His name is Amir Hosein — the man threatened with a big Iraqi cock up his arse. I know this because it’s a day later and I’m conducting the second of six scheduled checks on Amir. He’s been placed on the psychological support program, meaning he’s been assessed as being of moderate risk to self-harm. It was triggered last night. I don’t know exactly what he said, whether it was a threat to cut himself if he didn’t get this or that or whether he just indicated that he was thinking of hurting himself. At any rate, he got what he wanted. This morning the old Afghani man was moved into another room. Amir is on his own.
I conduct the fourth check of the day and find Amir lying in the dark. This is what I’ve got on the form:
6.21: client observed in bed in room sleeping.
10.09: client observed lying in bed in room.
11.45: client in bed in room.
2.37: client observed lying in bed in room.
In a detention centre, lying in bed is pretty much the universal signifier of protest, depression, sickness, anger, boredom — you name it. So that’s what gets written down on just about every welfare report ever written. It’s a meaningless and thoroughly unedifying paper trail.
What makes it worse is that I’m fairly sure no one even reads this shit. It’s arse-covering bureaucracy. So when it comes time for my next check I figure on adding a little colour to the bald fact that Amir is — no surprises here — lying in bed in a dark room. I use a piece of scrap paper to sketch out my “observation” before it’s ready for the form:
4.00: The client lies in a dim-lit room
No light no sun, only the Curtin gloom.
Though he says nothing and nothing is said
He touches a hand to his shaved head.
Hand! Head!
Then hits the newsstand: CURTIN CLIENT NOT DEAD!
I write it down that this man does live
Not much but enough and enough I give
(To this report, this avoidance of tort
Due diligence discharged in short).
Of more there is nil
Nothing else to spill —
On vigour or desire
Or thoughts gone haywire.
The client lives and lives as he lies
In the room of a prison made of endless Curtin skies.
The better part of an hour is taken up writing the shitty poem that would have made Mrs Kennedy from year eight English very proud. Before I transfer it to the form, I give it a final read, and that is when it occurs to me: I have lost my fucking mind.
If someone above the level of shitkicker were to actually read this, I would surely be reprimanded and maybe even shit-canned, so I screw up the paper and bin it, then retrospectively fill in my four o’clock entry and — fudging the time only by a handful of minutes — add my final entry after poking my head into Amir’s room for the sixth time this shift:
5:25: client in room in bed, audible breathing, appears to be asleep.