33rd letter to my friend, Khodayar

Dear Khodayar, I am writing to you now while I am ill. At night my cough wakes me again and again. During the day I am tired and find it difficult to talk. But I can still write. I send you my best wishes and the news that the coroner has made findings about your death. Insufficient findings; disappointing findings. He made no mention of the system that was designed and constructed to make your life a hell - to make the lives of all your sisters and brothers in detention a misery. He didn't mention that other refugees have also burnt themselves in their extreme desperation. It seems that these deaths and this inflicted suffering may continue, as the wheels of bureaucracy turn and human beings are addressed as numbers. As babies are separated from their parents and children spend their whole lives behind bars. This cruelty has been made normal - that which is disgusting tastes bland to us now. Over all is cloaked these "false slogans of humanity" to deceive our feeble minds and make us feel that all is well, while hate and cruelty rule our withered hearts. Love Stephen

#32nd letter to Khodayar

Dear Khodayar, today I manage to catch some winter sunlight coming through the bedroom window as I write to you. I can hear the faint call of a bird from outside. As I lift my eyes from this page I see spider webs glittering in the lemon tree. The fruits are plentiful and yellow. I hope you are well - I hope you can be safe. In these last few months I haven't thought of you so often. Is that cruel of me? It seems that the flowers I am holding for you have slipped from my hand and fallen in the dirt. How careless of me. How careless of the world. When you were alive you could tap my shoulder and walk into my room. But now that your life has been snuffed out I must go looking for you - you will never come for me. I walk beside Dandenong creek to get to your final camp. The burnt patch of ground where you died is very hard to see now, but I have the tree next to it well decked out with your photo, with flowers and with your final statement. How many others still come here to remember you? The Hazaras still come here to play sangirag. They choose this place specially in remembrance of you. Love Stephen

Final Statement for apathetic, so-called human beings.

As time passes and our lives play out, the words of Khodayar Amini are remade and reimagined in the forests and the cities where we live.

More flowers for you Khodayar.

More flowers for Khodayar Amini, left at his Final Camp - where he died - and at his grave.

31st letter

Dear Khodayar, what drives your enemies to plot against you and wish you harm? From which ancestors does this sickness come that makes them hate? I know that I am bound to not disown them; these criminals are my sisters and brothers. They are your sisters and brothers. And it is the urgency of this fact that makes their cruelty against you all the more futile and ugly. There is one sky above, there is one rock below our feet. These fences, these prisons that surround us are our own creation. We do not need to live like this. The food of the world is for all of us to share. No one should be starved, no one should be pushed from the table. Love is the only honest way to live – everything else is based on lies and cheating. The powerful take what they do not need from those whose need is greater. They take food, they take land and they take water. They take warmth and shelter. They will even take life and then call it justice.

Khodayar, you know all this. You have learnt about the ugliness of being tortured and sentenced to death. This all happened to you. This was done to you for no reason. It was for the shape of your face and the colour of your skin and the place of your birth that you were killed. How can people not see the hideouslness of this barbarity? They must be broken minds and sterile hearts that make these cages. Love Stephen

#FacesOfKhodayar (continued)

#FacesOfKhodayar

One year after your death we remember you Khodayar.

The many #FacesOfKhodayar defy tyranny and death.