I don’t want to be here, I don’t have to be here, but I need to tell them I’m leaving, say goodbye, or it would mean that none of it was real, that the friendships were just a client service officer performing a duty to clients, and I can’t let that be true.
I walk through the gate. This is my final shift. I know I won’t return. Maybe I’ve confused emotions from the other thing, but I feel guilt. It’s wretched and more than being wretched it’s exasperating because it’s a stupid cliché, yet I can’t help but feel like I’m abandoning them.
I’m off to whatever life I have, while they mark off one more person to leave, one more reminder of everything they don’t have as they wait and wait in their own version of Groundhog Day — only their Punxsutawney is called Curtin and it is hot not cold and it is red and silver not green and white, and Phil the groundhog is a fat Australian man named Deano who always sees his shadow and always predicts another six weeks of detention.
As soon as the morning’s duties are complete I start working through the compounds, finding and telling the people I’ve met, my friends, that this is the last time they will see me at the centre, that I’m going home, but that I wish them well and hope someday I will see them on the outside. People like Younes, Rasa, Soheil, Matthew and a dozen more who have filled my days with goodwill and levity.
I find Mani lying in his room. The room still smells of piss and Mani stinks of sweat. I apologise; I explain I’m leaving, but tell him the Red Cross have promised they will come and they will do something. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s the only little bit of hope I can offer. Mani tries to get up, but the effort and pain it brings is too much. I tell him to stay as he is. That’s how I shake his proffered hand — standing over his broken body. The truth is, I’m glad I won’t have to see Mani suffer anymore. There’s nothing I can do; it’s easier just to look away. It’s easier to feel guilty than to feel useless and angry.
After Mani, I find Meg in Blue Compound, the only officer who really cares that I’m leaving. She heard what happened — everyone has heard what happened — and so she wants to comfort me, but I don’t want to be comforted. I don’t want to talk about how I feel because I don’t know how I feel.
At Meg’s urging, we disappear to her secret hideaway. As I enter the room and see the desk, I can’t help but think about yesterday, about fucking Meg against that desk while my brother mourned for our mother. I shouldn’t be here.
“Sorry Meg, I think I’d better go.”
“Already? Umm, yeah, of course, ok. You’ll call me if you want to talk. Anytime, ok?”
“Yeah.”
Meg hugs me. “I really am so sorry, Nick,” she says, a gleam in her eyes. I think she’s going to cry — cry for me — and I can’t deal with that.
“No, it’s fine. I’m fine. Really, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Ok?”
“Will I … see you again?”
“Yeah, of course, I mean …” I nod my head, but I’m not sure either of us believes it. Meg kisses me on the cheek and I go.
I leave till last the two Iranian friends I know I’ll miss the most: Ali and Samir. I knock on their door. I’m invited in.
“So, Nick, you have your visa, yes?” says Ali.
News travels fast in this place.
“Yes, I have my visa. I leave tomorrow.” I don’t tell them about my mother.
“This makes me sad, Nick,” says Samir, and it is not a joke.
“I need to see my family, Samir. But I will see you guys again, ok? You’ll get your visas soon and I’ll see you in Australia, the real Australia.”
“Yes, Perth!” says Samir.
“Perth.”
For the better part of half an hour we joke and cajole and it’s exactly what I need — to not think about the other stuff. Samir has been getting good laughs with the sayings I’ve taught him, so at his urging I teach him a final Australian saying: “Couldn’t organise a root in a brothel.” Once he understands all the words, Samir likes the saying very much.
I ask which one of them will be the first to get a girlfriend when they leave. Samir certainly thinks it will be himself. But not just one. He must have ten. I tell him no way. In Australia it is one at a time.
“Five.”
“No! One.”
“No, four!”
Ali cracks up at Samir’s attempt to barter me down.
I give the boys my contact details. Ali is writing his email address down for me, except he forgets what it is and crosses it out and starts again.
“Ali,” says Samir, “you couldn’t organise a root in a brothel!”
Samir is going to fit in just fine in Australia. They both are.
“Nick. What percent English do you think Samir speaks?” asks Ali.
I think about it for a moment.
“Thirty. Maybe forty.”
“That is what I said!” says Ali.
“Nick, do you remember, first day I am here I ask, ‘How much English I speak?’ Remember?” says Samir.
“You say to me, ‘Twenty percent.’ So I improve,” Samir says with pride.
“By the time you leave here, Samir, you will be up to fifty percent. You will have reached your full potential!”
I don’t know if Samir gets the joke, but Ali does so we both laugh and Samir laughs too because he’s the sort of guy who does.
It is good to hear so much laughter in this room as we talk shit like friends do. When I tell them I must go it’s not with the sense of melancholy I felt earlier. I’m hopeful these guys will keep it together until they get out of here. I will see them again.
Across the rest of the afternoon it seems fitting that I’m tasked to a constant watch. A man who has been threatening suicide for over a month is curled up, sleeping. I sit outside his door, a numb nothingness occupying the body and mind of both prisoner and guard. I swat mosquitoes and wipe away beads of sweat. I won’t miss this.
Counting hours and minutes and seconds, I’m aware of the chaos in the rest of the centre. An attempted hanging, two different incidents with men cutting their heads with razors or glass, a Code Black after an officer fails to respond to being hailed — I hear all of it over the radio, and I feel only relief, because I’m the guy with the visa.
At exactly 6 p.m. my replacement strides down the corridor. I pick up my bag and pull the tucked blue shirt out of my pants. I stroll away lighter and happier than a man just told his mother is dead should.
When I round the corner just before the steel gates, I see them — Ali and Samir. It’s unexpected and touching. They have come to pay me my due, to execute the ritual played out every week for the lucky few detainees who have their visa and are being released: their friends meet them at the big gates, celebrating good fortune and wishing them well. The seeing off is the last and perhaps only joyous part of the detention process. It makes all the bullshit of the last few months seem worthwhile.
“Shit, guys, you didn’t have to come out just for me.”
“We want to,” says Samir.
“You will not forget us, Nick?” says Ali.
“I will not forget you.”
“I want you to take me with you,” says Samir.
“Should I put you in my backpack?”
“Yes.” Then Samir adds in seriousness: “I am sad you are leaving.”
“Samir,” I say, “you need to drink a cup of concrete and harden up, princess.”
While there are still smiles on our faces, I leave. As I walk through the last gate, I hear my name called. I turn.
I see Ali, just a shape now behind the steel and wire that has always separated us, offering a last wave goodbye.