At 99, a great-grandmother and her family love the 'give-life country'
- Date
Ali Nesha, with her family at home in Reservoir. Photo: Paul Jeffers
Ali Nesha made unreported history when she arrived at
Christmas Island in May last year, at 98 the oldest asylum seeker to
attempt to come to Australia by boat without an invitation.
She made a bit more last December when, as the oldest
resident of an Australian immigration detention centre, inmates and
staff at Brisbane's low-security facility celebrated her 99th birthday
with a cake and song.
Ali Nesha, originally from Burma will turn 100 in December. Photo: Paul Jeffers
With a little luck she will make even more in December, when
visitors who became friends in Brisbane will fly down to mark her 100th
birthday at the Reservoir home that constitutes community detention.
It will not only be one woman's extraordinary resilience that
will be celebrated, but the bond that saw four generations of the one
family board a boat in the hope of giving their young ones an education
and a future.
Other family members were offered resettlement as Rohingya
refugees in the United States two years ago, but say they declined it
because it would have meant leaving Ali Nesha behind in Kuala Lumpur.
''My brother said, '[If] my grandmother not going, my family not going to America','' recalls granddaughter Tara Begum.
Now they are all together, apart from Ali Nesha's son-in-law,
who suffers from asthma and did not think he would survive the voyage,
and two of his daughters who stayed with their father and their husbands
in Malaysia.
The voyage was most remarkable not because the youngest of
more than 120 passengers was just a few weeks old, and the oldest 98.
All were Rohingyas, who had fled Burma and are described by the United
Nations as ''one of the world's most persecuted peoples''.
Nor was it most remarkable because they left Malaysia without
any GPS or crew, with only the clothes they were wearing, their UNHCR
refugee cards and a map of where they were heading.
What distinguished it was that there was no people smuggler
involved, no middle man who organised their travel for profit. After
spending more than 20 years as stateless people in Malaysia, without
formal work or education rights and eking out an existence through the
support of the UN refugee agency and working illegally, the families say
they simply pooled their meagre resources, bought the boat and headed
off for Australia or New Zealand.
Grandson Sharif, 29, and Tara, 25, say the catalyst was the
thought of bringing up their children in a country where they, like
their parents, could not go to school and would live as stateless
people.
''I live[d] in Malaysia, but don't have life,'' Sharif says,
in the English he learnt in detention in Brisbane. ''My daughter born in
Malaysia, but not allow for school. They say 'refugee'. What can I
do?''
Sharif was five and his younger sister one when they fled
Burma with their grandmother and other family members. Their mother,
Sarmaras, is the youngest of Ali Nesha's 18 children. Only Sarmaras,
born when Ali Nesha was 55, and one brother are still alive.
Tara says her grandmother was calm on the 10-day voyage
while others were seasick and scared. ''She is very special.'' She did
not complain when she broke a hip last August, but became depressed
when other families who were on the boat left the detention centre.
Now they are preparing for a new life in Reservoir, trying
to put out of their minds that they do not yet have a visa and that,
when and if they get one, it will be temporary.
Under the community detention program, they have no work
rights but limited support and their children can go to school. Sharif's
daughter, Nojuma, is still a few years off enrolling, but he dreams she
will become a doctor, an engineer, or a customs officer, like the one
who boarded his boat when it approached Christmas Island.
He calls Australia the ''give-life country'' and looks forward to being able to work as a gardener or a driver.
Ali Nesha might be too old for dreams and her body is frail,
but her mind is sharp and her smile is warm and generous. She lives for
the present and says she is very happy the family is safe, together and
has a future. ''[Before there was] never free time,'' she says, through
Tara, who also learnt her English in detention and is hungry to learn
more. ''Now is very free time.''
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