Former Tampa refugee Abbas Nazari at Word Christchurch 2021

In 2001, the Norwegian freighter Tampa - crammed with more than 400 asylum-seekers who'd been rescued from a sinking fishing boat - was turned away from Australia.

A seven-year-old boy Afghan boy named Abbas Nazari, who was on board with his family, eventually found a home in Christchurch.

In 2019, Abbas went to Georgetown University in Washington DC on a Fulbright scholarship and eventually graduated with a Masters in Security Studies.

He tells his story in the book After the Tampa.

Listen to Abbas Nazari in conversation with Helen Clark (NZ prime minister at the time of 'the Tampa affair') and the University of Canterbury’s Ekant Veer at WORD Christchurch 2021:

Abbas Nazari:

When it comes to telling the refugee story, it’s usually involving a statistic or maybe a country of origin. Lost in that discussion is the enormity of having to make a decision to board up your house, to jump in the back of a truck or on a boat, or to walk across continents. What’s lost is the human struggle, the personal journey, the names, the faces and the conversations that take place.

That’s why After the Tampa is not about me.

In fact, you could copy and paste Afghanistan with the name of another conflict zone that’s experiencing upheaval.

One of my favourite passages in the book talks about that, beginning with the time when my family got on the boat:

When we see a trail of desperate people fleeing conflict, perhaps on the tv news, we miss the points in time when a parent has to make a life-altering decision on behalf of a whole family. To stay or to go, to endure known misery or to march towards an unknown future.

Caught between the endless ocean and an uncertain earth, we chose life. Some kind of future beckoned and desperation powdered us to climb aboard. It seemed everyone was coming to that same conclusion and a mild scramble erupted. Luggage was tossed onboard in a swarm of activity, noise, chaos, crying children. Adults waded out nervously, most touching sea water for the first time in their lives.

Today my mother recalls the curtain of fear that hung before her as she walked towards the boat. She battled with the voice in her head that insistently urged her to stay on dry land, to cling to certainty however bleak. With every step she felt she was dragging a heavy chain. Through teary eyes she could hardly see the ladder as her feet one by one left solid ground. There was no turning back now.

Abbas Nazari:

The reason I highlight that passage is that when you see a picture or video of refugees, you don’t know all of the points that led up to that point.

Ekant Veer:

And you touch on how your Mum and Dad not only brought the whole family but made the decisions about how to protect your older brother (a young man at the time). Love to hear more about that.

Abbas Nazari:

Afghanistan is like a patchwork quilt made up of very multi-cultural, multilingual, sectarian communities. It has been at the hands of multiple forces through history, with many empires coming and going. The area that we call Afghanistan has always been a place of incredibly rich culture and heritage but also, sadly, conflict.

One of the groups there is the Hazara, my people, an ethnic minority. We look different we speak a different language, we worship differently, and that has always made us outsiders in that country. My family can trace our lineage in the particular area that we lived in, for almost a century. When the Taliban came through in the mid-1990s in their quest to make Afghanistan or Islam great again, that meant that there was no room for minorities, especially people who looked, spoke, or worshipped differently and so that forced us to flee.

Abbas Nazari:

It is families like mine who have lived and farmed on pieces of land for generations who now are forced to choose. Do you stay and hope that you can survive should the Taliban come through or do you just literally board up your house, put your belongings in a bag and head elsewhere? Within the country first, and then if that’s not safe enough, maybe across the first border which for us was with Pakistan. And all of that decision making falls on the parents.

Ekant Veer:

What do you think the future holds for Afghanistan now?

Abbas Nazari:

Anyone who has tried to forecast the future of Afghanistan has failed miserably because of how incredibly multi-layered that society is. I’ve been back to Afghanistan in 2012 and 2017, and in that last trip back, we were driving back to Kabul and I found myself daydreaming about an Afghanistan that could exist in another universe.

On the drive back to Kabul I thought about what Afghanistan might look like in another world, and another time, and amongst the chaos, I saw glimpses of potential, with soaring peaks and clear lakes that rival the best the South Island of New Zealand has to offer. Afghanistan is a country of spectacular and largely undiscovered natural beauty, I pictured hordes of foreign backpackers taking in the scenery in a network of world-class national parks. In winter the mountains’ coating of snow offers the prospect of superb ski fields.

I imagine alpine lodges and cabins there just like in the Swiss Alps.

Abbas Nazari:

Vast teams of well trained, well-paid miners would work the numerous state and privately-owned mines. In 2010 the US Department of Defence estimated that a trillion-dollar motherload of precious metals lay untouched in the Afghan hinterland, and this could be the basis for significant tax revenue for the government, involving highly-skilled employment and even the creation of a sovereign wealth fund.

I imagine Afghan exports catering to the global demand for premium organic foods, I envision world-class infrastructure powered by Afghanistan’s plentiful natural supply of renewable energy. I imagine foreign homes adorned with high-class rugs and carpets, handmade by artists continuing centuries-old traditions of craftsmanship.

I imagine a country where everyone had a seat at the table and women were valued for more than their domestic skills. I imagine a nation where differences in culture and language were reconciled under a common creed, a nation where perhaps finally the Hazara genocide was recognised.

Abbas Nazari:

I was still dreaming about this perfect future when we reached the main road into Kabul. The barbed wired checkpoint was manned by Afghan national army soldiers with a dozen heavily armoured vehicles parked nearby. A sudden reality check.

In the last couple of months [with the Taliban reasserting control of Afghanistan], a new chapter has been opened up in that country’s long and tortured history. Who knows what the future holds? But sadly, because it’s not front-page news anymore, for many who are trapped under the iron fist of the Taliban it looks like it’ll be a bleak future ahead.

This session was recorded in partnership with WORD Christchurch