For the past few months, a Facebook ad has repeatedly popped up in my feed, in Bengali. It is a picture of a boat on the ocean, and above it, a map of Australia with a red slash across it, saying ‘No way. Australia will never ever relax its border control laws.’ I...
I was working with Filipino intelligence in Bangkok when I became close to an Australian, Tina. They viewed my friendship with her as a security risk, so I was given a choice to either ‘terminate the liaison’ or to go back to the Philippines without her. Instead, I...
My father was Greek Cypriot, my Mum is Welsh, and they met at an Irish dance in London! Dad hardly spoke English – I don’t know how they communicated. There were a lot of mix-ups. For example, she thought he was very wealthy because he had a gold tooth! But they...
Bahá’ís are not allowed to study in Iran, so when I was 19, my brother and I left to study in India. Soon afterwards, the revolution took place in Iran, which meant that it became hard for people to travel in and out of the country. My father was so worried about...
After a year of the war, all the villages in our area were out of government control, so there were no police, no courts, and nobody to protect us from the armoured groups who were attacking many villages. These groups would steal things, kidnap people, or even...
I’ve had polio since I was about five or six. One day I just fell down, broke my front teeth and fell into fever. After that, half of my body just collapsed. I never had any medical treatment, and as a result, I always limped badly. Then, when I was 8, war broke out...
