No Friend But the Mountains

Behrouz Boochani, No Friend But the Mountains, 2018, Translated by Omid Tofighian.

Behrouz Boochani came with so much to offer Australia and, instead of accepting this gift, we imprisoned and tortured him.

Boochani fled persecution in Iran and sought refuge in Australia. After nearly drowning, he arrived at Christmas Island in 2013, four days after Prime Minister Keven Rudd banned boat-borne refugees from ever settling in Australia. Boochani was sent to Manus Prison in Papua New Guinea.

Boochani and 400 other asylum-seekers were confined in one section of the prison that was so small it eliminated all personal space. They were not allowed possessions or activities. There was no chance of getting a notebook and pen.

“[T]here is nothing to occupy our time. … It is even prohibited to play cards. In Corridor L, a few people were able to get hold of a permanent marker and draw a backgammon board onto a white plastic table. They began to play, using the lids from water bottles as counters. Almost instantly, a group of officers and plain-clothed guards entered … and crossed out the game. They wrote over if in bold letters, ‘Games Prohibited’.”

One prisoner desperately wanted to call his father, who was dying. The guards forced him to follow the rules and wait three days. By the time he was allowed to call, his father had died. He reacted with grief and anger, and the Australian guards beat him up and threw him into solitary confinement.

Winner of two Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Prize for Non-Fiction

No Friend But the Mountains is a big book, but it was created on a smuggled mobile phone, one text message at a time sent to the translator. Boochani is a superb storyteller. On his first attempt to reach Australia, the rotting Indonesian boat sinks:

“With the weight of a boulder, the boat bashes us onto the surface of the ocean. I penetrate the water, into the darkness of the ocean accompanied by the boat, accompanied by its slashed carcass.
Down … /
I sink further down /
I sink further down /
The boat is pursuing me /
Trying to catch me /
Catch me and pull me within it /”

Reading about the cruelty of the prison is harrowing, but the quality of the prose, and the poetry that is mixed into it, kept me reading. I felt a mixture of revulsion at what we are doing to him and delight in the beauty of his art.

Writing about the prison, he is not only describing, but also analysing. He says that Australia’s oppressive regime aims to turn prisoners against each other, and create a situation so harsh it will force the refugees to return to their country of origin, where they are likely to be tortured and murdered.

Boochani calls this system a “kyriarchy”, borrowing the term from the feminist scholar, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, who used it to describe interlocking systems aimed at domination, oppression and submission. In the Translator’s note, Tofighian says that this “connects the prison with Australian colonial history and fundamental factors plaguing contemporary Australian society, culture and politics.”

In his foreword to the book, Richard Flanagan writes: “Australia imprisoned his body, but his soul remained that of a free man. … I hope one day to welcome Behrouz Boochani to Australia as what I believe he has shown himself to be in these pages. A great Australian writer.”