Yassmin’s Story Read online

  I could just imagine my father’s confusion; I would never see him start a meal until there was bread on the table.

  It is humbling to think that this Australian family opened up their lives to us, a group of strangers from the other side of the world. Being welcomed in this ‘true blue’ manner shaped the way we thought about our new country and set us up for success. Our first interactions with Australians were positive and welcoming, but I can only imagine how difficult it would have been to feel like we belonged if when we arrived, scared and alone, our neighbours were cold and distant.

  So why did this family open their doors to us? Part of the reason came from the fact that they were a religious family; they had a generosity of spirit and valued the community. I also think part of it could be that intangible ‘Australianness’ that more often than not treats others with kindness, empathy and respect. That was the Australia my father glimpsed on his travels. Because of his experiences during his time in the UK and the institutional and underlying racism he witnessed at Imperial College, my father still believes that, no matter what, Muslims and people of colour, particularly of African descent, will never be seen as equal in England. ‘Australia is different,’ he tells me any time the UK comes up in conversation. ‘That’s why we picked Australia. There is a meritocracy here!’

  Now, I feel like there may be caveats that need to be applied to that statement, but the reality is our initial experience included a support network that made us feel like we belonged. We moved out of the Hamilton house into a place just down the road that they helped us find, and became close friends with our new neighbours, Maggie and Bruce. Regardless of attitudes on the street, we had a support network in the mainstream community and that made us feel like part of the fold. This may not seem significant, but remember that Queensland was just emerging from the enlightened Bjelke-Petersen era!

  Play it forward twenty or so years, and I cannot say with confidence that we extend that same hand of kindness to the migrants, refugees and asylum seekers that come to Australia today. Some have forgotten the essence of who we are and have become fearful and entitled, spurred on by divisive language that does not actually reflect our real selves. There are some programs that do welcome families but help from a service provider is not quite the same as being invited into a circle of friends, into a family home. There is very little that is more powerful than a simple act of kindness: a smile or a shared meal. It doesn’t take much to make someone feel welcome, so why does it seem as if we have forgotten how to do that?

  For my mother, the first few years in Australia were desperately lonely. She will occasionally share shards of memory.

  ‘I cried every night for two years,’ she once told a friend. I was listening in on the conversation, hidden around the corner in the kitchen after I had served tea. My mother’s voice wafted over from the lounge room, as she retold an experience she would never have burdened me with. Her voice quietened and I had to strain to hear the last line: ‘But I had nowhere else to go.’ There was no communication with home, bar a two-minute call from the payphone down the road once a week. The connections she made in the neighbourhood were therefore her sole source of energy. Knowing Ian’s family, as well as our neighbours, was vital. Not only did Mum lose her social network and family in the migration process, but she was cooped up looking after a baby when she had just started hitting her architectural prime in Sudan, so her sense of worth would have taken a significant hit. For some time Mama didn’t want to be in Australia. What could she do, though? They’d bought a one-way ticket and escaped the regime. They couldn’t go back.

  My parents went from being well-respected professionals to being unemployed and on welfare. My father is always quick to point out that we came off Centrelink as quickly as we could, but in reality it wasn’t that straightforward. They had no jobs, so Mum stayed home and looked after me while Dad set about finding a way to put food on the table. Mama had been working as an architect in Sudan, in a nice job in the city of Khartoum. In Brisbane her only option was housewife duties. Her tertiary qualifications were not recognised in Australia, a common situation affecting many migrants and refugees and one that wastes so much potential. It saddens me when I see my mother watch an architecture show on TV or hear her remark on a beautiful building design and realise she misses her calling, a calling she was forced to give up for my brother and me.

  What the photos from this time don’t depict is the struggle of settling in. We lived a simple life, starting out on bare mattresses. Coming in as skilled migrants meant that we weren’t part of the humanitarian refugee system and did not have the formal institutional support services a typical refugee settlement program supplied, programs that would include helping my parents secure employment, set up bank accounts, register for Medicare and so on. My parents were left to fend for themselves.

  Those first two years were tough. It doesn’t appear that we were connected to the Muslim community during that period, although there was one. The Muslims in Brisbane at the time were largely Pakistani, with some Egyptian and Lebanese, all spread around this sprawling city. We really only started becoming engaged in civic life once I began school and my family entered an entirely new subculture in Brisbane, the local Muslim community. This was a community we would be part of for years to come, a community that understood the migrant struggle.

  My mother only opened up about our transition period once, giving me an insight into how our mindset had been formed.

  ‘What was it like, Mama? How did you leave everything?’

  ‘Ah, Yassmina … Understand that we were the ones who chose to come here. We weren’t forced by circumstance but came with an optimistic framework and mindset.’

  ‘Ya3ni [the Arabic word for ‘like’], what does that mean?’

  Mum let out a breath that teetered on the precipice of a sigh. ‘Yassmina, some people are driven by fear. Others are driven by trust. We were always driven by trust. We believed we had the capacity to deal with anything that came our way. We trusted in ourselves, in the world around us. We trusted in the power of education. We trusted that if we worked hard, we would be rewarded and we would be able to achieve what we wanted to achieve, Inshallah.’

  I wondered if that was my mother’s way of saying they had trust in Allah, trust that He would always put them in the right place at the right time. It’s this belief in our own abilities, through the strength of Allah, that underpins all that my family does. This same attitude is likely the reason my instinct is to throw myself headfirst at any challenge, figuring it out along the way – I trust that I will be able to, Inshallah. The truism that ‘everything happens for a reason’ gives an avenue to find meaning in even the most difficult experience.

  Believing that you have the capacity to handle anything that comes your way is incredibly empowering. Ideally, if you have the underlying confidence that you can do anything, you just have to figure out how, so having this trust helps you move beyond self-doubt to a place of self-reflection and analysis.

  My mother was not doling out random advice: trusting in her own capacity was how she had dealt with starting with nothing and creating a new life. ‘When we arrived we knew only Ian and his wife. We had $2000, two suitcases and a belief. We had to trust that it would work out, Inshallah. And we also believed the West had something good to offer.

  ‘Was I discriminated against? Yes.’

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  ‘Was it frustrating? Of course!’

  ‘Mama! Does it still happen today?’

  ‘Of course, Yassmina, of course. Your father and I are too different and come from somewhere too foreign to ever have “made it”, or progressed to high levels in society. But you either fight it and exhaust yourself, or move on to something else. You have to pick your battles! I also never believed I was lesser. I was open-minded and genuine, and in Australia, people value those who are genuine.’

  It was one of the first times we had talked about discrimination limiting
us. We spent so much time as a family working on behalf of others, empowering them to navigate the systems and structural inequities in the world, that we didn’t often turn the mirror back on ourselves. My parents did everything the ‘right’ way. They followed the rules, they were smart and worked hard and spoke the language, and yet they still felt the effects of discrimination. It didn’t fit with my viewpoint of the world at the time, but it gave me an insight into the reality of unconscious bias and structural inequality – phenomena that are much more insidious and difficult to call out.

  ‘Your father and I didn’t have time for excuses. We wouldn’t say “I didn’t get that job because I was Muslim, or because I was black, or because I was different”. We couldn’t afford to do that, and there is no value that comes out of it! We would look at a situation and reflect and think, Okay, what can I do better next time? Deep down, it is about choosing to not have a victim mentality. We are not victims. You can’t let that get you down. It just makes you more resilient.’

  That sounded more like it. This pragmatic way to approach the problem felt more comfortable; it sat well with my logical, engineering-influenced approach to life.

  ‘Just remember, we can’t blame others, and we can’t follow what others are doing if we want to make change. Remain respectful! Make your own choices. Pursue things hard. Remember to always have integrity.’

  Words can never express how grateful I am to have role models like my mother and father. People search high and low for mentors to help shape their future, guide them down the right path and provide them with the advice that will enable them to realise their potential, but I never had to look further than across the dinner table. I was born into a family where my two parents epitomised all that I would learn to value in life, and then some. Alhamdulillah one thousand times over does not cut it, and I live in their eternal debt.

  Chapter 2:

  Early Days

  Almost two years after we arrived it seemed that Brisbane was not ready for this jelly, so my family moved further north, travelling to Singapore for my father to take up a position teaching electrical engineering at a polytechnic. Despite Baba completing a diploma in IT, he hadn’t had much luck finding meaningful work in Australia. It was in Singapore that the first moments I can just remember took place.

  I went to a Chinese kindergarten, proudly wearing the green-bibbed and white-bodied uniform. In the class photo my afro piglets and bright, shiny brown face stand out among the sea of my Asian classmates’ faces. Apparently, I even spoke Mandarin, because that’s what most of my friends spoke.

  We lived in an apartment building with many other expatriate families, so all my friends lived in the same area and my parents’ social life bloomed. We would go out on the weekends with our friends and visit parks and markets, try new foods and watch my mother play badminton. The community was diverse, and I had Arab, Chinese-Singaporean and Caribbean children among my besties. These expat families eventually became our extended family, as my parents craved the large support network they were accustomed to in Sudan and missed in Australia.

  My little brother joined the family during this time and I swung wildly between loving having a playmate and hating the fact that he got all the attention. He was, and remains, adorable and well behaved, a blessing for my mother. We moved back to Australia shortly after he was born. My father’s contract was finished, and there was a much higher chance of becoming full citizens in Australia than in Singapore. We arrived back in Brisbane ready to jump right into life: my father hoping to get a job, our family to get citizenship, me to start my schooling, and us all to continue building a life in the lucky country.

  Our first home when we got back to Brisbane was a modest two-bedroom house on the southside, not too far from our friends and previous neighbours. It was brown brick, small and suburban. I would wait out the front for the Islamic College of Brisbane’s bus to pull into the driveway every morning around 7.30 am, the plain twenty-one seater driven by a local uncle – given we use ‘uncle’ as a blanket term to refer to an adult male in our communities. The photo taken on my first day of school shows me standing tall, shoulders thrown back, toothy grin and black shoes gleaming. The small white hijab that was part of the school uniform frames my face, and the checked long-sleeved tunic and green pants blend into the green of the front yard. I couldn’t wait to go to school; learning was all I wanted to do. Even at that stage, I felt there was so much to find out about the world!

  My childhood was what I would consider relatively conventional, in the Sudanese sense, as my parents did their best to bring me up with both Islamic and Sudanese values despite the completely different circumstances of being in Australia. Conventional for us meant broad African/Arab values: family and faith were our first priorities, closely followed by education and then play, but even then, play usually had a purpose. It felt normal, but we all think our way of experiencing the world is normal.

  The role of faith in my life when I was growing up was never at odds with my environment; as a young child it was found in playing with my mother’s scarves, or standing next to my father, copying his movements while he prayed, learning the dos and don’ts of Salah, Muslim prayer. Muslims pray five times a day: once at dawn (Fajr), around noon (Dhuhr), in the afternoon (Asr), after sunset (Maghrib) and at night (Isha). Praying doesn’t take long, and essentially the idea is to have regular ‘time out’ points during the day, to recentre yourself and provide a moment for reflection, meditation and connection to Allah. The method of praying is also quite physically active, with specific structured movements allocated for each time slot that every child has to learn.

  One time when I was little, I was praying next to my father and right after we began I let off a cheeky little gas. We continued to pray, my father not making any comment. As the prayers ended, we closed off the prayer with the usual Salaam. While sitting on our knees, we turn our head to our right shoulder and say ‘Al Salaamu Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu’, which means ‘May the Peace and Blessings of Allah be Upon You’, and then we turn to our left shoulder and say the same. On each shoulder, Muslims believe, there is an angel recording every deed. The angel on your right shoulder records your good deeds and the angel on your left shoulder records your bad deeds. Together they are called Kiraman Katibin, or the ‘honourable scribes’. The way these scribes work gives some insight into the underlying mercy of Islam. Good deeds, thoughts and even intentions are recorded instantly by the angel on the right – even a good intention is recorded. The angel on the left, however, waits a day before recording a ‘bad’ deed, and does not record bad intentions. If the individual seeks forgiveness within the day, the deed may not be recorded at all. There are also various times in a day and in the Islamic calendar year during which bad deeds can be removed from the ledger.

  After nodding to the Kiraman Katibin, my father looked at me. ‘Yassmina, what did you do at the beginning of the prayer?’ he asked gently.

  I looked down, not sure if I was about to get in some sort of trouble. ‘You mean the purrut purrut?’ I said.

  My father nodded. ‘If you do purrut purrut, should you keep praying or stop?’

  I searched my mind, unsure of the correct answer. It’s a 50-50 chance, I thought, taking a punt. ‘Keep praying?’ I answered, hope in my voice.

  My father shook his head. ‘La’a, Yassmina. If you do this, you should say Al-Salaams,’ he nodded to his right and left shoulder, ‘then go do Wudhu again and start to pray from the beginning. Purrut purrut breaks Wudhu, okay?’

  I nodded, taking it all in. Wudhu is the ablution or the washing process that Muslims do before prayer to ensure that we pray cleanly. It’s pretty straightforward, but it’s described in intimate detail in the Qur’an and Sunnah. So much of Islam is open to interpretation but things like how to pray and how to do Wudhu are not, which means there’s relative consistency in these processes around the world. Wudhu involves washing your hands, nose, mouth, face, and arms up to your elbows, wip
ing your hair, neck and ears and then washing your feet. Each wash is to be done thrice. There is also a number of things that break your Wudhu, like going to the toilet, bleeding, sleeping or, as I learnt, passing wind.

  The way my father gently led me to find the right way in this story is a hallmark of the educative style he used when I was growing up. Baba would never answer my questions directly, but would counter them with his own, forcing me to think. He only really got involved in my formal education during the later years, once my mother began to work and I had reached high school. In my younger years, it was always my mother who helped me with my studies.

  My mother was the reason I was ready to go to school at the age of four: her expectations were always high. I remember countless weekends sitting at the dinner table in our apartment in Singapore, books strewn across the table, Mama painstakingly teaching me the building blocks of a primary education: reading, writing, comprehension, adding, subtracting, and even multiplication and division.

  She taught me so well that back in Australia the local kindergarten turned me away. A few days after I started, the supervisor approached my mother while she was dropping me off in the morning to say they thought it would be better to enrol me in a school nearby.

  By that point, I could read, write, multiply and divide and had developed into quite the show pony, so I imagine having me flaunt my knowledge while the others were trying to learn the alphabet was quite frustrating for the teachers. Their suggestion was duly taken up by my parents who went about finding a school that would take me. Public primary schools at the time turned me away due to my youth, and so the only option that worked was to send me to the newly formed local Islamic school, the Islamic College of Brisbane (ICB).

  Being younger did not seem to make a difference to how others saw me, perhaps because I was always tall and so seemed older. I wore my age as a matter of pride, as if to say See what younger people can do? I’m beating you at your own game, classmates, and I’m not even your age! This is a sentiment that has been carried through my life, a belief in the power of young people and our ability to change things up, make things happen, defy expectations.