The Infernal Optimist Read Online Free PDF Page B

studied nuffin more than ten, fifteen minutes max in me whole life. I get bored too easy.’
    Hamid kinda smiled. ‘We had so much hope then,’ he said. ‘Hope and dreams.’
    ‘Yes. You were always talking about wanting to be a doctor. And the first Afghan surfer. After you learned to swim.’
    ‘I say that?’
    Azad laughed. ‘Yes.’ He looked like he suddenly remembered something. ‘You still growing your hair?’ he asked Hamid, telling me at the same time that back in Port Hedland, Hamid swore he wouldn’t cut his hair until he got free.
    Hamid looked up and he took off his cap. Azad and me, we didn’t even look at the hair much, what was long, cuz in the middle of his forehead was a lump the size of an egg.
    ‘Who…?’ Azad’s question seemed to get stuck in his throat like that piece a kebab the time me uncle Baris had to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on me in his shop, what is not a gay sex act even though it kinda looks like one.
    ‘No one.’ Hamid put his cap back on and stared at the ground. ‘Me.’

Seven
    That evening, Azad filled out a Detainee Request Form to be moved to Stage Two so he could look after Hamid. ‘He needs me,’ Azad said. He told me that back in Afghanistan, Hamid’s parents were teachers what ran a secret school for girls. That got them into big trouble cuz educating girls was a crime. Go figure. They put his mum in prison and no one knew what happened to his dad. After his folks disappeared, people told him that the Taliban, what was the bad guys what disappeared them, was coming for him next. He was only seventeen. So his rellies put all their money together to pay a people smuggler to get him somewhere safe. He didn’t have no idea about Australia before he came. It was just cheaper than Europe.
    The next day, as soon as Visits started, we went out to wait for Hamid. When the two a them seen each other without a fence sticking between them, they hugged and kissed each other’s cheeks, what is what men from the Middle East do and what doesn’t mean they be poofters.
    ‘What happened with your Federal Court?’ Azad asked.
    Hamid just shook his head. They both went quiet for a while. I guessed Azad be thinking about his own case too.
    ‘So…’ I was searching me brains for how the whole business worked. ‘You got rejected by the RRT?’
    Hamid nodded. ‘Yes. The Member, she did not believe I am Afghani. She said I was Pakistani pretending to be Afghani.’ He told us how the Member asked him about some rivers in Afghanistan what he didn’t know about. She said she’d sent tapes of his voice to some Swedish outfit. ‘They sent back a report saying my voice had Pakistani inflections.’
    ‘I spose they’d know all about that in Sweden, eh, mate?’ I said.
    Hamid didn’t smile. ‘The Member thought so. That’s why she rejected me.’ His voice was as flat as me tyres that time Marlena let all the air outta them after she caught me with that checkout chick, what I swear was an accident.
    I suddenly thought a something. No way could I name all the rivers in Australia. And Marlena tells me that sometimes I sound like one a them rappers what be from the ghettos in LA or the Bronx, and not an Aussie what be from the suburbs a Sydney. I hoped they wasn’t gonna ask me shit like that when I had me AAT or send me influctuations to Sweden.
    ‘What’s wrong, Zek?’ Azad asked. I looked up. They was both staring at me.
    ‘Nuffin,’ I said, wiping the sweat, what was from stressation, off a me forehead. I offered them some a the bickies what Marlena brung the other day, but they didn’t want any. So I ate six, what is two each.
    ‘Are you going to Full Federal?’ Azad asked, what be the next step after Federal.
    Hamid shook his head. He told us that DIMA gave him a letter saying they were making arrangements to deport him. ‘But the day after they gave me the letter, the Americans started bombing my country. Even DIMA couldn’t send me back to a war zone. And