Hear from one of the contributors to They Cannot Take the Sky
They Cannot Take the Sky is a collection of first-person accounts of the reality of life in mandatory detention. It has been compiled and edited by Behind the Wire, an award-winning oral history organisation.
Amir Taghinia is a 23-year-old man who has been in immigration detention on Manus Island since 2013. His story appears in They Cannot Take the Sky, under the title ‘We are all convicted to live on this planet’. It is based on two long conversations with Michael Green (a project coordinator for Behind the Wire) one day in July 2016, and subsequent phone calls. Amir met Michael in Lorengau, the main town on Manus Island, about 25 kilometres from the detention centre.
A couple of weeks ago, they exchanged voice messages reflecting on that meeting, for the Readings blog.
MG: Hey Amir, so, how are you today? What’s the mood like in detention? And yeah, what have you been doing to occupy your time?
AT: Well actually today started as a very good day. Last night I had repaired a raft, which I made with my friends. Behind the centre there is a beach which is okay. We took this raft and then we put it into the water. We went like maybe 200 metres from the shore, and I caught some blue starfishes and some sea cucumbers and sea urchins. When we came out of the sea, I tied the raft up with a rope to a tree. And I was actually stung by sea bees. Yeah, like, maybe twenty of them, they stung my back. So when I came back to the centre I took a shower and then I had my lunch and I just fell asleep, I just fainted. I slept at 2 pm and I woke up at 7 pm. When I woke up I went outside and I heard some guys, the refugees, they took my raft and they took it into the sea and they destroyed it. I was very angry when I saw it. I was very upset at the people that they had done this to the raft – it just ruined my day.
MG: I was reading through your story again the other day and I still find it very powerful and it makes me remember the time we met and then we had that long conversation. I was really struck by how articulate you were, and also how open and honest you were about your feelings and your experiences – and some things that lots of people probably wouldn’t want to reveal. I’m thinking about some of your recollections from when you were a child and also about your experience with facing, and reflecting on, death.
AT: Well it was, a quite strange day, the first time I met you, because it was the first time after almost three and a half years that there were no guards around me and I was actually seeing someone in a free environment. It was actually good, you know. And then later on, I had this feeling of I really want to go back to the centre. Because I was really having this feeling of institutionalisation. And I still have that. It’s a very strange feeling. When I go outside I just want to get back into the centre and just go back into my bed, covered with bedsheets. That’s the only place I feel safe. I have this feeling in my head all the time.
MG: I was wondering about why you decided to participate in this project? Why did you want to tell your story as part of this book?
AT: Well before I came to town I was told by [Kurdish journalist and fellow detainee] Behrouz Boochani that there is a project going on by a guy called Michael. He just said, ‘Just go there and see what he says.’ So I didn’t actually know there is this book project, but when you told me about it I was very happy. I had this feeling that eventually there is somewhere that we can record some of these events – events that we’ve gone through for three and a half years. It is good to be a civilised person. It is good to be an intellectual person, to record things, to write things down, to keep a record of everything so that we can prevent things like these happening in future.
You can also listen to an actual recording of one of the messages between Amir and Michael here.
