufferer it is our responsibility to dignify their human decency. Furthermore, Levinas lived briefly in Ukraine during World War I, after which the Levinas family moved back to Lithuania. The young Levinas went to Strasbourg, France, to study, where his strong Lithuanian–Jewish background contributed to his sense of displacement. When captured by the Germans during World War II, he was already naturalised and an officer in the French army but the Nazis did incarcerate him with his other French officers. As a French officer he could not be sent to the gas chambers. However, being Jewish, he was incarcerated with other Jews regardless of rank and during this time he learned that his entire Lithuanian family was murdered. Salient here, particularly at this time, are Levinas’s experiences of displacement and loss that bears witness for us to heed when he writes: ‘Importantly, [Peace] does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity’ (Levinas, 1984, 22). With regard to war, peace, restoration and alienation, Simi´c (2014) writes a fascinating political memoir of losing her country of birth, ‘a country that no longer exists’—Yugoslavia:

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6 The Ethical Interruption I have experienced the deep and enduring pain of losing my country, my friends and neighbours; of losing the safe ground under my feet, forever ... Experiences which affect every part of my life and often leave me feeling that I am merely surviving peace’. (Simi´c, 2014, 1)

Poignantly, she illustrates Levinas’s averment of one’s continued alienation after the traumas and indifference of war. Of lost identity, she writes: As in any civil war, my brother was expected to fight and kill his friends, from childhood, and the neighbours he grew up with; those who found themselves on the ‘other side’. Overnight they had become his fiercest enemies and targets for killing. To consider yesterday’s friend as today’s enemy must have been devastating. I can only imagine what was going through his mind, as we, his family, do not know anything about his war experiences. I remember he mentioned that he had to eat grass because he was so hungry and there was nothing else. That is all he has ever shared with us. We did not encourage him to tell us more, not because we did not to care, but because our daily lives were already filled with so many stories of evil, and we could not bear the thought of hearing such tales from someone we loved. … He has survived the war, but has changed irrevocably. (42)

As Kathleen Barry highlights in Simi´c’s Surviving Peace: The violence of war is obscured; we cannot see how it reaches deep into our society and silently but surely shapes all of our lives … The violence of wars turns against soldiers, if not during the war, then when they return home, where too often their trauma is not understood, their stories are left unheard. (Simi´c, 2014, 42)

Precisely because Emmanuel Levinas’s background and his personal experiences are not separate from his philosophy, his work is suited to a template for reframing a philosophical, policy and operational response to the vulnerability of asylumseeking-refugees as well as vulnerable others in societies. Ethically and aesthetically, Levinas intersects with the Midrashic writing style and my worldview—as an immigrant to Australia who felt strange and other, as a former activist against the unethical South African apartheid regime who felt estranged and othered from her country of birth, as a former leader in multicultural New South Wales and as a Jewish woman. It may be useful to add that Judaism is not a religion per se. The word in Hebrew for religion is dat, which means literally laws or rules. The word in Hebrew for knowledge is d’at, which is wisdom, knowledge, meaning and originally within the context of relating. Thus, we can see how for Levinas, understanding of being is knowledge through relating, that is, dialogical relating—other than solipsism or book learning.

The Ethical Event It is this shattering of indifference - even if indifference is statistically dominant - this possibility of one for the other: that constitutes the ethical event. (Levinas)

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To address the Levinasian paradigm in the context of substantive reframing of the current non-existent protection of people seeking asylum in Australia, I present the elements of his philosophy via the Midrashim for the reader to be touched, moved and uplifted. Mostly, here follows an expansion of essential Levinas, with an invitation to the reader, researcher, student and teacher to grow personally and stand face to face in scholarly conversation with the philosopher: His ‘hermeneutical approaches were developed with an open spirit that has not only seen a whittling away of barriers separating academic disciplines but has also witnessed the creative possibilities of scholarship that emerge when long-held distinctions between the sacred and profane, philosophy and literature, text and interpretation, high and low culture and politics and aesthetics are put aside (Kepnes, 1996, 2). In defiance of indifference, Levinas raises the necessity of responsible communication being initiated by an act of generosity. The Midrashim in this book show how the researcher-author takes up the defiance of indifference as applied to the people who seek asylum in Australia. Our endeavour requires holding to the position that Levinas clarifies as incontestable. That in every philosophical reflection, in every philosophical essay, there are memories of a lived experience, which is not rigorously intellectual (1988). We are required to reorient our thinking beyond the rational intellect to include memories of the lived experience. Ergo, the Midrashim. More than a reorientation of thought, Levinas, I propose, is arguing for a new paradigm in which a different way of thinking can emerge. I suggest he is calling for a paradigm in which prior to thought reorientation, we experience the meaning of being ethical. To achieve the new paradigm, we are required to be open to experience the other person as they are rather than to theorise about them. Theorising is an intellectual pursuit that endangers a unique person to be thought of as a generalised entity. The consequential distinction that Levinas makes is relational.’ [T]he ethical relationship is, as any relationship, open’ (Levinas, 1984, 191). Whereas a living person, the unique life of the living person, is other than matter that is fixed and stuck in time. Levinas attests that theoretical reasoning in its aim for closure, endangers the Other of being stuck in time. The human I is not a unity closed upon itself, like the uniqueness of the atom, but rather an opening, that of responsibility, which is the true beginning of the human and of spirituality. In the call which the face of the other man [sic] addresses to me, I grasp in an immediate fashion the graces of love: spirituality, the lived experience of authentic humanity. (Leinvas, 1984, 182)

On the topic of mindful meditation, Sam Harris, in conversation with David Whyte (Harris, 2020), suggests that ‘there is nothing worth thinking about. Simply connect with experience’. Both are doyens of mindful meditation in the depths of Buddhist traditions. Mindfulness has increased its currency in the West as it can be a nonreligious practice without any adherence to religion or spirituality. Recognising what thinking is, noticing the physiological changes in response to thought, is curative for the practitioner. It is my counsel that meditation is but one method for

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changing our grey matter—literally—thereby enabling long-held patterns of thought and behaviour to change. Additionally, the practitioner of mindfulness comes to the awareness that thought arises in consciousness in a similar way to sound, sight, sensation. Thought is otherwise than being. According to Levinas’s ethics, a stranger cannot be known by thinking about him, the consequence of which is to universalise him. Universalising cruelly neutralises the other. Their unique character, values and dreams disappear in the process of generalisations and totalisation. The example of Cornelia (Anna), who was wrongfully incarcerated in the Baxter detention centre while her family searched Australia for her, shows how she was neutralised and silenced, as were the detainees in the Baxter detention centre, who knew she was there. The guards and apparatchik of the detention regime shattered the injunction ‘do not kill’. Thinking they knew Anna, her unique, individual self was killed. What is left in existence in that totality system is wrongfully merely a thought about her, for she does not merely present me with lifeless signs into which I am free to read meanings of my own (Levinas, 1969, 15). Mr. Cham, the asylum seeker from The Republic of Gambia, of whom we will read more fully in the Chapter 8 was reduced to a thought within the mind of the immigration judge when the judge cruelly neutralised Mr. Cham’s spoken language: English and Arabic interspersed with Wolof. The judge committed violence by not paying attention to the strange world inhabited by Mr. Cham. We can only be ethical ‘when we pay attention to the other and take account of him and the strange world he inhabits’ (Levinas, 1969, 68). Then and only then, the ethical Self engages, listens and dialogues with the stranger. Ethics is one’s responsibility for the other as they present themselves to me. This act of showing up—presenting the self—has a Hebrew term: Hineni. Here follows an exegesis of Hineni that further enlightens our gaze upon the asylum-seeking-refugees as strangers, as others. As researchers within the context of the Midrash methodology, we are answering Hineni to the call.

Hineni Hineni means ‘Here I am’ in the contractive form. The first part of the word is hine and is translated as ‘here’. For example, the book is here. This is the presentational form of the word. The second part is ni. This is the suffix (as a contraction) of the pronoun ani, translated as ‘I’. So, hineni is the presentation of myself. Hineni—I Present Myself.

Who then is the I, and where is the here of presentation? Hineni—Here I Am.

We read that God calls to both Abraham and Moses, and both immediately answer God’s call with Hineni. No other words intervene between God’s call and their response.

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And God said to him: Abraham And he said: Hineni. (Genesis 22:1) And God said to him: Abraham Abraham And he answered: Hineni. (Genesis 22:11) And he [God] said: Moses Moses And he answered: Hineni. (Exodus 3:4)

‘Hineni—Here I am’ Is Not Descriptive; It Is Presentational Hineni answers the interrogative pronoun, presenting myself, making myself available to another. Despite any misgivings, doubts or confusion, the two leaders (Abraham and Moses) have the same immediate response: Hineni I am available. I take this responsibility for showing myself to you. They answered God’s call with an acknowledgement of their own presence.

‘Hineni—Here I am’ Is Not a Statement of Location The Torah presents the stories of real people inclusive of their human imperfections, rather than mythological or perfect deity figures. God calls out to Abraham (Genesis 22:11), who hears God (22:11). As Abraham was fully human, by extension, we can know that God speaks to all humans. Additionally, Abraham answers God, which means that he hears God’s voice calling. Thus, by inference, we learn that it is possible to hear God speak to each individual uniquely. Moreover, we learn that we can answer. God speaks to each individual, and each individual can hear and respond to God in their own unique way. In this event of dialoguing with God there is only one possible response: Hineni—here I am. The Torah shows that Hineni is the only response to God’s call.

‘Hineni—Here I am’ Is Not a Passive Response; It Is a Vital Act We read of dynamic relating between God and each individual. In the book of Exodus, the Sinai moment is described. We read that the infinitude of God was seen and experienced by all present—the infinity of the Wholly Other illuminating all. The unknowable Other is otherwise than being (Levinas, 1991). This experience—the illumination of the otherwise than being on all faces—influences the Hineni event.

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The call to ethical action is the call of the unknowable Other, the Stranger—the seeker of asylum—who confronts us with an infinite moral claim, one that is anterior to all theoretical or intellectual judgements (Levinas, 1969).

‘Hineni—Here I Am’ Initiates ‘The Face’ From the Wholly Other At Mount Sinai, the Israelites (the Jewish people) were presented with the ethical code more commonly known as commandments. The Midrash expands that not only the Jews were present at that Sinai moment—all nations were present. When God— the wholly unknowable Other, the wholly Other—showed God’s self to the peoples at Sinai, amid what is described as thunder and lightning, at that moment, the light and energy power of God rested upon the face of all humanity physically present and also for the entirety of people to come in the future. Verses 13 and 14 of Chapter 29 Deuteronomy relate the Messianic word of Moses addressed to his people: ‘Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath; but with him that standeth here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day.’ And from the Talmudic tractate Shevuot 39a Levinas teaches that we can already discern the faces of those who are not present at Sinai—the absentees (Levinas, 1988).

‘Hineni—Here I Am’ as Action-Oriented Ethics As a traditional Jewish man, Levinas did not ‘believe’7 —he adhered to the precept that he stood at Sinai, as did all people. At Sinai, the people present and, thus, all future souls, too, responded by accepting the ethical code with the words ‘we will do, and we will hearken: Na’se v’nishma’. The action component of Hineni derives from the Sinai moment when the Israelites stood at the foot of Mount Sinai receiving the Torah and responding to the code of ethics saying: ‘Na’ase v’nishma’—we will do, and we will hearken. Na’se v’nishma then becomes the injunction to, first, act: ethical responsibility prior to contemplation (hearkening) and understanding (hearkening with intuition and through relating). My reading of Levinas takes his conception of the only. Respond-able (responsible) ethic as, first, ‘to do’, from the Sinai moment when all Others were standing at the foot of the mountain—all Others upon whose face God, the Wholly Other, has rested. Hineni intersects with the detention regime as the ethical requirement of the Australian Government to take responsibility for those who seek asylum—upholding 7

Generally, Judaism is not a belief-based religion, but a religion of the here and now, as evidenced through one’s actions. Levinas has described Judaism as a religion for adults.

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human rights and more than their legal rights. Following Levinas, the only possible response is with actions that uphold the infinite and the sacred ‘face to face’. Today, relating with God is largely unrecognised and unrecognisable. The few verses from Genesis cited above are not the only ones portraying dynamic exchanges between a human and God. Yet such communication is typically considered figurative or allegorical, or such an exchange would be declared irrational or personal fantasy, as conceptions of God are constantly called into question by theoretical investigation and by the powerful influence of science and technology on our understanding of the universe. Still, regardless of one’s personal attitude towards or relationship with God, basing his arguments on the God of, and the events in, the Torah, Levinas adjures and counsels us not to spurn and abandon a stranger. Relating face to face behind the wire in the visitors’ yard of surveillance at the Villawood detention centre stands in stark contrast to the political and media spurning and abandoning of the asylum-seeking-refugee on the other side of the wire. The difference between the two positions in relation to the wire—inside and outside—is the concern of ethics, which, as Levinas specifies, is located ‘neither in the analysis of specific problems nor in the discovery of universal laws but in the vulnerable being of flesh and blood’ (‘The Other, Utopia and Justice’, in Levinas, 1984, 131). The bedrock of the ethical event is the initial responsible action. My ability to respond is predicated on the ethical stance that I take. I, only I, can respond in my unique way. Universal principles totalise people into, I submit, production line–type commodities, as a result of rationalist cognitive thinking that makes no room for the sacred, the unique, the individual through intangible ways of knowing. Kuhn-White promotes knowledge that is developed with: Curiosity, kindness and humility … arising from a combination of inner growth (soul work) with learning about others and one’s place in a broader, interconnected world. This combination will work towards wisdom rather than mere ‘cleverness’. Near the beginning of World War II, the actor Charlie Chaplin made ‘The Great Dictator’, a film dealing with the terrors of totalitarianism. His speech at the conclusion of the film is apposite to the point I am making: Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities life will be violent and all will be lost. You are not machines; you are not cattle. You are men; you have the love of men in your heart … (Kuhn-White 1997, 8).

The way we see ourselves or the way we approach ‘concrete situations’ must reflect the meaning of kindness, generosity and justice. Meeting the detainees in the Villawood detention centre’s visitors’ yard of surveillance mobilises the Levinasian approach to concrete situations. Only then can a new paradigm—an ethics of ethics—come to the site, within sight, with insight, in Australia. In his eulogy to Levinas, Adieu, Jacques Derrida testifies that: The reverberations of his thought will have changed the course of philosophical reflection in our time, and of our reflection on philosophy, on what orders it according to ethics, according to another thought of ethics, responsibility, justice, the State, etc., according to another thought of the other. (Derrida, 1997, 4).

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References Bell, N. (2019). Political justice: Levinas contra aristotle. Religions, 10(2), 126. https://doi.org/10. 3390/rel10020126 Caygill, H. (2002). Levinas and the political. Routledge. Cohen, R. (2006). Emmanuel Levinas: Philosopher and Jew. Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 481– 490. Derrida, J. (1997). Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (English). Stanford University Press. Hansel, J., (ed.) (2009). Levinas In Jerusalem: Phenomenology, ethics, politics, aesthetics, vol. 14. Berlin: Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Philosophy, Springer. Harris, S. (2020). Waking up: A new operating system for your mind [Mobile app]. https://www. wakingup.com Kepnes, S. (1996). Interpreting judaism in a postmodern age. New York University Press. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E. (1984). Is it righteous to be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas. Ed. Jill Robbins. (J. R. A. T. Loebel, Trans.). Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Levinas, E. (1988). Entre Nous: On thinking-of-the-other. (M. B. Smith & B. Harshav, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. Levinas, E. (1990). Difficult freedom (S. Hand, Trans.). John Hopkins University Press. Levinas, E. (1991). Otherwise than being or beyond essence. 2nd edn. (A. Lingis, Trans.). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publisher. Levinas, E. (1996). Proper names (M. B. Smith, Trans.). Standford: Stanford University Press. Malka, S. (2006). Emmanuel Levinas: His life and legacy (M. Kigel & S. Embree, Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Simi´c, O. (2014). Surviving peace: A political memoir. Spinifex Press. Warren, M. (2011). Man, I just need a job servicing people experiencing homelessness in an economic-focused society. Phoenix: Arizona State University.

Chapter 7

Knowledge

Meaning, Understanding, Communicating Within the text [Torah] are enclosed an infinite number of meanings that require a plurality of people in their uniqueness, each one capable of wresting meanings from the signs, each time inimitable. (Levinas, 1990)

Have you, as a student or perhaps as a scholar attending a conference, ever arrived at a lecture and, five minutes into the allocated hour, wondered if you are in the right session? Or wondered when the lecturer or presenter will get to the point? After 10 minutes, you turn to the friendly face sitting next to you, who seems to be engrossed. Somewhat timidly, you ask, “Is this the Philosophy of Human Rights lecture/plenary session?” Eyes remaining on the speaker, without turning their head, Friendly Face leans in towards you to whisper, “Isn’t this professor fantastic?” No. The professor is not fantastic. She is rambling. What is enthralling? Where is this lecture heading? I am lost! This somewhat simplistic, yet valid example magnifies two distinct academic/scholarly methods of inquiry and communication. Both originate from antiquity around the transition to the Common Era (CE). One derives from primarily the Jewish universities, where scholarly inquiry and knowledge building was shaped by conversations, discussions and stories, mostly in a mixture of Hebrew and an Aramaic dialect, the language spoken in the Middle East at that time. The second school of inquiry and communication derives from the Greek forms and structures. The difference between the two attendees, I would like to suggest, is that one is well attuned to what Levinas termed the Greek modality, and the other is comfortable with what Levinas termed the Hebrew modality. The Greek modality is the language/ method/style that dominates the Western academy. It is the method of hypothesis, thesis, of argument, rhetoric and connecting devices with which the majority of the academy is comfortable. The Greek modality is a distinctly different paradigm of searching for meaning, of understanding and of communicating compared to the Hebrew style. Furthermore, the Greek modality is of universals and generalisations, © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_7

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whereas the Hebrew modality has come to stand for the particular, that is the particular of relata,1 between those in conversation. Such relata focuses on the essence between those in dialogic relating. To further immerse ourselves in the cognizance of a research methodology that begins with Midrashim—albeit trained in logic, ethics, metaphysics and epistemologies of contemporary social, political, theological or atheistic approaches—the Greek modality alone can no longer be articulated as the dominant paradigm. The sacred, the spiritual, the value of each unique particular human life is all the more important in the 2020s. The twenty-first and early twenty-second centuries continue to reveal a gross disregard for life. Still today, at the time of writing, hunting homosexuals is considered a sport by some Russians. Such anti-gay purges include forced disappearances, secret abductions, torture and extrajudicial killings. The international blind eyes turned to the Rohingya genocide by Myanmar and the Chinese concentration camps for and killing of the Uighurs show us the endemic indifference to human life. Does such global silence reveal disregard for strangers, others, as did the world’s silence during the Shoah? Does it hold a mirror to the politics of ontological complicity that monetises human and national worth? Witnessing the complexities of civil war, the polarisation of citizens or bystander’s apathy to the suffering of others, we can no longer research and develop grand global narratives. Levinas’s project, at the end of World War II with Europe in dismay and disarray, is concerned with his attempt to suggest an approach of ethics, a humanism, to the healing and rethinking of modernism. Modernism was the progeny of the ontology of grand, universalising projects. Rejecting such totalising solipsisms, together with Levinas’s ethics, we turn to the Talmudic formulations for our research methodology. The Talmud is a monumental work that has been the basis for Jewish law, philosophy and life since the third century before the Common Era (BCE), the structure of which is phenomenology (Cohen, 2001, 109). With that, let us introduce the formulations of the yeshivot, Jewish universities, of Jerusalem and Babylon—The Talmud. The Talmud is a record of rabbinic scholarly conversations, discussions and storytelling that took place during the third, fourth and fifth centuries BCE. These rabbis, from different academies, came together searching for meaning and understanding of what was understood to be God’s word as given in the Torah. Talmudic rabbis passionately challenged each other, grappling in active and interactive study. They thought dialogically. Eventually, the lively dialogical conversations of the many and varied rabbis who ‘debated and pondered aloud’ (Holtz, 1984, 19) were canonised. The names of every rabbi participating in any, or many, of the conversations are recorded in connection with their explication or contra, so that today the Talmud is read as a multivocal scholarly source. No one rabbi or academy,2 is preferenced as more worthy than another because each and every voice is considered valuable. Even obscure rabbis and those who dissented are named, and their voices are recorded 1

Relata: in philosophy, relata is understood as each of two or more terms, objects, events or people between which a relation exists. 2 The rabbinic academy in Hebrew singular is yeshivah and in the plural is yeshivot.

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within the contexts of erudite conversations. The Talmud thus cannonises the to and fro of rabbinic grappling for sagacity of the deeper spiritual primordial knowledge, rather than a representation of a preferred argument based on a thesis or hypothesis or a particularly famed yeshivah of the time. The philosopher, Rosenzweig (1970), sought to introduce a renewal of thinking through the synthesis of philosophy and theology. Rosenzweig presents speech as more deeply linked to temporal experience than rational thought. Speech is ‘narrative’, that is, it is the necessary complement to the philosophy of reason. The philosophy of his contemporary, Buber (1958), was centred on the encounter, or dialogue, of a person with others and Buber’s relational method of knowledge co-creation is further addressed in this book. We nevertheless need a brief introduction to Rosenzweig, who calls the phenomenology of the encounter ‘speech-thinking’. Levinas has been influenced by Rosenzweig, so much so, that in Totality and Infinity, Levinas writes, ‘we were impressed by the opposition to the idea of totality in Franz Rosenzweig’s Stern der Erlösung [Star of Redemption], a work too often present in this book to be cited’ (Levinas, 1969, 28). The Hebrew designation of language and learning—Talmud and a Talmudic style of writing and speaking—‘lacks transition’ and has a ‘conjunctive-disjunctive’ texture according to Derrida (2002, 143). So the nub of why the presentation style appealed to the friendly face and not to the student is the difference between the Greek and the Hebrew designations of knowledge creation and communication. Our friendly face is comfortable following the lecturer/presenter who adopts the texture of the relational without the transitive signposts and conjunctive clues of the Greek logic and reason. Our Midrashim and findings are conceived and are written in the Hebrew texture of communicating.

The Hebrew Style First, it is significant for us to note that the ultimate issues of our existence addressed by the Rabbis in the Talmud are not dissimilar to the big questions asked by the ‘Greek’ philosophers. The difference is that the Greek system of philosophy seeks to find definitive answers to their questions: to solve the problems they have posed. Alternately, the Talmud shows conflicting ways of thinking through important issues by means of a dialogical relational method; so too is Levinas showing us the importance of dialogical relating. In contrast to theory sourced in the mind that is filial to the Cartesian cogito, dialogical relating is a valid source of knowledge. ‘I do not underestimate the importance of knowledge, but I do not consider it to be the ultimate axiological judgement’ (Levinas, 1984, 191). Therefore, Levinas affirms his position that without underestimating knowledge as framed and developed within the ‘Greek’ system (thinking), other ways of coming to know and other bodies of knowledge per se are equally and sometimes even more valid as knowledge qua knowledge.

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Second, the Talmud always encourages further inquiry, never allowing a final or exclusive interpretation. Levinas states that about many issues, the debates in the Talmud paradoxically bring opinions that will ultimately be rejected by the Halacha,3 even allowing, in some extreme cases, the recording and study of opinions that are considered heretical and theologically opposed to the basic corpus of beliefs. In other words, the structure of Talmudic thought never removes a valid thesis but posits it as one of the poles of thought that circulate between it and the opposite pole. With the phenomenological importance of all aspects of the text in mind, the reader engages to find what could be the meaning of even an ultimately rejected opinion (Wygoda, 2001). Third, the opinions of legendary teachers and students are voiced, defended or refuted, and even the contributions of lesser-known rabbis are included. The rich emotional world of human repartee, struggle and illumination that is the Talmud acknowledges and records more than the knowledge the rabbis acquired. Knowledge, being other than theory, is the composite of multiple teachers and learners as they intensely relate to and experience each other and God through the study of Torah. With reference to this concept—the importance of all voices in the discourse— responsible communication celebrates the multiplicity of local stories of truth without trying to reduce them all to the one. ‘The alterity of the other is an opportunity to be oneself truly … for the sake of the others’ material and spiritual requirements prior to one’s own’ (Cohen, 2001, 329). By speaking to the Other, I enter into relation with him. The appearance of the Other does not inform me about his inner experiences. He first appears and supports his appearance by expressing himself. Can I listen/hear his expression without seeking a universal, all-encompassing system or story? We are no longer seeking grand, final answers to our questions. When writing our Midrashim, our response to suffering is an intensification of ethics and responsibility. We engage in living dialogue, in which ‘it is more important to find out who is speaking and why, [emphasis added] than merely to know what is said’ (Levinas, 1969, 18). This is our inescapable responsibility, as Levinas and Buber have shown a passion to think about responsibility more radically and more honestly in the face of suffering … to protect others from suffering (Kepnes et al., 1998). Our research methods uphold the same open, dynamic, dialogical method as the multivocal Talmud by allowing each other—each asylum-seeking-refugee—their unique expression of themselves. Our role is hineni—to show up.

Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas On 25 December 1995, the radio station France 2 reported the death of the philosopher during the 8 o’ clock news. In the winter greyness, writes Malka (2006), Jacques Derrida delivered the eulogy in a blanched voice, barely audible through the wind. Chief Rabbi Gutman officiated, inserting a personal recollection: 3

Halacha is formal Jewish law prescribed in the Torah.

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‘How can we fail to recognise in him one who endured suspended “between the living and the dead,” one whose thoughts after the catastrophe obliged us to rethink the human as awakening, as insomnia, as responsibility? … Adieu For a long time, for a very long time, I’ve feared having to say Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. I knew that my voice would tremble at the moment of saying it, and especially saying it aloud, right here, before him, so close to him, pronouncing this word of adieu, this word à-Dieu, which, in a certain sense, I get from him, a word that he will have taught me to think or to pronounce otherwise [emphases in orginal]. (Derrida, 1997, xxx-xxxi, 1)

References Buber, M. (1958). I and Thou, Collectors ed. (R.G. Smith, Trans.). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Cohen, R. A. (2001). Ethics exegesis and philosophy: Interpretation after Levinas. Cambridge University Press. Derrida, J. (1997). Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (English). Stanford University Press. Derrida, J. (2002). Acts of religion. Routledge. Holtz, B. W. (1984). Back to the sources: Reading the classic Jewish texts. Simon & Schuster. Kepnes, S., Ochs, P., & Gibbs, R. (1998). Reasoning after revelation: Dialogues in postmodern Jewish Philosophy. Westview Press. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (A. Lingis, Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E. (1984). Is it righteous to be? Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas (J. Robbins & T. Loebel, Trans.). Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Levinas, E. (1990). Nine talmudic readings (A. Aronowicz, Trans.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Malka S (2006) Emmanuel Levinas: his life and legacy (M. Kigel & S. Embree, Trans.). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Rosenzweig, F. (1970). The star of redemption. University of Notre Dame Press. Wygoda, S. (2001). A phenomenological outlook at the Talmud: Levinas as reader of the Talmud. Retrieved March 6, from http://ghansel.free.fr/wygoda.html#tthFrefAAB

Chapter 8

Who Is Speaking and Why?

At the heart of the Midrash methodology is a coherent convergence of Levinas’s ethics and knowledge creation. In defiance of indifference, Levinas raises the necessity of responsible communication being initiated by an act of generosity. He boldly inserts spirituality into the ethical relationship, as if Denzin and Lincoln (2003) had whispered in his ear, ‘seek a sacred epistemology that recognizes the essential ethical unit of mind and nature … This sacred epistemology is political … and civic transformation’ (1052). In his conception of ability to respond—responsibility— Levinas takes us through the passage of raising to consciousness our understanding and actions for researching people such as asylum-seeking-refugees. Diving into Levinas is diving into ethics, like each unique wave of the ocean flowing, fulsome and swelling to meet the shore of our ethical knowing. As we pay attention to the process of research that begins with the ethical writing of the Midrashim, we are entering an ocean of new orientation in which prior to thought, we experience the meaning of being ethical. To achieve the new orientation, we are required to be open to experience the other person as they are, rather than to theorise about them, using the self’s own mind. (Levinas, 1988)

Experiencing Prior to Thought It would seem that the Abrahamic religions as expressed in biblical or Qur’anic texts have become increasingly irrelevant for daily lives in the complexity of individualisms and intellectualisms. Yet, after World War II, the Jewish philosopher, Levinas, sought to write Judaism in the style of French philosophy as his offering of humanism to shattered populations. Although God is considered somewhat banal or even an anathema to the postmodern consciousness, we can discover from the following in Genesis (B’reishit) 18:1–8, a phenomenology of hospitality and welcoming the stranger, lived experience prior to thinking about the stranger.

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We read that Abraham, at age 90, has just circumcised himself. He is resting and recovering in the shade of his tent that was under the shade of the huge, old trees. Looking up, Abraham sees three strangers approaching his camp domain. Despite the heat of the day and what must have been indescribable pain from the brit milah (circumcision), Abraham ran to greet them. He brings them to his tent, as is his custom, to bathe their feet, offer them food, water and rest under the shade of the trees. The story describes in detail, repeating, that Abraham runs to Sarah’s tent asking her to prepare food. He runs to the herdsman to ask for meat to be prepared. When Abraham notices strangers approaching his camp, is he overcome with fear? Does he instruct the camp guards to protect his vulnerable self and his family? No. Albeit in pain, notwithstanding the heat, and although Abraham does not recognise them, he runs to welcome and offer hospitality to the three strangers. Abraham does not defend or protect himself, his family and his tribe from Strangers. His is the ethical action of welcoming and hospitality despite any inconvenience, danger or pain to himself. The stranger calls to us with his face appearing before us. Abraham gives us the template for our responsibility to the unknown arrival. He does not first ask: “Who are you? From where do you come? To where are you travelling?” Not even does Abraham ask: “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Do you want to rest a while?” In his pain and discomfort is immense vulnerability. Notwithstanding, Abraham sets the precedent for us for showing up, face to the face, that goes beyond the logic of comprehension. It is the initial act of generosity.

Once Upon a Rainy Day Every time I visit, I do my best to look good. The people detained see none other than their visitors. What would they care how I look? Normally I have ‘bad hair’ days; ‘don’t know what to wear’ days; ‘Gee, don’t I look good in that’ days; or ‘Who cares—no one will even notice’ days. But never one of those days when visiting Villawood Detention Centre. Dressing well, looking good, was one small way I could show respect to the captives I visited. The non-verbal communication I attempt is ‘You are special’; ‘You are important to me’; ‘You deserve a presentation of myself that is appropriate, considered and clear’. It seemed so important to always give that respect; that regard; that consideration—as if my thoughts, my appearance, could annul some of the vitriol poured on the detainees.

I hoped that my attention to dress would reverse some of their amputation from life. If I am visible to myself, then they too will be visible. (Wainer, 2015, 86). ‘The Woman Poet’ (Die Dichterin) by Gertrud Kolmar (1894–1943) You hold me now completely in your hands. My heart beats like a frightened little bird’s against your palm. Take heed! You do not think A person lives within the page you thumb. To you this book is paper, cloth, and ink,

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Some binding thread and glue, and thus is dumb, And cannot touch you (though the gaze be great That seeks you from the printed marks inside), And is an object with an object’s fate. And yet it has been veiled like a bride, Adorned with gems, made ready to be loved, Who asks you bashfully to change your mind, To wake yourself, and feel, and to be moved. But still she trembles, whispering to the wind: “This shall not be.” And smiles as if she knew. Yet she must hope. A woman always tries, Her very life is but a single “You . . .” With her black flowers and her painted eyes, With silver chains and silks of spangled blue. She knew more beauty when a child and free, But now forgets the better words she knew. A man is so much cleverer than we, Conversing with himself of truth and lie, Of death and spring and iron-work and time. But I say “you” and always “you and I.” This book is but a girl’s dress in rhyme, Which can be rich and red, or poor and pale, Which may be wrinkled, but with gentle hands, And only may be torn by loving nails. So then, to tell my story, here I stand. The dress’s tint, though bleached in bitter lye, Has not all washed away. It still is real. I call then with a thin, ethereal cry. You hear me speak. But do you hear me feel? (Kolmar, 1930)

Gertrud Käthe Chodziesner, known by the literary pseudonym Gertrud Kolmar, was a German lyric poet and writer. She was born in Berlin and died in Auschwitz, after her arrest by the SS (Shutzstaffel [special police force]) and deportation as a victim of the Nazi Final Solution. Though she was a cousin of Walter Benjamin, little is known of her life. Taking up the Abrahamic template for responsibility to the unknown arrival, to go beyond the capacity of me, is the following illustration. The story of Mr Cham spotlights the garish indifference of a USA court judge to the 27-year-old individual

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who is pleading his case for asylum. Mr Cham, the asylum-seeking-refugee from The Gambia, was reduced by the immigration judge, who cruelly neutralised, thus silencing, Mr Cham’s spoken language that included English and Arabic interspersed with Wolof. The judge committed a Levinasian violence by not paying attention to the world inhabited by Mr Cham. Interestingly, as others in his family already had been granted asylum, it is fair to say that the causes for fleeing his country, The Gambia, were already known and established as genuine for granting refugee status. Furthermore, as others had to appear before an immigration judge, there would also be accounts of the language spoken in The Gambia. Despite English being the official language of Mr Cham’s country, the judge is insisting he speaks in Wolof and uses the translator. (I am in gratitude to my colleague Professor Bill Simmons who has been to The Gambia understands and explained to me the texture of the language.) The Gambia is a polyglot nation, with conversations frequently shifting seamlessly from one language to the next without any apparent cue to an outsider (author’s observations from frequent trips to The Gambia). … the court assigning a translator from neighbouring Senegal, where a different dialect of Wolof is spoken that is often intermingled with French. Further, Senegal and The Gambia are heavily Muslim with many words known mostly in Arabic. For example, neither Mr. Cham nor the translator knew the Wolof words for most months and dates, because they were mostly spoken in English, Arabic, or French. (Simmons, 2010, 225–227). At the very outset of the hearing, petitioner Abou Cham said, in English, that he was born in 1978. Judge to Mr Cham: All right. Remember what I told you, Mr. Cham? Mr. Cham, these instructions are not really earth shattering. They’re not that complicated. We are going to stay totally in the Wolof language, now. All right? Mr Cham: Okay. Judge: Just, just answer in the Wolof language. It’s rather simple. All right. What’s your full date of birth, sir? Mr Cham: 1979. Judge: All right. Did you not just tell me 1978? Mr Cham: ‘78. Judge: Mr. Cham …! (Interpreter to court orderly: It’s going to be a long day.) Judge: Mr. Cham, the question is a rather basic question. When were you born? You said in English, 1978. You said to interpreter in the Wolof language, 1979, or at least that was interpreted as 1979. I just brought that to your attention. Now, we’re back to 1978. When were you born, Mr. Cham? Give me your date of birth? Mr Cham: I, I cannot count it in Wolof. That’s the reason why I’m a little confused. Judge: I want to know the date you were born, sir. Mr Cham: 1978.

Once Upon a Rainy Day Judge: What date? Give me a month. Mr Cham: September. September 28. Judge: And, please … Mr Cham I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry. Judge: Would you, please, remain in the Wolof language. I don’t know why you’re doing this. I’m giving you instructions to speak only in Wolof and you keep intermingling English and Wolof. So, what’s your date of birth, now? Sir, the questions are going to get progressively more difficult. We’re two minutes into the hearing and already you’re having difficulty with a simple question. When were you born? Mr Cham: When it comes to counting, Your Honor, I am, I’m not very, very good at it in Wolof. I am better at counting in English than I am in Wolof. I’m very sorry. Judge: I’m not asking you to count. I’m asking you to give me a month. Give me a month that you were born. Mr Cham: Okay. I would like to know, Your Honor, if I can say the month in English? Judge to Interpreter: Mr. Interpreter, in the Wolof language, are the months January, February, March … are there 12 months? Interpreter to Judge: Yes, there are, there are 12 months but they use the Arabic [names for the] month Judge to Interpreter: All right. Well, you’ll know that. You’ll know the months—don’t you? Interpreter to Judge: Your Honor, personally, I know few of them. I don’t know all of them I use the French or the English Judge to Mr Cham: Okay. What’s the … give me your date in English, date of birth in English. Mr Cham: September 28, 1978. Judge: Mr. Cham, do you have a problem following directions? Mr Cham: I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry. Judge: Well, I’m, I’m tired. I’m sorry. And I’m tired of hearing you say I’m sorry. I don’t want you speaking English. Mr Cham: Okay. Judge: Don’t you understand the problem? Don’t you understand this premise? Mr Cham: Okay. Judge: I don’t want you speaking English. I gave you the opportunity and you flubbed the opportunity. You were tripping all over the words in English. Your English is not that good. I thought it was better. Now, instead of using your native language with the interpreter that I’ve provided at some cost to the Government, you want to impress me with your English. Stay in that Wolof language. Mr Cham: Okay, sir.

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8 Who Is Speaking and Why? Judge: You’re just delaying everything here. Mr Cham: I’m sorry, sir. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. Forgive me. Shortly thereafter, Judge Ferlise saw another opening when the subject of Cham’s age resurfaced. Judge: Now, you stated that you were 14 when you left The Gambia. Is that right? Mr Cham: Yes. Judge: But in, in, in 1994, if you were born in 1978, you would have been almost 16, wouldn’t that, wouldn’t that be true? Mr Cham: I know my age, but I think I’m in the-not far from, not far in between. Judge: Not far from what? Mr Cham: Not far from between 14 and 16–15. Judge: You were 16, sir You were born in ‘78. You were 3 months less — shy of being 16 You told me you were 14 when [the coup] occurred. I’m telling you, you were three months short of being 16. There’s a big difference between 14 and almost 16. So I want to know why you told me you were 14. Mr Cham: I apologize. It’s just so much going in my mind but that’s a mistake of-on my part. Judge to Interpreter: Proceed. The belligerence continued… Judge: Look, I’m not going to play games with you. You know what I’m talking about. Now, you better come up with an answer pretty quickly or I’ll find that you’re non-responsive. Mr Cham: I’m sorry. (“Abou CHAM, Petitioner v. ATTORNEY GENERAL OF the UNITED STATES, Respondent,” 2006, Court proceedings).

With powerful humility and insight, Levinas urges us to dignify the stranger and introduces the sacred into discourse. With that thought reverberating, we take up our responsibility—respond-ability—to our research. Since Levinas’s ethical responsibility in face-to-face relating precludes solipsistically thinking about another, a research method consistent with Levinas’s philosophy must be capable of uncovering and describing the phenomenology of relating. We begin to challenge epistemologies and our concretised/ fixed views of what it means to know. ‘We prefer our knowledge solid and like our data hard. It makes for a firm foundation, a secure place on which to stand. Knowledge as a process, a temporary state, is scary to many’ (Eisner 1997, in Leavy, 2009, 9). Levinas might have responded to Eisner with ‘communication is an adventure involving uncertainty’. For us, ‘communication’ is the research relationship in dialogue—our ethical responsibility despite uncertainty. ‘The approach is not the thematisation of any relationship, but is this very relationship, which resists thematisation as anarchic’ (Levinas, 1991, 121). What then, according to Levinas, is knowledge? Using the term discours, Levinas holds that conversation/discourse itself is relationship; relating is the generative

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process from which data, findings and, ultimately, understanding and knowledge emerge.Leavy (2009) discusses working with new tools to create ‘knowledge based on resonance and understanding’ (Leavy, 2009, 2). Levinas speaks of ‘the autoaffection of certainty, to which one always tries to reduce communication’ (Levinas, 1991, 119). Rather, listening and relating with must precede thinking about. Qualitative research methods that initially set out to be considered scientific still favour the researcher as observer/ interpreter/ analyser who thinks about the data as if they, the researcher, are entirely separate from the data. In turn, that data are said to be gathered from research participants who are also separate from the researcher. It is ‘more important to find out who is speaking and why, than merely to know what is said’ (Levinas, 1969, 18). Research practices can be employed as a means of creating critical awareness or raising consciousness. This is important in social justice–oriented research that seeks to … raise critical consciousness, build coalitions across groups, and challenge dominant ideologies. (Leavy, 2009, 13)

References Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2003). The handbook of qualitative research. SAGE Publications. Kolmar, G. (1930). The woman poet. https://allpoetry.com/The-Woman-Poet-----Translation-ofDie-Dichterin. Leavy, P. (2009). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Press. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Levinas, E. (1988). Entre nous: On thinking-of-the-other. Translated by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav. New York: Columbia University Press. Levinas, E. (1991). Otherwise than being or beyond essence. 2nd ed. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publisher. Simmons, W. P. (2010). A human rights of the other: Toward a deconstruction and reinvigoration of human rights law. Cambridge University Press. Wainer, D. (2015). Beyond the wire: Levinas vis-à-vis Villawood: A study on Levinas’s philosophy as an ethical foundation for asylum-seeker policy. Boffin Books.

Chapter 9

Midrash

Why Midrash Narratives are integral to living life well (Boochani, 2018)

Midrash is the Hebrew word with the root three letters being drash that means to study, to seek out or to investigate. Midrashim are accounts that elaborate on an incident, derive a principle or provide a moral lesson. In its first incarnation, the Midrash methodology was, in fact, heavily informed by arts-based research methods that motivate and include the author-researchers’ creativity (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003; Denzin & Giardina, 2012; Hesse-Biber & Leavey 2008; Leavy, 2009). Now, the Midrash methodology is based on writing phenomenological stories that are data. In her foreword to Lenette (2019) Professor Maggie O’Neill writes about art-based research methods. Like the scholars cited above: Arts-based research methods can certainly tell richer and more complex stories of asylum, displacement and belonging and, through the mediating function and relationship of art forms to the social issues sedimented or represented in them, the arts can elicit holding spaces or safe spaces for stories to be told. …Participatory, collaborative arts-based methodologies help to challenge dominant discourses, promote recognition and inclusion of the very people who are the subject of much research and commentary and promote our collective responsibility as a moral imperative. (xiii–ix).

Conversely, what about those, like detained asylum-seeking-refugees, the generalised images of whom are visible only through politicians’ gaze and the media? Their microworlds, past and current, are hidden from citizens. Usually, they have no channel through which they can be heard. The rare exceptions are epitomised by Boochani (2018) and Boochani and Servastani (2017), who made a documentary Chauka: Please Tell Us the Time that was shot entirely on mobile phones on Manus Island. The book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison was thumbed, also on a phone, and smuggled out of Manus Island prison in the form of thousands of texts. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_9

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Here follows an exemplar of the extent to which asylum-seeking-refugees are personae non gratae held in spaces of ‘no-man’s land’, living somewhat akin to Agamben’s conception of ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998). An Australian citizen, Cornelia Rau, was picked up by the Victorian police and incarcerated in the Baxter detention centre. Rau, suspected of being an unlawful non-citizen (a non-citizen who does not hold a current visa), was incarcerated and subjected to the government’s tyranny, cruel policies and damaging attitudes of detention centre guards and management. The scenario inside the Baxter detention centre for weeks prior to Rau being located and identified by her sister, Catherine, is instructive. Rau, due to a mental health condition, insisted on two certainties. One, she was convinced that her name was Anna—the name she gives herself when she was unmedicated and episodic. A search of hospital records or missing persons’ reports would have revealed the name Anna, her name Cornelia, who she is and her next of kin. Two, she was convinced that she was an Australian citizen. Yet only the asylum-seeking refugees detained in Baxter had the sensitivity and nous to perceive something was amiss with this new detainee. A few detainees told the guards and staff at the Baxter detention centre of their concern about their fellow detainee, Anna. They were convinced that she had a mental health condition and should not be punished and placed in an isolation cell. Their words, that fell like tear drops to the ground, served only to water their determination to help her. Despite the political shrieks that asylum-seekingrefugees are not the ‘types’ that the good people of Australia want as fellow citizens, the detainees began phoning their advocate friends. They were disturbed when the guards’ maltreatment exacerbated her obvious mental disturbances.1 Unlike the guards, who are treating her as if she is violent and dangerous, they find her to be sweet-natured and kind, despite obviously being mentally disturbed. Furthermore, the guards and centre management dismiss the detainees’ convictions that Anna is an Australian citizen as she proclaims. The ontological complicity—untested assumptions—of the staff and guards at the Baxter detention centre preclude believing that the detainees are sensitive truth-speakers, knowledgeable and educated regarding mental health (Palmer, 2005). Pugliese (2002) poignantly describes detention centres as spaces of living death. Just as the dead are not seen or heard, what the detainees were reporting was ignored or not believed. As a consequence of the prevailing mindset, the government was in denial of the alarms signalled by the detainees. Furthermore, the bureaucratic officers habitually failed to recognise and respond responsibly to the fact that the incarceration of people seeking asylum in Australia was unlawful and wrong. Bureaucrats and prison guards denied agency and voice to the detained ‘non-citizens’. As I write about the tragic circumstances that exacerbated Cornelia’s already poor mental health, I am reminded of a cameo within the self-described meditation of Perera (2006):

1

It would be irresponsible of me to write about the abuses Cornelia suffered at the hands of the guards, as reading them could traumatise a reader.

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My title refers to Dadang Christanto’s installation ‘They Give Evidence’, a series of standing, naked figures, bearing in their outstretched arms the remnants of burnings, drownings, beatings and other mutilations that leave their subjects stripped of any markers of identity. These nameless bodies, an image of contemporary political violence, invite exploration of the relations between the bodies of the dead and the living, between practices of bearing witness and giving evidence. (637).

The detainees in the Baxter detention centre are as if ‘standing, naked figures, bearing in their outstretched arms’ the information Rau’s sister and family were begging Australians to locate. In her article ‘“They Give Evidence”: Bodies, Borders and the Disappeared’ (Perera, 2006) draws on philosopher and political theorist Giorgio Agamben’s discussion of the inhabitants of the ‘state of exception’. She cites the Cameroonian philosopher and political theorist Mbembe, who argues that: Necropower is exercised where the state of exception and the relation of enmity have become the normative basis of the right to kill. In such instances, power … continually refers and appeals to exception, emergency and a fictionalized notion of the enemy. It also labours to produce that same exception, emergency and a fictionalized enemy. (Mbemebe 2004, 16, in Perera, 2006, 645).

Such is the ‘enmity’ to the asylum seekers as ‘fictionalised enemies’ that the disturbing facts about Australian citizen Cornelia Rau’s presence and treatment in Baxter detention centre were disregarded. These facts, as reported by the detainees, were corroborated in the Palmer Report (Palmer, 2005). The report raises the question: how is the disparity between the seriousness of Anna’s (Rau’s) situation— indefinite imprisonment—and the indifference and thoughtlessness of the bureaucrat officials in charge of her case to be explained? I suggest the tyranny of incarceration occurs when the perturbations of politics left to itself and the cruelty of the impersonal (Levinas, 1969) act to remove the human from human rights. Levinas’s critique of the tyranny of politics invigorates us, in the words of Franciscan minister Gregorio Redoblado, to ‘seriously consider the tears of the forgotten other—the marginalised’ (Redoblado, 2009). When we, the public who are responsible for electing politicians, choose not to see, or to turn away from the tears of the Others, then we are all complicit in the indifference that de-legitimises human rights. De-humanising removes asylum seekers as potential subjects for moral demands, removes any claims to a cause, or a just grievance, in fact removes any claims to subjectivity whatsoever … promotes social indifference. (Every, 2006, 142)

While Rau’s inquiry, headed by Mick Palmer AM—a highly respected, longserving, federal police commissioner—was underway, the brutal deportation of another Australian citizen made front-page and headline news. Just as Rau was not believed, so too was Vivian Alvarez Solon not believed by the bureaucracy (the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs [DIMIA] now named Australian Border Force) personnel. Indeed, DIMIA records include at least two references by officers who constructed a story that she was ‘smuggled into Australia as a sex slave and wants to return to the Philippines’ (Palmer, 2005, 227).

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Although from Alvarez’s DIMIA file, it is clear that she consistently rejected that construction, it eventually was written up as a fact. The fact is that Alvarez was married to an Australian and is herself an Australian citizen. Although there is no signature against that morally indefensible entry where it appears in her file, the day after that dated entry, she was deported (Marr, 2005; Palmer 2005). Disregard for the human, is endemic. More recently, in an episode reminiscent of the Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez Solon cases of more than a decade ago (Doherty, 2017), Australian Border Force illegally detained two Australian citizens and sent them to the Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre, a maximum security place of incarceration with sophisticated surveillance systems that enable the gaze from Canberra. Australian Border Force officers’ propensity to ignore the veracity of the story being told is like a cancer. As such, non-acceptance of the word of the asylumseeking-refugee leads to the grave injustice of ‘exercising the power to deprive someone of their liberty’ (Palmer, 2005, 61) and life. Yet awareness of the gravity of this overreaching of authority seemed to escape the personnel and the public so that the prevalence of the unlawful removal of liberty, of incarceration compounded by inhumane attitudes and of cruel treatment, is unknown, denied, and ignored or accepted as necessary by the public. Only when Australian citizens (Rau, Alvarez) were the recipients of the same unduly harsh measures as asylum-seeking-refugees did the absence of checks and balances for such significant responsibilities come under scrutiny. Only then did the discourse begin to include the rights of non-citizens. As a suspected non-citizen, Cornelia was, by contrast, almost a non-juridical being, with virtually no legal protections or legal rights. In order for her to be incarcerated, in theory for the remainder of her life, all the law required was that a junior official [emphasis in original] with authority under the Migration Act form a reasonable suspicion that Cornelia had no right to be on Australian soil. (Manne, 2005, 7)

Crimmigration (Stumpf, 2006) (the intertwining of immigration law and criminal law) thrives in the absence of public scrutiny. Practices and polices implemented within the realm of crimmigration are characteristic of law enforcement practices that are expanded to include government agencies. Thus, as seen with Rau, Alvarez and others, low-grade immigration clerks are making obnoxious, irresponsible life and death decisions. Knowledge of such hidden bureaucratic—immigration and border force—practices was regrettably but a brief exception to ongoing detention regime discourses. Malevolently, the government moved detention centres offshore to the islands, as previously discussed. Further impeding accountability and transparency, the government banished asylum-seeking-refugees to imprisonment as persona non grata. Foucault writes of sequestering institutions, for example, prisons that operate on the body through the interactions of power exerted over ‘living time’ (Foucault, 1994, 84). Like Mbembe, who defines necropolitics as ‘the right to kill, to allow to live, or to expose to death’[italics in original], (Perera, 2006, 645) I find this language chilling. It should send shivers through us all, for this is how the detention regime works to break and discard human beings. Mbembe states that ‘the ultimate expression of

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sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die […]. To exercise sovereignty is to exercise control over mortality and to define life as the deployment and manifestation of power’ (2003, 11). The possibility that there could exist Australian state power to directly or indirectly kill refugees and asylum-seeking-refugees comes from Faulkner, a highly respected politician and leader who, at the time, sat in the Australian Senate. In a speech to the Fabian think tank in Faulkner (2003, 6) elaborates further what he means by the ‘direct or indirect licence to kill’. He spells out the type of sabotage activities the Senate Inquiry into the sinking of suspected illegal entry vessel X (SIEV-X)2 could not categorically rule out as part of the official ‘disruption’ programme: the committee could not rule out that food was not provided to people aboard smuggling vessels; it could not rule out that sugar was not put into the fuel tanks of vessels carrying asylum seekers or that sand was not put into the engines of these vessels (Senate Inquiry, 2002). These statements spell out the kinds of deliberate sabotage and threats to human life included under Faulkner’s reference to ‘the direct or indirect licence to kill’. It is a chilling catalogue that fleshes out Mbembe’s definition of necropolitics— ‘the right to kill, to allow to live or to expose to death’ (Mbembe, 2003, 11). Palmer’s inquiry revealed serious problems, such as deep-seated cultural and attitudinal deficits within the Australian Border Force, including the absence of respect for human dignity. Such facts about the Australian Border Force and the detention regime that previously were hidden and of no interest now incensed the Australian public. Equating Cornelia Rau’s status with other ‘unlawfuls’ who are incarcerated included her under the veil of the impersonal and invisible—the rights-less. Rau’s unlawful incarceration, Alvarez’s unlawful deportation and the right to kill, to allow to live or to expose to death were, and continue to this date of writing, the rigorously logical conclusions of the concept that asylum-seeking-refugees are ‘unlawful non-citizens’—non-human. Wa syo’ lukasa pebwe Umwime wa pita3 [He left his footprint on the stone, He himself passed on] (Mbembe & Meintjes, 2003)

Now to answer our earlier question—why Midrash? Within the state of necropower, as we have seen, the Australian Border Force and its instruments have ‘the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not’ (Mbembe & Meintjes, 2003, 27). Here, I am associating the asylum-seeking-refugees who are detained in the Gulags as they were in the onshore detention centres with Mbembe’s ‘death-worlds’. He equates death-worlds with the ‘new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead’ (40). 2

Former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin, the man who single-handedly got the fate of SIEV-X onto the public agenda. (Kingston 2002). 3 Lamba proverb, Zambia.

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Other than extremely rare cases (Boochani, 2018; Sabbagh, 2005), there is no place for the voice of the disposable asylum-seeking-refugee while incarcerated. Accordingly, we arrive at the need to write Midrashim. Midrash is the first step in the process of data creation in the Midrash methodology. Martin Buber wrote Chasidic tales originating in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The stories had been passed down the lineages, mostly orally, but some were written. Most were in Yiddish.4 Chasidic tales are Midrashic. Equally, many Chasidic tales are influenced by Sufism. They tell stories of life in narrow streets, dark rooms and cobbled squares; of ordinary people in ordinary marketplaces; of the struggles of the poor and downtrodden; of encounters with tzaddikim (righteous ones); of kings and other rulers; of ardour, indifference and loss of the people of whom Midrashim are told (Kepnes, 1992). Of the Midrashim that I write, ‘I do not report, describe, enumerate dates or facts’ (Buber, 1955, 9). Rather, Buber says that his telling and writing stories reveals the new that ‘already lay dormant in them when they were told for the first time’ (Buber, 1955, 10). Herein lies a key to the Midrash methodology per se. We, the researcher-authors, are writing to reveal a new gaze, to challenge exclusionary and fixed discourses. People come to understand the lived experiences of asylum and migration through mainstream media images and narratives. We are asking the reader of our research to find the new in what might be a known story, for example, refugees or people experiencing homelessness. Buber insists that we do not tell and interpret such stories to awaken the telling of others: Our telling is a cry, a search … for the Other. …The search for the other must be carried to the unfamiliar, the foreign and the strange. (Kepnes, 1992, 149)

We write Midrashim to restore the Other, the Stranger, to full agency and dignity when they themselves are inaccessible and cannot tell, act, dance or compose their stories. Shierry Nicholsen (1993, in Lenette, 2019) tells us that the critical potential of art is that it can ‘pierce us’ and ‘help to grasp reality in its otherness within the context of an image society that attempts to tame and inhibit critical reflection’ by ‘decolonising research agendas in refugee studies’ and research methods (vii–ix). According to Kepnes, Buber would have his readers ask of his narratives: ‘how do these narratives shed light on my own experiences of meeting?’ (Kepnes, 1992, x). What of these narratives can I take into my own encounters with others, with the Stranger, with the Other? Like Buber, so too do we write to have the reader ask the questions of themselves. Although Buber was a scholar, he does not write in the academic third-person voice. Buber writes with passion: 4

Yiddish is a complete language.

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As is told, A rabbi, whose grandfather had been a disciple of the Baal Shem, was asked to tell a story. ‘A story’, he said, ‘must be told in such a way that it constitutes help in itself’. ‘My grandfather was lame. Once they asked him to tell a story about his teacher. And he related how the holy Baal Shem used to hop and dance while he prayed. My grandfather rose as he spoke and he was so swept away by his story that he himself began to hop and dance to show how the master had done. From that hour on he was cured of his lameness.’ That’s the way to tell a story! (Buber, 1947, v–vi)

References Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Translated by Heller-Roazen, D. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. Boochani, B. (2018). No friend but the mountains: Writing from manus prison. Translated by Omid Tofighian. Sydney: Picador in Pan Macmillan. Boochani, B., & Arash, K. S. (2017). Chauka, please tell Us the time. Directed by Behrouz Boochani and Arash Kamali Servastani. Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. iPhone, 90 min. Buber, M. (1947). Tales of the Hasidim: The early masters. Translated by Olga Marx. New York: Schocen Books. Buber, M. (1955). The legend of the Baal-Shem. Translated by Maurice Friedman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2003). The handbook of qualitative research. SAGE Publications. Denzin, N. K., & Giardina, M. D. (Eds.). (2012). Qualitative inquiry and the politics of advocacy. Left Coast Press. Doherty, B. (2017). Border force illegally sent two Australian citizens to Christmas Island. The Guardian. 5 July. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/05/border-force-illega lly-sent-two-australian-citizens-to-christmas-island. Every, D. (2006). The politics of representation: A discursive analysis of refugee advocacy in the Australian parliament. Ph.D. thesis, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide. Faulkner, J. (2003). A certain maritime incident, Sydney morning herald on-line. www.smh.com. au/articles/2003/07/23/1058853131600.html. Foucault, M. (1994). Power: Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984. In J. D. Faubion (Ed) (Vol. 3). Penguin Books. Kingston, M. (2002). Siev-X mystery unsolved: The story of SIEV-X by Kevin, Tony. Sydney Morning Herald On-Line. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/26/1030053029931.html. Hesse-Biber, S. N., & Leavy, P. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of emergent methods. Guilford Publication. Kepnes, S. (1992). The text as thou: martin Buber’s dialogical hermeneutics and narrative theology. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Leavy, P. (2009). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Press. Lenette, C. (2019). Arts-based methods in refugee research: Creating sanctuary. Springer. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Manne, R. (2005). The unknown story of Cornelia Rau. The Monthly. https://www.themonthly.com. au/monthly-essays-robert-manne-unknown-story-cornelia-rau-often-she-cried-sometimes-shescreamed-she-be#mtr. Marr, D. (2005). Don’t ask those questions: DIMIA’s cover-up of the Vivian Alvarez affair’. Project SafeCom. https://www.safecom.org.au/marr-alvarez.htm.

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Mbembe, A., & Libby M. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(Winter), 11–40. https://war wick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/postcol_theory/mbe mbe_22necropolitics22.pdf. Palmer, M. J. (2005). Inquiry into the circumstances of the immigration detention of Cornelia Rau. https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/reports-and-pubs/files/palmer-report.pdf. Perera, S. (2006). “They give evidence”: Bodies, borders and the disappeared. Social Identities, 12(6), 637–656. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630601030859 Pugliese, J. (2002). Penal asylum: Refugees, ethics, hospitality (Vol. 1). Redoblado, L. (2009). Ethical politics and marginality in Emmanuel Levinas. HAPAG, 6(2). Retrieved from http://ejournals.ph/form/cite.php?id=10096 Sabbagh, H., director. Tea for two. (2005). Metro screen: A short film starring Amanda Bishop and Lex Marinos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whyySQLa8hI. Senate Inquiry. (2002). A certain maritime incident. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. https:/ /www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Former_Committees/maritimei ncident/report/index. Stumpf, J. (2006). The crimmigration crisis: Immigrants, crime, and sovereign power. American University Law Review, 56(2), 367–419.

Chapter 10

Principles

Principle One: Midrash Is Relational Writing Midrashim can be soulful, intuitive and creative. The work resonates with the scholar who is the researcher, who is the author—the researcher-author—so that they are in relationship with their work, in relationship with themselves, in relationship with the research team.

Principle Two: Midrash Is Phenomenological Midrashim are phenomenological. Phenomenology is a research orientation that provides rich insights into the everyday world of humans. As a phenomenological method of research, the internal phenomena of the researcher are not considered separate from the external, objectively observable world.

Principle Three: Midrash Is Hermeneutical Phenomenological research can also be approached as hermeneutical research. Hermeneutical studies, according to Becker (1992), use literary texts that are read interpretatively and witness life events that are reframed and re-languaged. ‘Hermeneutic work is dynamic, creative and open-ended’ (Becker, 1992, 32). Hareven (1995), in Douglas-Klotz (1998), draws attention to the power of Midrash to moderate a story or a conception that is in danger of becoming fixed—rigid and bound.

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Principle Four: Midrash Represents the Unpresentable ‘Midrash helps to lift up, reflect upon, and develop an understanding … interprets by telling stories of events’ (Kepnes, 1992, xi). Midrash witnesses the unpresentable. The Other is not the object of a vision. To look at another’s face—the face to face of an encounter—has a structure other than that of vision or perception: it has the structure of speech and language as discourse (discours).

Principle Five: Interpretation The Midrash methodology actuates Midrashic fission at the intersecting of researcher as author, Other, text and world. Midrash engages the reader with the narrative or the text. Interpretation is at the intersection of the narrative, the narrator and the reader/ listener. Historically, Midrash was univalent and literally means exposition, investigation or searching, as discussed by Douglas-Klotz (1998) and Kepnes (1992). No longer univalent, Midrash gives life to contemporary discourses regardless of religion or field of research. ‘Midrash is contemporary and essential because the Midrash is one of the strongest and most important ways of overcoming the damage caused by static, sanctified myths about how people, politics, religion and economies must be’ (Douglas-Klotz, 1998, 182). Originating from the term Midrash that was a narrative, explanation or interpretation of text in the Torah, this form of exegesis—seeking meaning from the text—is not unique to Judaism. Various terms describe the method of narratives within Islam that provide elucidation, explanation, interpretation, context or commentary for clear understanding of the Qur’an. Like Midrash is to Torah, so tafsir is also a narrative form that exposes, investigates, searches and interprets verses of the Qur’an. Sufi commentators on the meaning of the Qur’an do not signify a literal exegesis, but an exploitation of its wealth of symbolic possibilities to encourage the reader to discover the spiritual and metaphysical range of the text. Ibn ‘Arabi, (1165– 1240 CE), Sufi commentator and scholar, mystic, philosopher and poet is one of the world’s greatest spiritual teachers. Born into the Moorish culture of Andalusian Spain, he lived at the time and in the centre of an extraordinary flourishing and cross-fertilisation of Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought, through which the major scientific and philosophical works of antiquity were transmitted to Northern Europe. Relevant to the non-univalence of Midrash as belonging to Judaism, or other commentaries in Islam, is the life and works of Ibn ‘Arabi. He wrote over 350 works, including the Fusûs al-Hikam, an exposition of the inner meaning of the wisdom of the prophets in the Judaic/ Christian/ Islamic line, and the Futûhât al-Makkiyya, a vast encyclopaedia of spiritual knowledge that unites and distinguishes the three strands of tradition, reason and mystical insight. In his Diwân and Tarjumân al-Ashwâq, he also wrote some of the finest poetry in the Arabic language. Firmly rooted in

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the Qur’an, his work is universal, profoundly influencing significant aspects of the philosophy and literature of the West. His wisdom has much to offer us in the modern world in terms of understanding what it means to be human. Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi is the thirteenth-century Persian philosopher, mystic, scholar and founder of the order of the Whirling Dervishes. It is thought highly likely that Ibn ’Arabi and Rumi knew each other as their paths between Turkey and Persia (and perhaps even in Syria) crossed during the same decades. It was a period of deep connection, influence and sharing between the mystics and theologians of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Rumi was a poet of transcendental power popular still today. His inspirational verse speaks with the ‘universal voice of the human soul and brims with exuberant energy and passion’. As well as being renowned for his poetry, Rumi is also esteemed for his influential epic Masnavi-ye Ma’navi on Sufi mysticism. It is not exactly Midrash, but close enough for scholars to acknowledge the influence of Sufiism on Chasidism. Like the poetry of Rumi and expositions of Ibn ’Arabi , Midrash uplifts and helps us to reflect upon and develop an understanding of the fragments and contradictions of temporal experiences. Midrash interprets narratively, it interprets by telling stories of events (Kepnes, 1992, xi). In the words of Brandi Carlile in ‘The Story’ (2007): All of these lines across my face Tell you the story of who I am … But these stories don’t mean anything When you’ve got no one to tell them to.

Freedom I remember that terrible day under the big tree, near the fence, at the bottom of the Villawood detention centre visitors’ yard of surveillance. We had submitted Rami’s application for refugee status to the Minister for Immigration. We had ticked all the boxes against the UNHCR guidelines for a refugee. Still no visa! Rami was still incarcerated. In my reverie, I returned to Rami’s file, reading the letter from the Vatican. Only when, desperately, I stood shaking his shoulders, saying, “Give me something. You HAVE to give me a character reference from someone that the Government will accept,” Rami said that a priest from his home country, now in the secretariat of the Vatican, knows him very well, “like family.” He even has his phone number in the Vatican. So, I leave Rami to phone the priest in the Vatican for a letter to help us get Rami out with a visa. Nothing arrives. Rami assures me that his cardinal had agreed to write a letter, and so he would. “Rami is not so important as the Pope,” was patiently explained to me. And then, one night, well before dawn, my phone rings. I almost do not answer. Then I do. Sleepily, somewhat irritably, I respond to the thickly accented voice:

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“Who is calling, please?” That night, Rami’s priest faxed his letter with the stamp of the Vatican. I cried. But nine months later, Rami is still incarcerated and could no longer hold himself together. Nine months previously, freedom had seemed within reach. So, to engender hope, I asked him what he would most like to do the day he is released. “I want to see nature. I want to go where there are trees and grass. And I want to see the sea—the horizon, as far as the eye can see.” As always, Rami was clear, his requests simple. The only time in four years that Rami had ever requested anything from me was when he was so depressed and anxious that his throat had constricted, and he could not eat. What can I bring you? I was concerned. He was getting very thin. All Rami wanted was a McDonald’s burger. “What sort?” I asked. “You choose.” I am a vegetarian. What did I know about McDonald’s burgers? But I went to McDonald’s and bought him burgers that were always cold by the time I passed the queues and security checks to the enter visitors’ yard of surveillance. Then that Friday afternoon, the phone call came. Rami is to be released. Come and fetch him now. Just like that! I get into my car and start the hour and half drive to the Villawood detention centre. The day after Rami left his ‘rubbish clothes’ inside and walked away from the wire, free, we went to Manly Beach, just as he had asked under the big tree nine months earlier. He had severe motion sickness during the drive. After four years of being locked up, he had become unaccustomed to the motion of a car. So, when strolling along the Manly Corso, I suggest he eats something to settle his stomach. “Perhaps a McDonald’s?” I give him cash, show him where to queue, how to order and nervously wait outside. He emerges, and I say triumphantly: “Now THAT is freedom. Buying your own McDonald’s.” “No, Devorah,” Rami declares. “Freedom is having a HOT McDonald’s. Now, as freedom, all I want is to see my name and picture on a Visa that says I belong. I want to discover who is Rami” (Wainer, 2015, 153). My personal encounters with asylum-seeking-refugees quickly deepened my awareness of the complexity of the situation I had entered. I was bothered and confused. Faint murmurings from deep inside myself pointed to similarities with my experiences of the South African apartheid regime. An apartheid era politicians’ catch cry when referring to people categorised as Black—‘Would you want people like them to live next door to you?’—reverberated in former prime minister John Howard’s war cry ‘We don’t want people like them’ entering our country. I needed to understand what was going on. The perspective of human beings living lives inside—or lives in suspension—was lacking. The lived experience of ˝unique individuals is not reported in the media. The distinction between men, women and children is made only with the words ‘unaccompanied minors’. The varied ethnicities, countries of birth and causes for fleeing homelands to seek asylum lack nuance. Each individual being lacks any

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visibility for the public. The conflation of asylum seekers and refugees together with the totalisation that flattens all to produce a faceless mob more than bothers me. I am troubled, then as now. I began wanting to know why the lived lives of real people appeared to be missing from the consciousness of Australians (Americans and British). Confusion and contradiction originated in the linguistic and conceptual dissonance at the borders of Australia, the borders of island jails and the local population, the borders of the politicians and the public, and the borders of the wire that demarcates the detention centres. In Australia, asylum-seeking-refugees are situated as the unwanted Others, whose culture and values are widely considered dangerously transgressive and distinctly other than Australians. The industrial-sized, systematised, life-sucking cruelty and killing of the Shoah cannot be compared with any other racism and genocide since. Yet, the political spin and indifference of politicians, media, factions and citizens are to be compared, if we consider the life of any one being is unique and valuable. Marian Turski, who was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 18 because he was Jewish, urged the world to adopt an 11th commandment: ‘thou shalt not be indifferent’, a reference to the late Nobel writer and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel, who wrote: The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. Do not be indifferent when you see … historical lies … when you see that the past is stretched to fit the current political needs … do not be indifferent, otherwise you should not be surprised when another Auschwitz crashes down on us. (cited in Connolly, 2020)

References Becker, C. (1992). Living and relating: An introduction to phenomenology. Sage. Carlile, B. (vocalist). (2007). The story (Written by P. Hanseroth, produced by T. B. Burnett). The Warehouse Studios. Connolly, K. (2020). Survivors call for end to world indifference at Auschwitz memorial: Ceremony in Poland attended by royalty, presidents and ambassadors from across globe. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/27/auschwitz-survivors-75th-ann iversary-commemoration?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other Douglas-Klotz, N. (1998). Midrash and postmodern inquiry: Suggestions toward a hermeneutics of indeterminacy. Currents in Research: Biblical Studies, 7, 188–189. Kepnes, S. (1992). The text as Thou: Martin Buber’s dialogical hermeneutics and narrative theology. Indiana University Press. Wainer, D. (2015). Beyond the wire: Levinas vis-à-vis Villawood: A study on Levinas’s philosophy as an ethical foundation for Asylum.

Part III

Chapter 11

Putting It All Together

Midrashic Phenomenological Inquiry I am bothered. I write. I reflect. I read. I write-reflexively. I analyze. I make sense. I write. Wainer

As we came to understand the Hebrew method from the Talmud, as well as the post-Holocaust decree that there can be no final answers, so too, now, as we put all the pieces together, we are not concerned with searching for specific or final answers. Instead, we are seeking to understand, to make sense of the phenomenon as they are lived, as they unfold, over time. Questions like ‘What does it mean’ and ‘How do I make sense of’ are implicit or explicitly asked as they become tropes for our inquiries. We write so that the reader receives symbolic meanings for their own understandings. While writing the Midrashim, that is to say creating the first data sets, other processes, such as self-reflexivity and perhaps reading, proceed simultaneously and iteratively. Thereafter, other simultaneous processes—sense-making, secondary data writing and analysis—take place. Mirroring life, our methodology interweaves back and forth, felt-time and felt-space with temporal and emotional landscapes, with our and the actors in our Midrashim. The Midrash, ‘The Garden of Hope’ (see Appendix C) exemplifies the woven tapestry of actor’s and the author-researcher’s temporal and emotional landscapes. Meanings are not spelt out. Instead, the Midrash is open to the reader’s interpretation. My dad, Yitzchak, is a wonderful gardener. Mahmud—who always carried the deep, cellular sadness born of his illegal sojourn in a country other than his beloved Iraq, of his multiple losses, including the death of his offspring, of the traumatic journey and the five-year incarceration—was never far from crippling depression. When Ruth, Mahmud regular visitor, # and I noticed the signs of him shifting back into that unreachable place, I asked my dad to visit him, highlighting their shared passion, talent and skill of gardening. I had a strong sense that contact with an older man would be a containing balm for Mahmud. Mahmud needed a Wizard. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_11

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Throughout the years of my visits to the detention centre, my dad had been guardedly supportive. While always totally available for me to unburden my aching heart or to tell my stories as my way of making sense and finding the meaning of the world into which I had stepped, my dad carried enormous fear for me—a fear of the consequences of visiting the detention centre. “What will they do to you when they find out?” he asked me. His question bears witness to the permanent damage inflicted by the South African apartheid regime. ‘They’ are the authorities. ‘They’ are the all-powerful authorities of the South African police state that was the South African apartheid regime. ‘They’ punish. ‘They’ imprison without trial those people who support the Other. In South Africa, the Other was the ‘Black’. Here in Australia, the Other, to my dad, is the Iraqi, the Iranian, the stateless Palestinian, the Somali, the Rohingya—the detainees and, always in Australia, the Aboriginal person. Fear had been successfully installed by the South African regime. Mum was vexed that I had asked. At that time, my parents had only their Australian permanent residence visas and had not yet received citizenship. They greatly feared the consequence of a negative result to their application for citizenship if my father visited Mahmud. In South Africa, a university student studying social work carried a pot of soup to the home of one of her clients in Soweto. She was intercepted by the police and jailed as an enemy of the state. “The whole pot of soup fell to the ground—wasted. How dare they waste the food that so many desperately need” she wailed. This young, ‘enemy of the state’,1 Ruby, was held in solitary confinement for four months without a trial. To this day, she suffers periodic flashbacks and emotional fragility since her time alone in that prison cell 24 years ago. My dad illuminates the memory of Ruby and others’ experiences. Who will illuminate Mahmud’s and others’ experiences? Mahmud was in need. I had to ask. My intuition told me that an older male with a common bond would be good for Mahmud. What drove me, at the expense of my parent’s tranquillity? Dad had not said yes immediately. But then … “What can I bring for him?” was my dad’s gruff, circumspect assent. Laden with sugar, teabags, fresh fruit and telephone cards, we headed for the interminable fences, wires, locks, bolts, queues and processing at the almost-toohigh-to-see-over counter at the Villawood Detention Centre. Tears seeped out of my usually well-closed ducts when I saw the terror overwhelm Yitzchak as he passed through the metal detector that suddenly beeped. An immediate, involuntary response: Dad, ashen faced, was frozen to the spot, his hands above his head as if a gun was pointed at him. Deeper even than the apartheid scars, Yitzchak’s World War II memories jumped into untimely life at the shocking sound of the beeping detector. I have travelled with Dad. Going through similar doorframe 1

The South African apartheid regime, from the mid-1970s to the 1980s, was ruled by governmentendorsed police security forces, military secret intelligence and counter-intelligence. In 1979, under ‘Pik’ Botha, a ‘civilian agency’ was established to identify security threats to South Africa and to launch operations that targeted and eliminated targets identified as ‘enemies of the state’. Ruby was a professional social worker taking food to a client when she was arrested as an ‘enemy of the state’.

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style metal detectors at airports has not produced such an alarming response. Here, at the Villawood Detention Centre, shock and fear are in the atmosphere. “Cleared,” a guard’s anonymous voice muttered, and we continued through the blue light, vacuum-sealed, security check chamber and waited for the guard to open the heavy, dense, metal door to the unlock-and-lock gates and into the visitor’s yard of surveillance. Then: “Mahmud, please meet my father, Yitzchak. Dad, this is my friend, Mahmud.” “Am I mad?” I ask myself. With doubt assailing me ferociously, I wondered if my confidence in my subjective certainties was the product of too much time spent visiting the people detained, my views distorted by the contagion of the detention centre. As I looked at my father during the introduction, my instinct was to grab him and run, outside and far from the security fences, away from the miasma of pain that suffuses the visitors’ yard of surveillance. I know—indubitably, —that his face reflects the shock, horror and fear of all who arrive to be locked up in or visit the detention centre. How do I protect Dad and Mahmud from my anger and anguish triggered by this place? Internally, it is rising and threatening to vent like a rancid subterranean fissure within my being. They will see it. They will recognise it and know it. And it will hurt them both. In Mahmud’s hand was the already-boiled kettle for tea brought from his small room of incarceration. Mahmud laid the tablecloth, then methodically set out the plastic cups, the various teas and the little sweets to accompany the tea. Dad clumsily gave him the sugar and other gifts he bore. “My Dad’s a fantastic gardener—just like you.” Silence, as the men start seeing each other—a seeing I had learned about since visiting the Villawood detention centre, a seeing born in the presence of total vulnerability and trauma, a seeing in the visitors’ yard of surveillance. Different from the seeing that the blind develop but a seeing also developed in the absence of the known, in the lack of the usual spaces, acumens, rhythms and practices of daily life. “Mahmud, why don’t you show Dad your garden? Dad, perhaps you’ll notice what plants you might bring for Mahmud next time.” I sat there as they walked off. Will Mahmud go into one of his torrents of anger and vitriol that involuntarily overtake him from time to time at unidentifiable triggers? Honouring the confidentiality of his personal story, I had briefed Dad sparingly. Had I become as mistrusting as those ‘inside’? Have I caught their airborne thoughts? Taken on their demons? How quickly can we leave? What if Mahmud is acutely uncomfortable with a Jewish man? Did Mahmud agree to meet with Dad only to please me? Such was my turmoil, confusion and self-berating as I sat watching them that day. This is typical of ‘their’ way of confused, vulnerable, angry thinking after being locked up, isolated and denied. Too often being told by authorities and apparatchik: “No one wants you. You are nothing.” And then, as they turned, I saw them clasp hands in the way of Middle Eastern men. I have seen Indian and African men clasp hands this way, too. My dad seemed so at ease exceeding his cultural conventions to meet with Mahmud’s way. Did the

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Anglo-European colonial gentleman make any internal comparison with the handholding Black miners and garden ‘boys’? Was his parents’ Latvian background of Eastern European hand-holding men within his collective unconscious? They started circling the perimeter of the yard in the manner of the visitor and detainee who have a personal, not-to-be-overheard conversation. One usually only sees those well known to each other circling the perimeter. It is the cue for all to stay away for a while. It is the absurd form of privacy that one constructs when under surveillance within the constantly lit visitors’ yard. And then it was time to leave. The sun was setting; the weather had turned. Dad did not have his thicker jacket. I had assured Mum it would be a short visit and that he would be home much earlier than … I never imagined …. And then, before we left the unlock-and-free-the-visitor-but-leave-behind-thedetainee gate that leads to the yard, before the check-the-security-tag-and-handstamp blue light, before opening the vacuum metal door, before cutting the plastic wrist tag, before collecting the keys and the driver’s licence at the almost-too-high-tosee-over processing counter, and just before we walk through the gate, they hugged. They cried. They released each other, facing each other, looking deeply into the stories each has told the other. Both men were now far away from home—one with a passport and applying for another, the other with no passport and no application lodged. Both fathers have lost their sons. Both sons were killed by the authorities. Then, beyond the story, into the soul they had found in each other—the soul of courage, the soul of humility, the soul of love, the infinite soul. They embraced again. Each man gathered his energy, braced himself and both emerged from the soft beauty of the sacred bond of love to be the Muslim and the Jew, the detained and the free. And we walked away (Wainer, 2015, 107–110).

I Am Bothered Like Foucault, I set out ‘to do’ this work based on ‘elements of my own experience’: Every time I have tried to do a piece of theoretical work it has been on the basis of elements of my own experience: always in connection with processes I saw unfolding around me. It was always because I thought I identified cracks, silent tremors, and dysfunctions in things I saw, institutions I was dealing with, or my relations with others, that I set out to do a piece of work, and each time was partly a fragment of autobiography (Foucault, 1994, 458).

Our methodology requires us to reveal our worldview and fragments of our autobiography that we bring to bear upon the research. Our role as a researcher is synonymous with the author of the data-producing Midrashim. Equally, we are included within the field of research, the social reality, the phenomenon under investigation. For this, we are required to be insightful, intuitive and self-reflexive.

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Phenomenology, as based on the work of Edmund Husserl,2 emphasises the study of conscious experiences as a way of understanding the reality around us. However, Husserl’s phenomenological inquiry requires that researchers eliminate any prior assumptions and personal biases (Bhattacherjee, 2012). The Midrash methodology, acknowledging the author is in the research, requires that the author-researcher brings to light their prior assumptions and personal biases (see Fig. 11.1). As we write the Midrashim, we generate the data by describing, reflecting on and understanding—initially from our own subjective experiences and perceptions. Once all the Midrashim are written, and only after they are all created, emergent themes unfold as they form patterns within, and together with, each Midrash. Once such themes show themselves, fragile and vulnerable as they are, we seek secondary data to ensure dependability, credibility and confirmability of the inquiry. I suggest a minimum of three and no more than five Midrashim. They can be written by one researcher-author or by multiple authors from within the team of researchers. Whether authored by one or a team of researcher-authors, traditional research method boundaries and distinctions collapse. We already now know that writing is research. We are re-presenting our unique particular embodied and lived experiences—our Midrashic phenomenology of the subjects, site and field. As such, the writing dismantles the boundaries between what we might consider data generation, data analysis and research findings. The researcher, as one of the research participants within the research field, is present as their personal dynamics come to bear—both consciously and unconsciously—in the Midrash. Figure 11.1 relates to my research regarding asylumseeking-refugees, showing my personal influences as a participant and data source on the one hand, and as an author and instrument on the other. These influences appertaining to my research are shown to present a fair and accurate portrayal of the phenomenon of asylum-seeking-refugees who are locked away, silenced and invisibilised. Knowledge of the researcher’s predilections or inferences through personal insights, knowledge and experiences of the context are critical for the reader to interpret the phenomenon as written in the Midrashim. By locating the researcher’s identities (see Fig. 12.1) and internal landscapes— temporal, cultural and emotional—that influence the Midrashim, there is an explicit honesty in the research inquiry. Reinharz (1992) affirms that personal experiences that trouble or puzzle a researcher can be the starting point of an inquiry. Although it may feel chaotic, this is the creative chaos Leavy (2009) refers to as the ‘incubation phase’ in qualitative research. This is the phase in which structured ‘intellectual chaos’ occurs (10). The purpose of each Midrash is to develop layers of foci and relations that will eventually speak to patterns and themes for secondary research and iterative writing. As stated by Richard Lang in Harris (2020), ‘living from the truth works better than living from delusion’.

2

In neat synergy, Levinas wrote his PhD on Husserl’s phenomenology, translating the German into French and so bringing phenomenology to France.

Fig. 11.1 Locating the researcher in the research

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I Reflect Entering the Villawood detention centre can be likened to going ‘through the looking glass’. I previously alluded to the experience of entering a detention centre/prison in Darwin where families, including women, young children and the disabled, host heart-wrenching cries and tear-dry silence—a profusion of bafflement and stupefaction, a … profusion of confusion. I was experiencing and witnessing close bonds of friendship and, as such, began to explore what insights could plausibly be brought to the outside realities from my insider knowledge, through my contact with the inside realities and relatings. When moving from the outside, through the wire, to the inside, we pass prison guards and move through security scanners, with a plethora of tags, locks and bolts activated to separate the inside from the outside. Staying with the Alice theme, this echoed the Mad Hatter in Alice Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There: ‘Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?’ (Carroll, 1871). Other ‘would be’s’ and ‘wouldn’t be’s’ were increasingly represented by the wire as the border of different realities. Between the looking glass versions of reality and personal experiences—mine and those of others who actually went inside— the asylum-seeking-refugees detained inside remained invisible and unknown to the politicians, bureaucrats, media representatives and members of the public discussing them on the outside. Meanwhile, inside they were treated like objects—an effect of the criminal penal culture and systems that were readily observable by the visitor. In that space, to borrow the words of Arendt (1971), they were ‘more effectively cut off from the world of the living than if they were dead’ (124). An absence of the voices from inside exacerbated the homogeneity of voices outside. The phenomenon of friendship, relating and community in the visitor’s yard of surveillance of surveillance inside remained an undisclosed and undebated lens. Since my personal encounters with the asylum-seeking-refugees quickly deepened my awareness of the complexity of the situation I had entered, I was bothered and confused. Faint murmurings from my depths, like clouds forming and re-forming, pointed to similarities with my experiences of the South African apartheid regime. In Australia, less was available for categorisation and contradistinction. Australian fingers were (and still are) pointed at other countries amidst self-declarations of exemplary border protection policies. The award-winning poet and author Mark Treddinick begins his textbook, The Little Red Writing Book, as follows: I sit down to write the book. Nothing happens. It’s summer out there. I’m working at a seventies office desk in a seventies ranger’s hut close to a visitors’ centre by a glacial lake, far from home. Being here is a gift, part of a prize I won for writing something else. And I want to spend my time here well; I want to spend it writing this book. If I don’t, my publisher might kill me.

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It got down below freezing last night, and I was cold in here. But the morning is warm and still and clear. There are black peppermints standing up in it, and black currawongs crying their guttural cry in it; and filling it out, there’s a light as clean and a sky as blue as you’re ever going to know. I’ve come here to write a book. So I walk out into the morning to find it (Tredinnick, 2006, 7).

I Write Like Tredinnick, our aim is to ‘find’ our writing. Let’s immediately address a scene from the Midrash ‘Cherry Ripe’ (see Appendix A); the beginning of which captures Treddinick’s poetic notion of walking out to find the words for the book. I have placed this excerpt here to show you how consequential it is to stay with what can be the messy confusion of writing. For the data to show up as new knowledge, we must, as Graham Greene, in Tredinnick, has counselled, ‘If this book of mine fails to take a straight course it is because I am lost in a strange region; I have no map’ (Tredinnick, 2006, 218). Let the writing tell you what needs to be written. From the apparently foggy and numb brain, perhaps termed writer’s block, if you will, emerges the gem. My experience was not writer’s block. Instead, I am inclined to say it was my hubris when ignoring the power of flow by favouring control. Thinking I ‘knew’ what had to be written was wrong thinking. I had stepped away from dialogically relating with the text that was showing itself. Writers speak of getting out of the way of themselves. Below you will read how I was in the way of myself writing and re-writing what I thought ‘should be’ until I expanded my mind and broke free from control and fixed thought. I surrendered to the writing itself. Only then was I able to see that what I repeatedly wrote and ignored was the content that had to be the Midrash. Each time my keyboard fingers move in a saying of their own … Day after day I observe this story, in varying ascending number of versions, arriving of its own volition on the page that is my computer screen. After saving vs_6 [version 6] on my seventh or eighth day of attempting to write the story I had planned, had intended to write, I give up—bereft! This is NOT what I am meant to write. WHY can’t I write anymore? ‘I agonise. .… And I concede’ (Wainer, 2015, 86).

While writing, we consciously avoid introjecting possible themes or any conclusions that we may have prematurely anticipated. This is the time for the researcher to have faith, to write with confidence and conviction. Write creatively. Write poetry. Write holistically, all the while avoiding introducing, even subtly, what you think must be in the Midrash. I have, like my students, had hunches as to what the findings might be. Such hunches can be wilful and want to find their way into the Midrash. My answer to the hunches is: No! You will be well rewarded with surprising emergent patterns of new knowledge. Concern that the writing will produce nothing of value is misguided and wasteful. Trust yourself more than ever at this stage of the research writing. This is how we inquire and create new knowledge by opting out of ontological complicity.

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The Midrash methodology relies on writing as the research itself. The research is the writing. Write viscerally and multisensorially. Write multivocally. Allow multisensory triggers to awaken your memories. At times, the memories may be clear and lucid as they awaken, and you will be able to capture them immediately. Others, however, may be unclear, hazy, sometimes floating with a cloud-like elusiveness. With the passage of time and writing, we become more adept at recognising and clarifying the messages transmitted from an activated memory. The writing takes on the nested layers of the Midrashic storyline. A complex and rich multidimensional text with the heterogeneity of voices, experiences and subjects ensues. As a phenomenological method of research, the internal phenomena of the researcher—feeling, intuition, personal perception—are legitimate sites of knowledge and understanding, and are not considered separate from the external, objectively observable world. ‘Researchers were once taught to disavow their feelings; however, these kinds of internal signals are vital to building trustworthy knowledge’ (Leavy, 2009, 49). While the researcher is not researching herself, she is also not separate from the research subjects and data. The honesty and self-reflexivity required for the writing seem to offer researchers a (re)invigoration of passion built on the validation of their felt-sense and felt-knowing. In turn, writing with passion is a felt-sense communicated to and for the reader. In my case, after researching asylum-seeking-refugees in the most horrid contexts and country situations, the auditory, olfactory, visual and tactile felt-memory triggers readily become more identifiable; the pain locked into my physical body took longer to reveal itself. It was there. Unrecognisably present in my limbs, neck and arms. Slowly, unfolding, healing took place. The healing nature of this method of research writing is undeniable. The representations, exercising their own free will, appear. The following cameo expands the above example to encourage the researcher-author to see and allow the research piece as it wants to show itself. This excerpt is also an example of the shifting and weaving of the temporal and emotional internal landscapes of the author-researcher. The honesty in the writing necessitates locating the researcher in the research (Fig. 11.1), as personal influences come to bear within the Midrash.

The Windmills of My Mind3 : My Story Becomes Midrash I am writing as I sit cross-legged on my comfortable, newish, blue, modern-ish, minimalist-ish couch. Gentle cooking aromas, wafting through my open patio doors, call my attention. Indian spices! I think I have smelt Indian food cooking for the past few days. “Must have new neighbours.” Yet another floating thought passes through my mind—the mind that I think is concentrating on writing this Midrash. 3

‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman and Michael Legrand. The song’s lyrics include ‘Round, like a circle in a spiral/Like a wheel within a wheel/Never ending or beginning/On an ever-spinning reel’.

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The next thought pattern, linking in like a nested Russian doll, takes me to my recent trip to India. I am seeing those exquisite multicoloured saris in a blended image with the girl-woman, baby on hip, hands thrust begging into our little pfut-pfut cab. The smog-filled air’s smells are not yet familiar to me. Oil, kerosene, incense, goats, dung, human bodies—the low cloud at dusk seemingly responsible for their mingling into one aroma that I now label as Mumbai! Mount Abu was different, I muse. Subtract from Mumbai the densely packed numbers of people, add space to the best of Mumbai, add Naki Lake and monkeys. Dogs teasing the monkeys. Or is it the opposite? With a jolt, I realise I am not writing or concentrating on the writing. Is this avoidance? The past two weeks I have tried to write this Midrash. Each time my keyboard fingers move in a saying of their own. “What am I writing?” I ask myself with disdain. The pitch of my internal voice rising. Ctrl S. Save. Vs_4. Yet another version. I diligently try again. Day after day, I observe this story, in an ascending number of versions, arriving of its own volition on the page that is my computer screen. After saving vs_6 on my seventh or eighth day of attempting to write the story I had planned, had intended to write, I give up—bereft! “This is NOT what I am meant to write. WHY can’t I write any more?” I agonise. The writing is, metaphorically, the seeker of asylum. I am the politician saying, “We don’t want writing like this on the pages of our computer screen.” I am the guard vigilantly, regularly taking muster to check if the illegally arrived words are well detained and incarcerated, locked away from the other words that I have already sanctioned as valid and useful for this project. The border guards of my mind expand their control, excising certain islands of thought as invalid for the research Midrash. “Exercise! I am physically tight so, obviously, my mind is tight,” I rationalise to myself. Dawning on me at that moment, as a huge revelation bringing immense relief, is the (in hindsight) illusion that I am taking control—that I am able to wilfully control this writing project with the logical assessment: “I need to exercise.” The following day, fresh and enthusiastic, I sit down to write. And yet again—the same flotsam and jetsam of words and phrases that are strange to me arrive on the page that is my computer screen. Uninvited memory—sensations of that rainy day in Villawood detention centre invade and overwhelm the body. I look for … “Music! Some agreeable, soothing, help-me-concentrate music to banish this unwanted sensate arrival,” I muse as I turn my music collection. My tense, lactic-acidlocked muscles mixed together with the metallic, rancid, anxiety memory smells of that Villawood detention centre are intolerable and must be banished. The gorgeous clear-blue skies terrorise my vision, and the ideal summer temperatures plague me. I hear the calls ‘go to the beach’, ‘a swim will refresh mind and body’, ‘you need some exercise’ (again! daily!), ‘the sea will be perfect for the body today’. Music! My defence against these unwelcome self-indulgent, perhaps even Midrash-sabotaging, internal voices.

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Searching through my CDs for the ‘right music’, I encounter the CD that I often (read ‘obsessively, always’) played en route to and from Villawood detention centre in the lived-time of this story. Autumn, 1 March, 1988. My brother, the pilot, whose plane exploded at the moment he was about to land was killed by the South African Government who caused that explosion to a commercial airline. Sudden death for all onboard. How would I live without my brother, my best friend? After the initial shock and heartbreaking tears, I became efficient, caring for Mum and Dad, my sister, my children, our guests. Was I numb? How numb was I? It was then, as now, that music penetrated the filter of my mind. Only music reached into the closed-off, numb depths until, unwittingly, tears gathered their own healing force, and I cried. Bereft! What happens to us when circumstances prevent our tears or we create the reasons not to cry? When we are not sufficiently tuned in or skilled to read our bodies, to know the levels of numbness? What is it that informs us? What breaks through? Since Stanley’s death, I know that music touches my depths so that I can access the topography of my corporealised pain, wherein lies the frozen and numb detained parts of myself. Blindly, or with unconscious intentionality, I picked the music that I played during those interminable drives, to and from the detention centre. The lyrics to the song ‘Chiara’ as sung in Italian by Andrea Bocelli (2001) echoed my lived-experience of meeting people behind the wire. She spoke, I spoke and evening fell … I listened, she listened and it got dark Could you tell me your name? … If you’re coming tomorrow

I had begun to wonder: “was I numb then? Am I numb now? How numb am I?” Possibly just numb enough to go through the wire again and again and again. Or, so numb that I do not even know how numb… ‘But tell me if you are coming tomorrow’ (Bocelli, 2001). Once again, music penetrates the numb and the healing, life-affirming tears flow. I am no longer the intelligent, in-control-of-my-writing scholar. As if claiming a lost part of myself— perhaps a new part of myself is expanding—no longer am I able to avoid scrutinising the representations that defy my presumptions of the story. These representations, exercising their own free will, consistently appear on the pages of my computer screen. And I concede (Wainer, 2015, 85–88). At the first instant, the researcher just writes! All authors can agree we have fruitful days, exciting days and stalled days of writing. The excerpt has a felt-tone where time is conceived of as a sensory time–landscape dimension. The Midrash is non-didactic. The conversation within the Midrash is relational. There, for the reader to interpret and make sense of—to own. However, in this method of writing, the researcher does not set out to study herself, as perhaps in an autoethnographic method. They have lived the experiences and are currently

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experiencing living as they write. The author-researcher has memories of the experience and writes them as honestly as is possible. A multiplicity of senses is exercised to inform the memories and phenomena. We must engage language in a primal incantation or poetising which harkens back to the silence from which the words emanate. What we must do is discover what lies at the ontological core of our being. So that IN the words, or in spite of the words, we find ‘memories’ paradoxically we never thought or felt before (Van Manen, 1990, 13).

This genre of writing—research as writing—requires the author-researcher to layer and nest multiple layers of reflexive consciousness in the Midrash. If you have already captured data with more traditional methods, such as interviews, focus groups and online surveys, it is still possible to transform the data to Midrashim by following the principles laid out in Chap. 10. Write phenomenologically. Use all your senses now to inform the Midrashim. Remember the sensorial, the visceral and intuitive knowledge, the embodied knowledge, at the time you were collecting the data. Walk out or sit, still allowing the knowing to come to you. All you need is there in your cellular memory or consciously available memory. Write as the witness who experienced receiving the initial data. Write with your own voice in a felt-tone.

References Arendt, H. (1971). The life of the mind. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Bhattacherjee, A. (2012). Social science research: Principles, methods, and practices. University of South Florida. Bocelli, A. (2001). ‘Chiara’. Composed by Alessio Bonomo, David Foster and Francesco Sartori. Track 4 on Cieli Di Toscana, Polydor. Carroll, L. (1871). Alice through the looking glass. Macmillan. Foucault, M. (1994). Power: Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984. vol. 3. Edited by James D. Faubion. Penguin Books. Leavy, P. (2009). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Press. Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. State University of New York Press. Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist methods in social research. Oxford University Press. Tredinnick, M. (2006). The little red writing book. UNSW Press. Wainer, D. (2015). Beyond the wire: Levinas vis-à-vis Villawood: A study on Levinas’s philosophy as an ethical foundation for asylum-seeker policy. Boffin Books.

Chapter 12

Sense-Making

Simultaneous Iterative Cycles of Writing My visits to the Villawood detention centre were not easy. The physical challenges (a long drive, often in heavy traffic; standing in processing queues; undignified body searches) that preceded my entry to the visitors’ yard of surveillance were bad enough. In addition, the emotional turmoil of the visits, the discomfort of extra high or low temperatures in the western suburbs of Sydney and the lack of shelter seemed to increase the difficulties visit by visit. Often, I had to brace myself before I set out and afterwards, at home, I was exhausted and debilitated. The visits took their toll on me, and family and friends asked, “Why? Why was I doing it?” (see questions of sense-making and understanding in the previous chapter). It was not only the visits but also taking up cases for recognition of refugee status, visas and release, assembling pro bono legal teams and preparing documents for the Minister for Immigration that consumed hours, energy and emotions. I became increasingly reflective during the five years of going in and out of the visitors’ yard of surveillance at the Villawood detention centre. Moreover, I began to consider the relationship between my internal drive to return again and, yet again, and the phenomenon I was witnessing and experiencing inside the visitors’ yard. What compelled me (and a few other visitors), against huge odds, to return to that visitors’ yard? Increasingly, I was inspired to penetrate with awareness and understanding the world in which I had placed myself. As my relationships with detainees deepened, I needed to make sense of the disparities between the fine people I was meeting inside and the negative ascriptions on the outside. At that time, a few other advocates were, like me, closely connected with a detainee. We began to support each other— informally. We queued together, shared information about processes and phoned to cry and debrief each other. We understood what each other experienced. And we asked the question, “Why? Why are we doing this?” John Kani’s question, “What will you do?”, did not address answers for why others too were putting their relationships, families and jobs under pressure to visit the detainees. There was a price for visiting

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Fig. 12.1 Arbitrary power. My deep gratitude to Neha (name changed) for her permission to reprint her Midrashic sketches

Fig. 12.2 Power damages the visitors. My deep gratitude to Neha for her permission to reprint her commentary

the detainees. We were harming ourselves too. We knew nothing of jails, guards and prison subcultures. Yet here we were. (See Figs. 12.1 and 12.2). Why did we do it? Why did I do it? The title of Mares and Newman’s compilation, Acting from the Heart: Australian Advocates for Asylum Seekers Tell Their Stories (2007), provides one answer. Advocate-visitors reveal the ‘maze of emotions’ (81) in ‘confront(ing) the despair’ (101) and the ‘emotional extremes’ (103) that went with their ‘harrowing visits’ (2). A paralegal and migration agent who contributed to the book revealed her ‘sacrifices and battling nightmares to visit’ (89). Notwithstanding the difference in each advocate’s sense of responsibility, their story and their reasoning, a common response to the question “Why?” emerges the answer: “Because I must.” So much so that it seems ‘when I ask myself what were their motives, I can only attribute their good deeds to their humanitarian feelings originating from their compassion’ (Gilbert, 2002, 22). Germane here is that I, too, had no answer beyond ‘I must’. Yad Vashem is the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Evidence was collected from more than 19,000 non-Jews, known as the Righteous Among the Nations who risked their own lives to save Jews from the Nazi campaign of obliteration. Recognisable names are Schindler and Wallenberg. Many more, however, were merely individuals who had the courage to ‘do what they had to do’. This, and similar phrases struck me

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when reading Martin Gilbert’s remarkable collection of The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust (Gilbert, 2002). Again, with moral insistence, I must reiterate that nothing compared with the Holocaust. No visitors’ life was risked when visiting the incarcerated asylum-seekingrefugees. Yet, regardless of the numeric or horrific scale of the Shoah, numerically, even one life is to be treasured. One life, according to the Talmud, is as if it is the whole world. This precept is taken from a Talmud Midrash based on Genesis 1–5: ‘Man—Adam is Hebrew for a human—was created alone. God did not create a clan or even one family. The teaching from this verse is that one human holds the potential of the whole world. So whoever kills one life, kills the entire world entire, and whoever saves one life saves the entire world’.

Entering the Villawood Detention Centre: Resonances Across Space and Time The metallic odour of the environment, uninvited, invades. Overwhelmed by the fencing, gates, locks and bolts I see as I walk from the car park, I have little awareness of what awaits me in terms of fences, locks and bolts. The smell of iron, metal, is material. Or was it the rusty atmosphere that I am sensing? I wondered. Feeling as if I was all nostrils, I recalled reading that the olfactory sense is the first sense that develops. Babies first recognise or know their mother (or primary carer) by their smell. Unlike the first smell of Mum, here, at the Villawood detention centre gate, nothing was familiar to me. The rancid body odours and sharp breaths emitted by anxious people mingled with the dissonant odours of fences, locks and bolts assaulted my olfactory senses that the first day. The day was hot. The earth was dry and dusty. A guard saw me walking towards the gate. Now! Heart pounding, I was almost there. The gate! Soon I will be inside. The thought was a combination of anticipation, curiosity and dread. I recalled a childhood movie, Bambi. The deer halted mid-step, ears erect, nose twitching as forest fire smoke reached their thicket. I felt like Bambi who saw his parents instinctively know the danger, yet he was still innocent of the grave import. These felt-thoughts were abruptly halted—suspended—as I saw the guard walk away from the gate. Has he walked away intentionally I wondered? I stood in front of the first gate and waited. Was he showing his power? Was he signalling to me that I don’t get inside to visit without him unlocking the gate and allowing me to enter the first waiting compound? Was the plan to intimidate, to humiliate, the visitor. Then I noticed the other guards patronisingly moving around as if focused on pursuing their duties. It seemed they were gazing right through me. I panicked. Whew! No need to have panicked; it was clearly all in my imagination. A strolling guard approached the gate. A massive bunch of clanging keys was pulled from his pocket, and he unlocked the gate. Matching his stroll, step by step, I entered. And wait. He locked the gate behind us. What now? The panic returned with greater intensity.

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Another gate was unlocked in front of me. “Ahhhh! This is OK,” I confirmed to my tight, pounding head as I stepped into the queue. I did not know how many hours of my life were to be spent in that queue—hot hours; wet hours; freezing cold, cranky hours; reading-a-book hours; chatting-to-other-queuing-visitors hours; raging-anger hours; shifting-from-foot-to-foot, aching-legs-and-back hours. Uniquely, it was only in this first hour that my face turned grey and my breath shortened. I feel my throat tighten and constrict. My heart is racing, increasing the pounding in my head with waves going through my throat and as if bouncing, vibrating on my tongue. Like Nobel poetess Akhmatova (1940) queuing to visit her son in Leningrad prison, ‘I see hands begin to quiver and my legs became like rubbery lead’. (Wainer, 2015, 89) (for complete midrash see Appendix A, p. 199).1 Reading the already written Midrashim, queuing to enter detention centres, the indignities experienced by the guard’s treatment of us (the visitors) and the interlinking of emotional with physical strain shows up as a recurring theme in each of the Midrashim that I wrote. Now comes the stage in the methodology process to seek secondary data that might support the phenomena of queuing and entering the prisons. Of the interlinking of emotional and physical strain and pain, if we, visitors and citizens, were treated so poorly by the guards, then how were the inmates and detainees treated? As I began my secondary research, I had no idea what might come to light. Once again, I followed my hunch. The Midrashim may have upended a different perspective of the treatment of already traumatised asylumseeking-refugees. New knowledge is filial to a new method of relata and data collection, that is, writing the Midrashim. The Midrash speaks as an agent for those who are without agency.

I Reflect. I Read. I Write-Reflexively Research in support of those tentative findings first points to recognisable descriptions of the symptoms of anxiety. At that time, I was so immersed in the phenomenology of the experience that I remained ignorant of those medical signs. Here is another example of ontological complicity. Initially, my unconscious was complicit with its own ontology. I was there, in the visitor yard of surveillance for the benefit of those incarcerated with whom I had become connected. ‘Straight-up friends’, as an Aussie 1

The poet Anna Akhmatova was born Anna Gorenko in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1889. She later changed her name to Akhmatova. In 1910, she married the important Russian poet and theorist Nikolai Gumilyov. Shortly afterwards, Akhmatova began publishing her own poetry. Although they had recently divorced, Akhmatova was nevertheless stunned by the execution of her friend and former partner Gumilyov in 1921 by the Bolsheviks, who claimed that he had betrayed the Revolution. In large measure to drive her into silence, their son Lev Gumilyov was imprisoned in 1938. He remained in prison and prison camps until the death of Stalin and the thaw in the Cold War made his release possible in 1956. Persecuted by the Stalinist government, prevented from publishing, regarded as a dangerous enemy, but at the same time so popular on the basis of her early poetry that even Stalin would not risk attacking her directly, Akhmatova’s life was hard. Her greatest poem, ‘Rekviem’, recounts the suffering of the Russian people under Stalinism—specifically, the tribulations of those women with whom Akhmatova stood in line outside the prison walls, women who, like her, waited patiently—but with a sense of great grief and powerlessness—for the chance to send a loaf of bread or a small message to their husbands, sons or lovers. The poet was awarded an honorary doctorate by The University of Oxford in 1965. Akhmatova died in 1966 in Leningrad.

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might colloquially say. Nevertheless, secondary trauma set in as I remained unaware of myself as relationally present. Each visit compounded the personal physical an d emotional damage that I later had to unravel. Once I permitted myself to become aware of and acknowledge my secondary trauma2 as exposed to myself, the authorresearcher, in the Midrashim, I was able to see the data and pattern of the primary trauma being inflicted upon the detainees. The Midrashim that brought to cognizance my secondary trauma, in fact, by association, pointed to the extreme medical (physical and mental) damage being inflicted upon those incarcerated. After reading three of the Midrashim that I had written and taking the starting place of the trauma as being in the queue waiting for security checks and admission, I began researching for further information surrounding scenarios of queuing at prisons. Like Harari follows to where the questions lead him, I followed the questions of trauma triggered by queuing. I was led to the affidavits as published in Caught! The Public List of Judicial Misconduct, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Ethics Violations, Civil Rights Violations and Legal Misconduct in Rhode Island (Affidavits, 2006). The affidavits are from the Intake Service Centre, which is a maximum security facility serving as Rhode Island’s jail for male offenders. I had written in one of the Midrashim my experience in words that proved to be almost exactly the same, expressing the same sentiments, as a mother who visited her son incarcerated on Rhode Island Maximum security jail. I had written: Perhaps it’s my fury, my defencelessness, my exposure to, yet again, the callous ACM (Australian Correctional Management) processing officer that is now surfacing and twisting itself. I HAD to be polite. I had to denounce my desire to be treated with regard. I had to censure my response to the manner in which the guard spoke. I had to suppress that lioness instinct to attack the officer. Always the thought close to the surface that, if we visitors are so disregarded, how much more so are the detained people annihilate. We can walk away. Unlike those who are detained and incarcerated indefinitely. (Wainer, 2015, 93). Under the heading Disrespectful Treatment at the Intake Centre, she wrote: I was visiting my son in intake in the summer of 2003. Upon passing through the metal detector it beeped. The man in front of me had on steel toe boots and a short spiked belt. He was asked to remove these items and allowed to put them back on. The reason the detector beeped after taking off my shoes was because of my underwire bra. I was asked to remove my bra … I was not allowed to put my bra back on and I only had a tee shirt on. I hadn’t seen my son in quite some time due to an injury and being hospitalized. However I was allowed to go to the waiting area down stairs and await his visit. Each guard commented on how they liked my tee shirt. The tee shirt was plain white. It wasn’t the tee shirt they were looking at. After sitting for 10 minutes I was told my son had lost his visit. Upon leaving the guards commented on the tee shirt again. My arms were across my chest. I was humiliated and I asked to see a female officer. They answered, ‘We don’t have any on duty.’ I asked for the senior officer. They answered, ‘He’s in a meeting.’ 2

An individual who is exposed to traumatised people or narratives of their trauma, torture and suffering might suffer secondary trauma, also known as vicarious trauma. Symptoms of secondary trauma are similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and are not to be minimised or negated.

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The guard who had me remove my bra was aware of my son losing his visit and seemed to enjoy my humility. I asked for his badge number and name. He said, ‘Don’t catch cold now’ and laughed. This was total discrimination. Needless to say I cried in the parking lot. I felt violated and it seemed like I was the prisoner. If I am made to feel this way, then what goes on behind closed bars? (Affidavits, 2006) Appended to her statement is, ‘The practices seem designed to deliberately antagonize, frustrate and anger inmates’.

Below are a few lines from another affidavit that mirrors the wording in the following section, A Tension Awakened. Both the Midrash and the affidavit highlight the abusive phenomena of guards making visitors stand in the rain: Approximately 3 minutes before 8, about 10 people came inside to get out of the heavy rain. They were quickly told by the staff, ‘We didn’t call anyone in yet, go back outside.’ For 3 minutes this group of visitors had to stand out in the rain waiting for a signal from the staff while they chatted amongst themselves (Affidavits, 2006).

A Tension Awakened I Remember … It was raining! We shared umbrellas with each other as we queued in the rain outside the processing room. “Queued,” I noted to myself, “is hardly the accurate word—as we huddled together, friends and strangers.” There was something about that queue at the Villawood detention centre that connected all who stood there, rain or sun, hot or cold. That two-hour wait bonded us.

Then it was my turn to huddle under the narrow door lintel just before stepping through the entrance to the processing room. “Two,” the ACM guards announced, glaring at the visitor who sought shelter by stepping ‘out of turn’ under the beam for cover. The briefly triumphant stance of the upright spine and broad shoulders changed to droop as the visitor stepped back, the one step necessary to again be ‘waiting in turn’ in the rain so that only the requisite two enter. “No umbrellas,” said the ACM processing officer to me after I was processed and tagged and prepared to go through the blue light chamber. “But … the … rain,” I stammered incredulously. The officer, impervious, did not even reply. Did not even raise an eyebrow. Nothing. He has spoken. That is enough. “You mean I can’t take my umbrella inside?” He stared blankly at me, his lips motionless, cold disinterest oozing indifferently from him. The floor I was standing on was cold and hard. Suddenly my thigh muscles were too tight, too tense. I was not to take the potentially dangerous weapon into the visitors’ yard of surveillance. As I wondered which might be worse, having the guard bark terrifyingly at me or be annihilated by such invisibilising absence of any interest I asked, with

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flaring nostrils that smell my own mix of fury and futility, politely controlling every syllable and note to disguise my raw repulsion, “Will my umbrella be safe here?” Disinterest turned to a withering directness: “We’re very busy here.” “Does that mean you are too busy to watch our umbrellas?” “They’re not our problem. You can take it back to your car if you want to be sure.” Incredible! Unbelievable! What is the smell of ice? “You mean, walk the 10 min back to the car, leave the umbrella there, return, getting wet, AND go back to the end of the queue?” Having waited about 1½ hours in the queue, I was in no mood to give up my place—or to get wet! Leaving the umbrella and chancing finding a dry spot inside was the lesser of the two disagreeable alternatives. Why did I make such a fuss over a silly old umbrella? The umbrella itself was so insignificant that I don’t even recall if it was old or new. Recalling my anger at and loathing for the guard and the system as I write, I feel the tension constricting my neck and, as if straining backwards, reminding me of my reaction that day.

Before writing this story, I had not noticed the tension in my shoulders, neck and thighs. Have I been living with these tense muscles? Have they just knotted up now? Or is this a cellular memory of my tension in those days now activated with the writing of the story? My attention is on my tense thighs. Standing in the queue for too long, again and again in each visit, and accumulating the tension thighs. In those days it was easy to imagine the tense thighs were due to the standing. Together with the thighs, my neck and shoulders are also screaming at me with the burning, ripping, tightening of muscles that never completely relax. As if they have lost their intelligence or the know-how to ‘relax’. Does my body need some let-go-and-relax nous? What about the people detained, existing year upon year, in an unrelenting state of tension, unable to sleep at night due to the fear, anxiety and terror related to apparently unresolvable and indefinite detention. The people detained told me that they also suffered from memories of torture and trauma that amplified when they closed their eyes at night. Memories that precluded sleep, as did the ever-present deep grieving for their losses—family, friends, freedom. Dropping into a fitful sleep as dawn approached, no exercise for the three, four, five years of incarceration produced aching bodies that moved about like partially stooped, ponderous old men in pain. Shuffling about, their watery bodies seemed not to breathe, as if halting the breath would block at their nostrils the acrid smell of the pervasive tension filling the air in the Villawood detention centre. Now it is so blindingly obvious to me that the accumulation of tension started on the first day I visited Villawood detention centre. My attention was awakened to a tension awakened … (Wainer, 2015, 83–85). Although various Australian government sources publish inconclusive data most sources acknowledge that between 90 and 95%3 of the incarcerated humans are found to be genuine 3

Refugee Council of Australia, https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/asylum-community/.

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refugees, according to the UNHCR 1951 Refugee Convention criteria, means that they have a well-founded fear of death. Usually, they have witnessed family, friends, colleagues and/ or villages murdered and managed to escape. Other criteria would recognise they have been tortured and traumatised that usually is exacerbated by the terrors of the escape from jails, homes and countries. Separation from and losses of loved ones are always tearfully nigh. With that in mind, the following passage from a Midrash jumped out at me.

Standing in the queue that first day of visiting the Villawood detention centre, I hear a soon-to-become-a-friend’s voice sound an alarm: “Are you OK? You’re grey. Are you going to faint? What is it? Breathe!” In the distance, I hear a voice, the words blurred as if coming to me through the cloud, saying something about the guards … prison … solitary confinement … South Africa … “You are here in the queue … Villawood detention centre … Australia, not South Africa … Feel yourself in this present moment. Locate your breath … nose or belly …” But now, I am not in the queue at Villawood detention centre. I am back in South Africa before my brother was killed. Apparently, my only suppressed, unobliterated fear and terror of the South African police and authorities surges and re-emerges. After 13 years outside South Africa, the visceral, as well as psychological, response to the experience of the guards and the queue at the Villawood detention centre shocks and surprises me. I do not want to remember. I want to run.

I Reflect Realising that my experiences in South Africa were infinitesimal compared with those of the incarcerated asylum-seeking-refugees, I became curious about the possibility of further supporting data for the trauma that standing in the queue could trigger. In what seemed entirely unconnected to my curiosity at that time, over coffee, a friend rather casually mentioned that he was again reading Akhmatova’s Rekviem. I had not heard of Akhmatova, and so we engaged in a rich and meaningful conversation. My curiosity piqued, leading me to a watershed moment in my research process.

Akhmatova wrote her Rekviem between 1935 and 1940, the preface of which is about her and others queuing outside a prison where her son was held in Leningrad (Akhmatova 1940). On first reading, while being captivated by her poetic, excruciating queuing scenario, I rejected any connection with a Leningrad prison during Stalinist Russia and the Australian detention centre regime. Nevertheless, when rereading the account of Ahmed, in the Midrash ‘Hineni’ (see p. 147), I was jolted to realise that I had rejected a Russian account due to the scale of Stalin’s crimes against humanity. In doing so, I had missed the uniqueness, the value, of each individual—in Russia and in the Villawood detention centre—as I earlier referred to in the Talmud Midrash on the value of one life. The space this recognition revealed was not of scale. It was

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about agency. When the personal voice is removed, who speaks out? When people are invisibilised, who shows them to the citizens of the state? We will read the relevant passage from ‘Hineni’, then return to Akhmatova.

Hineni Even as I write now, telling this story, while so clearly picturing, re-experiencing, almost relocating myself back there, I see the glistening, newly erected, additional fences and wires at Villawood. Patches of brown dust, like a patchy skin disease, complete with the pathetic excuse for grass in the visitors’ yard of surveillance, the people dotted around the visitors’ yard of surveillance, each with their own cultural food smells wafting, unbidden and definitely unwanted, into the mix. The surveillance apparatus, the guards …

At this moment of writing—somewhere between looking back and actually being there in that visitors’ yard of surveillance—I am jolted, as if from a dream or fog, as I notice how I objectified the body that has been tortured. No! Why can’t I say ‘HIS tortured body’? I write ‘have seen torture marks on others’ rather than talk of Ahmed’s or Rami’s or Mahmud’s scars—blue, purple, gnarled and uneven, scars showing themselves as strangely white on otherwise latte or cappuccino-coloured skin. By distancing myself, I reveal my need then, as now, to protect myself from fully feeling, from completely comprehending, from the imagined smell of flesh at the moment of being seared … imagined screams and yells as more than one place on the body is electrified, the crack of the tortured body, the fragmenting of the tortured psyche—of such sighting and imagining that ‘his’. “Look! Look here,” calls forth. His revealing is not born of sensationalism. On the contrary, this is a privately excruciating moment in the visitors’ yard of surveillance. Ahmed extends beyond his personal privacy by showing me his torso, showing proof of his story. “They said I lied. You can read the transcripts [of the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) interview].” Again, rage boils within. Like bile rising, anger has a bitter-yellow, vile taste. As if permanent indigestion, my anger is always there when I hear the oft-repeated, always experienced, ‘They didn’t believe my story’ (Wainer, 2015, 91).

Always seeking to remain at the centre of academic inquiry with the Midrash methodology, I sought documentation in support of this newly arrived agency, regardless of scale. In an exquisite moment, even prior to synchronicity, during my conversation with John Kani, the answer to my concerns of scale was already there. Kani gave it to me when telling about Mandela who, rather than a revolution and blood bath in South Africa, asked of his inner circle. “‘Wait. Please give us time to establish a new South Africa peacefully.’ So when Nelson asked us that, we said ‘Alright’. (see Chap. 5, 31) Madiba asked us to wait. We asked him: ‘Why ?’.

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‘If it saves one life4 —it will be worth it.’” (John Kani, pers, comm. with author, 2010) With Kani and Mandela in mind, I returned to Akhmatova. Rereading her epic, I was struck by the similarities in the topography of her languaging an individual’s lived experience and the felt-tone that she took up for agency in answer to the question, “Could one ever describe this?” ‘Rekviem’. by Anna Akhmatova During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone ‘picked me out’. On that occasion, there was a woman standing behind me, her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear (everyone whispered there)—‘Could one ever describe this?’. And I answered—‘I can.’ It was then that. something like a smile slid across what had previously. been just a face. [The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]. (Akhmatova 1940)

Indeed, Midrash witnesses the unwitnessable. To this point in our book, we have seen that contained within the texts, the Midrashim have enlightened (a) medical and emotional consequences of ongoing trauma, (b) the abusive treatment of asylum-seeking-refugees by the guards within the prison culture, (c) the value of one life that otherwise might be reduced to a mere number and (d) instances of numbing. “How numb is numb enough?” I asked myself. In turn, numbing is linked to secondary trauma. These findings have revealed themselves with the power of Midrash. Volunteers, students on work experience and visitors to detention centres are all subjected to a range of triggers that may cause denial, illness, numbing or perhaps breakdowns. I have counselled students with secondary trauma. Work experience or vacation volunteering had placed these students in precarious places. One such student volunteered in a remote Aboriginal village in the Northern Territory. Another went to a rape crisis clinic in South Africa. The first returned home to experience a mental health crisis. The latter had intense symptoms of trauma. Both denied themselves the ‘right’ to those crises as they were not, in their minds, the primary sufferers. We do not choose trauma. Trauma chooses us. Numbing can be an extreme protective mechanism that leaves us devoid of a healthy bandwidth of emotions. Policies with practices such as debriefing, therapy, counselling, meditation and a host of other methods can enable volunteers, students and visitors to continue their 4

Mandela was quoting from the Talmud in saying ‘to save one life’. On Robben Island, the only literature they could receive for reading was religious books.

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work, their passions and remain intact and healthy. Directly related to these findings was the self-care content I taught in my human rights course. ‘Seventh-moment research’ is also performative (Denzin & Giardina, 2012). Theatre, poetry, music and film can be included as secondary data sources only after the first iteration of Midrashim is written. Secondary and supportive data can include theatre and poetry. Figure 12.3 illustrates the examples of how the transparency of public and personal influences of the researcher can come to bear upon the research. This explicit rigour is honest and offers new dimensions for researchers from different dispositions, languages, cultures, countries and fields of inquiry. All cultures have stories, performance and poetry upon which the researcher can draw. Aligning with heritage and culture offers the researcher a signifier of holism and connection to self. Storytelling, philosophy, memory and performance were

Fig. 12.3 Data sources

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employed by Boochani and his translator, Omid Tofighian. Alternate to the approach to poetry that does not restate the contents or theme on a page, as explored above, Boochani introduces a different use of poetry as inspired by his cultural heritage. Distinctive narrative techniques, common in traditional and contemporary story telling practices of Iranian peoples, are used. Here, Boochani (2018) has written poetry to connect us to his felt-experience and that of the other ‘imprisoned refugee’. The engagement of the local community with the refugees is conducted through fear. The imprisoned refugees feel that they are in a nightmare; their feelings about the locals are transformed into a nightmare. A nightmare turned into a reality/ A nightmare within the prison/ A nightmare with the sound of locals/ A nightmare drumming with their footsteps/ … Two groups living in terror. (Boochani, 2018, 168)

I Write Reflexively Fig. 12.3 shows the multiple applications and intersections of personal and public domain data underscoring the complexity of life as a researcher and as the researched. The Midrashic text allowed me to unwrap and refold attachments and detachment, associations and revulsion, bonds and disconnection, intersections and incongruence in the Villawood detention centre visitors’ yard of surveillance in response to the paucity of research and literature in the space between theory and its application. As Villawood, so Darwin, Lampedusa, and The Senora Desert. Equally, reporting is now slowly emerging from Gulags such as Manus Regional Processing Centre, Nauru Regional Processing Centre and other sites of incarceration.

To avoid a reporting style associated with the researcher-author and to reveal the asylum-seeking-refugee as an immanent being, I want to write courageously. ‘Mohammad Ali’ by Ngareta Rossell 1. Mr. Mohammed Ali Owned rug shop twenty two A At the southern end of the market place Where he marked down the passage of days

2. Next door was the cinnamon seller A vendor of saffron and mace Mr. Mohammed Ali Lived his life at an organized pace

3. On Sundays he went to the desert With his wife and his family of four And they picnicked there by the clear water spring In the wind, where the wild eagles soar

4. Then Ali would visit the nomads Who sold rugs of deep indigo blue He inspected the reds, the yellows, the greens The knots and the threads and the hues

5. Designs he would choose with discretion His judgement was sharp as a knife From medallions and birds and animal forms He favoured the strong tree of life

6. He returned from his journey with figs With almonds and walnuts and peaches He recognized always the danger signs When market place had changed its features (continued)

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(continued) 7. Sometimes at midnight the soldiers would come They were dangerous, iron muscled men In return for his money they left him alone He would pay them again and again

8. The cinnamon seller was nowhere in sight His shop had been burnt to the ground The soldier had come with their bullets and guns And taken whatever they’d found

9. Ali and the cinnamon seller Together had worked out a way If one of them had been raided The other would leave that same day

10. Mr. Mohammed Ali Told his wife of the neighbour’s burning He said he would leave that night She should follow when soon he’d be earning

11. He packed up one rug and a shirt He had kept there for such occasion He took cash and he locked up the rugs In a cellar prepared for invasion

12. He’d heard of a country a long way away Where the soldiers left people alone And at midnight he shuttered and barred up his shop Then he struck out, on guard on his own

13. He passed villages, hamlets and townships by night He tramped mountains beneath the suns rays He crossed creekbeds and rivers and oceans on boats And he marked off the passage of days

14. He arrived at the gates of that country so far With his documents, suitcase and rug The officials they took all his papers away And declared that his fabrics had bugs

15. Like an insect they sprayed him with fluid, then more That stung both his nose and his eyes We will keep you locked up a uniform said Till we find out if you are a spy

16. Now you could be a robber, gun runner or worse You might be a gay or a stripper For all that we know you’re a dealer of drugs You could well be old Jack the ripper

17. No, no Sir you’re wrong Ali drew himself up I’m not from a sink or back alley In my country of birth I’m a dealer of rugs I am Mr. Mohammed Ali

18. We’ll see about that, the officials made note We will find if you are, who you say And they locked him away in a dry desert camp Where he counted the passage of days

19. We will know very soon the official pronounced If you’re Check or Bidoon or from Hui That’s all right by me Mr. Ali he said As he marked off the passage of days

20. On Fridays he thought of the Mosque and his prayers On Saturdays he pondered his life And each night alone in his small, narrow bed And sent thoughts to his loving wife

21. The first year he managed remarkably well He kept busy, alert and alive At the end of that time with his old ball point pen He marked days three thirty-five

22. The officials they told him he’d never sold rugs That his lying caused trouble and strife You know that’s not true sir, for you have my rug sir Designed with the grand tree of life

23. Your rug has been burnt officials declared So the germs and the bugs could expire It was then that a light turned on in his head He had jumped from the pan, to the fire

24. Now he sits every day in his small hut alone His beard is now flecked with some gray And his best cotton shirt is frayed at the edge On the seven hundred, twenty-fifth day (continued)

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(continued) 25. And sometimes he dreams of the clear water spring Of the nomads, his children and wife Alas an illusion he wakes with a start They have burnt out his whole tree of life Source Rossell (2010). I extend my gratitude to Ngareta for her kindness in permitting me to publish this wondrous poem

To include the reader in the space of feelings, poetry, for example, can be employed without theorising, without making connections and without explaining the inclusion of any poem at a particular point in the text. ‘Poetry offers a very particular form in which to interpret and represent humanexperience’ (Leavy, 2009, 64). While the poems are connected to the content on the page alongside the poem, there is no exposition by the researcher-author. The intention is as if to open up spaces for the reader, oxygen to breathe themselves into the Midrash. Poetry or theatre can be written by the researcher-author or be drawn from other sources. A useful example of drawing on and placement of poetry is within the Midrash ‘Cherry Ripe’ that contains themes such as ‘numb’, ‘closed heart’ and ‘open heart’. The poem titled Summer, written by the researcher-author and placed next to the opening paragraphs immerses the reader in those themes before arriving at those themes in the prose text. ‘Summer’ by Devorah Wainer On the days you are absent In the months you are weak I ache Suffering my yearning for you And then in the cycle you return To me alone To thrill me To please me To sustain, to nurture to open and open and open Me to you and you to me. In your absence I am cramped, closed, here, not absent Yet not open. How do I continue in the present - not open? By forgetting your caresses Your warmth that reaches me Delights, and thaws me Sensations, exhilarations Tingling to my bones, softening and unfolding.

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In the winter I am dry without you In the winter I am deep deep within without you In the winter I am white, I am pure, I am within And then the burst of your rays The golden, rose, pink, translucent white that open my pores, my cells, my bones My head my heart My soul. I live again. Loving dancing, receiving and giving, Free with your warmth, your heat I delight and play with you You’re with me again. Around me surrounding me Accompanying me with no tomorrow. Source: Wainer (2015, 81)

Attention Awakened While putting in order the words of a poem describing my desire for summer and the sensual delights of the summer sun warming, heating and as-if-melting the body, I paused to reflect upon the summer in 2002, when I experienced the heat as oppressive, stultifying. It was my tense body that came to mind rather than the relaxation-as-if-being-melted consciousness that I usually associate with a hot summer’s day.

This story, an intentional love story, titled ‘Cherry Ripe’, begins with my reflections relating to a specific experience on one of those unkind summer days in 2002. Although the same season of the poem ‘Summer’ none of the ‘caressing warmth’ reached me that day. It was raining that summer’s day—the sudden, unanticipated downpour that sometimes unashamedly presents itself regardless of one’s clothing, location or destination. Smugly, I drove towards the Villawood detention centre. No embarrassingly wet-cling-to-the-body or, even worse, wet-cling-to-the-bodytransparent clothes for me that day. No unappealing flattened-droplets-dripping-hair either. No offensive attack by the rain; having learned to keep an umbrella in my car, the rain merely offered respite from the relentless heat. Or so I mused! The ‘Cherry Ripe’ story unfolds on that rainy summer’s day at the Villawood detention centre. Unlike the ‘soft opening’ of the poem, that day inside the visitors’ yard of surveillance, I was neither soft nor open. Unable to receive a love token offered to me, that day was like the winter of the poem. I was ‘cramped, closed’. Leaving Villawood that day, I was disquieted. Why had I rejected so callously and offhandedly the love token? Half consciously, and quickly, before the self-reflexive musing could progress, I closed off the felt-thought that was already an ache. The ache was already developing into pain, a floating intermittent, empty pain. The pain detained. The ache generalised alongside other wounds.

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I Read Maya Angelou writes that history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived and, if faced with courage, need not be lived again. When, writing the poem ‘Summer’ and pausing to reflect upon that summer’s day inside the Villawood detention centre, comparing the poem ‘Summer’ with my ‘winter’ experience, I noticed my attention shifts subtly from the noninvasive musing of the mind to a knot locked in my belly. And then I notice the knot move to my throat, too. There—simultaneously in the belly and the throat—the knot revealed itself to me. Paying attention to the feeling of tightness in my gut opened the recognition of the constriction in my throat. I recognise that this knot in the belly and the constriction in the throat are apparently connected: an unknown stranger dwelling within. A hitherto invisibilised part of my life experience. Now revealing itself to me, this embodied stranger still presented as tension and constriction that, until now, has been generalised and unknown to me. Now it moves to arrive in my consciousness—locates … places … speaks … calls … asking to be seen and recognised.

Unconsciously, I had thought I could control body pain by sublimation, by denial—by locking it away … Not a new sensation, not a new pain, but now newly attended. Is this a call for the courage of which Angelou writes? The courage to face not the thoughtmemory; the courage to face the felt-memory. In his article ‘Venturing Past Psychic Numbing: Facing the Issues’, psychoanalyst Robert Gregory writes that there is an almost gravitational pull towards putting out of mind unpleasant facts. Quoting Daniel Goleman, Gregory (2003) continues, ‘We tune out, we turn away, we avoid. Finally we forget, and forget we have forgotten. A lacuna hides the harsh truth.’ (232) While I hid the ‘harsh truth’ from myself, I othered this part of the story together with the meaning that is interwoven with experience. Only by inquiring could I discover the meaning that I gave to that specific experience. Only by engaging with the stranger within could I relax and release the knot in the belly and the constricted throat. Here is a letter from a former student who worked in a shelter for people experiencing homelessness. Matt (Warren, pers. comm., 2012) wrote this letter to me approximately a year after he submitted his thesis. I had been on his supervisory panel. Dear Devorah I have been reminded of it [the Midrash methodology] recently in particular because I find myself struggling in my work. I have lost myself a bit in my work with people going through homelessness, and I haven’t been utilizing midrash–I haven’t been fully present for conversations in order to learn from the people we serve. Rather, especially lately, I constantly find myself imposing the accusatory questions, ‘Why aren’t you doing this? Why aren’t you following up/following through on this?’ Had I utilized a more ‘traditional’ methodology in my thesis, I wouldn’t have an idea of what it means to connect with my clients and to learn from them. A more traditional methodology would have brought me more quickly to where I am at the present moment–not learning from my clients and instead presuming an acclimation by them to my social expectations. I’m not enjoying being in this place in my work. I’m feeling extremely dissatisfied, ineffective, and burnt out.

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As I recognize where I am in my disaffection with my work, I’d like to return to midrash practices. I’d like to refocus on what it means to really listen and engage with my clients as powerfully transcendent rather than allowing social or organizational expectations of how clients “should” behave effect my interaction with them. Thank you again for coming up with this methodology, and thank you for your guidance as I try to implement it not only as an academic tool, but as a practice to improve my life and work [emphasis added].

The Dining Room at DAL 1 There is no crueller tyranny than that which is exercised under cover of law, and with the colors of justice... U.S. v. Jannotti, 673 F.2d 578, 614 (3d Cir.1982) Three long tables with chairs were squashed into space. I looked around trying to figure out why the guard was bringing us to this enclosed balcony. Surely this could not be the visiting area. Moving between the tables and chairs was a wiggle dance as one got up for the other to pass by. I was still confused. Less so the students who had nothing with which to compare this unwelcome and unprivate enclosure. Suddenly the visitors’ yard of surveillance at the Villawood detention centre with its excuse for grass, the small shelter under which I would go only on a rainy day, yet many chose to sit there regularly, seemed spacious. On first impressions, the white bucket chairs dotted around the visitors’ yard of surveillance always gave the impression of a relaxed, convivial environment. Not so here at DAL1. There was not enough room for visitors nor a private conversation. Despite the guards, the surveillance cameras and the people, privacy was constructed by walking together around the perimeter of the security fence in the visitors’ yard of surveillance of the Villawood detention centre. When we saw two people strolling around the perimeter, around and around again, we knew not to approach them. They were having a private conversation. Privacy for all to see!

At the table next to us, a vivacious young woman was animatedly talking and talking. She wore a bright pink tracksuit that indeed offset her gorgeous, thick, black hair. Her big brown eyes moved around the room and then back to the person to whom she was speaking. It seemed impolite to listen to their conversation but it was impossible not to. The proximity of the tables and chairs made hearing inevitable. Equally, the discussions at the next table were disturbingly clear. Someone was translating into English at that next table. Wait—the young attractive woman is moving between the two tables. Mostly I cannot understand the languages except for the bits of English filtering through. The effect of the talking in this small enclosure was a constant, slightly edgy hum. My attention was drawn to a frosted sliding door at the opposite end of the room. It slid open for someone to come in or go out, giving the illusion of freedom of movement. DAL1 is said to be more family-friendly and has a lower level of security than high-security jails. Are people free to mill in and out here? This musing was only arising in my mind when the answer harshly arrived. A woman and little boy were escorted to our table. She was the only person currently in the detention centre who we arranged to visit. Although approved to visit others,

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they had all been taken to the dentist. Almost feeling a stab in my jaw, I was drawn back to the image of the lady we saw at the entrance who had been to the dentist. Was she one of our detainees that we were to visit? I was slowly dropping into a deep internal state. Knowing that I was here for the students, I pulled myself out of it, mentally agreeing with myself to feel and process it all later. I had suggested to the students that we bring drinks, cake and sweets for our visit. Eagerly they had disregarded the heat and gone shopping before we set off in our hired car that morning. I looked at the woman sitting opposite me. Upright and silent. The little boy leaned towards her as his big eyes spoke of curiosity. I indicated to the students to busy themselves with pouring and offering the cool drinks into the plastic cups and putting the biscuits and sweets out on the plates. They offered to the mum. She shook her head. Following his mum’s cue, the little boy also shook his head. My heart melted. I could only imagine how much inner fortitude it took to refuse the treats that who knows when they had last enjoyed. I looked at Nooshin (name changed), for that was her name. She was so beautiful. Her latte skin was a fine, even, smooth texture. I imagined she had once tended to herself with regular facials. She was clearly a refined woman. Like the others we had noticed this morning, her clothes were unrememberable; her hair not quite unkept but not freshly done or styled either. Mostly, I noticed her quiet demeanour. Sitting opposite her, I felt—I saw—her soul. Her veiled eyes receded back under her brow and plucked eyebrows. Something else was there, and I could not interpret the sensation. It was not fear. It was not mistrust. And unlike her son, it was not curiosity. It hit me. The blank look from her depths was just that. Blank! Nothing. I felt a stab and panicked. She just sat there. Told to come to the visitor’s room, she came. How can I fix this? How can I make this right? It is my practice to initiate a conversation by clarifying that the students and I are only here to visit and that we cannot do anything for their case. As such, the person is not required to stay and talk to us. If they wished to leave and not visit with us, there are no repercussions. I launched forth. But Nooshin’s blank look continued. Waving my hands to indicate airplane, flight over the water … I tried to communicate that we had come from Sydney to visit. Blank. Soft. Upright and now concern, stress, circumspect … the start of fear. Nooshin did not understand English. Even the word Sydney meant nothing to her. Silently, I looked into Nooshin’s eyes. Gently, I placed my hands on the table between us. And in a movement that is exquisitely not of my own volition, I turn my palms open and upwards as they rest on the table between Nooshin and me. Holding my eyes with hers, never glancing away, she slowly, tentatively, ever so cautiously, lowers her palms onto mine. They are warm. Soft. Feminine. Palms only just touching. Eyes holding each other. Tears. Slowly, silently, one tear by one tear, they move from her eyes into which I continue to gaze. My heart opens. Dare I say our hearts open. A moment that is forever (Fig. 12.4). And the tears flow. Still tentative. Still silent. The students asked Nooshin, “What can we bring you? What do you need?” She asked for a long skirt more in keeping with her culture than the track pants she was

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Fig. 12.4 Students offered to buy fitting clothes for Nooshin and her son. See notes on student’s hand. My deep gratitude to Neha (name changed) for her permission to reprint this image taken in Darwin

given in detention and shoes to fit her son—the little boy in the story. The students would not receive money from me. They insisted on pooling their own money for the shopping. We returned that evening to proffer the items they bought.

References Affidavits. (2006). Disrespectful treatment at the intake center. Retrieved from Rhode Island. http:/ /caught.net/cases/inmates.htm. Akhmatova, A. (2005). Rekviem. In: Selected Poems. Translated by A. S. Kline. England.Poetry in Translation. Boochani, B. (2018). No friend but the mountains: Writing from Manus prison. Translated by Omid Tofighian. Sydney:Picador Pan Macmillan. Denzin, N. K., & Giardina, M. D. (Eds.). (2012). Qualitative inquiry and the politics of advocacy. Left Coast Press. Gilbert, M. (2002). The righteous: The unsung heroes of the holocaust. Black Swan. Gregory, R. J. (2003). Venturing past psychic numbing: facing the issues. Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, 8(2), 232–237. Leavy, P. (2009). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Press. Lincoln, Y. S., & Egon, G. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry (6th ed.). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications. Mares, S., & Newman, L. K. (Eds.). (2007). Acting from the heart: Australian advocates for asylum seekers tell their stories. Finch Publishing. Rossell, N. (2010). Mohammed Ali (unpublished) U.S. V. Jannotti, 673 F.2d 578, 614 (3d Cir.1982) Wainer, D. (2015). Beyond the wire: Levinas vis-à-vis Villawood: A Study on Levinas’s philosophy as an ethical foundation for asylum-seeker policy. Sydney Boffin Books.

Part IV

Chapter 13

Boundaries, Spaces and Lacuna

The Midrash methodology extends the boundaries of traditional qualitative research methods, offering a new pathway for knowledge creation that includes messy texts. The author-researcher writes the midrashim without any attempt to sway her words to preconceived themes or conceptions about the story. The author-researcher creates the first phenomenological data sets—the Midrashim—by including her lived-experiences and felt-memories in connection with the lives, and events and contexts of the research subjects allowing for the idiosyncratic or the unremarkable to show up in the messy texts. We do not seek to smooth or adjust in the process of writing for the sake of what might be called accuracy. The researcher-author allows for a creative chaos of the initial writing as she seeks to dialogically connect the ethical, respectful self and Other. Although traditional qualitative and quantitative analytical tools are unsuited to the structure and method of the methodology, our reflection on the Midrashim after they are written is akin to analysis. The previous chapter has shown that emergent patterns and themes lead to further research using secondary literature, for example, the work of Mandela and Akhmatova. Herein lies the academic rigour of the methodology.

I Analyse The simultaneous and iterative cycles of write, reflect and analyse includes the first analysis that attends to significant and recurring patterns and themes within each midrash. The second cycle typically includes secondary data that substantiates the findings contained in the primary data—the Midrashim. The last phase of the analysis is written as a corrective to ‘Greek’ analytic formations.Leavy (2009) recommends ‘using theory explicitly during data analysis’ (19) as a method of generating new interpretations and alternative meanings. Deconstruction and explication as part of the cyclical nature of the writing occurs after the Midrashim have been written. Themes, patterns and trends emerge during © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_13

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the writing of the Midrashim. Once we have iterated with supporting secondary data and relata and, perhaps, reiterated with supporting theory, we analyse the panoptic view of Midrashim-as-data and Midrashim-as-relata. Eschewing final solutions or grand answers, we use Rosenzweig’s speech-thinking1 and Buber’s dialogicthinking—upholding the post-Shoah narrative of the particular … the indeterminacy of meaning—to address the research themes, insights and interpretations as ‘signals for quiet study’, per Levi’s suggestion. Primo Levi2 (1986) writes instructively about a chain of signals that should alarm us, linking them specifically to the automatic conceiving of a stranger as an enemy. Referring to his own life experience, Levi says that the ‘lager’ is the ‘product of a conception of the world carried rigorously to its logical conclusion’ (9). In addition to alarm signals, the research shows a wholly unanticipated group of ethical signals. These are linked to automatically conceiving of the sacred other who I welcome with respect and care. Arguably, this chain of signals could have remained unaccounted for without a Levinas consciousness—a hineni framing. If we are to study the chains of signals to know where on the continuum the politics of the nation is located, we need knowledge of ethics too. Knowledge of the continuum aligns with bounded spaces represented by the divide of the wire. Throughout this chapter excerpts from the Midrashim-as-data are cited as well as secondary research in support of those bounded spaces and signal. Acknowledging that spaces and signals are often as complex as the humans that occupy such constructions, nevertheless, I have designated three separate spaces. Two of these three spaces hold to a continuum. The first space—‘sinister alarm signals’—and the second space—‘ethical signals for quiet study’—can be considered a continuum. By attending to the language and characterisation of researchers and other actors in political discourses, the media, entertainment and the broad, ever-polarising social media bubbles, we can notice where on the continuum one’s national politics and sentiments lie vis-à-vis our own. There is a third space that presents itself from the Midrashim. In this space, boundaries collapse as ‘the in-between’. The first and second spaces are conceived as liminal and physical where ‘the wire’ is literal and metaphorical. They signify the treacherous oceans and perilous deserts crossed. These spaces are evidenced by a spoken Midrash of a young Eritrean who reached Libya via the Sahara Desert; an archetypical motif of a Latin American woman walking through the Sonoran Desert; Midrashim I have written; and secondary research, such as poetry and theatre. Newspapers and social media reports 1

Speech-thinking seeks to show that relations between particular beings are best grasped through speech. More importantly, Rosenzweig demonstrates in his ‘speech -thinking’ that these relations occur through speech. Speech, Rosenzweig suggests, is the tool through which we come to recognise ourselves as selves, and which at once unites us with others. 2 Primo Levi was born in Turin, Italy, in 1919. In 1938, he first felt his Jewishness due to the Shoah yet was still able to complete his degree in chemistry in 1941, whereafter he joined the partisans. At age 24, he was captured and transported to Auschwitz, where he was considered useful because of his chemistry degree. While working in the Germans’ laboratory inside Auschwitz, he smuggled food and stayed warm enough to stay alive until scarlet fever took him to the infirmary. He was left for dead when Auschwitz was abandoned and was spared the winter death march to Buchenwald.

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are included. Importantly, reports and media have country specific linguistic turns that can trap the unaware reader. During 2014–2015, researchers preparing a report for the UNHCR (Berry, Garcia-Blanco & Moore, 2015) found major differences between the designated five countries in terms of the sources journalists used (domestic politicians, foreign politicians, citizens or NGOs), the language they employed, the reasons they gave for the rise in refugee flows and the solutions they suggested. Germany and Sweden overwhelmingly used the terms ‘refugee’ or ‘asylum seeker’ with negative registers. Italy and the United Kingdom preferred the word ‘migrant’. In Spain, the dominant term was ‘immigrant’. These terms had and still have an ongoing effect on the tenor of each country’s debate. Predominant themes also differ in line with a country and the press. Humanitarian themes were more common in Italian coverage than in British, German and Spanish press. Threat themes (such as to the welfare system or cultural threats) were more prevalent in [Australia] Italy, Spain and Britain. Overall, the Swedish press was the most positive towards refugees and migrants, while coverage in the United Kingdom was the most negative and the most polarised. Among those countries surveyed, Britain’s right-wing media was uniquely aggressive in its campaigns against refugees and migrants (Berry, et al., 2015). Language, voice, content, the absence of topics and conversations in response to any report reveal the positionality of the nation state vis-à-vis one’s own for our reflection and study. What follows is an exemplar of the three spaces (see Fig. 13.1) of creative possibilities, for documenting analysis and findings. Some of the excerpts that follow are not included as data or relata. They were miscarried at the stage of secondary research. Nevertheless, they powerfully illustrate specific moments in the lived lives and felt-experiences of unique others worthy of our time and attention.

Fig. 13.1 Continuum of spaces and signals

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Space One: Sinister Alarm Signals Trigger Warning Australia has a long history of refugee resistance, be it xenophobia or lack of experience and understanding. It is, however, vital to the well-being of the nation—of any nation—to be alert to a trajectory that bears alarm signals. David Marks, a survivor of Auschwitz, who at the time of writing is 92 years of age, warns us: ‘There are signs to look out for. If you don’t watch out one day you wake up and it’s too late’. The space of sinister alarm signals is located within the much publicised and researched responses to the asylum-seeking-refugees within the context of the legalisms, juridicisms and political rhetoric of the detention regime. The mechanisms of the regime have tragically desecrated and damaged the most vulnerable by further traumatising them during their period of indefinite incarceration. The Midrashim show the phenomenology of crimmigration3 and how the nature of this system is intended to be a production of violence for individuals. Australia’s refugee policy can be characterised as crimmigration since it constructs asylum seekers as illegal and subjects them to indefinite detention in offshore processing centres where human rights abuses occur. In addition, Australia’s highly secretive refugee processing arrangements in remote locations, where a multiplicity of state actors and private security firms are involved, makes human rights monitoring by lawyers, journalists, medical professionals and refugee advocates virtually impossible, and also means it is hard to assign responsibility for human rights violations under state-centric international law (Martin, 2019). Every year, thousands of refugees and migrants from Africa attempt to flee to Europe through the Sahara Desert4 only to be trapped in Libya,5 where they await boats to take them across the Mediterranean Sea. Between leaving the shores of Libya, North Africa, they cross the treacherous Mediterranean Sea, knowing they may not survive to arrive at European shores. Whether they set out in boats or across deserts, families, singles and children have discerned their options—drown, burn to death, be raped. The moral panic whipped up in citizens of the receiving countries fails to account for the lived lives of those who leave their homes, families and countries. ‘Now that I’m older, I couldn’t go through that again, I don’t have the stamina,’ Tekle (not his real name) age 36, concedes. ‘My sister left before me [for Libya], my other brother who left after me died in the Sahara, and I have one brother who is still in the military in Eritrea.’ 3

The conjoining of criminal and immigration law that enables government agencies other than law enforcement to act. 4 Quoting figures from the International Organization for Migration, the Associated Press reported in June 2018 that an estimated 30,000 people have gone missing in the desert since 2014. UNHCR estimates that for each death of a migrant in the Mediterranean Sea, there could be at least two more deaths in the desert. 5 The International Organization for Migration estimates there are currently between 700,000 and one million migrants stranded in Libya, of whom the UNHCR has registered more than 55,000.

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That brother is a grown man, Tekle says, and he wouldn’t listen if advised not to try to get to Europe through the desert. ‘But one puts his or her life down to chance’, he adds. His brother, he fears, might take that chance one day. (Kuwonu and Donavan, 2019).

In Lampedusa, I met a young man whose age in years lived was 16. His age in years of encountered experiences was incalculable. His stories were fathomless. He was one of the lucky ones who reached Italy. The lad left home at the age of 14. He told me, in halting English and with his English teacher translating, of his experiences, some of which are verifiable and well published. Sometimes walking, sometimes bundled into the back of speeding trucks, for two years he stop-started the 2,647 km from Eritrea to Libya. In the desert, they had no food and no water to drink. “We drank oil,”6 he told me. “Oil?” I questioned. “Yes,” he insisted, looking to Patricia (name changed), who was nodding her head as he described a process they went through to distil the black oil for drinking. His teacher/ interpreter/ informally acknowledged guardian was also the English–Italian translator for the mayor of Lampedusa. She was trusted by the Italian dignitaries, including the Pope, who visited Lampedusa. I, too, trusted her. By then, I had spent days with her as she introduced me to people and places that were invisible and unknown to me. Doors to vicarious visitors were tightly shut as the locals fiercely protect their ‘migrants’. Although I cannot verify this little-known gruesome detail that he was told to drink oil to stay alive, when I sought to be sure this was not a linguistic misinterpretation on my part, tears came to my eyes. Another desert that is a literal space is the Sonora Desert. Thousands walk to cross into the USA. Burning the soles of their feet through to the bone, dying of dehydration, some who are too weak to continue are discarded by the coyotes (people smugglers) and left to die. Others are left to walk in disoriented circles between Mexico and the USA. I have been there too, feeling disoriented and panicked, although a research colleague was nearby to reorient me, with his gentle kindness, back to our nearby vehicle. My sense of direction dissolved within 10 min, despite thinking that I had marked my track. How much more so is the abject terror of the refugees walking with the coyotes who are neither kind nor gentle? Seeing an empty pink jar, the label in Spanish, of a women’s face cream lying in a parched ravine—a lower-lying path taken recently—I wondered about the owner. She set out with the hope of reaching family in the USA, still tending to her appearance and caring for her skin before the harsh desert’s daytime heat and night-time temperature lows dried and shrivelled her appearance. Did she, as too many others, perish on their way through thick cacti and thorns or just disappear in this desert that is described as ‘a polarized land of crucifixion thorn and resurrection fern, shin-dagger and teddy bear cactus’ (Lenihan, 2021, X). Are her panties hanging with the other women’s

6

I cannot verify that he drank oil. However, I have heard from one other asylum-seeking refugee that he drank oil while crossing the desert because it bloated his stomach and so he didn’t feel hunger as intensely. Similarly, I am familiar with stories of those who drank their own urine to stay alive.

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lingerie? Faded pink bras and lacy black panties drooped from the twisted limbs of the rape tree nearby.7

Alarm Signal 1: Indifference Like Levi, who experienced the Shoah 80 years earlier, wrote of the indifference to the plight of the Jews, it is alarming to now read about the shocking indifference in Australians towards the asylum-seeking-refugees. In 2001 then Minister for Immigration, Phillip Ruddock, found a political upside to the appalling drowning of innocent men, women and children who had been on the SIEVX.8 Eleven years later the same Australian political party, The Liberals, against their own border safety protocols, promulgated on election day, 31 May 2022, that a boat had arrived at Australian borders. Once again the asylum-seeking-refugees became objects for politically expediency by a party desperate to win the elections that day. The years passed have continued to show sinister alarm signals indicative of as Levi wrote ‘the chain of events and syllogisms propelling’ asylum-seeking refugees towards increasingly harsh Australian detention regimes Susan, in Through the Wire, (scene: ‘Why I Got Involved’) says: I was shocked by the lack of reaction of the Australian people. … I was determined to see for myself what was happening in the detention camps. The great rolls of razor wire were like a symbol of everything barbaric suddenly sprung up in Australia. And I wondered what had happened to this country. (Horin, 2004)9

She refers to the SIEVX, the drowning of hundreds of mainly women and children, as one of the alarm signals, and then reveals a chain of events to which the majority of Australians were indifferent. Indifference to the plight of hundreds of drowned women and children is alarming. Perera (2006) cites the then minister for immigration, Philip Ruddock, who shockingly turned the SIEVX drownings into a positive spin of deterrence. In his first statements to the media on 24 October 2001, after the hundreds of deaths became public, Ruddock commented that ‘this tragedy may have an upside’ because of its value as a deterrent to others (647). In Through the Wire (Horin, 2004), Susan starts speech-thinking (as above) a shocking picture, ‘The great rolls of razor wire were like a symbol of everything barbaric suddenly sprung up in Australia …’ (scene: ‘Why I Got Involved’). This 7

Sometimes known as trophy trees, smugglers/coyotes mark the tree with the panties of migrant women and young girls they rape on their way. 8 (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel) SIEVX refers to a tragic drowning that took place in international waters off the coast of Indonesia, 18 October2001. 9 Through the Wire, a verbatim theatre project performed as a workshop presentation at the Sydney Festival 22 -25 January 2004, author and director was Ros Horin. Then premiered at the Sydney Opera House in October 2004. Staged in Melbourne at the Grant Theatre, Southbank, 11–28 May 2005.

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vision is corroborated by numerous investigations, media articles and reports utilising the same language as Susan with an addition reminiscent of the Shoah. Phrases such as ‘the overall impression was one of a modern-day concentration camp’, razor wire, mud, sad faces and shame. The continuum of alarm signals expands through the decades so that in 2020, we read in newspapers about the barbaric chain wire ‘cages’ in which American border apparatchik lock up children who are separated from their parent or parents as they enter the USA. At the time of writing, in the year 2022, hundreds of children still have not been reunited with their families. Administrative cruelty associated with the intentional separation of children from their parents by the United States government continued, despite current research clearly showing that early childhood trauma can alter the person’s nervous system and make the child increasingly vulnerable to later mental health problems. On my regular visits to the Villawood detention centre, I first cuddled then, as the years passed, played with a little girl whose first years of life were looking through barbed wire or looking up to the sky. In the Midrash ‘The Dining Room’ (see Chap. 13), we read about the little boy of six with his mother in the Darwin detention centre (DAL1). In the year 2020, an Australian delegation, together with royalty, presidents and ambassadors from across the globe, attended the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where survivors called for an end to world indifference. There, survivor Marion Turski, described what should be the Eleventh Commandment of the Bible: ‘Though shalt not be indifferent’ with reference to a better-known survivor of Auschwitz, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Turski added that the Holocaust didn’t ‘fall from the sky’ but came after growing acceptance for discrimination against minorities (Gera, 2020) which is akin to Levi (1986) speaking of his own life experience when he says that the death camps were the ‘product of a conception of the world carried rigorously to its logical conclusion’ (9). We cannot know what thoughts passed through the minds of the Australians, and other dignitaries, as they stood in the presence of the Survivors and Auschwitz itself; the conclusion to the chain of events, syllogisms and symbols of what the Polish Prime Minister named a ‘monstrous, criminal nightmare’, continuing that the ‘industrial nature of the crime perpetrated here was horrifying’ (Connolly, 2020). Did the Australians recognise themselves as the architects of horrifying torture, trauma, mental illness and death in the industrial nature of the Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island Gulags10 ? Or are they indifferent to those Others who are incarcerated within their criminal industrial complex? To be ever-vigilant regarding the sinister alarm signals is Levi’s adjuration to guard against indifference. Levinas, too, repeats in different texts his caution against

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Any reference to the Shoah is timorously made with full recognition that there is no comparison. The mirror being held is of indifference to invoke caution against this alarm signal. In the words of a survivor, ‘when minorities have to feel vulnerable again, I can only hope that everyone would stand up for democracy and human rights’.

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indifference. ‘It is the shattering of indifference … even if indifference is statistically dominant’ (Levinas, 1988, viii). Unlike the statistically dominant numbers of Australians who had not raised their voices, or their vote, against the witnessed indifference to the acute suffering and death of desperate people fleeing their countries and seeking asylum—genuine refugees, Susan took steps to ‘shatter the indifference’. The ultimate indifference is indifference to the highest court in the land. A decision by the High Court of Australia on 8 August, 2002, ruled that the procedures that have been used by the federal government’s RRT to reject thousands of asylum applications since 1993 are procedurally unfair and, therefore, unlawful (Skeers, 2002). It is vital to the well-being of any nation to be alert to a trajectory that bears alarm signals. The Australian Government and bureaucracy were so indifferent to linguistic torture that the policy and programmes to remove asylum-seeking-refugees to the offshore island prisons was titled the ‘Pacific Solution’.

Alarm Signal 2: Rhetoric and Doublespeak As we have suggested, attending to the language used by politicians in discourse and the media is a doorway to insightfully orienting their location on the continuum. The language of indifference clearly emerges in the relationship of the Pacific Solution to an earlier Solution of the Nazis. The Australian public were assured of their safety, as the Pacific Solution had mobilised the Australian navy for the purpose of border protection and border control. The implication was that those terrified and sometimes starving people, crowded into dangerously substandard, small and sometimes leaky boats, were The Enemy. They were constructed to be like enemies—the objects of public fear—needing to be marshalled by the Australian navy. Burnside (2007) likens the language of the Australian Government to doublespeak that deliberately obscures and disguises the truth, communicating in a way that misrepresents or obscures the truth. The message deliberately conceals the true meaning of what is being said. ‘Doublespeak uses language to smuggle uncomfortable ideas into comfortable minds’ (99). Negative registers ascribed to the term ‘asylum seekers’ that become interchangeable with ‘illegals’ and ‘queue-jumpers’ is doublespeak, as is ‘boat’ rather than an unsafe fishing vessel. Figure 13.2 is intended to toll alarm bells. The majority of disengaged citizens (domestic and global) are unaware that the linguistic turn ‘boats’ against which the Royal Australian Air Force, Royal Australian Navy and Australian Border Force are mobilised are, in fact, small wood fishing ‘boats’. These vessels are highly unsuited to the high and dangerous seas without cabins, amenities or cover to shelter from the storms and high temperatures.11 11

For photographs clearly illustrating the crowding and dangers on the boats as well as photos of people falling overboard see https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-26/hundreds-thrown-into-med iterranean-as-overloaded-boat-capsizes/7446992?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content= link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web

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Fig. 13.2 Two fishing boats with asylum-seekingrefugees in the Mediterranean Sea as seen from the airplane (see arrows inserted to point to the fishing vessels.). Source Author

In Fig. 13.2, The arrows point to two white flecks that are in fact boats with asylum-seeking-refugees en route from Libya to Lambedusa. I took this photo on a regular commercial flight from Lampedusa to Rome and have placed it here to offer perspective. People on those boats feel terror being surrounded by ocean with no land in sight. The associations of the policy title, the Pacific Solution, should have made people tremble in terror. Instead, the policy was introduced with language designed to make people feel safe from the enemy: to be relieved that the government understood that enemies were at the shores of our great nation and the government had a solution. Having convinced the general population that the asylum-seeking-refugees are a grave danger to home and hearth, to jobs, way of life and even death, the government produced increasingly stringent ‘solutions’ for which the grateful public, at elections, rewarded them with another term in office. Furthermore, the dismissal of the High Court of Australia judgments points to a reversal of the time-honoured separation of law and land and adds to the picture of doublespeak in the discourse. Successive governments have displayed contempt for basic democratic and human rights and international law in the way they have responded to High Court judgments. Both prime ministers and attorneys general have dismissed the importance of natural justice,12 a century-old protection against arbitrary power. Natural justice is the rule of audi alteram partem, the principle of listen to the other side. It is the principle that no person should be judged without a fair hearing in which each party is given the opportunity to respond to the evidence against them. If that rule is violated, then the decision becomes void. There is a specific procedure to follow the rule. If a person is not given the opportunity to be heard or defend themselves, then no one will be condemned. I witnessed the process that the USA 12

The accepted notion of natural justice is that everyone is entitled to a decision by a disinterested and unbiased adjudicator (nemo judex in causa sua or, in English, the hearing rule), and that the parties are given adequate notice of the case against them and a right to respond.

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used to be seen to be fulfilling the principle of natural justice. A row of physically restrained people, chained to each other, are shuffled from holding cells into the courtroom. The restraints, those worn by prisoners, consist of a chain around the waist to which the prisoners’ hands are chained. Their legs, too, are chained each to the other and to their individual chain belts. At first, the clanging and jangling were interspersed with sighs so deep that I could not identify the source of such a cacophony in a courtroom. The source of such inexplicable auditory sensations still haunts me. A human chain of misery became visible. Not a group of burly, dangerous-looking criminals was in sight. Instead, I saw a ragged group of emaciated, dehydrated humans in the shabby clothes they were wearing at the time of capture by the border guards. They have been in the holding cells for about three days. I saw shame, terror, bravado. But my eyes and brain could not synchronise a reason for such heavy security chains. They were brought before the judge to stand gang-chained and in a line ‘to be heard’. Group hearings were introduced for efficiency. Similar to a production line in a factory, the judge reads the charge to each in turn, usually with an interpreter, “You were caught by border patrol illegally entering the United States of America. How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?”. Each agrees or disagrees, pleads guilty or not guilty and are replaced by the next human chain of misery. Why are they gang-chained as if maximum security prisoners? Why was the very skinny, five-foot-nothing tall woman with haunted eyes and a torn dress chained as if she requires maximum security to manage her and protect us? She, weighing less than 50 kg, was staggering under the weight of the chains her body dragged along. The only instance of humanity that day in the USA courtroom was when a prisoner was dripping blood as he stood chained in front of the judge. Initially, the judge was most irritated by the man’s lack of dignity and care for the USA property. The floor! Apologetic rasps from the prisoner’s voice box seemed to say that it was the ankle chain that had cut through his skin, causing the bleeding. The judge’s absence of understanding was undisguised in plain sight. A guard runs to the prisoner with something to blot the blood and disappears back to the position at the sidewall of the courtroom. As more blood flows, the prisoner is shuffling his foot, no doubt to avoid the pressure (and pain) of standing on the foot. Suddenly the judge perceives the situation and barks at the guard to stop being cruel and ridiculous. “Remove the prisoner’s ankle chain, and have a doctor see him.” Now, my feltmemories of the tragedy that I witnessed brings my hardy eyes to tears. The only concession to health care and the cessation of the iron cuff rubbing ceaselessly into the open wound was from five minutes with the judge. Chains were not removed from anyone else. As the parody of natural justice unfolds in the USA, maximum security prisons are masqueraded as detention centres in Australia with little concern for natural justice or international law. Of the detention centres themselves and the processes that defied natural justice, we have already ascertained that people are locked up without trial for an indefinite period. At times, they are brutalised with impunity, as they are held behind razor wire

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and slowly sink into hopelessness and despair (Burnside, 2007). Susan,13 referring to Moshen, stated: One time it was the police in full riot gear—batons, boots, the lot. Another time he was hauled into ‘Management Block’ and beaten till he was black and blue …. thoughts about suicide and black awful despair. (Horin, 2004, scene: ‘Relationships in Detention’)

I had the role of director in a New South Wales government department when temporary protection visas14 (TPV) were introduced for those found to be genuine refugees according to the UNHCR conventions. TPVs replaced permanent resident visas for asylum-seeking-refugees. Shahin and others who arrived immediately before the start date for TPVs were placed in solitary confinement, thereby denying them immediate contact with a lawyer and/or submitting their applications for refugee status and permanent residency visa.15 The rhetoric and doublespeak lay in the fact that in the name of the Australian people, the government was stepping up a trajectory of human rights infringement. Australians did not know, understand the implications or, apparently, care of the brutal effects on people seeking sanctuary from the terrors and deaths in their home countries. Shahin was placed in solitary confinement because he arrived at that critical threshold when TPVs were about to be introduced. In the scene ‘Relationships in Detention’ (Horin, 2004), Shahin, who acts as himself, tells the audience of his (and other arrivals) first 10 days in Australia. Shahin: I didn’t get an interview [to establish his claim to refugee status] … Nothing …. For the first ten days I was kept in total isolation. Gaby16 : No contact with the outside world at all. Shahin: They try to make us go crazy by ignoring us.

Successive prime ministers and governments during the aforementioned two decades have habitually been dishonest to deceive the nation (or compete with the opposition government of the day) into accepting obscenities meted out and paid for by taxpayers. The doublespeak with which they engage is intended to be soporific and, thereby, massage our consciences with soft words that are actually about those obscene policies and conduct of the apparatchik. 13

Susan is a practising clinical psychologist. TPVs enabled the person to be released from detention into the community, where they had minimal settlement rights. 15 On a personal note, I was so distraught by the implications of TPVs and knowing that, despite the pretence of interdepartmental discussions, the TPVs were a fait accompli. I could not attend the whole of government planning meetings for fear of being unprofessional by showing my anger and cynicism. I wrote to the Premier of New South Wales, informing him of my professional resistance to the TPVs, that my integrity and values would have me resist even my presence at the meetings. Instead, so that we could be well informed, I requested a soulful, highly intelligent person on my staff to attend and to have noted in the minutes that we oppose, reject or suggest improvements to the muted arrangements for newly arriving asylum-seeking refugees. If, like me, none of my staff were morally able to attend, I would have been in a predicament. I am grateful to that person who wholly agreed to attend. 16 Gaby is a qualified nurse. 14

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Alarm Signal 3: Mechanisms for Reducing the Human to Mere Existence Humanity desperately needs a paradigm of development that operates as if living beings mattered. (Prout Institute) Speech is helpless when confronted with violence. (Arendt, 1951, xxxii)

This third alarm signal became irrefutably clear to me when, during the writing of each Midrash, there were moments that I reflected on how diminished I felt just visiting the inside. I began searching for theory and other secondary examples of what might support a solid finding from the Midrashim. Always holding to my heart the value of one life (as discussed previously, to save a life is to save the world), I still vacillated between the singular and the general; the unique and the totality. Secondary research was pointing us to longitudinal chains that were indeed alarming. Eighty decades earlier, the concept of biological existence was raised by Agamben with reference to the death camps of the Shoah. The Australian academic, Joseph Pugliese (2002; 2004), clearly connects the detention regime with Agamben’s Homer Sacer (1998), which refers to a person who could be killed without accountability. Yet, here we are, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, shockingly identifying parallels with homo sacer, of mere existence and worse. Research has established that refugees are generally framed by the emotion of fear, but the detention regimes in Australia offer no asylum from their fears—the opposite in fact! Security guards of detention centres for men, women, children and families are managed and employed on a roster basis. The same guards who are trained for security in maximum security jails housing people charged with heinous crimes are rostered into detention centres. Asylum-seeking-refugees have mostly experienced and/or witnessed horrors that most Australians would not watch on a crime or thriller television show. If part of a plot or character development, the visual and auditory abominations would be censored in Australia. Yet, here we have people who usually have literal scars, feltmemories and visual and auditory experiences who are subjected daily, and at night, to the fear of physical violence by other detainees and/or the prison guards. Even if some guards are not violent per se, prison culture, verbal ostracisation and persecution by the guards retrigger memories and possible post-traumatic stress. They live with ongoing fear for their lives. Ros Horin wrote Through the Wire (2004) as verbatim theatre. Let us pick up a cameo in the scene ‘Relationships in Detention’ of Susan, who is a practising psychotherapist, and Moshen, the detainee who was studying English at a university in Iran. Susan realises that following a devastating beating, Mohsen began displaying symptoms of the initial stages a psychosis symptom of which can be visual and/or auditory hallucinations. Mohsen tells Susan that he feels someone is in his room at night waiting to attack him. I have heard from at least five detainees that there are people, government spies of the countries from which they have escaped. With absolute conviction and terror, the spies are seen in the visitors’ yard of surveillance. At that time, the first decade of the twenty-first century, the majority of detainees were

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asylum-seeking-refugees who had escaped Middle Eastern totalitarian governments. Like Mohsen and Rami, the university students followed their own moral compasses rather than those of the regime. The Australian Government had a duty of care to protect their identities, as a matter of life or death for their families left at home. Equally, such detainees were too terrified to have one of us—their support visitors and friends—probe the possibility of someone being a spy. The mechanism that broke these people, with detention-induced psychosis, remained in place: Susan: The first call I got from Mohsen was at 11.30 one night. He was very disturbed. Mohsen could never sleep much … and he’d have terrible nightmares. But worse than the nightmares would be the feeling, the absolute conviction that there was someone in his room waiting to get him, waiting to attack him. Mohsen: I can hear voices, Susanne.17 They are whispering to me … soon they will shout. And the wall. I can feel it… I have to break down that wall. Susan: These nightmares and psychosis started after he had been severely beaten in Port Headland—twice. One time it was the police in riot gear-batons boots, the lot. Another time he was hauled into ‘Management Block’ and beaten till he was black and blue.

Later, in the scene ‘Pressure Building’, Mohsen tells Susan: One of my friends cut himself on—his artery—so much blood … and when the guard come [sic] he says, ‘Why don’t you finish the job’. ‘Shema’ by Primo Levi You who live safe In your warm houses, You who find, returning in the evening, Hot food and friendly faces: Consider if this is a man Who works in the mud Who does not know peace Who fights for a scrap of bread Who dies because of a yes or a no. Consider if this is a woman, Without hair and without a name With no more strength to remember, Her eyes empty and her womb cold Like a frog in winter. Meditate that this came about: I commend these words to you. Carve them in your hearts At home, in the street, Going to bed, rising; Repeat them to your children, Or may your house fall apart, May illness impede you, May your children turn their faces from you. (Levi, 1986, 11) 17

Moshen pronounced Susan as Susanne.

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Let us pause here to fully grasp this alarm signal. Australia, a Western democratic government, signatory to the Human Rights Conventions and Protocols such as the 1951 Refugee Convention; the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984,18 in the twenty-first century, is confining innocent, previously tortured and traumatised people in solitary prison cells. No trial and conviction! No access to legal assistance! No access to appropriate, timely or life-saving medical/ mental health assistance! Perpetrating acts of cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment, international laws were broken by the state as it intentionally seeks to reduce the human to worse than mere existence. Fashid, a pathologist in a hospital laboratory, speaks in the Through the Wire scene ‘Pressure Builds’: At this time, the Government started deporting people by force. They would raid the people’s room at 4am and handcuff them. Then a few guards would hold them down and force injection into them—to make them go quietly…. The department called it ‘doing extractions’. And the worse thing is … they freeze the decisions—they stop processing the Visa Applications. And most people were so worried, they couldn’t sleep. They would walk around all night— like ghosts.

In the same scene, ‘Pressure Builds’ Rami is telling Devorah: Rami: Me—I just try to sleep—for as long as possible. I want to kill time—just to make the hours pass. I don’t mix much with the other detainees. Some of them have no patience left. They can go crazy if you just say hello (Horin, 2004).

Above, Fashid and Rami speak of the detainees existing year upon year, in an unrelenting state of tension. Unable to sleep at night due to the fear, anxiety and terror related to apparently unresolvable and indefinite detention. Additionally, people detained told me they also suffered from memories of torture and trauma that amplified when they closed their eyes at night. Memories that precluded sleep, as did the ever-present deep grieving for their losses—family, friends, freedom, life as they knew it. After years of visiting behind the wires I saw how, not only the mental health of detainees deteriorated, but also their physiology changed. Years of incarceration that produced aching bodies that moved about like partially stooped, ponderous old men in pain. Shuffling about, their watery bodies seemed not to breathe, as if halting the breath would block at their nostrils the acrid smell. (Wainer, 2015, 85). In the scene ‘Rock Bottom’, Gaby refers to the transformation she sees in the detainees: Gaby: I watched people completely transform in the time they’d been in there. Like this Iraqi guy, an engineer, very intelligent, energetic—full of life. By the time he got out he was 18

Australia has ratified and is a signatory to those convention updates.The conventions recognise that those rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person (Natural law) that consider the obligation of states under the Charter of Human Rights, in particular Article 55, to promote universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms.

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withdrawn, depressed—distrustful of everyone, everything. His spirit was broken. He had lost himself. He had simply waited too long.

Further into the scene, Gaby relates the physical effects of a six-week hunger strike in the detention centre where she was working. Gaby: My job was to monitor them (the hunger strikers) with the medical staff. I wasn’t eating properly myself—couldn’t look at food. I was becoming very run down. My hair was falling out (Horin, 2004).

I visited Sara in the Villawood detention centre. In the Midrash ‘Hineni’, I observed that her hair has changed colour and structure. Lifeless. Her exquisite, long, glossy hair—bouncing curls—have been assassinated. She had to wash her hair with the same prison-issued soap as any convicted criminal in prison: ‘They took my shampoo’, she self-consciously explains. Silent still, I look deeply into her eyes (‘Hineni’ in Wainer, 2015). The theme of hair, a most personal aspect of the self, shows up in other secondary research. Bat-Sheva Dagan, a Polish–Israeli Auschwitz survivor, born in Łód´z in 1925, said she had asked herself what had been more painful: the tattooed number on her arm, as every prisoner not sent immediately to their death received; or the loss of her hair after it was shaved off on arrival. There’s no word in the dictionary to describe how human dignity was trampled on. The tattoo on my arm is just as visible today as it was back then … and this crown of mine was taken away … and I was turned into a pitiful creature. (cited Connolly, 2020)

Dagan said she felt even more dehumanised devastated when she was told that the hair was to be used to stuff mattresses. Hannah Arendt (1951) argues that: Where violence rules absolutely, as for instance in the concentration camps of totalitarian regimes,19 not only the laws … but everything and everybody must fall silent … Violence itself is incapable of speech, and not merely that speech is helpless when confronted with violence (xxxii).

Mohsen Soltani Zand began writing poetry inside the Villawood detention centre after three-and-a-half years’ incarceration: ‘The Noose’ By Mohsen Soltani Zand. If one person dies If one person dies, there is always one who will bury them. If a bird falls from the sky, there is one who will mend its broken wing. If a building collapses, someone will dig to rescue survivors. … We are the dying, just barely breathing. We are the birds, hearts pierced by the arrow of faith. 19

While Australia is not a totalitarian regime, the prevailing structural violence of the detention regime is politically legitimised.

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We cry out from beneath the rubble of humanity. Washed up by the flood to this shore. We are innocents who have kissed the noose of Australian democracy. (Used with permission of the author)

The Australian Border Force Act 2015 came into operation on 1 July 2015, the title of which has similar implications to the title of the Pacific Solution as discussed earlier. Among other things, the Act makes it a criminal offence, punishable by two years’ jail, for a person who works in the detention system to disclose any fact they learn while working in the system. Julian Burnside, QC, a notable barrister, asserts that the Act is intended to scare workers on Nauru and Manus Island into silence. In an extended orgy of self-congratulation, the Australian Government increased silencing and invisibilising mechanisms on the Gulags to prevent ordinary Australians on the mainland from knowing about the devastating treatment of the detainees. As crimes were becoming increasingly visible through social media and official reporting, an Act was passed that made reporting of criminal offences (e.g., the rape of a child) by qualified employees on the Gulags a criminal offence punishable with two years in jail. Immigration detention centres are a historically recent phenomenon in Australia, but they possess many of the characteristics of older closed institutions of incarceration. Modern principles of administrative law and government service delivery have not informed the manner in which the centres have operated. This has had many consequences, not least being the manifest inadequacies in detention centre mental health services. The Commonwealth’s failure to create agreements with the states in order to ensure access to state mental health services, the isolation of immigration detention health services from state health legislation and policy, and the delivery of detention health care by means of private contractual arrangements have in combination resulted in highly unregulated mental health services for detainees. Mental health clinicians working with detainees have been confronted by ethical challenges less commonly encountered in orthodox treatment settings. (Coffey, 2006, 67) A former nurse working for a detention centre as an operator reported at an inquiry that a doctor attended the detention centre five days a week. But detainees could only have appointments on the day allocated for their compound. Sometimes the wait for an appointment on the ‘right day’ could be up to three weeks, she said. Such uncaring attitudes are the violences that break the human beings incarcerated by the Australian Government. The following research from Project South in America is one example20 showing that medical abuse of detainees is rife in prison cultures. He said: ‘I am very sick. I have been complaining. I don’t know if they are really waiting to see me dead because, sometimes, they already see me on the floor laying crying, and not once, not twice, several times. All those things, sometimes make you hopeless and you

20

Citing the many examples from secondary research would stupefy the reader.

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know sometimes I feel like dying than to continue’. (Phone call to Project South21 from an immigrant detained at the Irwin County Detention Center, April 2020)

In 2016, a detainee on Manus Island reported that in January, when the temperatures are 25–30 °C (81–86 °F) with high humidity and possible daily rainfall, there was no running water in the detention centre for several days, not even for toilets. This was not an irregular occurrence, especially as water was at times turned off by the guards as a punishment. Similarly, research from Project South, (formerly the Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide, America) into the Irwin County Detention Center, shows that the absence of basic hygiene (water and soap) is typical of the negligence to which detainees are subjected. Everything is dirty; one shower for more than fifty people; one bathroom for all of us; I don’t even know how to give more details because it is all nasty, really nasty; only God is taking care of us here. (Letter from a Project South immigrant detained at the Irwin County Detention Center, April 2020)

Linked to an attitude of disdain with which detainees are regarded is the report of an asylum-seeking-refugee on Manus Island who smuggled out the photograph he took of two teeth in his food. It is unknown to whom the teeth, stained reddish-brown with betel juice,22 belonged. However as many of the locals on Manus island chew betel leaves, the offending teeth were most likely of a local. ‘This is the food they give us, always like this, always disgusting, … They treat us like animals, worse than animals’ (Doherty, 2017). A mass outbreak of food poisoning that affected about 100 asylum-seekingrefugees and the staff of Transfield, the then contracted managers of the Manus detention centre, insultingly was publicised to be gastroenteritis that was spread by unclean detainees. Later, Transfield management admitted to food poisoning causing mass diarrhoea. Like the above incident dehumanised the detainees, so did the Irwin Country Detention Center reduce the humanity of the detainees with food that is often spoiled with cockroaches in it. ‘The food is so bad that people can’t keep it down’ (Project South 2019). Administrative and operational cruelty are mechanisms associated with the intentionality of the governments’ detain, deter, deport mantra, which have been prevalent over too many decades. Hideous allegations of medical neglect have emerged from formal inquiries and whistle-blowers in the USA and Australia. The co-convener of The People’s Inquiry into Immigration Detention Centres, Professor Linda Briskman (2005), said the inquiry had been told of at least 10 people who had died in detention since 1999, despite common knowledge of more than ten deaths. Fatima Erfani, a mother of three detained on Christmas Island, died in January 2003 after being treated 21

Project South: An American non-profit influence watch organisation. Formally, The Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide (now stylised as Project South) organises support for educational, social, political, and economic issues in the Southern United States of America. Project South also provides leadership development and legal services for the advancement policy goals, primarily in education and immigration. 22 Betel nut leaves are typically chewed by the Manus locals, leaving their teeth stained a reddishbrown colour.

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incorrectly. She was suffering from high blood pressure but was instead treated for migraine and died from cerebral bleeding (Briskman & Goddard, 2005). Equally, The People’s Inquiry into Immigration Detention Centres (2005) documented an attempt by a 12-year-old boy to hang himself. To date, 2022, eye-witness reporting and official inquiries attest to ongoing suicides, unexplained deaths and deaths from medical negligence (Doherty, 2018; Millers, 2019; Monash University, 2021). The following account of a detainee in an Australian detention centre describes how those detained, like Levinas has described, feel forever changed. What becomes apparent here is that while the social and political architectonics of the detention centres are politically argued for, the Australian population is not aware that their government is violating the most basic human rights (and the other conventions) of each individual. As Mariam says: How can I describe this place? It is a place where no human being can ever forget. A place full of agony, deprivation, despair and sorrow. Everyone that came to me at Port Hedland said I deserved to suffer because I chose Australia as a country of freedom to live. Australia for me is a country of torture. (Samira et al. 2001, 3).

Alarm Signal 4: Human Commodities When humans are denigrated, humiliated and persecuted, the sanctity of all human life is threatened everywhere. Pictures drawn by children incarcerated on Nauru that depict their deteriorating mental health are dark and horrid. Innocent children are depicting themselves as commodities, the pawns in the politics that forgets the landscape of the human—the heart and the soul. As we conspire with the production of humans into commodities, we damage our own heart and soul of this nation.

Vasefi (2019), has accessed and published in The Guardian (25 August 2019) dark and disturbing drawings of young children who were incarcerated in detention centres in Australia and on the islands. With graphic insight their drawings starkly portray themselves, their families and the guards as non-humans: Indeed, as terrifying objects dismissed and disregarded. Vasefi, herself a refugee to Australia, astutely points out that these young children (as do all children) need all the nurturing and security they can get. Already the detention regime has transformed adults beyond the condition in which they arrived at Australia into deeply traumatised people. The criminal-penal system, into which asylum-seeking-refugees of all ages are unwittingly thrust, is actively creating a sub-generation of interrupted and suspended lives. People are condemned to live with detention-induced physical and mental illnesses. Astutely Vasefi writes that children are becoming adults who may never achieve their potential on any level. ‘Is that what we want as a country—to be creating further problems, rather than working towards a solution?’ (Vasefi, 2019). When their boats are intercepted, asylum-seeking-refugees are transported by the Australian Royal Navy to Australia, the Gulags and islands, in the holds of military or cargo boats and are allocated identity numbers according to the boat number. Reminiscent of times when a number was tattooed on the arms of people,

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asylum-seeking-refugees are known and referred to by the apparatchik only by their numbers. Thereafter guards and staff address them by their numbers. Consequentially, some very young children have forgotten their own names. To destroy the unique personhood of an individual is to withhold their name. Nyala Everson, a migration agent, reports: When they were taken to Curtin, the children— then aged 11 and 14 —became frightened and confused. They did not understand why they had been taken to a prison. Their possessions were confiscated and they were forced to wear the same clothes for two months. They have been separated from each other into different rooms for long periods of time. They are called by numbers, not by names, and are not allowed to see the nurse unless they show an ID card with their photo and number on it. (Mares and Newman 2005).

More recently, Mehdi Ali, a fifteen year-old boy, arrived at Australia in 2013. Despite his claim for refugee protection was formally recognised in 2014, the Australian government did not fulfil its legal obligation to protect him. Mehdi was imprisoned on Nauru and then at the Park Hotel in Melbourne for nine years. He was released in March 2022 to be re-settled in USA. Mehdi has written and spoken out ‘about his experience that was, in his words, “a complete trauma”. He watched, helpless to intercede, as a fellow refugee burnt himself to death, he was beaten by guards employed to protect him; and jailed without charge. (Doherty, 2022). A lengthier than usual cameo from the Midrash Hineni is included here for the reader to feel into the emotions of Sara’s and most others as they are locked up. In the Midrash ‘Hineni’ (see Appendix B) Sara’s experience is described: Ahmed’s Cousin, the Israeli, had been incarcerated on a Friday afternoon with no explanation of why she was where she was or for how long. ‘But who will tell me?’ Her near-hysterical repeated question was met with disinterest: we’ve-heard-this-terror-before. ‘It’s Friday. Everyone has gone home.’ someone tells Sara. ‘When do they come back?’ is her agonised cry. Immigration operating procedure is to incarcerate people on Friday afternoon, leaving them in the zone of terror until Monday. Sara had been inside for just long enough to learn that some detainees had been locked up in Vilewood (Villawood Detention Centre) for more than three and four years. This, too, is part of the villainous method of breaking people down. I met her, spoke Hebrew, and as she wrapped her arms around me, she collapsed onto my shoulder, her very long blonde hair a wee bit matted, entwining us. And she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Not hysterically. Sara sobbed the sob of shock, of fear turned terror, of the helplessness that precedes anger and with the life-force that precedes the automaton. I have seen people there as they slowly month by month release their life-force and begin to droop. Then tear-ridden, sleepless, baggy dark eyes, watery untoned bodies, un-styled hair and clothes stagger slowly around Villawood Detention Centre. For each one there arrives a moment when there no longer seems any purpose for holding on. They enter Villawood each according to their past circumstances: in touch with reality, demonstrating appropriate responses, speech patterns, relating, healthy bodies, alert minds, spunky personalities, hopeful. And slowly after months of waiting … waiting … no release

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… no visa … no family— No work. No autonomy. No exercise. No friends. No shade. No sun. No shelter. No clothes. No relating. No believing. No trust. No sleep. No relief. No release. No name. Ongoing, timeless incarceration with no end in sight, literally and liminally. The desert stretches out in front of them. The concrete wall of their compound is all. They stoop, bend, become watery, slow down and become the walking dead. An expiration takes place. ‘They took my shampoo’, she self-consciously explains. Silent still, I look deeply into her eyes. ‘And my money. Can you get my credit card? My cash?’ With that list, she remembers her mobile phone. ‘My phone—’Her voice quavers and becomes a wail. ‘My dad; I can’t call my dad, Devorah.’ It all pours out in Hebrew. Her Israeli accent gets to me and I have to look away. She shouldn’t see my tears. Right? (Wainer, 2015, 99–106).

The lens of the above cameo focuses on relating and Levinas’s ethics that asks us to value of each actor as the value of each unique individual is demonstrated in the Babylonian Talmud in the book of Sanhedrin 4:8 (37a): ‘Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world’. Levinas, too, takes up his discussion of the unique individual with reference to the Torah. He interprets the biblical claim that ‘the judge does not look at the face of everyone’ (Deut. 11:7) to mean that the individual Other who stands before the court of law is not looked at directly in the face. Judges avoid identifying with the individual but rather judge in accordance with universal laws and precepts, as though the individual were absent. Such is what Levinas called the contestation of uniqueness, and calls us to return to the recognition of each and relating with the unique individual. Relating with and taking responsibility for uniqueness is almost Levinas’ trope against generalisations that diminish—against totalism that erases. To surmount the ineluctable violence committed in the name of universal justice, Levinas proposes the reintroduction of the face-to-face relation. If the lofty ambitions of justice are not to be drowned in administration, he argued, ‘it is necessary that I rediscover the unique … each time as a living individual and as a unique individual who can find, in his very uniqueness, what a general consideration cannot find’ (Hanssel, 2009, 150). Levinas, too, was forever changed by his experience in an internment camp during World War II. Designated a Jewish POW, Levinas was separated from other French POW officers and sent to a special camp, Fallingbostel. He describes his years in the camp as a ‘parenthesis’ during which he and his fellow prisoners felt ‘no longer part of the world’ (Levinas, 1988, 91) and, confronted with the racism of the guards and local Germans, no longer even part of humanity. Levi (1986) also describes losing his sense of humanity in Auschwitz: Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes … he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself. He will be a man whose life or death can be lightly decided with no sense of human affinity. (27).

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Equally, Levinas heartbreakingly captures the demise of their humanity. In Fallenbostel, a brutal prisoner-of-war camp, ‘The dog was the only one who recognised us as men’ (Levinas, 1984, 90). The pattern of separation and segregation of the stranger occurs with notable regularity in the stories and accounts of seekers of asylum. The mechanisms are the same for Levinas and Levi, for Rami and Sara—separation, isolation, loss. Here follows the copy of correspondence between Auschwitz and I.G. Farben chemical trust. The words that follow are so offensive and shocking that a reader today will be jettisoned from any comforting stupor. Our aim of the quiet study is not to cause outrage. Rather it is for us to attend to the continuum. Where does our society lie as demonstrated by our linguistic conceptions? Primo Levi has alerted us to the inexorability of the movement into nihilism when a government dehumanises and commodifies. Humans within the totalitarian production line become commodities as the language in the Australian Government communications are about the ‘caseloads’ from ‘processing centres’. It is important to take cognizance that the Holocaust did not suddenly happen. It began with a trickle … hate speech … racism … violence against gendered others … state education that became indoctrination … I have transcribed with exactitude the communique that follows despite any perceived oddities. What follows was posted as evidence at the Nuremberg trials (see Box. 13.1). Box 13.1 From the Magazine | International Subject: Women Posted Monday, Nov. 24, 1947 Among the neatly filed business correspondence of Hitler’s grim Oswiecim (Polish for Auschwitz) concentration camp were some letters from an official of the I. G. Farben chemical trust. Last week excerpts from these letters were offered in evidence at the Nürnberg war crimes trial of 23 Farben [sic] directors. The excerpts: ‘In contemplation of experiments with a new soporific drug, we would appreciate your procuring for us a number of women.’ ‘We received your answer but consider the price of 200 marks a woman excessive. We propose to pay not more than 170 marks a head. If agreeable, we will take possession of the women. We need approximately 150.’ ‘We acknowledge your accord. Prepare for us 150 women in the best possible health conditions, and as soon as you advise us you are ready, we will take charge of them.’ ‘Received the order of 150 women. Despite their emaciated condition, they were found satisfactory. We shall keep you posted on developments concerning this experiment.’

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‘The tests were made. All subjects died. We shall contact you shortly on the subject of a new load.’ (Women at War! 1947)

Such are the commodities filial to camps and centres unchecked by care and compassion—unchecked by an ethical stance that considers the heart and soul, the sacred life of the Other.

Alarm Signal 5: Numbing to All the Alarm Signals Unless our social interactions are underpinned by ethical relations with other persons, then the worst might happen, that is, the failure to acknowledge the humanity of the other. (Levinas, in Bernasconi & Critchley, 2002, 13)

The Australian journalist, Saba Vasefi, has written extensively and informatively about the conditions and consequences of detaining children on the Gulags and in prisons. These young children need all the nurturing and security they can get right now. These children turn into adults and we’re already actively creating a sub-generation of deeply traumatised adults who may never achieve their potential on any level. Is that what we want as a country – to be creating further problems, rather than working towards a solution? (Vasefi, 2019)

Former member of parliament Dr Carmen Lawrence left the Australian Government and politics in 2002. A few years after, at a conference on mental health, she spoke of what could be considered a policy of “institutionalised sadism which has at its core the deliberate, systematic degradation and torture of our fellow human beings, treatment we would normally abhor.” The government’s approach to the now well-documented increase in mental illness among those held for prolonged periods in detention is a dismissive—‘So what … they brought it upon themselves.’ Sometimes, they simply deny that it is a problem. John Howard [the then prime minister of Australia], when challenged recently about the cruelty of holding children behind the razor wire, responded airily, ‘I believe that the action of parents who bring children into dangerous situations should be the subject of criticism rather than the government.’ He takes no responsibility at all … and is in effect suggesting we turn our faces away from their [refugees] welfare. (Lawrence, 2004)

With her words, ‘The Government encourages us to turn our faces away from the refugees’ (2004), Lawrence raises a harshness of the human heart that derives from or causes numbing. Successive governments have won elections based on what might be considered their and the voters’ numbed beings. Only in the federal elections of 2022, has a significant swathe of candidates been successful and elected to government on the platform of ending such heinous policies for asylum-seeking-refugees. For this

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author the collective political voice engenders hope for a corrective in policy and people. Turning one’s face away from the needy strikes at the heart of Levinas’s deplored un-responsibility, of which, he asserts, Heidegger was guilty. An interview in Le Monde in 1992 published Levinas’s claim that the absence of concern for the other in Heidegger and his personal political adventure is linked (Critchley & Bernasconi, 2002). At first reading, we might conclude that Dr Lawrence is referring to or separating the private and political parts of the self in a conscious or unconscious need to protect the self from the atrocities perpetrated in one’s own name as a member of parliament. A closer reading unveils a combination of the other alarm signals forming a more terrifying cause to be distressed: The Minister (of Immigration) [Senator Vanstone] implied that the experience of detention was not particularly harmful, even though so many of those in detention are depressed, because ‘I’m not sure that everybody would regard depression as a mental illness.’ Nudge, nudge—at least not sensible people like you and me (Lawrence implying Vanstone’s20 sentiments), just bothersome groups like the World Health Organisation [sic], The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry and the Commonwealth Department of Health. (Lawrence, 2004)

Senator Vanstone’s position, as rendered by Dr Lawrence, signifies the dissonance between the conception of the seekers of asylum and the Australian citizen. With regard to the ongoing and a more current dissonance during the COVID-19 global pandemic, a sentimental refrain ‘we are all in this together’ has been a common catchphrase of the Australian health minister, although this sentiment clearly does not extend to detained asylum-seeking-refugees living in overpopulated detention centres, enduring poor health, insufficient food and unhygienic and imposed filth in their environment. Public health organisations quickly identified detention centres, as sites of mandatory and often overcrowded social confinement, as extremely high-risk places for both infection and onward transmission of COVID-19. Before the end of March 2020, over 1180 health care professionals and epidemiologists called for the government to release people from immigration detention, flatly stating that, ‘failure to take action to release people seeking asylum and refugees from detention will... put them at greater risk of infection (and possibly death)’. Common to all expert advice were warnings that a failure to take action would not only endanger the health and lives of those in detention but would inevitably put the broader community at risk since detention centres are porous locations with staff and other personnel frequently moving in and out of them. Vogl et al. (2020). Turning one’s face away from the needy strikes at the heart of Levinas’s deplored un-responsibility, of which, he asserts, Heidegger was guilty. An interview in Le Monde in 1992 published Levinas’s claim that the absence of concern for the other in Heidegger and his personal political adventure is linked (Critchley & Bernasconi, 2002). With his comment about Heidegger’s personal and political selves, Levinas alerts us to a crucial philosophical moment that the Midrash methodology grounds in actual experience. We cannot fruitfully separate parts of ourselves. Both suppression and denial are concomitant self-protective mechanisms. How many of the members

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of parliament in successive government (internationally) have numbed parts of, or their entire selves, and were not aware of such mechanisms for protection and selfdefence? The Midrash methodology gave this author space for personal insight into how numb she had become: Only now, as I write these stories, do I realise how I had unconsciously numbed myself. How much numbing is just numb enough? … I remain numb. Just numb enough. And it is uncomfortable for me. I suppress my own fear and anxiety, push away those soft waves and feelings so that I can act (Wainer, 2015, 83, 87). The progeny of politics and the absence of natural justice, within the alarm signals of which we must take cognizance, are the accounts of jarring medical neglect in the USA detention centres. Like the affidavits were, almost word for word, the same as those that presented themselves upon the pages of ‘Cherry Ripe’ (see Appendix A) so, too, do reports and accounts at the USA detention centres mirror those submitted in Australia. One judge found that USA immigration officials had likely exhibited callous indifference to the safety and well-being of the detained immigrants at risk. The evidence suggests system-wide inaction that goes beyond a mere ‘difference of medical opinion or negligence’ (Southern Poverty Law Center in Vogl et al. 2020). Australian citizens, through the decades, are hurt by the detention regime—not only those released who are now Australian citizens but also those who visited the Villawood detention centre. Without implying comparability of scale and magnitude of the damage, yet upholding the principle of the parity of value of each individual life ‘Cherry Ripe’ (see Appendix A) and ‘Hineni’ (see Appendix B) provide examples of visitor injury: And so, heart pounding, rushing blood sounding in my ears, the smell of fear mingled with dry dust in my nostrils, I enter the lock-up compound, complete the security-check documentation, with further terror that I will be traced and found from the address I had to supply. And I join the queue—after a few years of visiting Villawood Detention Centre I have come to know or at least recognise enough people to have some companionable chats while waiting in the queue. However, when I started visiting, I often stood alone. Those days of queuing in the rain, in the heat up to 42 and 48 degrees on Christmas Day 2002, or in the winter’s cold of 10 degrees, always felt endless, raw and exposed (Wainer, 2015, 90).

Flare-ups inside the Villawood detention centre could happen without notice. I have seen such frightening sudden situations that have required guards, guns and body-handling in the visitors’ yard of surveillance. The environment and atmosphere inside were always edgy, fear filled, sad and tense. We were affected on every visit. ‘I don’t want to share space with them. These are not MY friends’, my inner voice whines. ‘Chair—me?’ I start lifting the white plastic bucket chair, noticing a few others looking at me. I can’t read this situation. ‘What is going on here?’ I feel prickly. But I can’t define the prickle. Embarrassment—yes? Frustration—yes? Rage at the situation—yes? But it’s something else … Is it my or their ‘something’? People are packed close to each other, all squeezing themselves under one shelter. Here under the shelter … I am nauseated by the smells of these foods … I’m panicking … I DON’T WANT to be here … (Wainer, 2015, 92).

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And: Perhaps it’s my fury, my defencelessness, my exposure to, yet again, the callous Australian Correctional Management processing officer that is now surfacing and twisting itself. I HAD to be polite. I had to denounce my desire to be treated with regard. I had to censure my response to the manner in which the guard spoke. I had to suppress that lioness instinct to attack the Australian Correctional Management officer. Always the thought close to the surface that if we visitors are so disregarded, how much more so are the people detained (Wainer, 2015, 93).

I am numb but not quite numb enough when I see Ahmed’s scars: ‘Look!’ he said to me. ‘Look … here … the marks from the torture’ he said, lifting his shift, turning to show front and back.

I panic. I am trapped. I have to look. To see. To witness. I have seen torture marks before now. ‘Please, God, don’t let me recoil; please give me the strength to cope with this sighting.’ (Wainer, 2015, 99–100). Some were still very young23 during their years of incarceration in Australian detention camps, where they witnessed the ongoing violence by the guards and selfinflicted bodily harm and suicide by some of those who were detained. Too easily, the Australian public, prompted by certain politicians and media accounts, tut-tutted about the ‘people like those’. A 10-year-old girl’s desperation was not revealed: In Woomera, month after month, their condition deteriorated. In particular, the ten-year-old girl stopped eating, stopped looking after herself, had trouble sleeping, and began scratching herself constantly. … on a Sunday night, while her parents and younger sister were at dinner, she took a bedsheet and hanged herself. (Burnside, 2007, 26)

When alarm signals are presented, we have an inescapable responsibility to raise the red flags. Did Senator Vanstone believe her own words? Was she demonstrating doublespeak? Which Australian citizen believed that depression can be disconnected from mental illness? Were they ignorant of the truth about detention centres? Sister Connelly addresses a Senate inquiry on behalf of A Just Australia in her report titled Closed Hearts Closed Borders. She is speaking out against becoming numb—shutting down. These attacks being planned on the right to life and safety of people escaping from oppressive regimes say a great deal about Australia. They demean and betray us. They reduce our humanity. This is not to argue that we should treat people well only for our own sake, but it points out that it follows as night follows day, that our actions not only say who we are but make us who we are. (Connelly, 2006). 23

Several authors have described high levels of depression, anxiety and PTSD in adult asylum seekers detained in Australia. They have also observed that detention may profoundly undermine the parental role, leaving children with little protection or comfort. Considerable evidence exists that refugee children themselves are at significant risk of developing psychological disturbance (PTSD, depression, anxiety and sleep disorders), but they frequently present with mixed symptoms, not necessarily fulfilling a single diagnostic category. The likelihood of psychological disturbance increases with the synergistic influence of multiple risk factors, including observing parental helplessness, separation from parents, witnessing or experiencing traumatic events, and the time taken for their immigration status to be determined.

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‘Cherry Ripe’ exposes how ‘we tune out, we turn away, we avoid. Finally we forget, and forget we have forgotten. A lacuna hides the harsh truth’ (see Appendix B). And in ‘Hineni’: ‘[B]y distancing myself, I reveal my need then, as now, to protect myself from fully feeling, from completely comprehending’(see Appendix B). Anchoring our foresight to the heart of Levinas’s ethics, the sight of political life is transactional. Politics is the view of humanity as interchangeable persons, of reciprocal relations in a quid pro quo. The substitution of persons, one for another, is the primal disrespect, making possible exploitation itself (Levinas, 1991). The incarceration and suffering in the context of my research, the asylum-seeking-refugees per se are the alarm signals of which we must be vigilant. They serve to alert us to an incipient chain of absences. The absences of ethical and moral responsibility (lacunae)—to which our response is ‘never again’. In accordance with Primo Levi’s recommendation, we have now quietly studied. Why does Levi suggest quiet study? Arguably, he is suggesting, in place of loud, vociferous, anti-government slogans and demonstrations, responsible (able to respond) actions and communications. Readers of this book, you will decide if excavating answers to address quiet study is within the scope of your whole self, your passions and interests, your fields of study and your incipient research projects. I propose that Levi also points us to the disabling and destructive chains that are filial to previous examples of earlier nation states. The Nazis stripping Jews of citizenship in 1935 was not sudden. The previous six years of 400 decrees marginalised and removed Jews from civic, professional and economic life in Germany. To ensure the economic success of tourism and the 1936 Olympic Games, Hitler had signs and obvious clues temporarily removed from public places. He and other world leaders knew his policies were abhorrent. By the time that Jews and other marginalised people were transported to concentration camps and death camps, they were stateless. Like other scholars (see Kepnes, 1992, Fackenheim 1994, Levi, 1986) Gillan’s (1998) astute book is not another attempt to document the horror of the Shoah. Instead, he chronicles a world for those, like us, who have read and listened to previous accounts. Gillan adduces that after the Shoah, we can no longer be confident that reason possesses the truth. Germane to our landscape of time—after reflecting on the history of the past—knowledge and being, Gillan assesses the relationship of reason to the truth: Reflecting on history, reason and discourse we come to realise that the distance of discourse from itself, in the heteronomy of reason (through language), is like the ‘difference between desire and its self-deceptions, as well as the distance between action and its manifest intentions’. Between the concept to itself, ‘reason is not equal to itself. The gap lies in the character of rationality that makes reason unequal to its own consciousness and its own constructions’. (Gillan, 1998, 3)

Rationality before it can claim to be reason must pass through the hell of Auschwitz and all that of which Auschwitz is a symbol: the anguish of the solitary human being before the dominance of evil, the terror in the loss of solidarity, the erasure of all hope, the pure nothingness …

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The anonymity in terms of which individuals were processed for death or survival at Auschwitz reveals the terrorism of the universal when the moral, existential substance of individuals is surrendered up to categories. Can reason speak in the face of that anguish and terror? ( Gillan, 1998, 51) We have seen the unwitnessable stare at us from vacant eye sockets in the irretrievable breach of the self-deception of reason.

Space Two: Ethical Signals for Quiet Study After such knowledge, what forgiveness? (Eliot, 1920) The truth of the utterance is only recognisable if the desire for truth in the form of credible communication first animates speaking. (Gillan, 1998).

Further analysis of the Midrashim identifies signals other than the alarm signals. Signals that give prominence to ethical events are analytically distilled from the broad, complex spaces of the Midrashim. Quiet study of this research, these Midrashim, draws out the responsible, the transcendent and the infinite. Relating and ethical events dwell within the panoptic view of the multivalent Midrashim-as-data. Unless I, as a researcher, had proposed more traditional research methods specifically to inquire if, and of what nature, ethical relating dwelt in the panopticon of the detention regime, the ecology of Levinas’s ethics typically would have remained unknown. Ethical relating shows up as soul-filled cameos within the Midrashimas-relata. Substantiating such relata with secondary findings, we account for their, albeit, wholly unanticipated presence. Lived lives gather on the continuum of alarm signals as polar opposite signals. Less is known about the phenomenology of ethics behind the wires, on the islands and across the deserts. Small communities are formed and are forming of citizens and detainees, of detainees with each other, of people unwittingly crammed together on a boat or parched and struggling through a desert, of many different cultural, familial, linguistic, religious and geographic backgrounds. ‘Face to face’ in the Villawood detention centre visitors’ yard of surveillance, in Darwin maximum security jails, on a boat crossing the Mediterranean Sea, amid the tyranny of coyotes, people— strangers—recognise the humanity of the other and relate with heart and soul— responsibly, dialogically, in Hineni moments. Equally are the ethics of quietude as we experienced with Nooshin in the Darwin detention centre (DAL1). Silently I looked into Nooshin’s eyes. Gently I placed my hands on the table between us. And in a movement that is exquisitely not of my own volition I turn my palms open and upwards as they rest on the table between Nooshin and myself. Holding my eyes with hers, never glancing away she slowly tentatively ever so cautiously lowers her palms onto mine. They are warm. Soft. Feminine. Palms only just touching. Eyes holding each other. Tears.

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Slowly, silently one tear by one tear they move from her eyes into which I continue to gaze. My heart opens. Dare I say our hearts open. A moment that is forever. And the tears flow. Still tentative. Still silent.

We return to my heart-opening island of Lampedusa and the young Eritrean lad of whom we have already heard. My questioning his story of desert survival, the incredulity in my eyes and the reserve in my voice were wholly inappropriate. My being was shocked, and I, this being, was shocking. Already being with him, my being held no possibility of his language as the vehicle for a lie. Not here in the Mediterranean heat; not here in the church square where we met. Here, we met in the ethics of trust and with faith. Our young man’s telling, sometimes pausing with contorted face, excruciating memories. I lost myself, the self’s desire for being an impeccable researcher. “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” I assured him.

This moment is vividly reminiscent of Ahmed in the ‘Hineni’ Midrash. Entreating me to “Look! Look here” at the scars on his body as proof of the multiple sites of torture he had endured. “They didn’t believe my story.” In the Villawood detention centre visitors’ yard of surveillance truth was spoken and received. I believed Ahmad. Stories of torture, visions of gnarled scars on latte bodies, were already known to me. But … on my Lampedusa island, I stammer “My problem is that I have never heard this story before ….” He looked to Patricia with pleading eyes that refused his tears. He knew that she had the words that he could not find. “It’s not about belief.” Patricia quietly soothed the atmosphere. “This is about shame. It’s complex and multidimensional. He is ashamed that he had to steep so low to put ‘such bad’ into his body. He is also guilty that he survived and others didn’t.” I do not know how much English he understood of her soothing tones as he leaned into her body, and she placed her arm around his shoulders. She was his guardian. Her responsibility would not permit me to betray or further shame him in any way. Three Others, strangers in every possible way to each other, standing on the island that opened my heart, my Lampedusa, responsible and trusting. Promptly, shifting his stance, his words transported us to Libya. Speaking in a manner of pressured speech,24 he told of the other refugees with whom he slept, ate and learned about life. In particular, he wanted to tell me about the older man who ‘looked out’ for him. A delightful grin that formed as he confirmed with Patricia that he used ‘looked out’ correctly further endeared them both to me. Unlike my lack of knowledge of drinking oil to fill the stomach as a method to survive in the African desert, his account about the people smugglers and child traffickers was already well known to me. This older man (typically and unlikely to be more than in his late 24

Pressured or pressed speech is a clinical term used for symptoms of a range of mental pathologies. My use here is not diagnosing or intending the ascription as a symptom of mental illness. Instead, the term is intended to describe the rhythm and speed changes in his speech patterns. The speed and pattern closely resembled pressured speech.

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twenties, as he was described) coached Kidane (name changed) in survival skills. Life or death, be trafficked or killed, his antenna had to be on high alert day and night. What are the effects of ‘being on 24/7’? As he described years of nil to peaceless sleep until he reached Lampedusa, I was tensing up and felt creeping anxiety as I listened to him. What will the tenor of his ensuing life be after the ongoing, relentlessness of his sympathetic nervous system being activated into acute stress responses? ‘Cherry Ripe’ and ‘The Garden of Hope’ (see Appendix C), reveal the adrenal burn out I experienced as a visitor. Chronic activation of the fight or flight survival mechanism impairs health. Oops! I digress from the ethical signals in this story. I notice how easy it is to attend to the alarming (and in terms of neuro-physiology we are told it is normal)! Yet, here they are. Those ethical signals are already present in the above paragraph, as multi-layered within the site of the Midrash; Patricia and Kidane; Kidane and his older man. The older man is to Kidane as I was to Rami. “Devorah,” he told me one day inside the Villawood detention centre, “you are my whole family.” Ami (name changed), ‘the old man’, mentors and coaches Kidane on how to recognise a child trafficker, a people smuggler or a bad man who wants to take your money; how to know what to eat; what to accept and from whom; and who gives us the right work. “Mostly he taught me to stand up tall like the man I am.” (He was 14 years of age.) “I will show you big story, Miss Devorah. Patricia knows. Now you will know my pain like the rock.” Kidane and Ami got on a boat together. In fact, Kidane stressed that Ami pushed him onto the boat. “Ami knew the too many people and how to get on.” Kidane lost time. They were in the middle of the enormous waters (the Mediterranean Sea) when Ami pushed him to the edge of the boat. Kidane described how Ami truly had to push “using too much energy” to get him through the “tightly packed with too many souls”. ‘Miss Devorah, Patricia knows Ami didn’t have that … what’s the word …’. ‘Spare?’ fills in Patricia. ‘Yes that sp…. energy. He already showed me, we must hold onto our energy.’ Ami always put Kidane first. Now, at the edge of the boat, Kidane could breathe fresh air for the first time. “No vomit. No toilet stuff.” (There was no toilet on the overcrowded fishing style boat. People tried to aim overboard, but small children and women who are usually unable to do so would typically be designated an area for their toileting space.) Suddenly, Kidane’s voice rose in a sound intended to describe the increasing size of the waves. He crouched as he pulled me down next to a wall, giving me the experience of towering waves ‘like this wall’. I was so engulfed in the story of this natural storyteller that I was utterly unprepared for what Kidane was now saying, with assisting interjections from Patricia. He backtracked in his telling. It seems that in response to Ami’s need to pee, Kidane gave him the spot at the edge of the boat. Now Kidane was deeper in the wall of people when the sudden huge waves pound the boat. “That’s how I lost him.” I—staying with his silence; him—nodding his head. I felt my heart pounding in my chest. This time I will stay with his words, I affirmed to

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myself, also nodding, as if in sync with his old man style of nodding. Silence. Now his eyes turned towards the earth. “I can’t live.” Patricia puts her arm around his shoulder and again pulls him close to herself. That sudden big wave only ‘wet us’ as it engulfed and took the closest person in his life, his everyone and everything. “I was only wet. Just water.” Kidane’s anguish is born of his trauma of watching helplessly as Ami was washed like a grain overboard. Compounding the loss of Ami is the thought that it should have been him washed overboard, if not for Ami needing to pee. Kidane survived and is now suffering from survivor syndrome. It was meant to be him who went overboard. He thought he was kind to the man who was kind to him. But he was not kind. He was ‘greedy’ to be alive. Levinas, too, lived with the monstrous pain of survivor syndrome that he describes as ‘a tumour in the memory’, with reference to the Shoah, during which his entire family was murdered in Lithuania (his wife and daughter were hidden in France). Over a quarter of a century ago, our lives were interrupted and doubtless history itself. There was no longer any measure to contain monstrosities. When one has that tumour in the memory, twenty years can do nothing to change it. Soon death will no doubt cancel the unjustified privilege of having survived six million deaths. (Levinas, 1996)

Earlier, we read about Tekle (name changed) in connection with crossing the Sonora Desert into the USA. He still lives with the ongoing visceral memories. “Even now, I can’t talk [about it].… It hurts.… It is very painful.” The ethical moment he describes is when he takes up his respond-ability to the screaming women—his Hineni. The women were defenceless against smugglers who would come at night, drunk or on drugs. ‘They would come and drag the women away. It was painful to see. You think of your own family. It got worse and worse and worse. You could hear the [women] screaming.’ Tekle says he was beaten by the smugglers when he objected to such harsh treatment of women, but he didn’t care if he lost his life. ‘In my culture, you don’t just abandon people; you do what you can to help them. After what they did to them [including rape], it hurts.… Even now I can’t talk [about it].… It hurts.… It is very painful.’ (Kuwonu and Donavan, 2019). Above, we see the deep humanity of people in conditions that would gobble up any decency in a morally bereft person. In Australia, despite stylised media reporting or public assumptions, the asylum-seeking-refugees are not terrorists or people seeking to appropriate our way of life, our jobs. Susan’s response in Through the Wire sets the tone of the ethical paradigm by first taking her responsibility to the Others. ‘I was determined to see for myself what was happening in the detention camps’—and secondly, by her gut reaction—‘I was shocked by the lack of reaction of the Australian people’. The great rolls of razor wire were like a symbol of everything barbaric suddenly sprung up in Australia. And I wondered what had happened to this country (Horin, 2004).

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Susan responded to a trigger. Something shocked her into action. Preceding her action was a feeling—outrage and shock. She is outraged by the lack of reaction of the Australian people to the SIEVX tragedy. Three hundred and sixty-one mostly women and children drowned with very little outcry from the Australian people. The lack of reaction typifies the indifference that Levinas condemns. Despite the Australian Governments’ malevolent rhetoric, those attempting to arrive in Australia are not ‘people like those’, as was the catchphrase of the then prime minister that became a mantra for ordinary people who lacked knowledge, understanding and curiosity. Successive descriptors ascribed asylum seekers as manipulators—holding to ransom the good people of Australia—by throwing their children overboard. The irony is apparent. Juxtapose Kidane’s helpless anguish of losing his best friend overboard with the insistence of the then prime minister, John Howard, that children and infants were wilfully thrown overboard25 to manipulate the government into permitting them to arrive at Australia. Gillan’s (1998) assessment of truth in his book titled Rising from the Ruins calls into question the direct relationship between reason and being has bearing for us at this juncture as he clarifies that by virtue of being, or the being of a personage—in our instance, a being with positional power—‘there is no simple identification of truth with being’ (Gillan, 1998, 9). The ‘Children Overboard’ incident per se is not the ethical event to which we turn. Rather, it is the moment Commander Banks repeatedly insisted that at the time of the incident, no children were thrown overboard. Despite being statistically outnumbered Commander Banks held true, insisted emphatically, under oath, before the Senate Committee that ‘no children were thrown overboard [from SIEV 4], no children were put in the water, no children were recovered from the water’ (Senate Inquiry, 2002). In Australia, deep, meaningful and, for some, long-lasting relationships develop between detainees and their visitors (offshore, they are letter writers). Albeit living within fixed systems and structures, the people I met were ‘neither rigid nor fixed’. The Midrashim illuminate relationships wherein the detainees are not victims. Power dynamics shift between the free and the locked up. Freedom is nuanced and dynamic. Freedom was not always associated with the physically free when interpreted through the multiple layers of consciousness the Midrashim reveal. Relationships are built, some ongoing. Each is distinct from the other. Some pair combinations are similar to other documented and researched relationships, such as incarcerated people and lawyers; victims and victors; Jews and the Righteous Gentile; welfare workers and clients. Yet the characteristics and qualities of the relationships in the Midrashim aggregate to reveal an ethical space that goes beyond the wires, oceans, islands and deserts. People are prompted to initial involvement for diverse reasons. As their time and emotional landscapes change, remaining connected and the nature of connection change too, reminding us that Levinas points to humans who are not fixed and closed like atoms. Equally, our relationships are open and dynamic. Ros Horin

25

The Children Overboard incident, also known as Children Unthrown, was the subject of a senate inquiry about SIEV 4, 7 October 2001.

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(2004) in the scene ‘Relationships in Detention’ tenderly portrayed the dynamic flow of relating from the inside out and the outside in: Devorah: Eventually I said to Rami, ‘if we’re going to spend many hours, just you and me sitting and talking together, I need an equal—a relationship of equals. I don’t want … I can’t relate to the victim. I want Rami to show up. Before that it was like ‘Yes Devorah, thank you Devorah …’ But I didn’t want to sit in Villawood and be the therapist. That didn’t feel right for me. I wanted to get behind the polite mask. Rami: I could feel her actually. She was driving for one hour, you know. Until she gets to Villawood Detention Centre only to see Rami who is a detainee, not an Australian citizen. Can you imagine that? It’s a very, it’s a big feeling. Devorah: I just somehow thought … ‘if he’s been invisible for three years, it’s time for him to show up. Nobody should be invisible.’ Susan: Sometimes on the phone late at night, when I was fading, Mohsen would say. Mohsen: Your battery is flat Susan. Susan: … and he’d make a silly voice. Mohsen: I don’t think the old car will make it up the hill! Susan: And I thought “maybe I won’t”. Devorah: Rami used to phone me, sometimes at night, and make me laugh. He would have me in absolute fits of laughter. That touched me, that somebody in his situation, would go to the effort to make me laugh.

Transcending fear and rhetoric, the inescapable ethical responsibility—the Hineni event—is experienced. Levinas clearly describes his work as a new paradigm of thinking that is other than normative ethics,26 where ethics cannot be instantiated. Rather, consideration of the Other as within the texture and fibre of the way one views life itself constitutes the paradigm. In his discussion of ‘other’ and the ‘same’, Levinas is clear that ‘to be I is, over and beyond any individuation that can be derived from a system of references, to have identity as one’s content. The I is not a being that always remains the same but is the being whose existing consists in identifying itself, in recovering its identity throughout all that happens to it’ (Levinas, 1991). In all his works, Levinas thematically calls the self to show up for and to engage with the Other. Above, we see that Devorah inspires the deferential detainee: ‘I want Rami to show up’. The ethical relation is a description from the point of view of an agent in the social world and not a spectator of it. This is the movement of Levinas’s thinking that Derrida compares to the movement of a wave on a beach. Always the same wave, returning and repeating its movement with deeper insistence.

26

Normative ethics lie within moral philosophy as a systematic description of what makes acts right and wrong. Non-normative is the absence of prescriptive theory. According to Levinas, ethics is the relationship per se that is between ethics, responsibility, the other and being.

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The Midrashim are instructive, offering examples of cameo Hineni moments— that is, the visitor first shows up through the wire before befriending and advocating for the detainee. “What can I bring for him?” was my dad’s gruff, circumspect assent. After some time had passed: Dad and Mahmud standing arm in arm at the wire fence, looking out through the chicken-wire that separates the visitors-yard-of-surveillance from the living-quarters yard. And then, as they turn, I see them clasp hands … (‘The Garden of Hope’).

Ethical Signal 1: Acting with Moral Conscience Commentaries on the Torah in Etz Chayyim (2001) explicate obligations that are addressed to people both in the singular and in the plural, recognising that the individual and society are equally responsible and accountable. This lens abundantly informs the Midrashim. However, such an ethic is not the preserve of the Torah. Revealing his ethical stance, Rami, who was a young Iraqi student before he fled from the Saddam Hussein regime, says in Through the Wire (2004), scene ‘Rami’s Story’: Rami: It was during the Gulf War. I was 19 and still a student. Devorah: He was studying in the hospitality industry. Rami: I was doing my work experience as a concierge at the reception desk at a 5 star hotel. At that time we had many foreigners staying there—journalists working for all the major news agencies like Reuters, Visinews, CNN. Peter Arnett the well-known journalist was there at that time. We also have a group of United Nations arms inspectors staying at the Hotel at that time … Suddenly the Government General Security called the Hotel front desks departments to a meeting and they gave us this briefing: Rami describes the briefing behaviours that he, as a young student acting with a moral conscience, refused to carry out. Rami: Then they took me into General Security for one and half months and … It was not a prison where they took me. It was not a jail … there was different. When they arrest someone they just tie you up—on the eyes and hands—you feel the car is moving—then suddenly you are shocked. Where am I? Where have they put me? It was just a small hole in the ground27 —in the dark. A small hole one metre by one metre. Metal door—nothing in it. No window—no light just darkness …

Rami describes the torture he suffered. Upon release from that hole of torture, Rami was instructed to perform according to that briefing—or be killed. 27

Saddam Hussein was seen emerging from such a hole underground, surrounded by guns aimed at him, when captured by the USA troops in 2003.

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Rami: They gave me three days to get back to work. And in that three days I managed to … escape. (Horin, 2004)

Rami knew that he, the individual, could not behave as the leaders of his society required. Perversely, upon arrival as an asylum-seeking-refugee, he was then locked up in the Villawood detention centre for almost four years. In the Midrash ‘The Garden of Hope’, the young social worker who carried soup to a client family in Soweto, like Rami, also exemplifies one who cannot accept the commands and constraints of their country’s repressive system. She had been acting in her professional social worker capacity and was jailed. She, too, was acting with moral conscience by going into Soweto and—when caught—her thought was for her clients and the food before herself. Rosie was intercepted (by the police) and jailed as an enemy of the state … ‘The whole pot of soup fell to the ground—wasted’, she wailed to me. ‘How dare they waste the food that so many desperately need.’ (‘The Garden of Hope’).

Levinas suggests that the other cannot be located in the ‘system of references’— that is to say, references such as ‘asylum seeker’ or, in the case of Rosie, ‘enemy of the state’. Rather they can be found in the transcendence of the face. Indeed, Rami and Rosie radiate the illumination of the Other in the paradigm that refuses to posit them as closed or as fixed as an atom when we say ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘enemy of the state’. Levinas argues that without any pre-reflection or any notion of reciprocity, without any specific purpose, there is a ‘non-indifference’ to them—I reach out and act accordingly. This is always my responsibility to anOther who calls out to me for assistance and justice. Levinas’s work reveals that he is writing with his mind, intellect, heart and soul as he argues for an ethics other than knowledge—the relationship itself that is ethical.

Ethical Signal 2: Voice … Agency On first reading Akhmatova, I rejected any connection with a Leningrad prison during Stalinist Russia and the Villawood detention centre. Yet by the time I was writing the ‘Hineni’ Midrash, the account of Ahmed jolted me into realising I had rejeced a Russian account due to the scale—Stalin’s mass crimes against humanity. Thereby, I had missed the uniqueness, the value, of each individual—in Russia and the Villawood detention centre. The space revealed was not of scale—it was about agency. When personal voice is removed, who speaks out? When people are invisibilised, who presences them and accounts for them as living beings, without altering their intrinsic, transcendent otherness? Rereading her epic poem, I was struck by the similarities of the lived-experiences that we have examined and that Akhmatova took up agency for those in the queue in poetry. ‘[W]hat had previously been just a face’ evidences Levinas’s vis-à-vis. Always centring his discussions on the knowledge inherent in interpersonal relating,

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Levinas reflects on the rights of individuals and how they are inextricably linked to those of others. The link to be explicated here is less about the tribulations of the visitor, as shown by Akhmatova and the visitor to Rhode Island Maximum Prison, and more about the Hineni of the visitors. We enter the Villawood detention centre and participate; we are phoned at home; we participate in each other’s lives. It is only by responding to him that I become aware of the arbitrary views and attitudes into which my uncriticised freedom always leads me, and become responsible, that is, able to respond. It is then that I see the need of … doing justice to the other in my thought and in my action. (Levinas 1961, 15).

Ethical Signal 3: Hineni Participation is a way of referring to the other: it is to have and unfold one’s own being without at any point losing contact with the other. (Levinas).

In Acting from the Heart (2007), Judy McLallen describes the first time she met Hassan inside the Villawood detention centre. At that time, no one had ever visited him. I saw a man crouching behind the wire and staring into the visitors’ area. Noone visited him, so he stayed inside the detainees’ compound … he looked blindly straight ahead, still as a rock. ‘Who’s that?’ I asked. … ‘That’s Hassan … He’s got no-one and he’s lost his family.’ She [Kerry] introduced us and immediately he launched into a tirade of complaints that lasted, I swear, a good 20 min. He’s mad … what’ve I done? Suddenly he just stopped talking. I looked … ‘Will you visit me again?’.28 That day I stepped into a world I’d never seen before; a friendship built on dead men’s shoes, a sense of protectiveness that overshot all my Jewish mothering attributes. (Mares & Newman, 2007, 9). Like Judy, the visitor-advocates experienced what Levinas (1969) proposed as the first act that has no cause—namely, the inescapable response-ability to the concrete conditions of the detainee to whom we first offered friendship, then support and hope. We returned again and again—and then again. Three years after first meeting Judy, Hassan wrote the poem ‘The Visitor’—he slowly takes up his own voice.

28

Judy did visit—again and again—until, after more than five years, Hassan was recognised as a genuine refugee and released with a visa. Today, he has converted his Baghdad University accounting degree to Australian qualifications and is studying a master’s degree in Economics and Commerce. He is an Australian citizen.

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‘The Visitor’ by Hassan Sabbagh Have you ever seen someone who loves his torturer? Have you ever heard about someone loved in his fifties? I am that one When she is coming I start shaking My heart dancing Embarrassing Like a teenager meeting his girl for the first time She is as gentle as the breeze of a spring morning The rose in first blooming A butterfly She is a balsam on the wound She is so gorgeous

At this juncture, it may be easy to conclude he is writing to or of his lover. But, no: When I see her I forget my suffering, my torture and my deprivation, She makes me happy. Who is she? She is the old woman who comes from faraway. She is the little girl who heard of asylum seekers, She is young and middle-aged Australian women. (Scott & Keneally, 2005)

Hineni is feeling. Through the Wire, scene ‘First Connections’ captures the first Hineni day in concrete terms—as felt-experience. Susan and Devorah, respectively, went through the wire: Susan: The first time I was out there, I met this, absolutely haunted, frightened, devastated young man …’ Please find me a lawyer … please I need a barrister’. He was going from person to person to person telling his story, or bits of it. There were lots of people and he was sort of circling and beseeching ‘please I need … this is my case …’ That was Mohsen. He tried to tell me all this in his broken English—but it was like Double-Dutch at that point. At that time I had no idea about legal processes—RRT (Refugee Review Tribunal)—or any of it. But I could feel his urgency. I could feel his need. His fear was palpable. (Horin, 2004).

In this scene, Susan’s ‘I could feel his urgency … his need’ is, according to Levinas, the injunction for an exemplary in which, prior to the reorientation of thinking, we experience meaning. To achieve this new radical mindset, we are required to be open to experiencing the other person as they are. However, a very different experience of feeling the other is sketched in my own words: Devorah: I landed up in a big circle around one of the trees … being shy in crowds, I’d just sit and observe, and I turned to this very still person next to me and said ‘Please forgive me for being so quiet, but I am actually shy’, and we exchanged names … that was Rami. And we got talking.

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Albeit shy, I say “Hineni. Here I am making myself available to you.” This chesedlike act is the showing up that began as I entered the Villawood detention centre and as she opened a conversation with Rami. And, more, I feel Rami—he is very ‘still’. Hineni—I present myself. Yitzchak met Mahmud with ‘Hineni’—despite all else, ‘Here I am.’ Mahmud was in need. I had to ask. My intuition told me that an older male, with the common bond, would be good for Mahmud … Tears seeped out of their usually well-closed ducts when I saw the terror that overwhelmed Yitzchak when he passed through the detector … Dad, ashen-faced, was frozen to the spot, his hands above his head as if a gun was pointed at him … Then: “Mahmud, please meet my father, Yitzchak. Dad, this is my friend, Mahmud.” (‘Hineni’).

Ethical Signal 4: Engaging with the Others My uniqueness lies in the responsibility I display for the other. I cannot fail in my duty towards any man any more than I can have someone. (Levinas). What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. (Bishop Tutu)

At the time I began visiting the Villawood detention centre, it could not be found in a street directory. That was in the year 1999. This is where I first, consciously and unconsciously, experienced the asylum-seeking-refugee as other. According to Levinas, they were wholly Other with absolutely no possibility of reducing any one of them to the same. This highlights the impossibility of reducing any one unique person to be considered the same as another detainee. Equally, in the context of Levinas’s ethics, the same could hold the connotation of the self. Each asylum-seeking-refugee was other than myself. Those I met were so poignantly different, and their manifold differences precluded any thought of comprehending their alterity. Inside, as a visitor, I became aware of certain unanticipated qualities of interaction between a few Australian visitors and the detainees they were supporting. And it is these qualities that I began to examine. The few Australian visitors were, like myself, volunteers advocating for specific asylum-seeking-refugees who had been incarcerated for three or more years. We took an advocacy role for specific detainees to help the, gain recognition as refugees, receive visas and subsequently be released. We have referred to the engagement of advocates, such as Susan with Mohsen, Devorah with Rami, in the Villawood detention centre. Of engagement, Howard (name changed), one of the students who visited DAL1 (and the maximum security jail), writes: On Saturday morning at DAL1 (called The Lodge) we met with Nooshin (name changed) and her seven-year-old-son, from Iran. They had arrived by boat from Indonesia and had been in detention for a little over one month. A SERCO guard

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escorted them to a small room, like a vestibule, connected to the DAL1 dining room. … At the adjacent table was a young 17-year-old asylum-seeking Kurdish girl called Naza (name changed) that was just finishing up a visit. We heard her speak English and invited her to join us and interpret. She eagerly agreed. Our first barrier in communicating was overcome. (Midrash written for debriefing Howard by Dr Wainer). As we have established, our first visits in 2000 and 2001 were prompted by our incredulity of the Australian media and politicians’ portrayal of these asylum seekers. In a move of intellection, these asylum-seeking-refugees were relegated to the realm of Buber’s (1958) It. Intellection correlates with one’s perception of some-thing, or one’s thoughts about some-thing and makes up the domain of the It. Anyone who enters into a relationship with a detainee conceived of as the Other, the stranger, is confronted with the issue of Buber’s two I’s: I–It and I–Thou significations. Following Buber’s I–It modality, intellection is when the I explores no more than the surfaces of the other, not becoming engaged with them as whole beings. There is a focus on and a speaking of rather than a relating to or with. Here follows a substantial cameo from Cherry Ripe that illustrates relating to or with inside Villawood detention center (see Appendix A). The week that I met Rami in the Villawood detention centre, I learnt it would be his birthday. I take agency for Rami, who cannot conceive of celebrating his birthday ‘inside’. Worse—after two-and-a-half years inside, Rami had lost the sense of himself and that people could engage with him, a real human being. Rami: ‘Actually tomorrow’s my birthday …’ Devorah: ‘I’m coming back next week, and I’m gonna bring you a birthday cake and candles and we’re gonna have a birthday party.’

Anyway, I found out that he liked white chocolate, and I got this HUGE, I mean gross, BIG, big, big white chocolate cake with all white chocolate things on it, and candles, and I rounded up friends of mine and we bought cool drinks and paper plates the whole bit, crisps, and we went in. It wasn’t easy to find—a white chocolate cake. I went out in my lunch hour … and I walked around and I looked and then I found one. I found one! But because I was working I had to sort of duck out get the cake, not bring it into the office, but lock it in the car. Oh I remember, it was an astoundingly hot day and I was terrified it would melt in the car … Anyway it survived the journey. And we called for him to come through security. As he came through those gates I stood there and I must have had the biggest grin of triumph on my face and he looked at me, he just looked … You could see that he was trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Afterwards he told me, Rami: I didn’t have anything to hear that you would come back with the cake. Devorah: He had heard my words: ‘I’ll come back with a cake’, but his experience in Villawood Detention Centre didn’t allow him to even believe, or imagine …that I would. (Through the Wire, scene: ‘First Connections’).

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Alternately, the Midrash ‘Hineni’ (see Appendix B) embodies multiple dynamics of engagement meandering behind the wire, beyond the wire, through the wire. The following cameo is engagement qua engagement: It was shortly after meeting him that Ahmed started calling me Cousin. ‘Because you are my cousin’, he explained. His family came from Bethlehem. They spoke Hebrew. ‘We are cousins’, he had proclaimed as he presented me with a picture that he had drawn, symbolising our kinship and discussing the merits of recognizing our kinship. That day Ahmed unfolded a deeper connection between us with lively ensuing dialogue relating to Israel-Palestine (see Appendix B, section Kinship behind the wire).

Ethical Signal 5: Freedom Justice coincides with the overcoming of rhetoric. (Levinas). We do not get our full humanity until these people go out into a normal situation. (Guenther)

In her brilliant book on solitary confinement, Guenther records the words spoken by a control unit administrator at a Washington State prison: In Total Confinement Lorna Rhodes recounts one warden’s insight that the policy of total control undermines the humanity of the prison staff , as well as the prisoners, by putting them in a position of unsustainable, irresponsible power over others. (Guenther, 2013, 246). What follows is my almost-meditation on the spaces of freedom. Earlier in this book, I wrote that all people and entities involved in the structural decimation of other persons (e.g., the Royal Australian Navy in SIEVX, Australian members of parliament and their staffers who are numb and/ or are told to look away, those involved in the Children Overboard incident, Gaby in Through the Wire) are damaged. I made the point that although we are all damaged, we are not equally as damaged as the asylum-seeking detainees. It behoves me to again reflect on visceral or secondary trauma. PTSD is PTSD. Multiple or complex PTSD is complex PTSD. It is not for us to analyse, judge or diagnose who is worthy of such a life-decimating condition. A life ruined is a life ruined. I personally know of navy personnel, detention staff, volunteers and persons who worked on the Gulags who have had to piece together a resemblance of life and relationships after being traumatised and breaking down. Equally, with consideration of structural positional power and the damages to all, Levinas in Totality and Infinity (1969) claims that ‘not only modern war but every war employs arms that turn against those who wield them’ (21). I invite you to traverse this landscape, as revealed by the primary Midrashim and other sources. Alternate spaces of freedom are in the now famous words of Shoah survivor Victor Frankl. It is with temerity that I take up the words of Frankl for fear of

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reducing even a miniscule iota of the severity of the concentration and death camps. To quote Frankl is to contextualise his work with his question: How was the everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner? Viktor Frankl’s own meaning was the search for meaning. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. (Frankl, 1959, xi)

Frankl was transported to four different concentration camps where his family was murdered. Then, in Auschwitz, Frankl found himself waiting day by day to be sent to the ovens. Frankl lived and gave to us his profound observations about the category of prisoners who, by sheer will, survived the camps. ‘We who have come back, by the aid of lucky chances or miracles—whatever one might choose to call them—we know: the best of us did not return’ (Frankl, 1959, 4). Frankl (1905–1997), of a similar era to Levi (1919–1987), begins his book Man’s Search for Meaning negating any entitlement to write about the great horrors of the concentration camps. Rather, he writes: This book does not claim to be an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again. It is the inside story of a concentration camp, told by one of its survivors. This tale is not concerned with the great horrors, which have already been described often enough (though less often believed), but with the multitude of small torments. (Frankl, 1959, 1)

He continues to describe his own lived experience and, in relation to others, the experiences of ordinary men and women—the average prisoner—also desperately clinging to threads of life. In the concentration camp, every circumstance conspires to make the prisoner lose their hold. In these desperate attempts lies the last choice left to those specific men and women: the freedom to choose. Having read Frankl, I took his message into the Villawood detention centre on the day the court judgment for Rami was handed down. He failed to be accepted as a refugee. Hope was lost. To engender hope, a future, I asked Rami what he would most like to do the day he was released. “I want to see nature. I want to go where there are trees and grass. And I want to see the sea—the horizon, as far as the eye can see.” As always, Rami was clear, his requests simple. During future visits, for about another year, another long year inside the visitors’ yard of surveillance at the Villawood detention centre, we would conjure up the scenery of freedom (Wainer, 2015). Boochani (2018), under the most impossible of conditions conspiring to make the prisoner lose hold, chose to send text message by text message to his friends in Australia until his book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison was published. The overwhelming commentary on his book highlights his extraordinary achievement and the phenomenology of the lived experience in Manus prison.29 Boochani exerts his freedom 29

Manus Prison is retained here as Boochani’s own expression that refer to ’Manus Regional Processing Centre’ on Manus island.

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throughout the book by naming, defining and critically analysing on his own terms and by referring to the Manus Island detention centre as Manus Prison. The freedom that Boochani’s writing exerts is multifold. One powerful example is the all-encompassing term he uses to signify the intersecting social systems that reinforce and multiply with the aim of punishing, subjugating and suppressing. The Kyriarchal system is the name he gives to the ideological substrata that have a governing function in the prison; it is the title denoting the spirit that is sovereign over the detention centre and Australia’s ubiquitous border industrial complex (Boochani, 2018, xxvii).

A little acclaimed achievement of freedom that I read in his work is Boochani writing in the genre of his native culture. He evokes his homeland into the detention centre and onto Australia. From the space of incarceration, he claims his freedom to import his culture into our homes. His remarkable translator Omid Tofighian writes that ‘Behrouz intentionally fuses literature with political commentary and language from different scholarly discourses. This corresponds with the literary play involving forms and devices from different genres’ (Boochani, 2018, xxvi). From behind the wires of the Manus prison Gulag, the detainee entered the space of freedom to be the Kurdish–Iranian writer, scholar and cultural advocate. His work introduces many of us to the genres and flows of Kurdish–Iranian literary and philosophical styles. The following excerpt from its eponym, ‘Cherry Ripe’ (See Appendix A section/ heading) follows the spaces of freedoms. Slowly they approach us. Each one (names have been changed) finding a way to include his chair in the evergrowing circle. Valerie, Mahmud, Osalp, Chrissy, Mohammed, Rami and Myself. The harsh day begins its transition to dusk. The rain lessens its own violent nature, halting a while. All is silent and fresh. Visitors leave, passing through the 10-foot high fence on the left of the shelter. Most people detained have exited the visitor’s yard through the security fence and gate that separates their accommodation yard from the visitor’s yard. There is a feeling of space. In this space I am inspired. I feel refreshed. It’s time for some fun. ‘So what would you like to drink for your sundowner, Osalp?’ I ask, knowing he’s a Muslim who observes the prohibition of alcohol. He looks at me blankly. Rami peers at me, with a look that says, ‘Has she gone mad?’ Osalp sometimes flips into violence. Rami is instantly alert. ‘It’s such a beautiful evening—after all that noise—all of us here under the shelter and the rain pelting down. Now I feel like a drink’. I repeat the theme. They get it. Osalp says, ‘I’d like some red wine.’ ‘What? How boring are you?’, I instantly respond. And slowly one by one, each detained person offers some crazy never-heard-of cocktail, assuring us all it’s real. One describes a lovely cameo of not only the drink they would like but also the mood, the environment, the scene in which they now find themselves. One is engulfed in a romantic fireside tête-à-tête. Another is a couple strolling in hand along the beach. And, so, our creative imaginations set us free. Mohammed is now telling us about the woman, his girlfriend, with whom he will enjoy his drinks. ‘What? Are you leaving me?’ I feign heartbreak. Rami becomes a little twitchy. Devorah is MY friend is clearly his thought. Heightened sensitivity due to the environment and due to their vulnerability increases our ways of knowing each other.

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Valerie teases him: ‘Is Devorah your girlfriend?’ Oops—a sticky moment. We all know there is no suitable, accessible label for this relationship. Bravo! Rami offers ‘Yes, of course’, and places his arm in a boyfriend-ly manner around my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. ‘Oh!’ I feign surprise. ‘Who was your first love?’, I asked Rami. And the conversation livens up significantly. Each one telling their stories of love. And with the telling, they are free. Free men and women. Lovers. Not storytellers. Livers of the great world out there. I take the ball and run with it: ‘And you, Osalp? When was the first time you had a girlfriend?’ Osalp is drop-deadgorgeous. Even here, behind the wires, he is constantly reminded of his desirability by not only the detained but also by the visiting women. ‘I’ve never had a girlfriend’, he says with a straight face. ‘No one loves me.’ I am faking a sob. I find a tissue and do a loud nose-blow and wail. ‘Poor Osalp. No one loves him. He has never known love’—as I rush round the table to console him with a hug and stroke his brow. Peals of laughter all around. And out of the corner of my eye I notice Rami has jumped up and is darting across the visitor’s yard to his accommodation yard. We all stop playing the game—WHAT is going on? In this environment anything is possible. Sudden flare-ups, flips, aggression and suicide. They have seen it all. And we are all back in Villawood Detention Centre under the shelter. A few suggestions are offered. Opinions as to where Rami has gone. Why he has gone? Will he return? A few attempts at regaining the joie de vivre. We all want to be back there. —free. Enjoying the reverie. And then Rami returns triumphantly, presenting a box of ‘Quality Street’ chocolates. This is the celebration offering. The highest quality champagne is offered in the joy of the moment here in Villawood Detention Centre. We all settle. I am relieved. The all-important choices are made. Each one in turn with noses dipped towards and into the box, turning the different sweets over and around, appraising the variety in anticipation of their flavours. Will I have this one? Will I have that one? In the silent moment, I become reflective. How fragile it all is here. And my reflection takes me back to my anger and vile bile earlier that day. I am feeling such appreciation for my friend. Rami was able with his laughter to pull me out of my disturbed self. ‘Quite amazing, really’, I muse, ‘given that he is the captive’. This afternoon, it was the detained seeker of asylum, my friend. Rami, who was able to free me from the captivity of my prior confusion and frustration and my intense discomfort under the crowded shelter. This has been an excellent visit after all. Now I feel so connected to this soul who with an overflowing heart brought the chocolates to share with us all. As the others choose their chocolates, Rami moves even closer to me. His deep-brown eyes soft pools now, he opens his palm towards me. In it lies one red-wrapped Cherry Ripe. ‘This is for YOU’, he gently mouths. This is his love wrapped in bright cellophane. The love for which he is truly yearning. Momentarily the boundaries are non-observable. His heart is overflowing. More than the one dozen red roses of a free man are offered to me.

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His palm open, my eyes somehow simultaneously on his palm and looking into his eyes … AND I reject it! Rami is invisible …. I am numb …. I have produced ‘the unwelcome Other’, ‘the detainee strange to me’ (‘Cherry Ripe’). I, Devorah, lose my freedom the moment I reject Rami’s Cherry Ripe. Alternately, Rami was free—he offered me ‘a dozen red roses’.

Ethical Signal 6: Responsibility to the Other The Midrash ‘The Garden of Hope’ arises from the commitment to the responsibility to the Other, as instituted by me and then enacted by both my dad and me. However, my passage to the dialogical relating implied in the commitment to the Hineni event is challenging. In the Midrash ‘The Garden of Hope’(see Appendix C), I muse: ‘Am I mad?’ I asked myself. With doubt assailing me ferociously, I wondered if my confidence, in my subjective certainties, was the product of too much time spent visiting the people detained, a distortion sourced in the contagion of the detention centre. As I look at my father during the introductions my instinct is to grab him and run, outside of and far from the security fences, away from the miasma of pain that suffuses the visitor’s yard. I know—indubitably, from a dimension of cosmic time— that his face reflects all the shock, horror and fear of all who first arrive to be locked up in the detention centre (‘The Garden of Hope’). Yet Yitzchak, also a Torah scholar, was prepared to be vulnerable in his ethical response-ability. Devorah says of Rami in Through the Wire: The hardest part was carrying the pain. Being responsible for someone so vulnerable. And sometimes it was quite difficult at home. When Rami phoned … it might be in the middle of a conversation or eating with the kids, and I would drop everything. My children never complained. They urged me to support him. Susan of Mohsen says: … how did I put up with such demands on me, on my time, why was I doing it? My friends thought I was crazy. I don’t think Ross (Susan’s husband) and I ever sat through a meal for the next 18 months. Gaby (the professional nurse) thought: There were times when I thought ‘What am I doing here? In these Detention Centers. And what’s going to happen in the future? Is this going to be compared to a concentration camp?’.

Meeting inside the Villawood detention centre, the visitors and the seekers of asylum, respectively, equally lack knowledge of the Other to whom they present themselves. Like the two men meeting in Buber’s Midrash (below), ‘something happens’ between the two people. The scene ‘First Connections’ in Through the Wire captures the ‘something’ in the Villawood detention centre visitors’ yard of surveillance.

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Devorah: Slowly I started meeting people … We landed up in a big circle around one of the trees. And being shy in crowds, I’d just sit, and observe, and I turned to this very still person next to me and said ‘Please forgive me for being so quiet, but I’m actually quite shy’, and we exchanged names, and I said, ‘You know, I’m just the kind of person who, if I’ve got nothing to say, I don’t say it’. And that was Rami. And we got talking. (Horin, 2004)

The Midrash ‘The Garden of Hope’ offers another cameo of the intangible ‘something special’ happening between two people—a special, unique experience. Dad and Mahmud standing arm in arm at the wire fence, looking out through the chicken-wire … looking through—to where the garden miraculously grows and blooms, a symbol of hope. And then, as they turn, I see them clasp hands in the way of Middle Eastern men. I have seen Indian and African men clasp hands this way, too. My Dad seems so at ease exceeding his cultural conventions to meet with Mahmud’s way (‘The Garden of Hope’). Visitors to the Villawood detention centre have no guarantees for the outcome of their Hineni event., In ‘Cherry Ripe’ I described feeling like a Bambi—lost in the thicket, sensing danger, not knowing which way to turn. Taking Yitzchak into the Villawood detention centre is a fraught experience; the Midrash reflects the multiple layers of consciousness. Tears seeped out of their usually well-closed ducts when I saw the terror that overwhelmed Yitzchak when he passed through the detector and it suddenly beeped. An immediate, involuntary response: Dad, ashen-faced, was frozen to the spot, his hands above his head as if a gun was pointed at him. Deeper even than the apartheid scars, Yitzchak’s World War II memories jumped into untimely life at the shocking sound of the beeping detector. As I look at my father during the introductions my instinct is to grab him and run, outside of and far from the security-high fences, away from the miasma of pain that suffuses the visitor’s yard. I know—indubitably, from a dimension of cosmic time—that his face reflects the shock, horror and fear of all who first arrive to be locked up in the detention centre. How do I protect Dad and Mahmud from my anger and anguish, threatening to vent like a rancid subterranean fissure within my being? They’ll see it. They’ll recognise it and know it. And it will hurt them both (‘The Garden of Hope’). ‘Something happens’ in the ethical event that rests on the intangible qualities of transcendence and infinity. Each self is response-able to transcend any totality and recognise the infinite Other. In a Midrash titled Silence That is Communication told by Martin Buber (2002), we meet two men who are meeting each other in their silence, illustrating this project’s interpretation of Hineni—‫ינינה‬. The open, responsive man—the social agent—engages with l’autre and he, the closed man, is profoundly changed. In that morning meeting, the reserved man in Buber’s tale essentially shows up to the receptivity of the other.

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Through this barest of settings, given in a quick, almost thoughtless manner, we struggle to fill in the gaps. Who are these men? What do they look like? Are they travelling by train? What did they learn about each other in the morning? Is Buber one of the men? Even this is not stated. This lack of information reinforces the strangeness and solitude of the two men involved. We do not receive specific information because the two men themselves care little about the details of each other’s lives. They are content to remain strange, content to remain in their solitude. Most importantly, we do not receive background information; Buber wants to stress that such information is not a necessary precondition for an I–Thou encounter. Buber gives us only those elements of a character sketch necessary for an understanding of the dynamics of the I–Thou event. Buber tells us that one man is open, receptive, calm. The other man is the opposite type. He is a man who holds himself in reserve. He withholds himself. Then suddenly, as the men sit beside each other, ‘not speaking with one another, not looking at one another, not once turned to one another, something happens’ (Buber, 2002). Our closed and reserved man, through a special, unique experience, is suddenly able to open himself, and this the other man feels, though no word is said or gesture made. Buber presents us with the story. ‘Silence That Is Communication’. Imagine two men are sitting beside one another in any kind of solitude … They do not speak with one another, they do not look at one another, not once have they turned to one another. They are not in one another’s confidence, the one knows nothing of the other’s career, early that morning they got to know one another in the course of their travels. In this moment, neither is thinking of the other; we do not need to know what their thoughts are. The one is sitting on the common seat obviously after his usual manner, calm, hospitably disposed to everything that may come. His being seems to say it is too little to be ready, one must also be really there. The other, whose attitude does not betray him, is a man who holds himself in reserve, with holds himself. But if we know about him we know that a childhood’s spell is a lid on him, that his withholding of himself is something other than an attitude, behind all attitude is entrenched the impenetrable inability to communicate him- self. And now—let us imagine that this is one of the hours which succeed in bursting asunder the seven iron bands about our heart—imperceptibly the spell is lifted. But even now the man does not speak a word, does not stir a finger. Yet he does something. The lifting of the spell has happened to him—no matter from where—without his doing. But this is what he does now: he releases in himself a reserve over which only he himself has power. Unreservedly communication streams from him, and the silence bears it to his neighbour. Indeed it was intended for him, and he receives it unreservedly as he receives all genuine destiny that meets him. He will be able to tell no one, not even himself, what he has experienced. What does he now ‘know’ of the other? No more knowing is needed. For where unreserved has ruled, even wordlessly, between men, the word of dialogue has happened sacramentally. (Buber, 2002, 3)

For Buber we do not tell and interpret the stories of our common memory to find our collective ‘I’ but to awaken the telling of others. Our telling is a cry, a search, not for ourselves but for the ‘Other’. … The search for the other, the search for the Thou, must be carried to the unfamiliar, the foreign and the strange. (Kepnes, 1992, 149). Indeed, one might consider the silence that streams from the one man and is received by the other as foreign and strange.

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… an element of communication, however inward, seems to belong to its essence. But in its highest moments dialogue reaches out even beyond these boundaries. It is completed outside contents, even the most personal, which are or can be communicated. Moreover, it is completed not in some ‘mystical’ event, but in one that is in the precise sense factual, thoroughly dovetailed into the common human world and the concrete time–sequence. (Buber, 2002, 4)

Poetry That Is Communication Earlier, we met two strangers in Wickham Point Maximum Security detention centre in Darwin—Kavan and Firouz—upon whom also descended the grace of a Buberian I–Thou moment. The two strangers were put together in an impossibly tiny room—also a shipping container—when they arrived at the detention centre. We learned a bit about their families. Tears as they speak of their sons. How have we moved from sons back to poetry? It seems as if grace was waiting to descend to a Buberian I–Thou among us. Firouz offers: “I like to write poetry. But what’s the point here in hell?” Kavan’s eyes light up. Now, the one room-mate writes his poetry for the other to read and recite.

Space Three: The In-Between The Absolute works with nothing. The workshop, the materials Are what does not exist. Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it. Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing, where something might be planted, a seed, possibly from the Absolute. (Rumi)

Space Three emerges as other than the first two. All spaces we have discovered are literal and metaphoric. They are dichotomous, paradoxical, and some are unexplored—the lacunae in-between. The wire of the onshore detention centre signifies, in concrete terms, boundaries between the spaces occupied by the seekers of asylum and the Australian communities. The metaphoric wire separates Australia and the island prisons. The wire is also a signifier of discontinuities. In the Midrashim, ‘the wire’ is immanent; it is also, in the Midrashim, transcended.

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The In-Between is the Liminal Space Where Boundaries Collapse The in-between is the liminal space where boundaries collapse. Only after all the Midrashim had been written did the in-between come to light. Writing the foodsharing cameo in the Midrash ‘Hineni’ and reflecting on the choice of words for the text, I noticed a preference for writing ‘she fed me, Devorah, between the wire, piece by piece’. Wanting to avoid introducing another term (between the wire) in connection with the wire—‘through the wire’, ‘behind the wire’ were already familiar—I settled on ‘she fed me, Devorah, through the wire, piece by piece’. I still see the picture Ahmed described of Sara feeding him. The critical edge that belongs to rational discourse arises from liminal experiences writes Gillan: Liminal experiences suspend involvement in the patterns of daily life and provide a time for self-discovery through meditation and dreams and the discovery of community thought through the collapse of social distinctions. (Gillan, 1998, 121)

Writing the Midrashim was typically less of an analytical process than I experienced writing that sentence. Regarding the internal questioning and ambivalence almost as field notes, I asked, “what is this about? What does my internal response to the language tell me about the project itself?” The answer came: the fact is that Sara fed Ahmed that Friday night. Equally and powerfully, the symbolism of Sara— the Israeli—feeding Ahmed—the Palestinian—was important. The food itself is symbolic of nurturing and nourishment, and it struck me that even ‘inside’—after the humiliation, confusion and shock of being locked up—Sara stepped into dialogical relating with Ahmed. Any situation may become the vehicle for the attitude of dialogical relating; the I takes an interest in the Thou. In his poetic, mystical conception of I-Thou Buber (1958) establishes that ‘[a]’ll real living is meeting’(11). ‘Man takes his stand in relation (4)… here is the cradle of Real Life’ (9) came to mind while reflecting on the sentence that illuminated the notion of the in-between. The meeting place is the space of the in-between. There, the Israeli cares for the Palestinian; the free, Jewish post-colonial gentleman, Yitzchak, holds hands with the captured Iraqi Muslim gentleman, Mahmud. Together, arm in arm, they look through the wire to the Garden of Hope. Thus, the boundaries of the wire collapsed. The literal boundaries between inside and outside collapsed as Rami called Devorah at home and made her laugh; as Hassan wrote poetry for the women visitors. The metaphoric boundaries of freedom collapsed as Susan became Mohsen’s ‘mother’ and as Mohsen wrote poetry from inside the Villawood detention centre that was then published for the outside world to access. Rami was able to comfort and protect Devorah in the visitors’ yard of surveillance on a rainy day. Likewise, Rami was free when he offered Devorah ‘one dozen red roses’. The representative boundaries collapsed as Mahmud planted his garden with his spoon and watered it from his mug. The literal boundaries the government had constructed to protect the Australian citizen from ‘people like those’ collapsed. Australians took food, photographs— Sydney life—inside. Australians wrote letters to asylum-seeking-refugees who were

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incarcerated on the island prisons. The detainees met a culture and language new to them. Australian women in clothing that opened the boundaries of bodies, revealed the body, were not the negative stereotypes that Muslim men had been told about. Women who did not know the boundaries of not touching a Muslim man greeted the detainees wholeheartedly in the Australian style of hugging and kissing. Muslim men taught the women the style of kissing the air at the cheeks. Australians learned the number of times to kiss the cheeks according to the different cultural backgrounds of the detainee. And boundaries collapsed. In between, a Levinasian community grew where each one of the multiplicity of unique souls was as important as the other. Together, they transcend the wire. Levinas urges us to meet face to face in dialogue, particularly with the vulnerable and people who are strange to us, arguing that ‘the face of the Other expresses infinitude’ (Levinas 1961, 47). Meeting face to face began as an ethical event—the visitors enter the Villawood detention centre. Levinas’s cruelty of indifference is shattered, and people relate dialogically so that ‘the self is not a substance but a relation. It can only exist as an I, as taking an interest in a Thou’ (Levinas, 1996, 20). Meeting with the other person consists in the fact that despite the extent of my domination over him and his submission, I do not possess him. (Levinas, 1988, 9)

The I–Thou attitude is the alchemy for transcendence beyond the wire. Susan and Moshen, Rami and Devorah—in Through the Wire—offer a view into the space of the boundaries as they collapse into an I–Thou of concrete situations of daily life. A metaphoric dance of freedom and captivity takes place: Mohsen: You’re very bossy. Do you know this? Susan: Sometimes Mohsen would say that to me—when I’d try to tell him what to do, like ‘Do some exercise, try to walk every day’” … Anyway to make things very clear I started interpreting our relationship as mother and son. And, he started to call me mother … Sometimes on the phone late at night, when I was fading Mohsen would say—Mohsen: Your battery is flat, Sussane. Susan: … and he’d make a silly voice. Mohsen: I don’t think the old car will make it up the hill! Susan: And I thought ‘maybe I won’t.’ Devorah: Eventually I said to Rami, ‘If we’re going to spend many hours just you and me, sitting and talking together, I need an equal—a relationship of equals. I don’t want—I can’t relate to the victim. I want Rami to show up. So find yourself. Forget you are in Villawood Detention Centre …’ And that was really difficult because … Before that it was just things like ‘yes Devorah, thank you Devorah, anything you say Devorah …’

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Rami: I could feel her actually. She was driving one hour, you know. Until she gets to Villawood Detention Centre only to see Rami who is a detainee, not an Australian citizen. Can you imagine that. It’s a very, it’s a big feeling … Devorah: I just somehow thought … ‘If he’s been invisible for three years, it’s time for him to show up. Nobody should be invisible.’ … he used to phone me sometimes at night and make me laugh, he would have me in fits of laughter … that touched me, that someone in his situation, would go to the effort to make me laugh. Horin (2004, scene ‘Relationships in Detention’)

Levinas’ first major treatise was Totality and Infinity (1961). His second major work, Otherwise than Being (1991) addresses what he considered to be his shortcomings in the first. Thus, towards the end of Otherwise than Being Levinas declares: ‘This book has exposed the signification of subjectivity in the extraordinary everydayness of my responsibility for other men [sic] (Levinas, 1991, 141). For Levinas, infinity is the social relationship with a being who is transcendent (as are all beings).. Here we have the alchemy for personal transformation to the ethical self. Within the context of ‘everydayness’to be ethical is a social attitude as Buber’s I–Thou30 relating. When I show up—the Hineni dynamic—and present myself , I am already choosing the I–Thou attitude of the relational as described by Buber. Yitzchak, in ‘The Garden of Hope’, invokes the ethical event when he goes to the Villawood detention centre to visit Mahmud. Mahmud was in need. I had to ask … What drove me, at the expense of my parents’ tranquillity? ‘What can I bring for him?’ was my dad’s gruff, circumspect assent. And then, later, a different form of non-abandoning: Silence, as the men start seeing each other. A seeing I had learnt about since visiting Villawood. A seeing born in the presence of total vulnerability and trauma (‘The Garden of Hope’). The words used to describe the experiences in the Villawood detention centre— the Midrashim—are more than mere words: they ‘propagated into the living world the I in relation to Thou’. A seeing in the yard of surveillance … a seeing also developed in the absence of the known, in the lack of the usual spaces, acumens, rhythms and practices of daily life. … And they start circling the perimeter of the yard in the manner of the visitor and detainee who have a personal, not-to-be-overheard conversation to conduct. One usually only sees those well known to each other circling the perimeter. It is the cue for all to stay away a while. It’s the absurd form of privacy one constructs when under surveillance within the constantly lit visitors’ yard of surveillance. 30

Buber and Levinas wrote (in dialogue) about their philosophical differences. In today’s terms Buber was a mystic and Levinas was deeply spiritual. To be true to their words this author is not equating I-Thou relating to the ethical personal self relating to the Other. Yet, as this book is about method, agency and research cohorts, an explication of their differences would be beyond the scope here.

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Just before we walk through the gate, they hug. They cry. They release each other looking deeply through the eyes into the stories each has told the other. Both men now far away from home (‘The Garden of Hope’). In between land masses, Libya and Lampedusa, the young man gave up his place at the edge of the boat to the old man. Ami, who taught Kidane how to survive, how to stay alive, was drowned in the place that Kidane had stood on the boat. Only after the students and I visited Wickham Point Immigration Detention Centre did the room-mates, Kavan and Firouz, learn the poetry that constituted their in-between.

In-Between She fed me … She fed me, Devorah, through the wire, piece by piece. My hands were too big to take it. I put my mouth to the wire. Nothing even spilt. The best food I had—more than five years. (‘Hineni’). The Israeli and the Palestinian in the ‘Hineni’ Midrash have reached beyond the wire. What lies in-between Sara and Ahmed as he receives good food is the space that comes from the combination of Hineni and dialogical relating. The primary word I–Thou can only be spoken with the whole being. The primary word I–It can never be spoken with the whole being (Buber, 1958, 3). The whole being is the in-between Awake! Awake! O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! expand! (Blake in Granger, 2014, 46)

Buber understands that we never live totally in the primary I of the I–Thou. However, the movement to dialogical relating entails a shifting of conceptual and cognitive assemblages. The horizontal thinking of dialogical relating—through the living dialogue, in face-to-face conversation—enables the unique illumination of the infinitude inherent in the in-between of the I–Thou relation. The face cannot be totalised because it expresses infinitude (Simmons, 2010). Only in relating do I transcend the primary I of the I–Thou to reveal and witness the infinite Other. ‘We engage in living dialogue in which it is more important to find out who is speaking and why, than merely to know what is said’ (Levinas, 1969, 18).

Buber alludes to dialogue, saying that ‘he feels he may trust this man, that this man is taking part in his life, accepting him before desiring to influence him. And so he learns to ask’ (Crowell, 1990). The life of human beings, says Buber, is not passed in the sphere of transitive verbs alone. It does not exist in virtue of activities alone, which have something for their object. I perceive something. I am sensible of something. I imagine something. I will something. The life of human beings does not consist of all this and the like alone. This and the like together establish the realm of It.

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But the realm of Thou has a different basis. When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing for his object. For where there is a thing there is another thing. Every It is bounded by others; It exists only through being bounded by others. But when Thou is spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds. (Buber, 1958, 4)

We may seek to transcend, first as individuals and, later, as a group. This intentionality of transcendence is the way beyond the wire. It is also the ‘way’ of other people and asylum-seeking-refugees that I have met from and in different lands. The ‘quiet study’ of the Midrashim, as seen in the examples given in this chapter (and in other Midrashim I have written) shows both the old paradigm to reject and the new to which Levinas and Buber pull us. For the new paradigm to flourish, the internal shift required is to take one’s stand in the I–Thou—the ethical event of responsible action, where relating is the landscape. The Hineni for the self and the other. It is … not love of knowledge that is important. It is knowledge of love that guides Levinas

In between each face to face is the ethical event and the dialogical relating— as each cameo of the Midrashim shows. The dialogue must occur for each Hineni moment to come to rest, in between the in-series moments. The imperative is ethical … for in listening to the human voice of the other and in responding with our human voice we touch that which is human. In touching the human we close the gap that separates people. In closing the gap we repair the tear in human relations. (Kepnes et al., 1998, 150).

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Coffey, G. (2006). Locked up without guilt or sin: The ethics of mental health service delivery in immigration detention. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 13(1), 67–90. https://doi.org/10.1375/ pplt.13.1.67 Connelly, S. S. (2006). Closed hearts closed borders. A just Australia presentation to senate inquiry for designated unauthorised arrivals bill. Connolly, K. (2020). Survivors call for end to world indifference at Auschwitz memorial: Ceremony in Poland attended by royalty, presidents and ambassadors from across globe. The Guardian. 8 January. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/27/auschwitz-surviv ors-75th-anniversary-commemoration. Critchley, S., & Bernasconi, R. L. (Eds.). (2002). Cambridge companion to Levinas. Cambridge University Press. Crowell, S. G. (1990). Dialogue and text: Re-marking the difference. The interpretation of dialogue. http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-dialog.htm. Doherty, B. (2017). Border force illegally sent two Australian citizens to Christmas Island. The Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jul/05/border-force-illega lly-sent-two-australian-citizens-to-christmas-island. Doherty, B., Evershed, N., & Ball, A. (2018). Deaths in offshore detention: The faces of the people who have died in Australia’s care. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ ng-interactive/2018/jun/20/deaths-in-offshore-detention-the-faces-of-the-people-who-havedied-in-australias-care. Doherty, B. (2022). Iranian refugee Mehdi Ali released after nine years in Australian immigration detention. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/04/iranian-ref ugee-mehdi-ali-released-after-nine-years-in-australian-immigration-detention. Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man’s search for meaning. Random House. Gera, V. (2020). Auschwitz survivor draws praise. The Times of Israel, Jerusalem. 29 January. https://www.timesofisrael.com/auschwitz-survivor-draws-praise-but-also-criticism-in-polandwith-wwii-speech/ Gillan, G. (1998). Rising from the ruins: Reason, being, and the good after Auschwitz. State University of New York Press. Granger, I. M., (ed.) (2014). The longing in between: Sacred poetry from around the world. N.p.: Poetry Chaikhana. Guenther, L. (2013). Solitary confinement: Social death and its afterlives. University of Minnesota Press. Hanssel, J (ed.). (2009). Levinas in Jerusalem: Phenomenology, ethics, politics, aesthetics (Vol. 14). Amsterdam. Horin, R. (2004). Through the wire. Verbatim Theatre. Produced by Ros Horin. Kepnes, S. (1992). The text as thou: Martin buber’s dialogical hermeneutics and narrative theology. Indiana: Indiana University Press. Kepnes, S., Ochs, P., & Gibbs, R. (1998). Reasoning after revelation: Dialogues in postmodern Jewish philosophy. Westview Press. Kuwonu, F., & Donavan, L. (2019). Perils of a journey from Eritrea through Libya to Europe: migrants search for greener pastures carry deadly consequences’. United Nations Africa Renewal. December 2018—March 2019. https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/ december-2018-march-2019/risky-journey-europe Lawrence, C. 2004. Mental Illness? What Mental Illness? Paper presented at the Mental Health and Human Rights Conference, NSW Parliament House, Sydney. Lenihan, B. (2021). Rape trees and rosary beads: Field notes of a border patrol agent. The American Scholar (Summer 2019). 3 June. https://theamericanscholar.org/rape-trees-and-rosary-beads/. Leavy, P. (2009). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Press. Levi, P. (1986). Survival in Auschwitz. Translated by S Woolf. New York: Simon and Schuster. Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity: An essay on exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.

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Levinas, E. (1984). Is it righteous to be: Interviews with Emmanuel Levinas. Standford University Press. Levinas, E. (1988). Entre nous: On thinking-of-the-other. Translated by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav. New York: Columbia University Press. Levinas, E. (1991). Otherwise than being or beyond essence (2nd ed.). Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publisher. Levinas, E. (1996). Proper names. Translated by Michael B. Smith. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Mares, S., & Newman, L. K. (Eds.). (2007). Acting from the heart: Australian advocates for asylum seekers tell their stories. Finch Publishing. Marr, D., & Loughland, O. (2014). Australia’s detention regime sets out to make asylum seekers suffer, says chief immigration psychiatrist. The Guardian. 5 August. https://www.theguardian. com/world/2014/aug/05/-sp-australias-detention-regime-sets-out-to-make-asylum-seekers-suf fer-says-chief-immigration-psychiatrist. Martin, G. (2019). Turn the detention centre inside out: Challenging state secrecy in Australia’s offshore processing of asylum seekers. In P. Billings (Ed.), Crimmigration in Australia: Law, politics, and society (pp. 327–352). Springer. Millers, M. (2019). Deaths in detention. AIMNetwork. https://theaimn.com/deaths-in-detention/ Monash University Migration and Inclusion Center. (2021). https://www.monash.edu/arts/migrat ion-and-inclusion/research/research-themes/migration-border-policy/australian-border-deathsdatabase. Organ, M. (2003). Villawood centre disgrace. Illawarra Mercury. 15 July. https://www.illawarra mercury.com.au/story/7674631/death-at-nsw-villawood-detention-centre/. Perera, S. (2006). They give evidence: Bodies, borders and the disappeared. Social Identities, 12(6), 637–656. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630601030859 Project South: Influence Watch. (1986). Atlanta, Georgia. www.projectsouth.org/non-profit/projectsouth/. Pugliese, J. (2002). Penal asylum: Refugees, ethics, hospitality (Vol. 1/1). Borderlands ejournal. http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol1no1_2002/pugliese.html. Pugliese, J. (2004). The incommensurablity of law to justice: Refugees and Australia’s temporary protection visa. Law and Literature, 16(3), 285–311. Senate Inquiry. (2002). A certain maritime incident. ISBN 0 642 71191. CanPrint Communications. Commonwealth of Australia.Canberra. https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/senate/committee/mar itime_incident_ctte/report/report.pdf. Scott, R., & Keneally, T. (Eds.). (2005). Another country. Halstead Press. Simmons, W. (2010). A human rights of the other: Toward a deconstruction and reinvigoration of human rights law. Cambridge. Skeers, J. (2002). Australian high court ruling. international committee of the fourth international. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/08/refu-a22.html. Vasefi, S. (2019). “Australia is a bigger cage”: The ongoing trauma of nauru’s child refugees. The Guardian. 25 August. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/25/australia-is-abigger-cage-the-ongoing-trauma-of-naurus-child-refugees. Vogl, A., Fleay, C., Loughnan, C., Murray, P., & Dehm, S. (2020). COVID-19 and the relentless harms of australia’s punitive immigration detention regime. Crime, Media, Culture, 17(1), 43– 51. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659020946178 Wainer, D. (2015). Beyond the wire: Levinas vis-à-vis Villawood. Boffin Books. Time Magazine. (1947). Women at war.(personal communication).

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Dedicated to Giusi Nicolini, whom I promised to write about. Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible. (Arendt)

During my second day on the island, a serendipitous or perhaps a synchronistic encounter occurred. I was still without an interpreter or plan for my research intentions, so I decided to go sightseeing. Very jet-lagged and preoccupied with my research desires, I left my hotel room. As I stepped into the hotel lobby, the blend of Ottoman and modern resort decor intrigued me. My leisurely stop at the reception to discuss the Ottoman connection proved as frustrating for myself as the wide-eye, dark pony-tailed receptionist. She superbly communicated in a pastiche of language, hands, eyes and body that she would ask the island translator to answer my questions. Somehow, I understood that this sole translator is currently with the mayor. She is the official translator for the mayor. At that moment, my only response was a mixture of curiosity, delight and judgement as I thought: ‘small island … everyone knows everyone’s movements’. Reaching to my jeans back pocket for my phone, to write down said translator’s name, I realised the phone was not with me. Abruptly turning and bolting up the two levels of stairs to my room, adrenaline pumping, my energy (and head) had me fly down the stairs back to the receptionist as I had left with no clumsy explanation for the abrupt turn. The adrenaline rush and focusing on my manners vis-à-vis the receptionist caused me to collide with a human body as I landed at the bottom of the stairs to the lobby. Profuse apologies in English were quickly followed by a mutter to myself that this human will not understand English; this was met with a belly laugh of delight. That is how the interpreter, Patricia (name changed) and I met. I am indebted to her for introducing me to people and places of research that transcended my research intentions to profound experiences on the island. Equally so, my meeting with Guisi, the mayor, that was squeezed into her heavy schedule just hours before my flight departed the island. As Guisi and I concluded our conversation that, like my encounter © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7_14

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Fig. 14.1 I took this photograph of this rescue ship as it arrived at the island of Lampedusa and have purposefully blurred it to protect all involved

with John Kani, appeared mundane from the outside, we embraced each other and cried. Not for a brief instance but holding each other with the intensity of a forever blended with the tenderness of love. I believe ours were the tears of the I–Thou encounter. Her parting words to me were: “come back and write about us.” “I will write about you. I promise,” I said as the people for her next meeting were entering the same door out of which I was hurried. Figure 14.1 symbolises the ethical imperative of the Hineni. The rescue ship is in-between the ocean and the harbour, between life and death, between countries of home and foreign lands of hope. It is the rescue ship between the Australia navy ships that turn the asylum-seeker laden vessels away and those ships that rescue them by actively seeking them out, receiving sightings by pilots and other ships and boats daily. This ship is the symbol that epitomises the courage of the then mayor of Lampedusa, Giuseppina Nicolini, who enabled rescues to be carried out at sea, who has been awarded and who brought the asylum seekers to shore to tend to their medical needs. She deployed the island’s meagre resources to house and feed them. She did not lock the gates of their Welcome Center. Between the shores of Africa and the land of Europe; between the power of mainland Rome and the poverty of the island of Lampedusa; between the despair of incarceration and hopes of family reunions—life itself; between the island named Australia and the island named Lampedusa; stands Giusi Nicolini, who has never heard of Levinas yet paraphrases him with, “it’s only natural for an island to welcome others.” Guisi is no longer the mayor. She was voted out, not because she saved lives and welcomed refugees. The islanders were strongly behind her and proud of their legacy. Her constituents grew weary of carrying the resources asylum-seeking-refugee burden for Europe.

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On Lampedusa, the then haven island of 6,000 folks, after his mass, Pope Francis said to Giuseppina Nicolini: Before imparting my blessing to you I want to thank you once again; you people of Lampedusa, for the example of love, charity and hospitality that you have set us and are still setting us. The Bishop said that Lampedusa is a beacon. May this example be a beacon that shines throughout the world, so that people will have the courage to welcome those in search of a better life. Thank you for bearing this witness!

Postscript

This book has no conclusion. A reconstructed understanding of writing should make us aware that closure, even momentary closure, is impossible. A text is by its very nature as writing open to other texts and to social conditions. It is a sieve through which signs flow. And the constant murmuring of language cannot be silenced. (Gillan, 1998, 127) Equally the work of the midrash is without the more traditional academic closure. Rather the midrashim are to open up—A discursive cry from the depths of the soul.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7

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Appendix A

Cherry Ripe

Attention awakened While putting in order the words of a poem describing my desire for summer and the sensual delights of the summer sun warming, heating and as-if-melting the body, I paused to reflect upon the summer in 2002 when I experienced the heat as oppressive, stultifying. It was my tense body that came to mind rather than the relaxation-as-ifbeing-melted consciousness that I usually associate with a hot summer’s day. This story, an intentional love story titled ‘Cherry Ripe’, begins with my reflections relating to a specific experience on one of those unkind summer days in 2002. Although the same season of the poem ‘Summer’, none of the “caressing warmth” reached me that day. It was raining that summer’s day—the sudden, unanticipated downpour that sometimes unashamedly presents itself regardless of one’s clothing, location or destination. Smugly I drove towards Villawood Detention Centre. No embarrassingly wet-cling-to-the-body or even worse wet-cling-tothe-body-transparent clothes for me that day. No unappealing flattened-dropletsdripping-hair either. No offensive attack by the rain: having learned to keep an umbrella in my car the rain merely offered respite from the relentless heat. Or so I mused! Summer On the days you are absent In the months you are weak I ache Suffering my yearning for you And then in the cycle you return To me alone To thrill me To please me To sustain, to nurture to open and open and open Me to you and you to me In your absence I am cramped, closed, here, not absent Yet not open. How do I continue in the Present—not open? By forgetting your caresses Your warmth that reaches me Delights, and thaws me Sensations, exhilarations Tingling to my bones, softening and unfolding, © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7

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In the winter I am dry without you In the winter I am deep deep within without you In the winter I am white, I am pure, I am within And then the burst of your rays The golden, rose, pink, translucent white that open my pores, my cells, my bones My head my heart My soul I live again Loving dancing, receiving and giving, Free with your warmth, your heat I delight and play with you You’re with me again, Around me surrounding me Accompanying me with no tomorrow

The Cherry Ripe story unfolds itself on that rainy summer’s day at the Villawood Detention Centre. Unlike the ‘soft opening’ of the poem, that day inside the visitor’s yard I was neither soft nor open. Unable to receive a love token offered to me, that day was like the winter of the poem. I was “cramped, closed”. Leaving Villawood that day in 2002, I was disquieted. Why had I rejected so callously and offhandedly the love token? Half consciously, and quickly, before the self-reflexive musing could progress, I closed off the felt-thought that was already an ache. The ache that already was developing into pain, a floating intermittent, empty pain. The pain detained. The ache generalised alongside other wounds. Maya Angelou writes that history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived and, if faced with courage, need not be lived again. When, writing the poem ‘Summer’ and pausing to reflect upon that summer’s day, inside Villawood Detention Centre, comparing the poem ‘Summer’ with my ‘winter’ experience, I noticed my attention shift subtly from the non-invasive musing of the mind to a knot locked in my belly. And then I notice the move of the knot to my throat, too. There—simultaneously in the belly and the throat—the knot revealed itself to me. Paying attention to the feeling of tightness in my gut opened the recognition of the constriction in my throat. Recognition that this knot in the belly and the constriction in the throat are apparently connected: an unknown stranger dwelling within. A hitherto invisibilised part of my life experience. Now revealing itself to me, this embodied stranger still presented as tension and constriction that until now has been generalised and unknown to me. Now it moves to arrive in my consciousness— locates … places … speaks … calls … asking to be seen and recognised. Unconsciously, I had thought I could control body pain by sublimation, by denial— by locking it away … Not a new sensation, not a new pain; instead now, newly attended. Is this a call for the courage of which Angelou writes? The courage to face not the thoughtmemory; the courage to face the felt-memory. In his article ‘Venturing Past Psychic Numbing: Facing the Issues’, psychoanalyst Robert Gregory writes that there is an almost gravitational pull towards putting out of mind unpleasant facts. Quoting Daniel Goleman, Gregory (2003) continues, ‘We tune out, we turn away, we avoid. Finally we forget, and forget we have forgotten. A lacuna hides the harsh truth.’ While I hid the ‘harsh truth’ from myself, I othered this part of the story together with the meaning that is interwoven with experience. Only by inquiring could I discover the meaning that I gave to that specific experience. Only by engaging with

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the stranger within could I relax and release the knot in the belly and the constricted throat.

A Tension Awakened I Remember … It was raining! Sharing umbrellas with each other as we queued in the rain outside the processing room. “Queued”, I noted to myself, “is hardly the accurate word—as we huddled together, friends and strangers”. There was something about that queue at Villawood Detention Centre that connected all who stood there, rain or sun, hot or cold. That two-hour wait bonded us. Then it was my turn to huddle under the narrow door lintel just before stepping through the entrance to the processing room. “Two”, the ACM guards announce, glaring at the visitor who sought shelter by stepping ‘out of turn’ under the beam for cover. The briefly triumphant stance of upright spine and broad shoulders changes to droop as the visitor steps back, the one step necessary, to again be ‘waiting in turn’ in the rain, so that only the requisite “Two” enter. “No umbrellas”, says the ACM processing officer to me after I have been processed and tagged and prepared to go through the violet infra-light chamber. ‘But … the … rain’, I stammered incredulously. The officer, impervious, doesn’t even reply. Doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. Nothing. He has spoken. That is enough. “You mean I can’t take my umbrella inside?” He stares blankly at me, his lips motionless, cold disinterest oozing indifferently from him. The floor I am standing on is cold and hard. Suddenly my thigh muscles are too tight, too tense. I am not to take the potentially dangerous weapon into the visitor’s yard. As I wonder which might be worse—to have the guard bark terrifyingly at me or the guard who annihilates me with such invisibilising disinterest—I ask, with flaring nostrils that smell my own mix of fury and futility. I ask politely, controlling every syllable and note, in order to disguise my raw repulsion: “Will my umbrella be safe here?” Disinterest turns to a withering directness: “We’re very busy here.” “Does that mean you are too busy to watch for our umbrellas?” “They’re not our problem. You can take it back to your car if you want to be sure.” Incredible! Unbelievable! What is the smell of ice? “You mean: walk the 10 minutes back to the car; leave the umbrella there; return, getting wet, AND go back to the end of the queue?”

Having waited about 1.5 hours in the queue, I am in no mood to give up my place—or to get wet! Leaving the umbrella and chancing finding a dry spot inside was the lesser of the two disagreeable alternatives.

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Why did I make such a fuss over a silly old umbrella? The umbrella itself was so insignificant that I don’t even recall if it was old or new. Recalling my anger at and loathing for the guard and the system as I write, I feel the tension constricting my neck and, as if straining backwards, reminding me of my reaction that day. Before writing this story I hadn’t noticed the tension in my shoulders, neck and thighs. Have I been living with these tense muscles? Have they just knotted up now? Or is this a cellular memory of my tension in those days now activated with the writing of the story? My attention is on my tense thighs. Standing in the queue for too long, again and again each visit, accumulating the tension thighs. In those days it was easy to imagine the tense thighs were due to the standing. Together with the thighs, my neck and shoulders are also screaming at me with the burning, ripping, tightening of muscles that never completely relax. As if they have lost their intelligence or the know-how of ‘relax’. Does my body need some let-go-and-relax nous? What about the people detained, existing year upon year, in an unrelenting state of tension? Unable to sleep at night due to the fear, anxiety and terror related to apparently unresolvable and indefinite detention. Additionally, people detained told me they also suffered from memories of torture and trauma that amplified when they closed their eyes at night. Memories that precluded sleep, as did the ever-present deep grieving for their losses—family, friends, freedom. Dropping into a fitful sleep as dawn approached, no exercise for the 3, 4, 5 years of incarceration, produced aching bodies that moved about like partially stooped, ponderous old men in pain. Shuffling about, their watery bodies seemed not to breathe, as if halting the breath would block at their nostrils the acrid smell of the pervasive tension filling the air in the Villawood Detention Centre. Now it is so blindingly obvious to me that the accumulation of tension started on the first day I visited Villawood. My attention was awakened to a tension awakened …

The Windmills of My Mind1 : My Story Becomes Midrash January 2003: I am writing as I sit cross-legged on my comfortable, new-ish, blue, modern-ish, minimalist-ish couch. Gentle cooking aromas, wafting through my open patio doors call my attention. Indian spices! I think I have smelt Indian food cooking for the past few days. “Must have new neighbours.” Yet another floating thought passes through my mind. The mind that I think is concentrating on writing this story. The next thought pattern, linking in like a nested Russian doll, takes me to my recent trip to India. I am seeing those exquisite multicoloured saris in a blended image with the girl-woman, baby on hip, hands thrust begging into our little pfut-pfut cab. The 1

‘The Windmills of Your Mind’. Words and music by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand (from the film The Thomas Crown Affair): ‘Round, like a circle in a spiral/Like a wheel within a wheel./Never ending or beginning,/On an ever-spinning wheel ….’.

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smog-filled air’s smells are not yet familiar to me. Oil, kerosene, incense, goats, dung, human bodies. Low cloud at dusk seemingly responsible for their mingling into one aroma that I now label as Mumbai! Mount Abu was different, I muse. Subtract from Mumbai the densely packed numbers of people. Add space to the best of Mumbai; add Naki Lake and monkeys. Dogs, too! With a jolt I realise I am not writing or concentrating on the story. Is this avoidance? The past two weeks I have tried to write this story. Each time my keyboard fingers move in a saying of their own. “What am I writing?” I ask myself with disdain. The pitch of my internal voice rising. Ctrl S. Save. Yet another version. Diligently try again. Day after day I observe this story, in varying versions, arriving of its own volition on the page that is my computer screen. After saving Cherry Ripe_ vs5 on my seventh or eighth day of attempting to write the story I had planned, had intended to write, I give up—bereft! “This is NOT what I am meant to write. WHY can’t I write any more?” I agonise. The writing is the seeker of asylum. I am the politician saying, “We don’t want writing like this on the pages of our computer screen.” I am the guard vigilantly taking muster regularly to check if the illegally arrived words are well detained and incarcerated; locked away from the other words that I have already sanctioned as valid and useful for this project. The border guards of my mind expand their control, excising certain islands of thought as invalid for the Cherry Ripe story. “Exercise! I am physically tight so obviously my mind is tight”, I rationalised to myself. Dawning on me at that moment, as a huge revelation bringing immense relief, is the (in hindsight) illusion that I am taking control—that I am able to wilfully control this writing project with the logical assessment: “I need to exercise.” The following day, fresh and enthusiastic, I sit down to write. And yet again— the same flotsam and jetsam of words and phrases that are strange to me arrive on the page that is my computer screen. Uninvited memory—sensations of that rainy day in Villawood Detention Centre invade and overwhelm the body. I look for … “Music! Some agreeable-soothing-help-me-concentrate music to banish this unwanted sensate arrival”, I muse as I turn my music collection. The tense, lacticacid-locked-in muscles mixed together with the metallic, rancid-anxiety smells of Villawood Detention Centre are intolerable and must be banished. The gorgeous clear blue skies terrorise my vision, and the ideal summer temperatures plague me. I hear the call “go to the beach”; “a swim will be delicious”; “you need some exercise” (again!) (daily!); “the sea will be perfect for the body today”. Music! My defence against these unwelcome self-indulgent perhaps even selfsabotaging internal voices. Searching through my CDs for the ‘right music’, unwittingly I encounter the CD that I often (read ‘obsessively, always’) played en route, driving to and from Villawood in the lived-time of this story.

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Autumn, 1 March 1988 My brother, the pilot, died suddenly when his plane, about to land, exploded. After the initial shock and heartbreaking tears, I became efficient, caring for Mum and Dad, my sister, my children, guests. Was I numb? How numb was I? It was then, as now, that music penetrated the filter of my mind. Only music reached into the closed-off, or numb, depths until unwittingly tears gathered their own healing force and I cried. Bereft! What happens to us, when circumstances prevent our tears or we create the reasons not to cry? When we are not sufficiently tuned in or skilled enough to read our bodies, to know the levels of numbness? What is it that informs us? What breaks through? Since Stanley’s death I know that music touches me so that I can access the topography of my corporealised pain, wherein lie the frozen and numb detained parts of myself. Now, hearing the words of the songs that I played during those interminable drives, to and from Villawood Detention Centre, I begin to wonder: “Was I numb then? Am I numb now? How numb am I?” Possibly just numb enough to go through the wire again and again and again. Or, so numb that I don’t even know how numb …. We were there like those who’ve been there for ages She spoke, I spoke and evening fell She showed me her ideas on beauty I listened, she listened and it got dark Could you tell me your name? I’m Chiara, what’s yours? And spring played all around us Would you mind if in an instant I fell in love with you and your air of serenity But tell me do you come here often? We were there, she spoke, I spoke Is it OK but I’d follow you to your door if you show me the way or at least if you’re coming tomorrow If you’re coming tomorrow But tell me if you’re coming tomorrow If you’re coming tomorrow.

“But tell me if you are coming tomorrow…” Bocelli. The healing, life-affirming tears flow. I am no longer the intelligent-in-control-of-my-writing student. As if claiming a lost part of myself—perhaps a new part of myself is expanding—no longer am I able to avoid scrutinising the representations that defy my presumptions of the story. These representations, of their own volition, consistently appear on the pages of my computer screen. And I concede.

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Entering Villawood Detention Centre: Resonances Across Space and Time The metallic odour of the environment, uninvited, invades. Overwhelmed by the fencing, gates, locks and bolts I see as I walk from the car park, I have little awareness of what awaits me in terms of fences, locks and bolts. The smell of iron, metal, is material. Or is it the rusty atmosphere that I start sensing, I wonder. Feeling as if I am all nostril, I recall reading that the olfactory sense is the first sense developed. Babies first recognise or know their mother (or primary carer) by her smell. Unlike the first smell of Mum, here, at the Villawood Detention Centre gate, nothing is familiar to me. The rancid body odours and sharp breaths emitted by anxious people mingled with the dissonant odours of fences, locks and bolts and assaulted my olfactory senses that the first day. The day is hot. The earth is dry and dusty. A guard sees me walking towards the gate. Now! Heart pounding, I am almost there. The gate! “Soon I will be inside.” The thought is a combination of anticipation, curiosity and dread. I recall a childhood movie, Bambi. The deer halted mid-step, ears erect, nose twitching as forest-fire smoke reached their thicket. I felt like Bambi who saw his parents instinctively know the danger, yet he was still innocent of the grave import. These felt-thoughts are abruptly halted—suspended—as I see the guard walk away from the gate. Has he walked away intentionally, I wonder? I stand in front of the first gate and wait. Is he showing his power? Is he signalling to me that I don’t get inside to visit without him unlocking the gate and allowing me to enter the first waiting compound? Is the plan to intimidate, to humiliate, the visitor? Then I notice other guards patronisingly moving around as if focused on pursuing their duties. It seems they are gazing right through me. I panic. Whew! No need to have panicked, it was clearly all in my imagination. A strolling guard approaches the gate. A massive bunch of clanging keys is pulled from his pocket and he unlocks the gate. Matching his stroll, step by step, I enter. And wait. He locks the gate behind us. What now? The panic returns with greater intensity. Another gate is unlocked in front of me. “Ahhhh! This is OK”, I confirm to my tight, pounding head as I step into the queue. As if Bambi, I did not know how many hours of my life were to be spent in that queue—hot hours; wet hours; freezing cold, cranky hours; reading-a-book hours; chatting-to-other-queuing-visitors’ hours; raging-anger hours; shifting-from-foot-tofoot, aching-legs-and-back hours. Uniquely, it was only in this first hour that my face turned grey and my breath shortened. I feel my throat tighten and constrict. My heart is racing, increasing the pounding in my head with waves going through my throat and as if bouncing, vibrating on my tongue. Like Akhmatova (see Appendix C) in her queue, I see hands begin to quiver and my legs became like rubbery lead (Akhmatova, 1940). Standing in the queue that first day visiting Villawood Detention Centre, I hear a soon-to-become-a-friend’s voice sound an alarm:

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“Are you OK? You’re grey. Are you going to faint? What is it? Breathe!” In the distance I hear a voice, the words blurred as if coming to me through the cloud, saying something about the guards … prison … solitary confinement … South Africa … “You are here in the queue … Villawood Detention Centre … Australia, not South Africa … . Feel yourself in this present moment.” But now I am not in the queue at Villawood Detention Centre. I am back in South Africa before my brother was killed. My apparently unobliterated fear and terror of the South African police and authorities surge, reemerge. After 13 years outside South Africa, the visceral, as well as a psychological response to the experience of the guards and the queue at Villawood Detention Centre’ shocks and surprises me. I don’t want to remember. I want to run. Now a little girl, perhaps 3 or 5 or maybe 7 years old, awaken during the early hours of the morning, I lie rigidly in my bed, hardly breathing; listening. I heard the police van’s brakes screeching as they stopped at each house in our street. The grating throaty rev of the engine as the van started and moved on to the next house has awakened me. Screech–rev; screech– rev. And then I hear screams. Followed by the yells. Doors slam. Male voices in the language I don’t understand cause an internal icy quiver. Guttural sounding words, unkind and unfriendly voice notes in the language that I didn’t understand. The sounds are now moving closer to our house. Screech—rev—scream—van door slam; screech—rev—scream—van-door slam again. Screech—rev—front door bang and bang again: “Don’t do it, Izzy.” “Don’t do it, Izzy.” The voice comes from within my own home now. My mother, whispering the whisper that is always audible, beseeching my father, Izzy, to not do what? The apartheid apparatus searches the homes of the whites for any black people who might be sleeping in the maid’s room without the required documentation. The pass. The reviled pass of the apartheid regime permitted black people to work and live in a specified white area. At night, terrorising and terrifying the neighbourhood, the police would inspect white homes for any others who were there without the correct pass. Usually these others were companions, husbands, lovers, partners and friends. Perhaps even a child, a son or a daughter, a brother or a mother or a sister. If caught, the offenders were jailed. From what was my father to desist? Later I learnt that my father resisted the police. Speaking Afrikaans, the language I didn’t understand, the language of the police, my father, gun in hand, would insist on a search warrant before they were permitted to enter our property. In those days in South Africa, people disappeared—incarcerated without trial, criminalised as Enemies of the State, perhaps deported. This, my mother feared. Resisting the authorities was sufficient for such an eventuality. And so, heart pounding, rushing blood sounding in my ears, the smell of fear mingled with dry dust in my nostrils, I enter the lock-up compound, complete the security-check documentation, with further terror that I will be traced and found from

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the address on this page. And I join the queue—after a few years of visiting Villawood Detention Centre I have come to know or at least recognise enough people to have some companionable chats while waiting in the queue. However, when I started visiting, I often stood alone. Those days of queuing in the rain, in the heat up to 42 and 48° on Christmas Day 2002, or in the winter’s cold of 10°, always felt endless and rawly exposed.

Once Upon a Rainy Day Today I am upset. It was raining. Every time I visit, I do my best to look good. The people detained see none other than their visitors. What would they care about how I look? Normally I have “bad hair” days; “don’t know what to wear” days; “Gee, don’t I look good in that” days; or “Who cares—no one will even notice” days. But never one of those days when visiting Villawood Detention Centre. Dressing well, looking good, was one small way I could show respect to the captives I visited. The non-verbal communication I attempt is “You are special”; “You are important to me”; “You deserve a presentation of myself that is appropriate, considered and clear”. It seemed so important to always give that respect; that regard; that consideration—as if my thoughts, my appearance, could annul some of the vitriol poured on the detainees. Rami from Iraq had once whispered to me: “The visitors help me feel that I’m a human being. I don’t know myself that I’m human when I’m locked up.” I hoped that my attention to dress would reverse some of their amputation from life. If I am visible to myself, then they too will be visible. I am visiting Rami. Where is he? I make my way past Nawu who rises to greet me, kissing both cheeks. A faint glimmer of life flickers in his eyes only momentarily and then he sits again. I nod silent greetings to his visitors, some of whom I know; others I recognise as Regulars. All the while my eyes darting: Where is Rami? “How you, Nawu?”. “Good, good—thank you. Fine.” Not me, I remember thinking, not me. I have only had the past 10 min of lost independence and I am raging. I feel lost. How can you say fine, Nawu? I think. What is fine? In the remembering now, I am also wondering who was more lost then. Was Nawu lost to his free self, for the years of denial of freedom and of individuality? Or was I, because of the immediacy of my experience? “How you, Devorah?”. “Thank God, Nawu. Thank God,” I reply as the customary greeting begins its dance. “How’s your wife, Nawu?”. Why am I asking this question? Nawu has been in Villawood Detention Centre for three years. His body has already turned from solid, healthy and fit to the blubbery,

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watery, untoned no-shape, the shape that eventually masquerades as the body while inside. Nawu’s wife arrived with him as a seeker of asylum. She is an exquisitely beautiful young woman. Was she so withdrawn before Villawood? They have three children. After two years inside, his wife and three children have been released with permanent residence visas. This is now Nawu’s fourth year in Villawood Detention Centre. He worries constantly. His children are becoming unmanageable. They are not studying well. His wife needs an operation. She isn’t mobile—well, the only sort of mobile. So she can’t mother the children properly. “Who will take her, who will nurse her after the operation? That I must do,” he agonised with relentless angst. “I must look after my family” is his constant mantra. So WHY do I ask? It is polite to ask. I ask for the same reason I bother about my appearance. And so the greetings continue. He inquires about my children, I about his. All the while my eyes darting, looking for Rami. He sees my eyes darting around the visitor’s yard. “Rami was here.” He interrupts the greeting dance, thus demonstrating acquisition of and flexibility to slip into the more ‘get to the point’ Australian manner of communication. “Maybe he just went to his room to get something”, Nawu suggests. I tighten. Going to his room means he must walk through the now pelting-down rain, without an umbrella, it having recently been designated by Australian Correctional Management a ‘potentially dangerous weapon’, on the same list as pencils and cigarette lighters. “Thanks, Nawu.” I move on. I am starting to feel like a pressure-cooker, with concern and irritation building. “Why has he gone to his room and left me here?” I ask myself. I hate it here under the only shelter in the visitor’s yard. HOW CAN HE leave me standing here? “Excuse me.” I have spotted a spare chair. “Is this chair taken?” I ask the people who are seated, eating, around the table. I get some blank looks. My frustration is building. “I can take chair?” I ask, controlling my voice. More blank looks. “You speak English?” I didn’t think I had shrieked, although I felt like shouting at the blank faces eating food that assaulted my olfactory senses, here under the shelter, with the rain pelting down. “I don’t want to share space with them. These are not MY friends,” my inner voice whines. “Chair—me.” I start lifting the white plastic bucket chair, noticing a few others looking at me. I can’t read this situation. “What is going on here?” I feel prickly. But I can’t define the prickle. Embarrassment—yes? Frustration—yes? Rage at the situation—yes? But it’s something else … Is it my or their ‘something’? People are packed close to each other, all squeezing themselves under one shelter. Here under the shelter … I am nauseated by the smells of these foods … I’m panicking … I DON’T WANT to be here … At that moment an arm encircles my waist and I am turned around 180 degrees. Rami is there by my side. Saving me. But from what? “Where the hell were you?” I hiss at him.

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“There”, he points. “There. I didn’t even see you arrive. I am so sorry. It’s this crowd here. I didn’t see you. So sorry. I’m so stupid—I didn’t see you—I’m sorry …” “Nawu said you went to your room”, I accuse him. Gently, quietly: “No, I didn’t.” Rami has performed the impossible. He has created a space for just the two of us with the two chairs that he was guarding. Just two chairs for us. He knows I hate the crowding, the bodies, the smells, the sensations, the confusion under the shelter on rainy days. I breathe a sigh of relief. We sit opposite each other. Facing each other, knees touching, leaning forward on our white plastic bucket chairs. I look deeply into his eyes—and I settle. Looking into eyes is how I have learnt to know the answer to the unspoken question: “How are you?” I’m aware of a swift shift from the general indignity of having to queue for hours, the rain, having to hand in my umbrella, exposure to what felt like all the harsh elements, to this. Rami, permitting me to look silently into his eyes. Perhaps it’s my fury, my defencelessness, my exposure to, yet again, the callous Australian Correctional Management processing officer that is now surfacing and twisting itself. I HAD to be polite. I had to denounce my desire to be treated with regard. I had to censure my response to the manner in which the guard spoke. I had to suppress that lioness instinct to attack the Australian Correctional Management officer. Always the thought close to the surface that if we visitors are so disregarded, how much more so are the people detained annihilated. We can walk away. Unlike those who are detained and incarcerated indefinitely. This is my mood; Akhmatova’s ‘alien delirium’, if you will. I try to centre myself, to clip the wings of madness that have covered my soul, feeding me fiery wine (Akhmatova, 1940). Rami is a gentle soul. A perceptive young man. He extends himself now—for me. He knows how to make me laugh. And does exactly this. Here under the shelter, where visitors and people detained are squashed together on the white bucket chairs that leave no room to move freely from group to group; where bodies rub up against bodies in too close proximity; where the food smells attack all pervasively; and the sky is dark, thick and brooding and the rain renders hearing almost impossible. It is the laughter that rises above the hushed sounds of people sharing conversation, couples’ intimacies; English or French learners; babies crying; teenagers yelling and the slurping of noodle soups. The laughter is magnetic. Roles have been reversed: the inmate, my friend, has given me, a visitor from the free world, asylum in this harsh environment.

Intimacy, Freedom and Fragility [There are threads here of the intimacy of the communal experience, the freedom known in those moments, the fragility of it when Rami goes, the intimacy of Rami’s token and the freedom/power he experiences at that moment, and then once more the fragility as the moment is broken.]

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Slowly they approach us. Each one finding a way to include his chair in the evergrowing circle. Valerie, Mahmud, Osalp, Chrissy, Mohammed, Rami and Myself. The harsh day begins its transition to dusk. The rain lessens its own violent nature, halting a while. All is silent and fresh. Visitors leave, passing through the 10-foot high fence on the left of the shelter. Most people detained have exited the visitor’s yard through the security fence and gate that separates their accommodation yard from the visitor’s yard. There is a feeling of space. In this space I am inspired. I feel refreshed. It’s time for some fun. “So what would you like to drink for your sundowner, Osalp?” I ask, knowing he’s a Muslim who observes the prohibition of alcohol. He looks at me blankly. Rami peers at me, with a look that says “Has she gone mad?” Osalp sometimes flips into violence. Rami is instantly alert. “It’s such a beautiful evening—after all that noise—all of us here under the shelter and the rain pelting down. Now I feel like a drink”, I repeat the theme. They get it. Osalp says, “I’d like some red wine.” “What? How boring are you?” I instantly respond. And slowly one by one, each detained person offers some crazy never heard of cocktail, assuring us all it’s real. One describes a lovely cameo of not only the drink they would like but also the mood, the environment, the scene in which they now find themselves. One is engulfed in a romantic fireside tête-à-tête. Another is a couple strolling in hand along the beach. And, so, our creative imaginations set us free. Mohammed is now telling us about the woman, his girlfriend, with whom he will enjoy his drinks. “What? Are you leaving me?” I feign heartbreak. Rami becomes a little twitchy. Devorah is MY friend is clearly his thought. Heightened sensitivity due to the environment and due to their vulnerability increases our ways of knowing each other. “I wouldn’t leave you”, Rami says to me somewhat possessively and emphasising the ‘I’. Valerie teases him: “Is Devorah your girlfriend?” Oops—a sticky moment. We all know there is no suitable, accessible label for this relationship. (Horin 2005) Bravo! Rami offers “Yes, of course”, and places his arm in a boyfriend-ly manner around my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. “Oh!” I feign surprise. “Who was your first love?” I ask Rami. And the conversation livens up significantly. Each one telling their stories of love. And with the telling, they are free. Free men and women. Lovers. Not storytellers. Livers of the great world out there. I take the ball and run with it: “And you, Osalp? When was the first time you had a girlfriend?” Osalp is dropdead-gorgeous. Even here, behind the wires, he is constantly be reminded of his desirability by not only the detained but also by the visiting women. “I’ve never had a girlfriend”, he says with a straight face. “No one loves me.”

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I am faking a sob. I find a tissue and do a loud nose-blow and wail. “Poor Osalp. No one loves him. He has never known love”—as I rush around the table to console him with a hug and stroke his brow. Peals of laughter all around. And out of the corner of my eye, I notice Rami has jumped up and is darting across the visitor’s yard to his accommodation yard. We all stop playing the game—WHAT is going on? In this environment anything is possible. Sudden flare-ups, flips, aggression and suicide. They have seen it all. And we are all back in Villawood Detention Centre under the shelter. A few suggestions are offered. Opinions as to where Rami has gone. Why he has gone? Will he return? A few attempts at regaining the joie de vivre. We all want to be back there—free. Enjoying the reverie. And then Rami returns triumphantly, presenting a box of ‘Quality Street’ chocolates. This is the celebration offering. The highest quality champagne is offered in the joy of the moment here in Villawood Detention Centre. We all settle. I am relieved. The all-important choices are made. Each one in turn with noses dipped towards and into the box, turning the different sweets over and around, appraising the variety in anticipation of their flavours. Will I have this one? Will I have that one? In the silent moment, I become reflective. How fragile it all is here. And my reflection takes me back to my anger and vile bile earlier that day. I am feeling such appreciation for my friend. Rami was able with his laughter to pull me out of my disturbed self. “Quite amazing, really”, I muse, “given that he is the captive.” This afternoon, it was the detained seeker of asylum, my friend Rami, who was able to free me from the captivity of my prior confusion and frustration and my intense discomfort under the crowded shelter. This has been an excellent visit after all. Now I feel so connected to this soul who with an overflowing heart brought the chocolates to share with us all. As the others choose their chocolates, Rami moves even closer to me. His deepbrown eyes soft pools now, he opens his palm towards me. In it lies one red-wrapped Cherry Ripe. “This is for YOU,” he gently mouthes. This is his love wrapped in bright cellophane. The love for which he is truly yearning. Momentarily the boundaries are non-observable. His heart is overflowing. More than the one dozen red roses of a free man are offered to me. His palm open, my eyes somehow simultaneously on his palm and looking into his eyes, I take a breath. I am floating in the silence of knowing no separation. I am the recipient of pure, creative love. The only bit of red, wrapped around the chocolate, is the sacred offering, the sacred declaration of this moment. It is sacred, true to and pure within this moment. AND I reject it! “Oh, that’s so sweet of you, Rami,” my patronising I-am-pretending-I-don’tknow-what-is-going-on-here voice whines. “I actually don’t like Cherry Ripe. Thanks all the same.” And then, somehow to soften the blow: “But Casey—Casey LOVES Cherry Ripe. Should I keep it and take it to her?”

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I need to soften this a bit more, so even more patronisingly: “From YOU, OF COURSE.” He shrivels. I, in a hideous, shrieky I-am-in-control voice, say to no one specific and all in general: “Hey, what about me! Which chocolate shall I choose?” Rami is invisible. He is the one locked up. Yet he was free. He could run freely to get the box of chocolates. I am numb. Dead. I am free yet in a perverse 180-degree flip I am immobilised. Frozen. Detained. Devorah invisibilised herself, reduced to playing a role. Rami felt the flow of love. Rami dared to be connected. Compromising myself, my heart was unable to acknowledge the love token, the flow between us connecting us. Fearing a moment’s loving connection I have instantly moved to produce ‘the unwelcome Other’, ‘the detainee strange to me’. Now I am the stranger; the stranger to be feared; the stranger who harshly annihilates the seeker of asylum offering the love token. 19:00. Visiting time is over and it is time to leave Villawood Detention Centre. The ritual hugs of the dead. Today, both of us are dead. Leaving time always triggers his transformation back into the bent old man. His hands like claws that cannot really take hold of the wire fencing. Arms disappear. I see only the numbness-deadening, receding eyes staring alternately at the ground and then at me as I pass through the first unlock-and-lock gate. Like a scarecrow unable to stand upright, he flops even lower, his arms now visible as if they have re-joined his hands. Using the wire fencing, he holds himself up. I turn, as I always turn for a last glance, to see him before the next unlock and step into the blue infra-light vacuum chamber of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. This time, filled with self-disapproval and disappointment, I don’t care about the unlocking-locking and more unlocking-locking. Each rattle of keys, the slam of gates, odours of guards, guards’ uniforms, muted words of other departing visitors, take me further and further from my known self. Simultaneously deceiving and slowly numbing myself, I rationalise: “Of course I couldn’t accept the chocolate-love-token. That would have been a false signal … He’s a detainee … I need to keep the boundaries clear …” “Of course I can’t FEEL this farewelling week after week, year after year. I would become immobilised with the anguish of seeing him re-collapsed into the unwelcome detainee, as I walk away to the Sydney bush and beaches, the laughter and love of my family.” I add to and shift my story, thereby making it more comfortable to sensibilities, further inducing an othered numbness that becomes corporealised pain while locked within. Only years later will it be recognised, welcomed and released. Then I am ‘outside’ and in my car. I turn on my mobile. As always, I phone home to tell my children I am ‘out’ and starting my journey home. “Are you OK, Mum?” Casey inquires. “Yeah. Why, Love?”.

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“Was it a hard visit?” she persists gently. “No. Actually quite fun.” I start to tell her, but she interrupts. “I don’t know—you don’t sound OK, Mum. Don’t waste money on the mobile now. I’ll make supper for you. Please drive carefully.”

Appendix B

Hineni

“Waa, waaa, waaaaa.” Ahmed’s urgent voice was riveting. I froze. The secret signal between us, that only he and I could interpret. He arrived in Australia by boat and now his story seems no longer to be his own personal story. Boat people! They and their stories are too similar to each Other’s stories. His unique personal story, his own danger, his threatened life, is now in danger of no longer being unique. Boat people stories are now being universalised. They were tortured, they ran, their boat almost sank. They seek asylum … Ahmed had lost four plus years of his life in detention camps. His story must not become generalised; popularised; losing personal individual unique qualities. Ahmed is not a ‘Boat-People’; he is not a detainee; he is not an asylum seeker. He is Ahmed! Ahmed was a stateless Palestinian, born in a refugee camp. He had been held for six years, in a Syrian prison replete with regular torture—unsophisticated, crude, brutal torture. Against this unimaginable backdrop the young man escaped from his country, and started his pathetic journey to Indonesia and by boat to Australia. He was 32 when I met him in Villawood Detention Centre and had already been detained by the Australian apparatus for almost four years.

Scars Revealed “Look!’ he said to me. ‘Look … here … the marks from the torture”, he said, lifting his shirt, turning to show front and back. I panic. I am trapped. I have to look. To see. To witness. I have seen torture marks on others before now. “Please, God, don’t let me recoil; please give me the strength to cope with this sighting.” What is the appropriate response? I never know. Frequency hasn’t immunised my horror. I am now one foot away, even less, from the site of such unforgivable, unjustifiable, unwarranted, reprehensible disfigurement. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7

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Even as I write now, telling this story, while so clearly picturing, re-experiencing, almost re-locating myself back there, I see the glistening newly erected, additional fences and wires at Villawood (Vilewood). Patches of brown dust, like a patchy skin disease, compete with the pathetic excuse for grass in the visitor’s yard, the people dotted around the visitor’s yard each with their own cultural food smells wafting unbidden and definitely unwanted into the mix … The surveillance apparatus, the guards … In this moment of writing—somewhere between looking back and actually being there in that visitor’s yard—I am jolted, as if from a dream, or fog, as I notice how I objectified the body that has been tortured. No! Why can’t I say “His tortured body”? I write “have seen torture marks on others …” rather than talk of Ahmed’s or Rami’s or Mahmud’s scars—blue, purple, twisted, gnarled and uneven. Scars showing themselves as strangely white on an otherwise marble latte or cappuccinocoloured skin. By distancing myself, I reveal my need then, as now, to protect myself from fully feeling, from completely comprehending, from the imagined smell of flesh at the moment of being seared … imagined screams and yells as more than one place on the body is electrified, the crack of the tortured body, the fragmenting of the tortured psyche—of such sighting and imagining that his “Look! Look here” calls forth. His revealing is not born of sensationalism. On the contrary, this is a privately excruciating moment in the yard of surveillance. Ahmed extends beyond his personal privacy by showing me his torso, showing proof of his story. “They said I lied. You can read the transcripts [of the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) interview].” Again, rage boils within. Like bile rising, anger has a bitter-yellow, vile taste. As if permanent indigestion, my anger is always there when I hear the oft-repeated, always experienced “They didn’t believe my story.” Now, I am in the comfort of my writing place—crisp skies, life-giving sun shining, African quela music playing sounds from my childhood in the deep resonant natural harmony of male voices. I am again churned. My eyes sting! In Villawood Detention Centre, Ahmed and the others before and after him, in the muted voice tones of the living-dead, pleadingly said to me, “They didn’t believe me.” Deep within, I notice a flicker of doubt. How dare I even for that fleeting, almost non-existent second, doubt Ahmed. The look, somewhat questioning eyebrows, distancing eyes, an unresponsive mouth that silently conveys, “I know what you are saying is not true.” If I don’t believe him—I have raised the knife that cuts the soul and so poisons not only me but the relationship between us, too. I remember developing a ‘quick-awareness button’ to remove such doubt. They thought they knew. Their disbelief, their will to disbelieve, cost about 95% of the detainees three to five years of their life. No, I was determined not to play God and decide about truth and life. That is too burdensome a role for me. I couldn’t bear to be one of those who emit the toxic damage associated with playing God. I recall the time I listened to his interview tapes in order to establish a case for a return to the review tribunal. I shudder as I realise how unprepared I was for what I would be hearing on those twelve tapes. By tape three I was retching owing to

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the impossibility of hearing this detainee’s almost matter-of-fact voice recount the details of his torture. So, here in an open, exposed, public environment (the visitor’s yard which is under surveillance), a Muslim man shows his body to a Jewish woman. The moment is not lost to either of us. This ‘in-between space’, where all boundaries and conditions are suspended, is where deep in my heart and soul I silently call forth strength not to fail him with a look of horror or a gasp betraying my revulsion. I am a volunteer coordinating the legal teams, spearheading other vital activities, to secure his recognition as a refugee with subsequent visa and release. Ahmed wants me to see, to witness his evidence of torture and, therefore, the fear of return to his country of origin, Syria. His eyes fill with tears, he sways slightly, he gently rolls his head. “My brother… They took my brother after I left my country. We heard that they broke his legs, then my mother had a heart attack, so no one told my family anything more …” We stand in silence. “Cousin, I can’t go back there. My brother hasn’t been seen. Maybe he’s still in there?” Ahmed imagines. I silently wonder if, in his brother’s case, death might not be preferable. We are silent. He pulls down his shirt. His head hangs. He droops as if he is devoid of the energy required to put away the image, to placate his inner guilt-torment of his brother’s suffering caused by his flight to freedom. Well … he had hoped it was to freedom. Hoarsely, in his Arabic accent: “I can’t go back there. I can’t go back.” He sits down. “Tea?” he offers me the cooling mint tea from his ever-ready flask. I so enjoy his mint tea.

High-Alert Warning Cry “Waa, waaa, waaaaa.” The signal we set up to let me know he is in danger of forced removal, secret deportation. I groan, “Oh no, Cousin; oh no! How long have I got?” I ask. I am ready to kick-start plan A, B or C into action, depending on how long before he is restrained, injected and forcibly removed. I am on the verge of tears with shock. When planning the coded distress signal, it was fun. We had laughed a lot, suggesting different signals and testing the sounds. “Waa, waaa, waaaaa” developed from us mimicking a helpless baby that can but cry to signal distress or a need. Then, the full import didn’t really strike me. Perhaps I never thought I would actually hear the “Waa, waaa, waaaaa”. Did I not dare ‘go there’? Did my consideration of an emergency signal come from the intellect that plans without including my felt-self?

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Kinship Behind the Wire It was shortly after meeting him that Ahmed started calling me Cousin. “Because you are my cousin,” he explained. His family came from Bethlehem. They spoke Hebrew. “We are cousins,” he had proclaimed as he presented me with a picture that he had drawn, symbolising our kinship and discussing the merits of recognising our kinship. That day Ahmed unfolded a deeper connection between us with lively ensuing dialogue relating to Israel–Palestine. “No!Not ‘Waa, waaa, waaaaa’ me !!!! It’s my Cousin. ‘Waa, waaa, waaaaa’ my Cousin. It’s my other Cousin and she is young and she is beautiful and she’s in shock and she’s very troubled. She’s here now. Come quickly.” He was babbling. My brain was scrambling. What was he saying? Had they given him the injection already and he was mumbling in drugged madness? No, that can’t happen. He would be restrained, handcuffed, heavily guarded and unable to use his prohibited mobile. He wouldn’t have the mobile with him. “Cousin, what are you telling me? What is ‘Waa, waaa, waaaaa’ ?” Did my voice sound calm? Or was I shrieking? “Why can’t I hear my own voice?” I interrogate myself with urgency. “Ooooh. Oooooh. Sorry, Cousin. Sorry to upset you.” It was his voice that was calm. “My other Cousin they brought in today is a young Israeli girl. She is too scared. She is crying and confused. She needs you. Come. Come.” “Does she know you are calling me, Ahmed?” “No.” “Did you introduce yourself?” “No. She is too scared. She doesn’t know I am her cousin.” My throat constricts. I swallow. Again I swallow. My eyes moisten. I don’t know if at this moment my heart opens or closes. It’s opening as I feel care for Ahmed, as I recall how he extends himself. Despite his woeful situation, he calls me. My heart closes, I still am partly numb—my protection, my defence against all that intolerable pain, the atmosphere of angst, anxiety and anguish that is palpable behind the wire. And I protected myself, by not fully feeling. Only now, as I write these stories, do I realise how I had unconsciously numbed myself. How much numbing is just numb enough? I need to function. Has the numbness frozen? Yes and no: both frozen-numb and defrosted-numb. It was him noticing her plight; him caring; him phoning that defrosted the numb so I felt waves of tenderness soothing my muscles and my heart. And then again the numbing—so I can shift into action and deal with the situation; the hour-long drive in that traffic; the one- or two-hour wait in the queue; the 38° heat that day; the stamping; tagging; scanning of the security checks; the locking; unlocking; and slamming of gates until I will be in the visitor’s yard to meet Ahmed with his other Cousin. I remain numb. Just numb-enough. And it is uncomfortable for me. I suppress my own fear and anxiety, push away those soft waves and feelings so that I can act. ‘Na’ase v’nishma—We will do, and we will hearken’. Words from the Torah float around my head and settle within.

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Shabbat The peaceful, floating, restful Saturday juxtaposes itself to the hard, incessant, pounding, relentless beat of the work-week. The unanticipated, therefore shrill, ring of my mobile cuts through my sense of silent well-being. “Unusual for Ahmed to call so early in the day” is the thought as I notice his caller number. I am slightly jarred and now alert. “Thank you, Cousin. Thank you for the lovely food I had last night.” I Am Confused “What food?” I probe gently “The food, Cousin; the food you sent in for Shabbat. Hummus, Pita, Kebab, Salad. The food!” Usually able to think quickly, I draw a blank. I am perplexed. Ahmed’s Cousin, the Israeli, had been incarcerated on a Friday afternoon with no explanation of why she was where she was or for how long. “But who will tell me?” Her near-hysterical repeated question was met with disinterest: we’ve-heard-this-terror-before. “It’s Friday. Everyone has gone home.” “When do they come back?” Immigration operating procedure is to incarcerate people on Friday afternoon, leaving them in the zone of terror until Monday. Sara had been inside for just long enough to learn that some had been locked up in Vilewood (Villawood Detention Centre) for more than three and four years. This, too, is part of the villainous method of breaking people down. I met her, spoke Hebrew, and as she wrapped her arms around me, she collapsed onto my shoulder, her very long blonde hair a wee bit matted, entwining us. And she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Not hysterically. Sarah sobbed the sob of shock, of fear-turned terror, of the helplessness that precedes anger and with the life-force that precedes the automaton. I have seen people there as they slowly month by month release their life-force and begin to droop. Then tear-ridden, sleepless, baggy dark eyes, watery untoned bodies, un-styled hair and clothes stagger slowly around Villawood Detention Centre. For each one there arrives a moment when there no longer seems any purpose for holding on. They enter Vilewood each according to their past circumstances: in touch with reality, demonstrating appropriate responses, speech patterns, relating, healthy bodies, alert minds, spunky personalities, hopeful. And slowly after months of waiting … waiting … no release … no visa … no family––No work. No autonomy. No exercise. No friends. No shade. No sun. No shelter. No clothes. No relating. No believing. No trust. No sleep. No relief. No release. No name. Ongoing, timeless incarceration with no end in sight, literally and liminally. The desert stretches out in front of them. The concrete wall of their compound is all. They stoop, bend, become watery, slow down and become the walking dead. An expiration takes place. “They took my shampoo,” she self-consciously explains. Silent still, I look deeply into her eyes. “And my money. Can you get my credit card? My cash?” With that list, she remembers her mobile phone.

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“My phone—” Her voice quavers and becomes a wail. “My dad; I can’t call my dad, Devorah.” It all pours out in Hebrew. Her Israeli accent gets to me and I have to look away. She shouldn’t see my tears. Right? I can’t even recall how I felt at that moment! Dare I even admit this to be so? I feel shame that after one-and-a-half years I have no felt-memory. Visual memory there is. I recall what Sara wore. I recall how Ahmed hovered—watching—yet remaining incognito. Yet what did I feel when holding with this traumatised and terrified, clinging and crying, no longer a stranger to me, young woman. Sara was the same age as my daughter who at that time was living and studying in Israel. What causes this loss of feeling? Did I feel then? And only now, while writing, I don’t feel, or can’t recall what I felt? Was it the numbing again? After two weeks of being dehumanised, institutionalised, invisibilised, Sara made a claim to kosher food. “At least I must have kosher food for Shabbat. Devorah, I am Jewish. I must eat kosher on Shabbat.” Behind the wire, confused and terrified, this was more of a brave and gallant protest for life, to be witnessed and heard, than a religious requirement. Sara was not religious. Sara demanded living. She had not yet reached that lettinggo-of-life moment. The food was brought in, after visiting hours—after 7 pm to reduce visibility of a situation that could become inflammatory. Sudden unanticipated escalations of drama were inevitable where people were ‘buried-alive’, in Villawood Detention Centre. What could fresh food on order stir up? It was Friday night, Shabbat, in Villawood Detention Centre. Sara was locked into the single women’s accommodation yard, and Ahmed was locked into his section, Stage 2, where single men were housed amidst couples, families and children. Sara’s at the wire. Rattling the security wire between the two yards attracts someone’s attention. She asks them to fetch Ahmed. Now, while writing, much more is personalised. Not then, but now I wonder who she asked? How long did it take for Ahmed to get the message? Was he lying aimlessly on his bed when someone he knew or didn’t know knocked on his door? Did he first grab some other clothes? Did he take or hide his illegal mobile-phone? Was he having coffee and chatting with another incarcerated someone? Are these the questions of the vicarious witness? It was there, in the most unlikely of spaces, the space of no space, that Sara, fiercely proud and independent, waited at the wire. Her eyes that had recently acquired dark shadows from sleeplessness, tears, fear and trauma, looked out for Ahmed, who came unquestioningly to the wire. “The food was so yummy! The best in more than 5 years. Thank you, Devorah,” I hear him continue on the telephone. “You mean the kosher food I sent in for Sarah?” “YES ….” with the “Duh—what else?” tone. “But … but …” His “duh” inhibits my freedom to inquire further. Bracing myself I ask: “But how did you get it? I asked them to deliver after visiting and lock-up time. Did you get permission to eat together?” “HUH???? Que???” Ahmed speaks five languages and apparently English-nuance is his sixth language recently learnt from young Aussie visitors. He’s been inside

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for five years, which now, it seems, is enough to learn “duh” and “huh” with the appropriately withering tones. The “huh” is his incredulity that I could even think, never mind utter, the question out loud: “Did you get permission to eat together?”. “No, Devorah”, gentling his sixth language and returning to his soothing Arabic accent. “Not even asking permission.” He’s enjoying himself. Momentarily he savours having a private life. Nothing in Villawood Detention Centre is private. All is known. But I didn’t know how he got the food. “The best food in more than five years.” “She fed me.” Silence. “She fed me, Devorah, through the wire, piece by piece. My hands were too big to take it. I put my mouth to the wire. Nothing even spilt. The best food I had—more than even 5 years.”

Appendix C

The Garden of Hope

My dad, Yitzchak, is a wonderful gardener. Mahmud, who always carried the deep, cellular sadness born of his illegal sojourn in a country other than his beloved Iraq, of his multiple losses, including the death of his offspring, of the traumatic journey and the five-year incarceration, was never far from the crippling depression. When Ruth and I noticed the signs of him shifting back into that unreachable place, I asked my Dad to visit him, highlighting their shared passion, talent, skill and knowledge of gardening. I had a strong sense that contact with an older man would be containing, a balm for Mahmud. Mahmud needed a Wizard. Throughout the years of my visits to the detention centre, my dad had been guardedly supportive. While always totally available for me to unburden my aching heart or to tell my stories as my way of making sense, finding meaning in the world I had stepped into, my dad carried enormous fear for me, his fear of the consequences of visiting the detention centre. “What will they do to you when they find out?” he asked me. His question bears witness to the permanent damage inflicted by the South African apartheid regime. ‘They’ are the authorities. ‘They’ are the all-powerful authorities of the South African police state that was the South African apartheid regime. ‘They’ punish; ‘They’ imprison without trial those people who support the Other. In South Africa the Other was the ‘Black’. Here, in Australia, the Other—for my dad—is the Iraqi, the Iranian, the stateless Palestinian, the Somali and always the Aborigine. Logically, for my dad, since the authorities lock them up, visiting and supporting the detainees could incur punishment—imprisonment—for his daughter. Perhaps her passport will be seized; perhaps she will be sentenced for the ill-fated visits she made. Perhaps she will lose her job. “Is Dad also still locked up,” I wondered, “detained in his experience that wounded and bruised his compassionate soul?” Fear had been successfully introduced then, by the South African regime and now, by the Australian apparatus. In South Africa, a university student studying social work—a 26 year-old with a huge heart—carried a pot of soup to the home of one of her clients in Soweto. Rosie was intercepted (by the police) and jailed as an enemy of the state. My friend Rosie! An enemy!!!! “The © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7

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whole pot of soup fell to the ground – wasted”, she wailed to me. “How dare they waste the food that so many desperately need.” Rosie, ‘enemy of the state’,2 was held in solitary confinement for four months without a trial. My precious friend suffers periodic flashbacks and emotional fragility since her time alone in that prison cell twenty-four years ago. My dad preserves the memory of Rosie’s and others’ experiences. Dad didn’t say yes immediately. Mum was vexed that I had asked. At that time, my parents had only their Australian permanent residence visas and had not yet received citizenship. They greatly feared the consequence of a negative result to their application for citizenship if my father visited Mahmud. Mahmud was in need. I had to ask. My intuition told me that an older male, with a common bond, would be good for Mahmud. What drove me, at the expense of my parent’s tranquillity? “What can I bring for him?” was my dad’s gruff, circumspect assent. Laden with sugar, tea bags, fresh fruit and telephone cards, we headed for the interminable fences, wires, locks, bolts, queues and processing at the almost-toohigh-to-see-over counter at Villawood detention centre. Tears seeped out of their usually well-closed ducts when I saw the terror that overwhelmed Yitzchak when he passed through the detector and it suddenly beeped. An immediate, involuntary response: Dad, ashen-faced, was frozen to the spot, his hands above his head as if a gun was pointed at him. Deeper even than the apartheid scars, Yitzchak’s World War Two memories jumped into untimely life at the shocking sound of the beeping detector. ‘Cleared’, we continued through the blue infra-light, vacuum-sealed, securitycheck chamber and waited for the guard to open the heavy, dense, metal door to the unlock-and-lock gates into the visitor’s yard. Then: “Mahmud, please meet my father, Yitzchak. Dad, this is my friend, Mahmud.” “Am I mad?” I asked myself. With doubt assailing me ferociously, I wondered if my confidence in my subjective certainties was the product of too much time spent visiting the people detained, a distortion sourced in the contagion of the detention centre. As I look at my father during the introductions my instinct is to grab him and run, outside of and far from the security-high fences, away from the miasma of pain that suffuses the visitor’s yard. I know—indubitably, from a dimension of cosmic time—that his face reflects the shock, horror and fear of all who first arrive to be locked up in the detention centre. How do I protect Dad and Mahmud from my anger and anguish, threatening to vent like a rancid subterranean fissure within my being? They’ll see it. They’ll recognise it and know it. And it will hurt them both. 2

The South African Apartheid regime, from the mid-1970s to the 1980s, was ruled by governmentendorsed police security forces, military secret intelligence and counter-intelligence. In 1979, under ‘Pik’ Botha a ‘civilian agency’ was established to identify security threats to South Africa and to launch operations—targeting and eliminating targets identified as ‘enemies of the state’. Rosie was a professional social worker taking food to a client when arrested as an ‘enemy of the state’.

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In Mahmud’s hand is the kettle for tea. Mahmud laid the tablecloth then set out the plastic cups, the various teas and the little sweets to accompany the tea. Dad clumsily gave him the sugar and other gifts he bore. “My Dad’s a fantastic gardener—just like you.” Silence, as the men start seeing each other. A seeing I had learnt about since visiting Villawood. A seeing born in the presence of total vulnerability and trauma. A seeing in the yard of surveillance. Different from the seeing the blind develop, but a seeing also developed in the absence of the known, in the lack of the usual spaces, acumens, rhythms and practices of daily life. “Mahmud, why don’t you show Dad your garden? Dad, perhaps you’ll notice what plants you might bring for Mahmud next time.” I sat there as they walked off. Will Mahmud go into one of his torrents of anger and vitriol that involuntarily overtake him from time to time at unidentifiable triggers? Honouring the confidentiality of his personal story I had briefed Dad sparingly. Why? Was I now as mistrusting as those ‘inside’? How quickly can we leave? What if Mahmud is acutely uncomfortable with a Jewish man? Did Mahmud agree to meet with Dad only to please me? Such was my turmoil, confusion, and self-berating as I sat watching them that day. This is typical of ‘their’ way of thinking after being locked and isolated and denied and told by Australian Correctional Management “No one wants you. You are nothing.” “Have I caught their airborne thoughts? taken on their demons? ….” Dad and Mahmud standing arm in arm at the wire fence, looking out through the chicken wire that separates the visitors yard from the living-quarters yard. Looking through—to where the garden miraculously grows and blooms, a symbol of hope. And then, as they turn, I see them clasp hands in the way of Middle Eastern men. I have seen Indian and African men clasp hands this way, too. My Dad seems so at ease exceeding his cultural conventions to meet with Mahmud’s way. Did the Anglo-European colonial gentleman make any internal comparison with the handholding Black miners and garden ‘boys’? Was his parents’ Ludvak background of East-European hand-holding men within his collective unconscious? And they start circling the perimeter of the yard in the manner of the visitor and detainee who have a personal, not-to-be-overheard conversation to conduct. One usually only sees those well known to each other circling the perimeter. It is the cue for all to stay away for a while. It’s the absurd form of privacy one constructs when under surveillance within the constantly lit visitors yard. And then it is time to leave. The sun is setting; the weather has turned. Dad doesn’t have his thicker jacket. I had assured Mum it would be a short visit and that he would be home much earlier than … I never imagined … And then, just before we leave the unlock-and-free-the-visitor: leave-behind-thedetainee gate which leads to the yard which leads to the check-the-security-tag- andhand-stamp-infra-blue-light and before opening the vacuum-metal-door and before the cutting of the plastic wrist-tag and before the collecting of the keys and the driver’s licence at the almost-too-high-to-see-over processing counter. Just before we walk through the gate, they hug. They cry. They release each other looking deeply through the eyes into the stories each has told the other. Both men

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now far away from home. One with a passport and applying for another. The other with no passport and no application lodged. Both fathers have lost their sons. Both sons were killed by the authorities. Then, beyond the story, into the soul they had found in each other—the soul of courage, the soul of humility, the soul of love, the infinite soul. They embrace again. Each man then gathers his energy, braces himself, and both emerge from the soft beauty of the sacred bond of love to be the Muslim and the Jew, the detained and the free. And we walk away.

Appendix D

Through the Wire Program

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Appendix E

Jewish, Muslim Tea for Two

Source The Australian Jewish News, 19 August 2005

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Appendix F

Amal Basry’s Testimony

Amal means hope in Arabic. That was why my father gave me that name and maybe it was why I survived SIEV X. 146 children, 142 women and 45 men died in the tragedy of SIEV X. I was one of the 45 survivors. I saw it all. I saw so many people die and I have to tell the story. It has been three years since the sinking of SIEV X but I am still in the water. I can still feel the dead woman whose body I clung to so I could keep afloat. I never saw her face, it was in the water but I talked to her all night. I prayed for her soul and she saved my life. I still see what I saw when I first opened my eyes under the water. I saw children dying. I can taste the oil and the salt of the sea, I feel my fear and I smell death. Little children, dead babies, desperate parents, families dying one by one, and I was alone believing all the while my own son was dead. I was in the water for 22 h waiting for my death. I was like a camera. I saw everything. When the sharks circled I prayed for my death and suddenly a whale rose up beside me, it was as big as an apartment block it blew water from its blowhole all over me and I thought it would suck me and the woman I clung to into the deep. But the whale also saved me. It saved me from the sharks. Sometimes when the pain wakes me in the night, at that moment between frightening dreams and the shock of reality, I think the sharks are feeding on my body, tearing parts of me away, and ripping at my soul. On the second anniversary of the sinking of SIEV X I knew I was ill. On 27 October 2003, I lost my left breast to cancer and now the cancer is in my bones and is eating away at me. The cancer eats like a shark. My doctors are kind and try to manage the pain but there is a deeper pain, the pain of loss, the pain of rejection. In those hours when I cannot sleep I see the lights that were shone on us as we fought to live in the water. The lights came from ships, I could hear the voices of the men on board so safe and so dry but I could not make out the language they were speaking. I screamed to them to help, we all cried from the sea but they went away. The pain of SIEV X will not go away. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7

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Appendix F: Amal Basry’s Testimony

I cry so often. I cried and cried when I saw the Australian families in Bali mourning their friends and relatives, I knew how each of them felt. That is how I feel. I cry when I see the families of the American soldiers who have died in Iraq. That is how I feel. And like them I need to talk about the things that have happened to my life and my family because of tragedy. I cry when I think of my beloved Iraq the land of my birth reduced to rubble and my people dying and I cry when I think of my father who is still in Baghdad so ill and so poor. When I was a child we spoke English in our house and my father took me around the world and I learnt so much and met such wonderful people. Our family was torn apart by Saddam Hussein. My mother died hungry. My husband and I were forced to flee to Iran with our children. But we knew we could not stay there, and we believed in Australia, so my husband went ahead. He was waiting for us when SIEV X sank. When we were rescued I spoke English again. I said ‘I want to go to Australia and learn very good English and then I want to go on Larry King and tell the world what happened to us’. In all the months we waited in Indonesia and were questioned over and over I still believed in Australia. And I still believe in Australians because they do care about us and they are kind and loving friends. But none of us from SIEV X feel safe; we cannot be safe until we know we belong until we can be citizens. I may not have long now but I speak English well enough to give evidence for Australia in a court of law without a translator. And I can speak in public without notes and I want to tell my story. The Australians who have spoken up for us are my angels and I thank God for them. And now I want to spend what time I have left telling people what it was like to be there, awaiting my death, there in the water being kept afloat by the body of a dead woman and seeing it all happen. We still need help. All of us from SIEV X still need your help. On the eve of the third anniversary of the sinking of SIEV X, I pray to God for the people who died and for all the people who loved them and I pray too for the survivors. We are all in different places and our lives will never be the same but now I know Australians will never forget. I don’t have time to write a book but I want to talk and I want to talk now. My name is Amal. It means hope. And I will not give up hope until the day I die.

Glossary

Advocate: Volunteers who performed effective functions in support of a specific refugee/s to gain recognition of refugee status, visa and release from detention, as distinct from the legal qualification. Asylum seeker: A legal status; a fixed-state term that neutralises the individual person. An asylum seeker is a person who has left his/her country of origin, has applied for recognition as a refugee in another country and is awaiting a decision on the application.Refugees should not be confused with seekers of asylum; the two terms have different legal definitions.Have chosen the designation ‘seeker of asylum’ as a move away from the universal legal term ‘asylum seeker’ and to indicate an action or actions of people. See also Illegal immigrant, Refugee Asylum-seeking-refugee: To create language that is ethically sensitive to asylum seekers I instantiate the hyphenated term asylum-seeking-refugee. This newly created word is used throughout this book. Auschwitz: A concentration camp where the majority of Jews were murdered during World War II. Also used to mean the Holocaust (Shoah). Chesed/Chesed:Hebrew: ‘loving-kindness’. Cogito: From Descartes’ (1641) proposition ‘Cogito, ergo sum’—‘I think, therefore I am’—the ‘first and the most certain fact which presents itself to whoever conducts his thoughts in order’. The principle establishes the existence of a being from the fact of his or her thinking, or awareness of himself or herself, as a thinking subject. The Convention: The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is the key legal document in defining who is a refugee, the rights of the refugee and the legal obligations of states. The 1967 Protocol removed geographical and temporal restrictions from the Convention. Gender: I have chosen to interchange the masculine and feminine wherever I’m referring to a non-specific individual. Haftorah: The section of writings by the Prophets that is read together with the weekly Torah reading. Halacha: A collective body of Jewish religious law derived from Torah, Talmudic and Rabbinic law. Customs and traditions are included in the Halacha. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Wainer, Human Rights for Refugees and Other Marginalised Persons, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3571-7

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Hineni: Hebrew; literally ‘Here I am’. Illegal immigrant/Illegal immigrants: people who enter a country without meeting the legal requirements for entry or residence. The UNHCR Convention says that states should not impose penalties on individuals coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom is threatened on account of their illegal entry (Article 31). Furthermore, under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to seek and enjoy asylum. Infinity: As used by Levinas in Totality and Infinity (1961). ‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’: Language used by prisoners; also used by the incarcerated asylum seekers indicating their institutionalisation within the culture of the criminal–penal system. Midrash, pl. Midrashim.adj. Midrashic: Literally, exposition, investigation or searching does not, of course, have a univalent meaning (see Neusner 1987, 1989). I am using the term, not in its narrow sense, to refer to classical rabbinic Midrash, but rather to identify an entire phenomenological category of hermeneutical exposition that has historically been uniquely expressed in Jewish philosophy and mysticism, albeit with influences from other quarters. The Hebrew word means ‘commentary’ or ‘ex- pound’. Was the Rabbinic commentary on the Torah through the method of stories. In this thesis midrash refers to stories written with the purpose and method of midrash, akin to the hermeneutical narrative; not directly related to Torah. Refers to stories and teachings of the Torah in modern idiom through today’s lens. Ontological complicity: Messages that are communicated by politicians, bureaucrats and the media and adopted by the public as facts; individuals’ worldviews; according to perceptions, constructions. Other: a unique person who is suffering or a stranger as per Levinas’s thinking. Refugee: A refugee is a person who ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country …’Article 1, 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees: • Refugees have to be outside their country of origin. • The reason for their flight has to be a fear of persecution. • The fear of persecution has to be well-founded. • The persecution has to result from one or more of the five grounds listed in the definition, that is, race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. • They have to be unwilling or unable to seek the protection of their country. Refugees are forced to leave their countries because they have been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution. Refugees run away. They often do not know where they will end up. Refugees rarely have the chance to make plans for their departure such as packing their personal belongings or saying farewell to loved ones. Many refugees have experienced severe trauma or have been tortured.

Glossary

241

Refugee Status: Many states that are party to the 1951 Convention also have refugee-status determination procedures, to determine the person’s status in accordance with the domestic legal system. UNHCR offers advice to governments on refugee status determination as part of its mandate to promote refugee law and the Convention. UNHCR advocates that governments adopt a rapid, flexible and liberal process, recognising how difficult it often is to document persecution. Relata: In philosophy to be understood as each of two or more terms, objects, events, or person/s between which a relation exists. Shoah: Hebrew for the Holocaust; literally ‘catastrophe’ or ‘calamity’. Talmud: The collection of Jewish exegetical, hermeneutic and legal writings derived from Torah; also known as ‘Oral Law’ (Torah being ‘Written Law’). The wire/through the wire/behind the wire: Colloquialisms for the detention centres Through the Wire: A play about three ordinary Australians and four refugees and the extraordinary life-changing relationships that developed between them. Penned by Ros Horin from material gathered from in-depth interviews with the people who are the characters in the play. A verbatim theatre work about refugees and Australians who took steps to develop life-changing relationships with the detainees. Torah: Hebrew word for the revelation of God to Moses at Mount Sinai as recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures; also a noun referring to the parchment scroll on which the Torah is handwritten by Rabbinic scribes, in pen and ink. The significance of Torah in Judaism is illustrated by the Jews in the Shoah who lost their lives trying to bury, hide or protect their community’s Torah scroll. Totality: As used by Levinas in Totality and Infinity (1969) Vilewood: Colloquial term for Villawood Detention Centre used by a few volunteer advocates Villawood detention centre: Used in full to honour the manner in which the detainees spoke. Yeshivah, pl. Yeshivot: An academy for the study of central Jewish texts such as Torah and Talmud.

Index

A Abraham, 76, 77, 88 ACM, see Australian Correctional Management, 127 Adelaide, 19 Adieu, 79, 84, 85 Affidavits, 127, 128, 168 Agamben, 64, 96, 97, 156 Ahmed, 130, 131, 163, 169, 172, 179, 183, 191, 192, 195, 219–224 Akhmatova, 126, 130–132, 145, 178, 179, 209, 213 Ali, Mohammed, 134, 135 Alvarez, 97–99 Ami, 173, 174, 194 Arabi, Ibn, see Ibn, Arabi Arendt, Hannah, 63–65, 117, 156, 159 Auschwitz, 38, 42, 89, 107, 146, 148, 151, 159, 165, 171, 184 Australian Border Force, 6, 98, 99, 152, 160 Australian citizens, 18, 21, 26, 96–98, 167, 168, 170, 176, 180, 192, 193 Australian Correctional Management (ACM), 127, 128, 169, 205, 212, 213, 229 Australian detention regime, 43, 150 Australian government, 11, 20, 21, 43, 45, 56, 78, 129, 152, 157, 160, 161, 163, 165, 166, 175

B Bagaric, Mirko, 29 Baxter detention centre, 18, 19, 31, 76, 96, 97 Bekker, Carol Benhabib, Seyla, 7, 62

Bernasconi, 166–168 Bhattacherjee, 115 Bishop Tutu, 15, 181 Boats, 15, 16, 21, 62, 63, 65, 135, 148, 150, 152, 153, 163, 172–174, 182, 194, 200, 219 Boochani, 7, 8, 95, 100, 133, 134, 185 Boundaries, 1, 3, 23, 25, 26, 34, 39, 115, 116, 145, 146, 187, 190–193, 215, 216, 221 Bourdieu, Pierre Briskman, 162 Buber, 21, 30, 38, 70, 83, 84, 100, 101, 146, 182, 188–190, 192, 194–196 Burnside, Julian, 42, 43, 152, 155, 160, 169

C Cham, 76, 89–92 Clients, 58, 61, 112, 139, 176, 178, 227, 228 Coffey, Guy, 161 Cohen, Leonard, 41 Cohen, Richard, 69, 82, 84 Connolly, Kate, 107, 151, 159 Convention, 11, 16–18, 28, 44, 56, 64, 65, 114, 130, 155, 158, 162, 188, 229, 239, 240 Criminals, convicted, 28, 31, 57, 58, 159 Crimmigration, 98, 148 Critchley, see Bernisconi, 166 Critical theory, 37, 38 Crowell, 195

D DAL1, 57, 58, 60, 62, 139, 140, 151, 172, 182

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Index

Death row, 26, 27 Denzin, Norman, 29, 53, 87, 95, 133 Derrida, Jacques, 29, 79, 83–85, 177 Detention, relationships in, 155, 156, 176, 193 Dialogical, 5, 7, 38, 70, 74, 82–84, 187, 192, 195, 196 Doublespeak, 152, 153, 155, 170 Douglas-Klotz, 103, 104

181, 183, 187–189, 191, 194–196, 200, 219, 240 Holocaust, 20, 30, 38, 111, 124, 125, 151, 165, 239, 241 Holtz, Barry, 82 Horin, Ros, 150, 155, 156, 158, 159, 175, 176, 178, 181, 188, 193, 241 Hunches, 23, 25, 118 Huysmans, Jeffrey, 57

E Eacott, Scott, 25 Ethical signal, 146, 173, 177–179, 181, 183, 187 Every, Danielle, 57, 97 Exile stories of

I Ibn, Arabi, 104, 105 Illegal immigrants, 239, 240 Indifference, 23, 43, 44, 65, 73–75, 82, 87, 89, 97, 100, 107, 150–152, 168, 175, 178, 193 Inquiry, 3, 9, 10, 23, 28, 29, 38, 54, 81, 84, 97, 99, 111, 115, 116, 131, 133, 161, 162 Interpreter, 61, 90–93, 149, 154, 199 Irwin County Detention Center, 161

F Fackenheim, 38, 170 Falzon, Christopher, 7 Fear, well-founded, 130, 240 Flynn, Michael, 12 Foucault, 5, 9, 98, 99, 114 Frankl, 6–8, 184, 185 Freedom, spaces of, 184, 185 Friendship, 20, 116, 117, 180

G Gaby, 155, 159, 184, 188 Gilbert, Martin, 124, 125 Gillan, Garth, 9, 25, 170, 171, 175, 191, 192 Granger, Ivan, 195 Greece, 32, 33 Greek modality, 81, 82 Gregory, Robert, 138, 204 Guardian, 59, 149, 162, 172 Guba Guchteneire, 64, 65 Guenther, Lisa, 183, 184

H Hanssel, Joelle, 73, 165 Harris, Sam, 25, 28, 37, 75, 116 Hathaway, James, 57 Heidegger, 30, 70–72, 167, 168 Hess-Biber, 24, 28, 29, 95 Hineni, 76–78, 84, 130, 131, 146, 159, 163, 168, 170, 172, 174, 176, 177, 179,

J Justice, 3, 5, 17, 19, 21, 37, 54, 55, 69, 70, 73, 79, 93, 139, 164, 178, 179, 183

K Kani, John, 39–41, 123, 131, 132, 200 Kavan, 46–48, 190, 191, 194 Kepnes, 38, 41, 75, 84, 100, 104, 105, 170, 190, 196 Kidane, 173–175, 194

L Lampedusa, 134, 149, 153, 172, 173, 194, 200, 201 Lawrence, 166, 167 Leavy, 24, 25, 28, 29, 92, 93, 95, 116, 118, 136, 145 Lenette, Caroline, 9, 95, 100 Leningrad, 126, 130, 132, 178 Letters, 46, 95, 105, 106, 139, 161, 165, 175, 192 Levi, 30, 42–44, 146, 150, 151, 157, 158, 165, 170, 184 Levinas, Emmanuel, 2, 3, 5, 7, 20, 22, 29, 30, 38, 40, 44, 45, 53–55, 62, 65, 66, 69–79, 81–85, 87, 92, 93, 97, 115, 146, 151, 152, 162, 164–168, 170, 171, 174–184, 192–196, 200, 240

Index Levinasian Response, 44 Life-force, 164, 223 Lincoln, see Guba, 29 Lingis, Alphonso Locks and bolts, 116, 125, 209 Lodge, 57, 182 Love token, 138, 204, 216

M Mahmud, 111–114, 131, 177, 181, 185, 188, 189, 192, 194, 214, 220, 227–229 Malka, Salomon, 71, 84 Mandela, 18, 19, 39, 40, 131, 132, 145 Manne, Robert, 98 Manus Island, 6, 7, 11, 95, 96, 151, 160, 161, 185 Manus Prison, 8, 95, 185 Mares, 21, 124, 163, 180 Marr, David, 43, 98 Martin, Greg, 148 Masters, Jarvis, 26, 27 Mbembe, Achille, 19, 97, 99, 100 Mcadam, Jane, 64, 65 Medevac, 44 Meditation, 25, 28, 29, 75, 97, 132, 184, 192 Methodology, 1–4, 10, 11, 22, 24, 25, 28–30, 38, 41, 53, 62, 73, 76, 82, 87, 95, 100, 104, 111, 114, 115, 118, 126, 131, 139, 145, 168 Migrants, 27, 64, 147–150 Mohammed, 185, 186, 214 Mohsen, 45, 156, 157, 160, 176, 181, 182, 188, 192, 193 Mumbai, 119, 207 Music, 20, 33, 120, 121, 133, 206–208, 220

N Natural justice, 153, 154, 168 Nawu, 211–213 New knowledge, 3, 37, 117, 118, 126 Newman, see Mares, 42 Nooshin, 140, 141, 172, 182 Numbing, 59, 132, 138, 166–168, 204, 216, 222, 224

O Osalp, 185, 186, 214, 215 Other/other, 1–5, 7–9, 11, 12, 15, 17–24, 27–30, 32–34, 38, 40, 41, 44, 46–48,

245 53–57, 62, 64–66, 69–79, 81–84, 88, 90, 97–100, 104, 105, 107, 111–114, 116–118, 120, 123, 125, 128, 130, 131, 133, 134, 136, 138–141, 145–151, 153–156, 158–160, 162–173, 175–179, 181, 182, 184–196, 200, 204, 205, 207, 209–216, 219–222, 224, 227, 229, 230, 240 Overboard, 174, 175, 184

P Palmer, 97–99 Palms, 88, 141, 172, 187, 215 People smugglers, 16, 32, 149, 173 Perera, Suvendrini, 97, 99, 150 Perimeter, 59, 114, 139, 194, 229 Person, 5, 16, 20, 25, 28, 33, 44–46, 54–56, 69, 71–73, 75, 83, 87, 88, 96, 100, 112, 140, 151, 153, 156, 160, 166, 170, 174, 175, 181, 182, 184, 186, 188, 193, 214, 239–241 multiplicity of, 20, 21 Photographs, 161, 192, 200 Piguet, 64, 65 Poem, 2, 40, 45, 47, 136–138, 179, 180, 203, 204 Poetry, 1, 3, 8, 19, 23, 47, 48, 62, 104, 105, 118, 133, 136, 146, 160, 179, 190–192, 194 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), 127, 169, 184 Pretoria, 39, 40 Prisoners, 18, 26, 27, 58, 59, 62, 71, 128, 154, 159, 165, 184, 185, 240 Prison guards, 31, 57, 59, 61, 96, 116, 156 Pugliese, Joseph, 96, 156

Q Queue, 59, 106, 112, 123, 126–130, 132, 152, 168, 179, 205, 206, 209–211, 213, 222, 228 Qur’an, 104, 105

R Rain, 4, 5, 59, 128, 138, 168, 186, 203, 205, 211–214 Rami, 27, 30–34, 45, 64, 105, 106, 131, 157, 158, 165, 173, 176–178, 181–183, 185–188, 192, 193, 211–216, 220

246 Rau, 18, 19 Rau, Cornelia, 18, 96–99 Razor wire, 45, 150, 154, 167, 175 Reception desk, 60, 177 Refugees, 1, 3, 5–9, 11, 12, 15–18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, 38, 43, 44, 47, 53, 55, 56, 58, 62–65, 69, 72–74, 76, 79, 84, 87, 90, 95, 96, 98–100, 105, 107, 116, 117, 119, 125, 126, 130, 132, 134, 147–150, 152, 153, 155–157, 161–163, 167, 169, 170, 173, 175, 178, 179, 182, 185, 192, 195, 200, 219, 221, 239–241 Refugee status, 7, 11, 16, 22, 27, 90, 105, 123, 155, 239, 241 Reinharz, Shulamit, 116 Religion, 20, 25, 74, 75, 78, 87, 104, 240 Rights, 8, 11, 25, 40, 42, 43, 47, 56, 60, 61, 63–65, 81, 90, 92, 97–99, 125, 132, 135, 140, 147, 161, 166, 173, 176, 179, 209, 224, 239, 240 Robben Island, 18 Room, processing, 128, 205 Rosenzweig, Franz, 38, 70, 83, 146 Rosie, 178, 227, 228 Rugs, 134, 135 Rule, 46, 74, 99, 153, 159 Rumi, 23, 47, 105, 191

S Scale, 29, 30, 125, 130, 131, 168, 179 Secondary trauma, 127, 132, 184 Security guards, 3–5, 21, 46, 59, 156 Senate inquiry, 99, 170, 175 Shabbat, 223, 224 Shahin, 155 Simmons, William, 5–8, 56, 62, 90, 195 Sinai, 77, 78, 241 Situation, concrete, 53, 79, 193 Social world, 26, 177 South Africa, 18, 19, 39, 40, 112, 130–132, 210, 227 South African, 19, 39, 40, 74, 106, 112, 117, 120, 130, 210, 227, 228 Special Branch Speech, 5, 79, 83, 99, 104, 146, 150, 156, 159, 164, 165, 173, 223 States, enemy of the, 112, 178, 227 Stranger, 3, 9, 19, 20, 22, 43, 44, 48, 53–56, 65, 69, 71, 72, 76, 78, 79, 82, 87, 88, 92, 100, 128, 138, 146, 165, 172, 182, 190, 204, 205, 216, 224, 240

Index Students, 3, 6–9, 25, 31, 41, 45–47, 57, 59–62, 70, 75, 81, 83, 112, 118, 132, 133, 139–141, 157, 177, 182, 194, 208, 227 Summer, 2, 20, 117, 120, 127, 136–138, 203, 204, 207 Susan, 150, 152, 155–157, 175, 176, 181, 182, 188, 192, 193 Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel (SIEV), 175 Sweets, 96, 113, 140, 187, 215, 229 Swing, 31–34

T Table, 24, 40, 139–141, 172, 182, 186, 212, 215 Talmud, 70, 82–84, 111, 125, 130, 132, 164, 241 Tea, 33, 47, 113, 221, 228, 229, 233 Temporary Protection Visas12, see TPVs Temporary Protection Visas12 (TPVs), 155 Tense thighs, 129, 206 Tension, 7, 33, 59, 61, 128, 129, 138, 158, 204, 206 Terrorists, 15–19, 175 Text message, 8, 185 Theory, 3, 6, 9, 11, 22, 23, 25, 29, 83, 84, 98, 134, 146, 156, 176 Throat, 5, 31, 40, 59, 106, 126, 138, 204, 205, 209, 222 Torah, 41, 70, 77–79, 81, 82, 84, 104, 164, 177, 188, 222, 239–241 Tredinnick, Mark, 117 Truth, harsh, 138, 170, 204, 205 Tutu, Bishop, see Bishop

U Ubuntu, 39–41 Umbrella, 4, 5, 128, 129, 138, 203, 205, 206, 212, 213 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, see UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 7, 16, 72, 105, 130, 147, 148, 155, 240, 241

V Van Manen, Max, 121 Vatican, The, 105, 106 Victims, 6–9, 40, 64, 89, 176, 193 Vilewood, 164, 220, 223, 241

Index Villawood detention centre, 15, 19, 21, 24, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 57, 59, 64, 79, 106, 112, 113, 116, 120, 123, 125, 128–130, 138, 139, 151, 159, 160, 164, 168, 169, 173, 178, 179, 181–183, 185, 186, 188, 192–194, 203–207, 209–211, 215, 216, 219, 220, 223–225, 228, 241 Villawood detention centre’s visitor surveillance, 20, 79, 105, 134, 172, 188 Visiting Villawood detention centre, 88, 168, 209, 211 Visitors, 6, 19–21, 27, 30, 33, 34, 46, 53, 59, 61, 64, 79, 88, 106, 111, 113, 114, 117, 123–128, 131–133, 138–140, 149, 156, 157, 168, 169, 173, 175, 177, 179, 180, 182, 185, 186, 188, 189, 192, 194, 204, 205, 209, 211–216, 220–222, 224, 228, 229

247 W Wainer, Chanah, 9, 37 Wainer, Devorah, 20, 25, 42, 45, 59, 88, 106, 114, 118, 121, 126, 127, 129, 131, 136, 168, 169, 185 Wall, 26, 39, 65, 126, 157, 164, 174, 223 Warmth, 137, 203, 204 Watery, 56, 129, 159, 164, 206, 212, 223 Wedding, 32, 33 Wheel, 119, 206 Wife, 134–136, 174, 211, 212 Winter, 84, 137, 138, 158, 168, 204, 211 Wire program, 231 Wolof, 76, 90, 91 Wolof language, 90, 91 Women, 11, 15, 16, 30, 33, 34, 106, 116, 149, 150, 174, 180, 185, 186, 192, 214, 224, 235 Wygoda, Shmuel, 84