Twentieth Dead Letter to Khodayar Amini

Dear Khodayar, with your name I honour each refugee that there is in the world. I honour those that have been killed and those who have made it this far. I honour all the perilous paths that people have fled along and all the dismal sea crossings that have been made. In your story I see myself and my ancestors and my children. I see my friends and family in your struggles and suffering. Yours was a gigantic and a mortal quest. Even as a child death was a threat that hung above you. You had to move; you had to try to find a place that was safe. Your only chance was to push apart the mountains and search for the key that would give you true freedom. You threaded a way through the mountains, passed over the water and managed to arrive here. But there were only dry and brittle hearts to be found – our arms refused to help you up and would only push you under. Relentless logic excluded you from our community. You were put in the camps and learnt there what a living death could be like. Peeling away your name and your past the Government made you like refuse to be burnt. Your future was a grey nothingness. You were forgotten and forgettable and utterly without love and dignity. But they could never stifle your voice, never negate your compassionate words. Love Stephen

Nineteenth Dead Letter

Dear Khodayar, this country that you came to looking for peace and safety has a violent and racist past. Now we re-enact that violence and racism in the present on people like you – the people of the road fleeing unthinkable misfortune. Our false slogans of humanity are both to strangle our own guilt and to harm your spirit. It is not just you bodies that we lock away from freedom but we also stuff your minds with lies and filth. We can not admit what we do to you so we deny the reality of your enslavement. We can not bear your weakness and vulnerability so we blacken your names and demean you. We can not bring ourselves to embrace our sisters and brothers so we deny your humanity and take away your voices.

You know all this Khodayar. This is what you lived and died, and this is what you taught to me. You bore witness to this crime that is being done by us. This was a difficult thing to do and I congratulate you. This crime that is decried in history books yet made afresh each day. Love Stephen

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.

Breaking....Khodayar buried in a pauper's grave

I was stunned to learn a few days ago that Khodayar Amini has been buried in secret.

His body has been with the Coroner for a few months and several people had been negotiating with the Coroner's office about getting his body released to the Hazara community in the Dandenong area so that he could be buried by his friends and supporters. I have spoken on the telephone to the Coroner's office about this.

And now we find out that they have given him a "pauper's funeral" against the wishes of the Hazara community and his other friends. This type of funeral - also sometimes called a "destitute funeral"- is reserved for those who die and who have no one who is willing to come forward and organise the funeral.

This is not the case with Khodayar.
He has many friends.
I have met with and spoken to some of them.
And others I know by the flowers and the cards that they leave at his final camp at Robert Reserve in Dandenong.

Khodayar Amini has many friends and is not forgotten.

I am still confused and distressed by the news of his secret burial.
As if his death was not horrible enough already.



(Below is a statement from the Hazara community of Melbourne)

Hazara community of melbourne have been disgusted, to have NOT been informed or consulted by corner & police for burial of Khudayar Amini body which has been buried few days early at this unknown crematory in far far away land fearing repressions.

Flowers of love and candles were laid in the memory of Khudayar Amini who have burned himself and lost his life in unjust manner! Where is justice for refugees may he R.I.P and bless his soul.

We, many community leaders and family friends have attended a symbolic funeral at Northern Memorial Park 56 Box forest road Glenroy in the Islamic Section at 3 today 21/02/2016

THANK YOU.

The ugly letter - number 17

Dear Khodayar, before the flames closed over you for the last time your mind had been broken. The death of your friend, Nasim Najafi, was particularly destabilising. That shock, after all the other things that had happened, took away the last resilience of your spirit. You no longer believed you could stay alive. You could not find hope in the future, only your own death – in pain and isolation.

I don't like to think about this, about the mental illness that made your suffering even more full of terror. I would prefer to see you as a hero than as a victim. But in the end it was hard for you to tell what was real and what was not. The false slogans of humanity that we buried you with had anguished your mind. It was not only your body that was hurt and imprisoned. We did this to your mind also. Until it was sick and broken and unsure and empty of imagination. I feel so low to write this. Love Stephen

18 February 2016

Sixteeth letter to Khodayar

Dear Khodayar, I hope this letter finds you well. I wish that you will live a long and happy life. I couldn’t wish you any less, but I fear it is not so and all hope for you is dead. My concern, my love for you has come too late. I can only stir the ashes where you died, I can not touch your hand.

I hope that even after you have been killed I will keep your name, your words and your story alive. I hope that in doing so I will cheat the killers of their victory. I hope that in so doing I can make the stain of your death a little smaller. I would prefer if your life had been less eventful. If you had a family and a home and work. I would prefer if you hadn’t had to make the hero’s journey into danger. If so I would have never heard about you, you wouldn’t have died in a bush camp on the edge of this city. I remember you Khodayar Amini, and your friends Nasim Najafi, Reza Rezayee and Ahmad Ali Jaffari. Immagination is memory. Love Stephen

Fifteenth letter to my friend Khodayar

Dear Khodayar, as humans we share things. You and I can be hurt, we can be beaten and tortured. You and I can be scared and we can be enslaved. You and I can be humilliated and we can be killed. These are things that can be done to us or to any other human. I know I have protections against these things happening that others don’t have. I have my maleness, my whiteness and my wealth. But these are still possibilities for all of us, for all the sisters and brothers of this world.

Khodayar, all these things were done to you. They were done by other humans. These are bad things, ugly things. Things that should never be done. I am terrified to change places with you, for these things to happen to me. You needed asylum but you ended up in the barrens. A place bereft of compassion and love, that runs on racist violence. All you knew were false humane slogans and harsh treatments. You knew such bitterness here in the barrens. Love Stephen