‘A mask tells us more than a face.’
Oscar Wilde
As the walls pressed in, my mental health began to suffer. My sleep had been fitful at the best of times but now I found it difficult to get any meaningful rest. Every creak and rattle put me on edge, especially at night. The steady drone of helicopters, on their way to the nearby airport, was a constant torment.
I learned that my new Airbnb was located on the drive between the national parliament and the home of the prime minister of the Solomon Islands. He travelled in a motorcade, surrounded by police cars with sirens blaring. They’d drive past several times a day in a show of loud bluster. Whenever I heard that motorcade, I’d flinch, getting ready to grab my backpack and fly through the back door.
My habit of scanning for exits, developed in Indonesia, became a compulsion. I knew where each laneway and backstreet led, and which fences were scalable. Behind my sunglasses I was hotly planning my next escape.
And yet there were few ways out. With international flights out of reach, I looked for seaward routes. Of the nearby countries, I became intrigued by Vanuatu, an island chain whose northernmost reach lay just shy of one hundred nautical miles from the bottom of the Solomon Islands. This southern edge belonged to Santa Cruz, another cluster of the Solomons, whose main island was Nendö.
On Nendö was an airstrip that resembled a golf course gone to seed, much like the grassy field in Choiseul Bay. After landing there, I could travel by sea to Vanuatu, perhaps as a deckhand on a fishing boat. It was blue-sky thinking, as I had no idea what a deckhand did, or how to find a skipper willing to take me on.
Then there was the feasibility of Vanuatu itself. For the record, it had once been an Anglo-French colony that became independent in 1980. It may have been another client state of Australia: my research had not taken me that far. Pure optimism had convinced me it might be a place where I could secure a travel document, board an international flight and get the hell out of the South Pacific, once and for all.
Arriving as a passenger made more sense. According to the Trip-advisor website, a New Zealand couple ran sailing tours in and around the Santa Cruz islands. When I emailed them, however, it was near the end of August, their off-season.
As I learned from wandering past a small building by the water, which turned out to be a hangout spot for maritimers, the Solomon Islands was a major stopover on the South Pacific sailing circuit. A steady flow of around-the-world mariners and adventure seekers plied the warm waters and restocked their supplies on the sleepy tropical islands year round. I came across websites where people could volunteer as crew members on private vessels in exchange for free passage.
That I knew nothing about sailing and was terrified of water were hopefully shortcomings that could be overlooked. A bigger problem, however, was the profile of the skippers I contacted, all of whom were either Australian or heading to Australia.
My growing fearfulness kept me from pursuing the idea further. Every promising thread I found was another strand of the web, with the fat body of the Morrison-Dutton cabal at its centre, about to pick on its next refugee victim.
My search for a place to stay, in the meantime, had better success. The breakthrough came in the form of the website couchsurfing.com. It’s a fairly well-known platform where locals offer free accommodation to the world’s more frugal travellers in a spirit of grassroots support. Often the offer wasn’t much – sometimes not even a room or bed of your own – hence the site’s name.
After a few failed attempts at connecting with hosts in Honiara, I received a message from a man named Savang. We met over coffee near his office, and made an effortless connection. Originally from Thailand, he worked for an Australian NGO in the Solomons. As it turned out, his last job had been with the IOM, assisting refugees on the Burma-Thailand border – a responsibility that gave him a line of sight into the plight of Burmese minorities who had fled the junta.
Having worked for a time in West Papua, he was also aware of the condition of those detained on Manus Island. For the first time in a while, I felt comfortable opening up to a stranger. He listened intently and sympathetically when I spoke about the trials of life in captivity, during what should have been the best years of our lives.
And while I did not complete the confession by admitting the details of my escape from the island – in case he had qualms about harbouring a fugitive – I spoke of myself as somewhat adrift in the world, and in need of a temporary haven.
‘Listen, Jaivet,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about anything. You don’t even need to pay for any food. Eat whatever you want. Feel free to hang around as long as you need to figure your shit out, okay?’
He stayed in a two-bedroom house, provided by the NGO that he worked for, in a neighbourhood called Koala Ridge. The building had a commanding view over the nearby valley, and the breeze blowing up the hill took the edge off the heat. Because Savang lived alone, he had an extra bedroom where he occasionally took in couch surfers like me.
I was deeply moved by his compassion and generosity, and amazed that I had somehow managed to connect, almost at random, with such a caring person. Savang was another point in the secret network of helpers, existing in parallel to the spiderweb run out of Canberra. He appeared in my life when I needed it the most. And the network was about to welcome a new addition.
Finally relieved of the pressure of finding a place to stay, my mind turned with double strength to the question of how I was going to get off the island. Flying was impossible, given my lack of ID, but a sea journey seemed nearly as far-fetched. Teleporting was a great option, just not in my lifetime.
I was stuck.
One thing I had learned from my experience of depending on the kindness of strangers was this: when you did not have a ready solution to offer someone, you could recommend a helpful contact instead. Many times, the breakthrough you needed was just a friendship away.
That was the approach of Tessa, who had a long track record of solving problems. When she realised her own ability to get me out of my current bind had reached its natural limit, she offered to put me in touch with a woman she knew named Rendi, a Solomon Islander whom she had once helped in Darwin.
‘I don’t know if there’s anything she can do, but she is someone else you can talk to,’ said Tessa. ‘And you can definitely trust her.’
She was right. A petite woman who loved to laugh, Rendi was also a natural listener – ‘Keep talking’ was her signature phrase – with an ability to empathise with my situation that came in part from her own biography. She had spent some time in the Wickham Point Detention Centre in Darwin, after seeking protection in Australia from domestic abuse in the Solomons. When her application was rejected, Tessa worked on her successful application to have her freed from detention and she returned to Honiara.
Our first conversation took place under the shade of a mango tree, within spitting distance of the Honiara fish market. We spent a lovely couple of hours getting to know each other. Rendi explained how life worked on the islands: ‘the Solomon way’, she called it.
‘Things move at the speed of a snail in this place.’ It was important advice for me, someone who was soon to experience a healthy dose of the Solomon way, and whose constant sense of internal pressure, if not checked by this gentle warning, might have landed me in hot water.
At our second meeting I was comfortable enough to tell Rendi nearly everything: how I’d escaped from Manus, come to the Solomons by boat, and tried and failed to secure a passport, after immigration had changed the rules a week before I applied.
‘I missed out on getting it by this much,’ I said, holding up my thumb and forefinger.
Rendi understood. Her brother worked at the Ministry of Health and he had told her about the new requirements, which were even more stringent than I knew. In addition to supplying two statutory declarations, photos and biometric data, applicants who were inelegantly termed ‘mix-breed’ needed to show proof of their parents’ marriage or, alternatively, their own birth record from the hospital where they’d first come into the world.
Passport security in the Solomons was now in line with the rigorous standards of other countries. And the sting in the tail was that Australia had encouraged and even funded the new system. They may not have been following me in helicopters or police cars, but they were still blocking my escape at every turn.
The tropical sun that arced its way over Honiara didn’t cook the blood the same way it had on Manus Island, but the weather it spawned was just as monotonous: a perpetual 30 degrees plus humidity.
Every now and then, a storm brewed, born of low-pressure systems rising from the warmth of the surrounding seas. During the summer months, any number of infant storms grow into tropical cyclones that spiral with haphazard fury across the South Pacific. In the times when these monsters swerve towards land, they leave a trail of destruction – particularly across the low-lying islands, where the locals live in huts of wood, tin and palm branches.
One unexpected upshot of such a disaster was explained to me by Rendi’s brother, David. Since he worked for a government agency, Rendi had recruited him to the effort of helping solve my problem of getting my hands on a Solomon Islands birth certificate.
Over motu, a Solomon Islands specialty made of root vegetables cooked over hot stones, David talked about some of the more epic cyclones of his experience. Back in the 1990s, the coastal town of Auki had been levelled by high winds and storm surges.
‘The local hospital and health department buildings were wiped out,’ David said of this provincial capital, located about 100 kilometres north-east of Honiara. ‘All the records held there were completely ruined or lost.’
By laying waste to Auki, the cyclone had created a small crack in the new airtight immigration system of the Solomons. It was a crack I might be able to crawl through, and be reborn.
‘There was no central system of record keeping. If you were born in Auki before the storm, your birth certificate is probably gone. That’s partly why the government had to come up with the new process.’
The process sounded fairly easy, which was a red flag that it probably would be anything but. Still, what other option did I have? The cyclone, I decided, was my friend.
The next few weeks were a back-and-forth tussle with government offices as I pressed the case that I was Michael Waradi, the son of a mixed Indian-Fijian father and Solomon Islander mother, and that I had been born in Auki before the fateful storm.
I encountered a fair amount of resistance. Initially I was told I’d have to fly to Auki and present my case to the authorities in person. When I said I was unable to do that, I learned the requirement could be waived by paying a small ‘fee’. With the bribe and a dozen or so documents submitted, I was mailed a genuine Solomon Islands birth certificate in the name of a fictitious man.
And now it was time to become that man.
With my language skills, outfit and backstory already in place, I focused on the finer details. Many Solomon Islanders had dark reddish-brown stains on their teeth, a particular signature look in Honiara. The stains were the result of the ancient practice of chewing what was called, for convenience, betel nut: in fact a concoction of areca nut wrapped in a betel leaf with a dash of lime powder. The resulting high was similar to the one from chewing tobacco, a strong stimulant effect, with a comparable flattening of the appetite.
For me the taste was revolting and I spat out the infused saliva, rather than ingest it. I didn’t want to get high – I just wanted stained teeth for camouflage.
By the middle of September I felt confident enough to lodge another passport application at the immigration office. A week after that, I was asked to attend the ministry offices in Honiara to supply my biometric data. According to the new rules, all Solomon Islands passports were embedded with an electronic chip that recorded the holder’s unique features, including facial structure and fingerprints, and an iris scan.
Showing up at the appointment as an imaginary person was interesting, and worrisome. Back in my home country, I had some experience in having to mimic a young man who was Burmese in ethnicity and Buddhist by faith, in order to get past the checkpoints that screened for Rohingya and other minority tribes. Code switching was one thing. Assuming an entirely new identity was more daunting.
Despite my butterflies, I managed to get through the meeting with immigration intact, focused on keeping the tenor of my voice and the movement of my hands under control. After supplying my fingerprints and facial scans, I began to relax and even enjoy myself a little. My transformation into Michael Waradi was nearly complete.
When I was about to leave, the clerk called me back and handed me another form to fill out. Because I was of mixed heritage, he asked me to contact a separate division of the ministry to book an interview. The in-person examination was the last step before I could be issued a passport.
On the way back to Savang’s place, I considered my likelihood of passing such a test. My command of the Pijin dialect may have improved with recent practice, but it was still not strong enough to bluff my way through a talk with an immigration officer, whose job it was to sniff out deception. I might look and act the part, but I was unlikely to fool a professional.
Since my method of preparation lay in thinking through scenarios, here was a new and formidable challenge to consider. I imagined how it might play out. The immigration officer, hearing my well-prepared backstory, would turn to me with a quizzical stare and state, ‘If you’ve never had a passport before, then you’ve never travelled outside of the Solomon Islands, yes? Then explain to me why you can’t speak your native language properly and why you have an accent.’
As usual I had trouble sleeping that night. After a while I stopped trying, and instead turned on the light and looked at the document I was supposed to fill out before the interview, scanning it line by line. Aside from the standard sections like name and date of birth, there were more pointed questions such as ‘What is the purpose of gaining the passport?’ and ‘What is the intended travel destination?’
After what I had been through, these requirements sounded like an accusation, a demand for proof of legitimacy. As the endless night wore on, however, they took on a new light. The questionnaire could also be read as an invitation to invent any story I liked, for the sake of eluding scrutiny.
At that witching hour, the fabulist in me, so at odds with my resident logician, was let loose to play. What was my purpose in gaining a passport? I needed it to seek medical treatment that was not offered in the Solomons.
You see, poor Michael Waradi suffered from a wide range of physical and mental problems. His motor skills were diminished, he had arrested mental development from birth and – saddest of all – had lost the ability to speak properly.
The next day, I shared my woeful alibi with Rendi, who liked it so much she agreed to accompany me to the immigration interview.
Her brother joined the project, obtaining a forged doctor’s certificate through a contact at the Ministry for Health. It stated that I required care from an overseas specialist to address my complex and deteriorating condition. The note also outlined my dependence on a full-time caregiver – Rendi – who was qualified to speak on my behalf.
Next I took a crash course in mental impairment. I read an array of scholarly articles online that described symptoms and behaviours of people with failing motor skills and serious cognitive challenges. As this was my one shot at a fake passport, I had to be convincing – as Michael Waradi, a seriously ill young man from the township of Auki.
After submitting the final form along with the statutory declarations, birth certificate, two photographs, a biometric data record and doctor’s certificate, I made an appointment to face off with an immigration officer.
When the day arrived, Rendi drove me to the ministry offices in Honiara and accompanied me inside. The trouble began as soon as we sat down. The immigration officer turned out to be a close match with the mistrustful figure I had imagined in my fear fantasies. He was doubtful about my need to have a caregiver by my side at all times.
Rendi tried to protest but the officer was firm. ‘I won’t bite! I just need to talk to him on his own for a few minutes. We’re going to carry on our chat in another room.’
He was onto me. Otherwise, why ask to move? Maybe there was a security guard or government agent from Australia waiting for me there.
Rendi watched in helpless distress as two officers ushered me down a hallway and into a small, austere office. Fighting an instinct to run, I scanned for exits along the way. When the officers locked the door behind me, I started to tremble.
Laying the trap, they stepped outside and left me alone for a few minutes. An interrogation about my escape from detention on Manus was about to begin.
I dug my phone out of my pocket and texted Rendi: ‘Go to car. Keep engine running. Leave door open.’
Terrified of what was to come, I was ready to make a break and run for it.
The lock on the door turned, and the officers stepped back inside. They took their seats on the metal chairs across the narrow table, and their questions came in a torrent.
‘What is your father’s name?’
‘What is your mother’s name?’
‘Why are your parents not with you?’
‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’
‘Where did you go to school?’
‘Where do you live?’
‘What is the reason you need a passport?’
I replied as best I could, drawing on details from the background I had carefully fabricated for Michael Waradi. At the same time I was concentrating hard on the weird task of acting like someone who was a peg or two below the usual levels of mental acuity. I mumbled, talking in sentence fragments, and took breaks to look around the room with a startled expression. Clearly, I was at a loss without my trusty caregiver.
This was both the scene from a dark comedy and a horror movie. At any moment, someone was going to say ‘Enough’ and pull out the handcuffs.
After twenty spine-tingling minutes, the officers let me go. Resisting the urge to dart, I shuffled awkwardly back down the hallway, staying in character. Seeing the car where Rendi was waiting set me free and, safely out of sight of the immigration officers, I ran the last few steps and jumped through the open passenger door.
‘Drive, please,’ I begged Rendi. ‘I don’t even care if I get a passport or not. Just get me the hell out of here.’
Two days later, I received a letter stating my application had been turned down. It was almost November – the start of cyclone season.