18th letter to Khodayar

Dear Khodayar, when I go to visit you I start from my home in Woiwurung country and drive to your final camp in Bunwurung land. In your plight you withdrew from the cities of concrete and asphalt and turned to the timeless landscape of Australia; to the animals and plants and stories that have always lived here. Settler Australia with its cities and towns is a recent growth on this land. You looked for the gaps between the carparks and the buildings and found some sort of respite in the indigenous paradigm of water, land and air. When I look at the eucalyptus leaves I see your name in their long curving shapes. It is as though this very land remembers you and sighs your name from its pores. As much as the city wants to forget you, the earth and roots and rocks won’t stop singing your name.

I am glad. This land is witness to your agony and to the others who came here and to those who will come after. This land holds the shape of your voice and the light of your face. Deep and large beyond reckoning, this place is witnessing the tragedy inflicted on you and remembering. Each of the cuts with cotton that killed you is folded in animal skin and fur. Love Stephen.