‘Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.’
Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
I had been thinking about running away since the gates of Manus were opened in May 2016. Leaving an island that was heavily patrolled and lay hundreds of miles from the nearest shore, however, was going to be difficult.
One way out was through a medical transfer to Granville House in Port Moresby, where those refugees receiving medical treatment were held. The sorry state of my mouth and gums was well known by the medical staff by that point, and I tried to improve my chances of being relocated by stating my family would pay for the treatment.
I pursued that line for months, knowing Australian Border Force was likely to take a look at the request and refuse. True to form, they did.
Time for a new plan. Borrowing a trick from my favourite show Prison Break, I began taking detailed notes on the world around me. I knew, for instance, the schedule of each guard, how long it took him to go from fence A to fence B, how many seconds it took to walk along the fence line, and how long the same trip took when cutting across the yard at a 45-degree angle.
There were other, more gruesome metrics, like how long it took the guards to figure out someone was sick or had committed suicide. If the body didn’t show up in an obvious way – in a surprise room inspection, for example – the guards were often alerted to the tragedy by counting up the unused meal tickets (though that became less of a warning bell after we were allowed to leave the centre for daytrips to Lorengau).
My tables of notes, featuring the hours of work and any other detail that seemed like it might be useful, were entered into my journal and checked against the data from the previous days. It was tedious stuff but it laid bare the graceless choreography of the guards’ movements in and around the property – I had a better understanding of where their next step would fall than they did – and the mechanics of the centre itself.
The research was for more than satisfying my idle curiosity. From Prison Break, I had learned that most people, when planning an escape, tended to focus on getting past the next obstacle, and the one after that. With such an approach, they were likely to fail. If each new crisis point came as a surprise, they would be unprepared for it, leaving no obvious path to success. A better approach was to start at the end goal and work backwards, in the manner of reverse engineering.
The detention centre on Manus presented a fierce challenge. It was a prison inside a military base, on an island that was patrolled by the Land Rovers of the Australian Federal Police and the ships of the Australian Navy. There were circles within circles within circles to cross.
Realistically, the only way off the island was by plane, and the only flights from Manus went to Port Moresby, the capital of PNG. Taking that as my destination, I took a step backward, starting with a proposition: ‘How might I get past airport security?’
Once the encounter with a customs or immigration official was clear in my mind, I considered the preparation required to make it that far. In this scenario, for example, I would need a good fake ID, as well as transportation to the airport, some suitable civilian clothing, a disguise and an airline ticket. Only in this way could I present myself as someone other than a Rohingya man in flight from captivity.
One of the odder ways the Australian government had thought to spend money on us was by offering lessons in Tok Pisin: perhaps to help prepare us for our exciting new lives in the backwaters of Papua New Guinea. I had sat in a few classes, mostly out of boredom. Now energised by my new plan, I became a star student, taking in every word of the regional dialect. While most people in PNG spoke English, it might be wise to have some local words in my kitbag. What if a Papu official preferred to communicate in Tok Pisin? It was good to think through each scenario and come prepared.
On the nights when I wasn’t dreaming about guards chasing me down and throwing me into a cage, I’d lie awake trying to imagine the escape in detail. Part of that meant coming up with plausible excuses, in case I was cornered on the way out.
If I made it to the airport and I wasn’t a fugitive, for example, then who was I? Aside from the Papus, nearly everyone employed at the centre flew in and out of Manus on rotating rosters. Yet I’d never be able to pass myself off as an Australian or a local.
There were two demographics that might work for me: interpreters and healthcare workers. An interpreter was a safer bet. Until that point, I had not had much interaction with the interpreters on the island. Now I took a keen interest in their work. I watched them closely, recording their movements in my journal, alongside those of the guards. The pages also began to fill with their flight schedules in and out of Manus Island.
It was a slow process, since I could hardly walk up to an interpreter and ask, ‘What day did you fly in and when are you flying out?’ Reconnaissance had to be subtle: ‘Hey, good to see you back! When did you come in?’ If I asked the next interpreter the same question, and the following guy too – and their responses lined up – then I had a pattern to work from.
It took me about four months to be confident that interpreters flew in and out once every three weeks on alternating Thursdays and Sundays. In theory, an opportunity to pose as an interpreter and jet away from Manus presented itself in intervals of twenty-one days.
Drawing on my aborted medevac visit to Darwin, and on stories from those who had made similar trips – rehabilitated just enough to survive, only to be thrown back into detention – I knew the airport was patrolled by sentries of Wilson guards. Usually a pair of them, a Papu teamed with an expat. Running into a local guard at the Manus airport wouldn’t pose much of a problem, but an encounter with an expat – who was more likely to recognise a Manus escapee, and less likely to accept a bribe and look the other way – would be a disaster.
Their busiest time was when flights landed, during the switchover between arriving and departing passengers. In those moments, the guards were usually distracted, their hands full with the transfer of detainees returning from medevac. If I showed up at the airport during that window, I’d stand a better chance of squeaking through undetected.
After six months of quiet observation, I felt like I’d learned everything there was to know about flight schedules and staff movements – almost down to the minute. Taking the next step, however, I would require some help.
Winiaka was the first to hear of the strategy as it was shaping up. We met in her office one afternoon to discuss the progress of my legal challenges. She and Nina believed that, as a stateless person, without an official existence even in my home country, I was likely to be kept in indefinite detention on Manus. It was either that, or to the black hole of Bomana.
She was in the midst of laying out my unsavoury options when, overcome with excitement and nerves, I began drawing up my plans on a sheet of paper, a list of escape scenarios with arrows pointing to different options and courses of action.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she whispered urgently. ‘Stop it! Don’t draw anything like that in here! Do you forget we’re under observation?’ Even here, in the office where she was tasked with providing confidential legal advice to detainees, we were being monitored by mounted CCTV cameras.
She could hardly give her blessing on the spot, since she, like Nina, was an employee of the state. And if the scheme went sideways, she would have to live with the guilt of whatever came next. At the same time, while she did not endorse the plan, she didn’t say no either. Nor did Nina. In both cases, it was a silent yes that I understood without them saying a word. I pressed on.
To purchase an airline ticket I would need a high-quality fake photo ID: not an easy item to come by on Manus Island. Luckily, at that time PNG didn’t have a uniform national identification system. Any card – like a drivers’ licence or an employment ID – that carried a photograph and some kind of official seal could qualify the holder to purchase a ticket on domestic flights.
The plan evolved. Forging an ID in the guise of an interpreter was not much of a possibility. Airport staff would be familiar with those kinds of credentials and would easily spot a fake. Having never seen a local ID besides the ones that made it inside the detention centre, I was at a loss.
For that, I zeroed in on a Filipino guy named Richard, the pharmacist in charge of City Pharmacy in Lorengau. I was on good terms with him, thanks to my regular visits to buy toiletries and Tylenol to keep my wired-up teeth from driving me crazy. Richard wore an impressive-looking ID on a lanyard around his neck and I needed to get a closer look at it.
Since the products in his store – including the pharmaceuticals – were shipped in by plane, I hoped to pass myself off as a City Pharmacy sales representative, or maybe a visiting foreign chemist. Richard, after all, was a foreigner, and there were other Asian people working for various companies in Lorengau. Since I had interned as an industrial chemist back in Rangoon, I had a higher chance of impersonating one of them.
During my next trip to City Pharmacy, I engaged Richard in a long conversation at the counter, my eyes darting, now and then, toward the badge hanging from his neck. What I’d initially thought was a laminated photo stuck on paper was in fact a rigid plastic card with a high-resolution photo printed directly onto the surface. No facility on Manus could produce ID cards of such quality. It might be possible to have one made in Australia, but having it sent here would be difficult since our packages were delivered straight to the detention centre, where they were searched. I needed a better idea.
A few weeks later I was returning from town on the Wilson bus when I noticed a banner announcing the opening of the Lorengau branch of an IT school, impressively named the International Training Institute.
Back in the compound, I googled the company and saw it was run by IT instructors who appeared to be foreign-born. Since the business was new to Manus, the wider community – including people who worked at the airport – were unlikely to know what their employee ID cards looked like. This was my opportunity.
I searched online for their company logo and downloaded it. Next, I had a cellmate use my phone to take a headshot of me in front of the white wall of MA2-09. Back in Lorengau, a few days later, I visited a print shop, and had the portrait shot and logo printed onto extra-thick photographic paper that also listed my credentials as an IT teacher named Ian Vele – the most PNG-sounding alias I could think of.
Lastly, I had the card laminated – twice – to make it more substantial. The end result was pretty good by Manus standards. It even had an extra in-built detail that would help me avoid scrutiny. The birth-date listed on the card put my age at just a few months shy of eighteen, nearly seven years younger than my actual age. If I presented as a minor in PNG, there were certain things a parent, or adult guardian, could do on my behalf: like pick up a boarding pass.
Access to the Lorengau post office was a boon for the prison. For one thing, it brought the flavours of the world to Manus Island. Detainees began importing small parcels of their favourite dishes from abroad. I joined in when some of my countrymen had some Burmese food called Lahpet – fermented tea-leaf salad – sent by Rohingya friends in Australia.
The post office was next door to my regular perch at City Pharmacy, and I made a point of being pleasant to the postal staff whenever we crossed paths. For some months now, I had been exchanging legal documents by mail with the law firm in Port Moresby that had been working on my judicial review. On days when a letter was likely to arrive, I made sure I was on the list to go into town by waking up before sunrise and lining up for hours to secure a spot on the bus.
My first attempt at intercepting a package at the post office failed.
‘But it’s addressed to me. I am Jaivet Ealom,’ I implored the Papu woman on duty.
‘Packages addressed to people who live in the centre are supposed to go there,’ she said evenly. ‘I can’t just hand the mail over to you.’
‘I know, but I am here now. This is my ID.’ I showed her my identity card, complete with my misspelled name, matching the one on the envelope. ‘Which means it makes sense to give it to me now.’
Wrong. When I tried the following week she rebuffed me again. The time after that, I went armed with the tracking number of the package, the name, address and telephone number of the sender in Port Moresby, along with a detailed description of the paperwork inside the envelope. ‘Look, clearly this is my mail,’ I told her. ‘I really need it today – now – so can you please just give it to me?’
She relented and handed it over. From then on I was allowed to collect my mail in person from Lorengau, away from the prying eyes of the Australian guards.
I had been discussing with Tessa – who often had the most practical idea of what to do next – how best to go about purchasing a plane ticket. The money wasn’t a major issue: I’d been busy squirrelling away my cigarettes. The challenge was how to buy a ticket in the name of Ian Vele without leaving a suspicious paper trail. Since I had no certainty the scheme would work, I began with the worst-case scenario – getting caught with the ticket – and backfilled it with a plan that hopefully would not land anyone in trouble.
Buying a ticket in person was futile. Although there was a travel agency on Manus Island, I worried the staff would spot me and inform PNG immigration. There were spies and accomplices everywhere on the island, and I was easily recognisable. From the post office to the fruit market, everyone knew what a typical detainee looked like.
Time was running out. My visits to the print shop and post office might get me in trouble at any moment. I’d placed my bets on a flight off the island, and needed assistance to make it happen.
‘I have to be very, very careful,’ said Winiaka. ‘I can’t be seen to be involved at all. The consequences would be huge for me too. But I will do everything that is in my power to help.’
As a dual resident of both PNG and Australia, Winiaka had influence with a wide circle of local contacts. When Nina also offered to help, I started to wonder if my plan might actually have a chance of succeeding. For the first time in four years, there was a stirring of hope in my chest, and the unfamiliar sensation kept me awake at night.
A makeover was in order. Since my tropical prison uniform – including the bright yellow t-shirts we had been provided with in detention, which were designed to be easily spotted and possibly shot at in the darkness – was unlikely to pass muster with airport security, Tessa sent me a blue button-down shirt and jeans, the sort of outfit you might expect from a professional on leave from the island after a three-week shift. She packed the clothes in a knapsack, and included the baseball cap I had requested, along with sunglasses and a pair of earphones for my Android: a poor man’s disguise kit.
Meanwhile, I waited (and waited) for the credit card that Tessa said she’d sent me, the Load&Go Travel Visa holding the funds needed to cover the cost of my ticket. It usually took three weeks for parcels to come from Australia. As the days passed, the odds increased that the envelope might never arrive at all, another victim of the spotty PNG postal service.
Winiaka also advised me it would be a good idea to hold off trying to escape until after the PNG general election, due to begin on 24 June and run until the first week of July. ‘Things can get quite scary when there’s an election here. There’s a lot of violence expected. It might be safer to wait.’
There were risks on both sides. Election chaos could tie up the staff who dealt with matters of citizenship and identity, leaving me relatively unscathed. On the other hand, it could also put the airport authorities on high alert.
A chance conversation with a staff member from Transfield, now rebranded Broadspectrum, dramatically raised the stakes. This was someone I had come to know while sewing together the pages of Man’s Search for Meaning (he was in charge of the sewing sessions where we were supposed to be mending our clothes). Big changes were coming to the detention centre, he said. Those of us who were negatives were going to be isolated in our own compound and forbidden from leaving. They had tried to separate us twice before, but this time they were serious, and the changes were coming immediately.
He mentioned this in an offhand way, almost by accident, but for me the news was calamitous. If the gates were closed, my escape plan fell apart. It was time to move.
For weeks, Winiaka and I had been dancing around the timing of my departure, with her advising me to wait to ride out the PNG election, and me itching to leave. Now there was no question. I would depart first thing in the morning, before the gates closed on me, possibly for good.
There was much to organise, all at once. I asked Winiaka to book me on the next plane out, the ‘interpreter flight’ to Port Moresby on Sunday, 25 June 2017. Hearing the desperation in my voice, she agreed to do this against her own better judgement, since I would arrive right around the time when the pandemonium of the PNG election was gaining steam.
I gathered my legal paperwork and asked Zakaria, still living in Oscar compound, if he would mind holding onto it for a few days. If I were to get caught, I didn’t want the authorities getting their hands on my records, and I needed someone like him, a trustworthy friend, to better cover my tracks.
‘For a few days? Where are you going?’
‘Oh, nowhere really. Just want to get these things off my hands. I’ll come back for them.’
He looked deep in my eyes, suspecting that I was hiding something. Holding his gaze, I tried to arrange my face into a perfect blank screen, a mask of absence. For me to do this to a man who had been a friend of mine and my family’s for years, and over as many continents, felt like treachery. But to tell him would be a risk for me, and dangerous for him too, if I were to get caught.
Back in MA2-09, I packed my bag, placing as little as I could in my knapsack, to avoid attracting attention on the bus ride the next day. In striving for minimalism, I forgot to include my most prized possession, the bound-and-stitched photocopy of Man’s Search for Meaning, complete with my handwritten marginalia. Like the spiralling notes in the Talmud, the comments were almost as important as the original text, to me anyway, since it contained my reflections on what I had discovered in silent conversation with the author.
Of all the objects I’ve misplaced or left behind in my life, the loss of this book continues to bother me the most.
With my bags packed and ticket booked, I had one more important task. Taking my phone (which I could now use openly, thanks to the recent Supreme Court ruling on the illegality of the detention centre), I snapped pictures of every familiar sight. This was not just an exercise in nostalgia – it was an attempt to capture a visual record of a place I might never see again.
As I knew from my time in Burma, the past could be deleted at the stroke of a pen, and I was worried the same thing might happen to the centre. Whoever controlled the documents dictated the truth and history itself. There needed to be an eyewitness record of the detention centre before that erasure occurred.
For that reason, my pictures, some of which appear in this book, have an impersonal flavour, since I wanted to capture the facts of our physical surroundings, the fences, sides of shipping containers and the beach huts that doubled as sentry posts. Indulging my eye a little, I also took pictures of the oceanside, and plants growing in and around the compound.
The shrubs and flowers had largely been planted by Salim, a Rohingya guy whose journey paralleled my own. He had grown up in Burma, and travelled aboard the Emelle to Christmas Island, where we had our first proper conversation. His arrival on Manus had happened weeks prior to mine.
He had a first name that was distinctly Rohingyan, and a last name that was typically Burmese. It was a combination so unusual it was hard for me to wrap my head or tongue around, and I usually stuck to addressing him as Salim.
Other things that made him unique included his love of gardening, and his epilepsy, which ebbed and flowed as a source of affliction. His seizures, which had been less severe on Christmas Island, came hard and fast in detention on Manus. Nurses pushed to have him medevaced to Darwin. In the relatively humane conditions of the detention centre there, he recovered again, and the seizures stopped so completely there were some who doubted he’d ever had them in the first place.
Back in the hothouse environment of Manus, they returned at full strength. Still, he did his best to fill his time, finding calm in the act of getting his hands dirty. Many of the twigs he had planted years ago around Oscar had flourished, offering a source of comfort and relief to those of us tired of the hardscrabble grit of our surroundings. He had left his mark, and we were thankful for his efforts.
The plantings put more than just his personal touch on this place. They were a sign of the passage of time. Since we had come to Manus, the flowering plants had filled out and the shrubs had grown tall, much like the children who we were used to seeing pass by the fence. Time had passed, but not for us. We were still here, still the same.
My goodbyes that day were silent. When I saw people I knew, or cared about, I asked them how they were, and threw out a few of our well-worn jokes. The separation that lay ahead of us might be years long, but they had to believe I would see them tomorrow, like any other day.
To stop the farewells from hurting too much, I told myself that when we saw each other next, it would be under much happier conditions. This was not a goodbye, just a long build-up to that wonderful moment of reconciliation, and of getting to know each other again.
For some of my friends, that moment was never to come. Within a year of my departure, Salim jumped from the roof of a bus and lost his life. Whether it was his own internal troubles, or those inflicted on him from the detention system, he had decided it was time to end his journey.
His death triggered protests in cities and towns across Australia, by those outraged that his medical condition had been allowed to go untreated, to the point of mortality. In addition to the usual homemade signs and painted bedsheets, the demonstrators carried flowers, of every kind and colour, as a symbol of mourning and respect for the Gardener of Manus.
The only way out of the detention centre was on the bus, and it had one destination: Lorengau. By 11 am on 24 June, having lined up early for the privilege, I was on my way to town. It wasn’t unusual for detainees to carry bags, which were searched on the way out (mostly for cigarettes, with only one packet allowed at a time) and again on the return to the centre later in the day (in that case, for food). Hopefully no-one would discover my own knapsack hid civilian clothes and a makeshift disguise.
The flight to Port Moresby was not until the following day, so when I arrived in town, I waited for the return bus to leave. Worried that my old phone might be traced, I bought a new one, then checked into a budget motel to wait for the morning.
The motel was crawling with cockroaches, and these ones were even more unpredictable than the usual surface-dwelling kind, with wings as well as skittering legs. With nothing but these insects for company I shifted to a white plastic chair outside the room.
The town was blissfully free of floodlights to block the view of the sky. It was the most clear and beautiful night that I had witnessed since coming to Manus, and it’s one that still stands out in my memories. Rather than bothering to get some rest, I spent hours watching distant constellations slowly rotate overhead – and wondered how long it would be before I was captured.
It was past midnight when I pulled my old phone out of my pocket and deactivated my social media accounts – including Messenger, my sole means of communication with Tessa. I went further: destroying the sim card and disabling every function that might flag my GPS location. I’d spent weeks memorising the phone numbers and email address of everyone I knew and depended on, to prepare for this moment.
While the rest of the detainees on Manus slept, or paced the yard, I silently vanished from cyberspace. If only I could have deleted myself from the island so easily.