ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

I bought this book after hearing the author speak at an author event at my local library – not because I needed to know more about the controversial issue of asylum seekers in Australia, because I consider myself well-informed about the subject already – but because I wanted to see if the book was likely to change any minds.   Our politicians seem convinced that the prevailing hostile attitude towards refugees who come here by boat is entrenched, so it might well be that a book has little chance of changing that.

But perhaps there are open-minded people who would like to know more about the reasons why people flee their home countries and then take extraordinary risks to come to Australia.  And if that is so, then The People Smuggler is a compelling story that makes a convincing case for Ali al Jenabi’s flight from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.  It recounts the torture of his father and the loss of his mental health; the murder of his brother; his terrible time in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, his attempts to work with resistance groups, and his use of people smugglers to get out of the country.

Australian politicians have been demonising people smugglers for so long that it comes as no surprise to learn that when Ali arrives in Indonesia he is himself ripped off by a smuggler.  But it is made clear that these smugglers are providing a service that seems to be the only way some refugees can reach a safe haven.  Ali becomes a smuggler himself because it’s the only way he can raise the money to get his family out of Iraq to the safety of Australia – and he helps a large number of other people to get here too.  That is why the book is subtitled The True Story Of Ali Al Jenabi, The ‘Oskar Schindler Of Asia’.  

I am undecided about the author’s choice to tell this story using a first person recount based on interviews with the subject. It has immediacy, but given the emotive subject-matter, it sometimes feels manipulative.  The reader is processing a human history of torture and trauma, but feeling empathy for that doesn’t necessarily turn off one’s critical faculties.  I think the author’s hope is that hostility to refugees will dissipate as readers develop compassion for what refugees suffer, but because the Australian media has been feeding the public disinformation about this issue for so long, I wonder if the story might not have been better served by a more objective style.

An obvious opportunity for this comes towards the end of the book when Ali is brought to Australia to be charged with people smuggling.  His defence calls as witnesses, some of the people that he smuggled here.  It is one thing for Ali’s compelling voice to tell us that he brought women and children here at no cost, and that he made sure the boats were big enough and that they took the safest routes in the safest weather.  It would be less easy for people to dismiss this as self-serving evidence if there were also testimonies from some of the people that he helped.

I also think that a third-person narrative (or perhaps a mixture of the two) could have better addressed the matter of the UN processing of refugees.  Long before Ali considers Australia as a destination, he applies for refugee status in a refugee camp.  Despite his situation, his claim fails.  Yet when his family finally arrive in Australia, they (like almost all the other asylum seekers who get here) are deemed to be refugees – but he isn’t.  While this story isn’t the place for an exhaustive analysis of these inconsistencies, the explanation is too cursory to make sense.  And a few statistics to back up the claim about refugees languishing in camps for generations could have added further authenticity to this aspect of Ali’s story.

At the beginning of John A. Scott’s brilliant new novel N (see my review) there’s a scene in which the Fadden government turns away a shipload of Jewish refugee children.  One of the artists in the novel is haunted by the fate of this ship and as he tries to bear witness to it, he struggles desperately to recapture the colour of the rust that will take the children to their doom. Well, it was because so many shiploads of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany were turned away and because their subsequent fate still hangs heavy on the conscience of the world, that the United Nations set up the Refugee Convention to which Australia is a signatory.

Yet today Australia’s attitude is stony-hearted.  The bipartisan policy towards refugees is gone and the deterrent strategy is cruelty to those who come here.  (By boat, that is.  Nobody gets tense about refugees who come by plane, as the overwhelming majority do).  Our politicians are content to capitulate to demagoguery.  Many Australians feel ashamed of this, but not enough of them, apparently.

Robin de Crespigny feels passionate about the refugee cause, and has written a compelling book to state the case and correct some of the disinformation that influences public opinion.  What she said at the author talk is that if each person who reads the book lends it to someone else so that the message spreads, perhaps attitudes will eventually shift.  I found myself thinking of other influential Australian women who tackled impossible issues and won, women like Caroline Chisholm, Faith Bandler, and Germaine Greer.

From little things, big things grow…

©Lisa Hill

Author: Robin de Crespigny
Title: The People Smuggler
Publisher: Viking Australia 2012
ISBN: 9780670076550
Source: Purchased from the Readings book-stall, on the night.

Availability
Fishpond: The People Smuggler: The True Story of Ali Al Jenabi, the ‘Oskar Schindler of Asia’