Between Two Beers Podcast: Abbas Nazari: Escaping the Taliban, The Tampa Affair, Becoming a Best-Selling Author

On this episode of Between Two Beers, we talk to Abbas Nizari.

Strap in because this is one of the most epic stories we've told.

When the Taliban were at the height of their power in 2001, Abbas's parents were forced

with a choice.

Stay and face persecution in their homeland of Afghanistan, or seek security for the young

children elsewhere.

Abbas's family chose to leave, and what happened next formed the storyline for his best-selling

book After the Tempah.

Abbas talks about escaping the Taliban as a young child, being adrift at sea as a refugee

for weeks, the makings of the largest maritime rescue in modern history which turned into

an international standoff, and finding home in the Al Tiroa.

Then, after arriving in New Zealand as an 8-year-old who spoke no English, Abbas went

on to place 3rd in the New Zealand Spelling Bee a few years later, played Rep Rugby, graduated

from the University of Canterbury, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in Washington DC,

now owns two gyms, and is one of New Zealand's most in-demand speakers.

Abbas is a world-class storyteller with one of the most incredible tales to tell.

This was one of our favourite episodes we've done, and is a real perspective shifter.

Listen on iHeart, or we've got your podcasts from, or watch the video on YouTube, and follow

us on Insta and TikTok to see the best video clips from each episode.

This episode was brought to you from the Export Beer Garden studio.

Enjoy!

Abbas Nazari, welcome to Between Two Beers.

I like that.

That was good.

That was a good intro.

Thanks, bro.

We're very excited to have you in the Export Beer Garden studio this morning, flown in

to do some speaking gigs up for a couple of days.

Yeah, that's right.

Actually, I was in Hamilton last night, and then drove up this morning on the beautiful

Waikato Expressway, got here just in time, so someone actually sent me through your

Ambassadors Facebook group, actually, they said, make sure you promote it on their podcast.

There you are.

I am doing my duties.

Nice, the word is spread.

We'll get admin to add you into the group.

It's not that hard to get in, but...

Am I right in thinking that was the 43rd speaking gig you've done this year?

Yeah, that's right, man.

It was insane.

I'm booked and busy, which is a great place to be.

And that was a pun booked.

I was going to say that.

Maybe a few.

Maybe a few.

Maybe one and three.

Definitely.

But no, it's incredible, man, just to be able to share my story, which obviously is going

to be the content of today's chat, so people can get comfortable and listen up to both all

three of our velvety voices.

We're just incredible, the response to the book and the opportunity to share my story

to groups large and small, corporate, government, wherever.

I'm always astounded by the interest and the fact that almost two years on since the book

was released, people are still interested in it.

And hopefully, long may that continue.

There's a TED tour available on YouTube.

Was that you straight out of high school?

Yeah, that was it.

TEDx, Christchurch, 2012.

So that was, yeah, I was year 13 at the time.

And it was also held at my school, because that was a year after the earthquakes in Christchurch.

And the Aurora Center at Burnside High School was the only venue still standing and capable

of hosting an event like that.

So that was me year 13 doing a TEDx there, which if people watch now and look at me now

and look at that video, it's like, are you two different people?

No, no, no.

The messaging is still very similar.

Obviously, you've polished your delivery.

That's right.

But yeah, man, like to be that age and delivering that sort of content.

And also for the hardcore out there, I dipped into a Radio NZ interview with a 12-year-old

Abbas after the spelling bee, where you were still really polished.

You know, it's insane.

I've gotten a lot more selective about the kind of media that I do.

So you know.

You have those filters up at 12 years of age.

So no, no, no.

I've got a lot more selective about the kind of, you know, media and speaking opportunities

that I take up.

But yeah, I mean, for some reason, interest in my story and people wanting to hear my

experiences, whether it was a spelling competition or a TEDx talk or whatever, has always been

there.

And I haven't shied away from it, but you're right.

Over time, you know, the delivery, their content, what you say has become a bit more

polished.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

We're honored that you've chosen to tell your story, and that is seriously going to

be such a cool lit.

But we want to start by putting you on the spot.

So part of our process is we reach out to friends and family, and they give us bits

and pieces.

So we've gone to your new wife, Jen, congratulations, got married last month in July.

She has suggested that you have an intense enthusiasm for dead jokes, and she suggested

we put you on the spot so you come what you come up with.

So she'd ask him for his best joke.

Joke of the day.

Joke of the day.

Joke of the day.

Oh my goodness.

So we want to get the ball rolling with a little game.

I like that.

I like that.

So for reference, joke of the day is, and here I am putting in a plug for Jim, I'm the

owner and studio manager of BFT Body Fit Training, Wellington Central and Wellington East.

And I'm sure listeners of this podcast probably are members of their local BFTs around the

country.

And we start off every class with a joke of the day.

If you think about it, you've got members coming in at 4.45 a.m. cold, it's raining,

they probably woke up two minutes before, they're in there, and you've got to stand

up in front of 36 people and kind of wake them up a little bit.

And that's where the joke of the day started.

And it used to be actually funny jokes and the material has just decreased over time.

He's stalling.

Yeah.

He's stalling.

Anyway, long story short, this is what we are on between two beers.

So beer related.

This was the other day's joke of the day, so I'm pretty proud of this one.

So I went to the pub the other day and had my golf club with me in hand, just walked

in and the barman asks me, he's like, hey, what's that about?

You're not allowed to bring that in here.

And they say, don't worry about that.

Just my designated driver.

Yeah.

That was a cheat.

I like it.

I read it.

It's a high pressure situation.

That was a genuine reaction.

Thank you.

I'm having it.

I'm having it.

That was last, I think two days ago's joke of the day, so, you know, that wasn't on

the spot.

But yes, joke of the day.

That's what it's about.

That's good.

That's good.

The driver stands up.

Stronger.

Stronger.

So in the build up to the set, I read your book and it's a sensational piece of work.

It really is.

I can't recommend it highly enough to anyone listening.

My wife, Bonnie, read it when it first came out and was raving about it for weeks.

I think she's more excited for the set than any other of the 140 guests we've had.

But I was interested to learn that it was released on the same week as Steve Hanson's

Simon Bridges and Sonny Bill's autobiography and that smashed them all.

Were you surprised by how well it did out of the gate?

Yeah, I mean, it was August and September, a hot month for book releases.

It's timed in for Father's Day, that pre-Christmas rush, all of that.

The reason mine came out in August 2021 was that was actually the 20th anniversary of

our rescue by the Tampa, which obviously we'll get into in this podcast.

We were rescued August the 26th, 2001 and it just so happened that the book was going

to be released in August 2021 on the 20th anniversary.

And obviously we were in lockdown and there's a few other big names that came out that either

within a week or two weeks of my book.

And mine held the number one spot for, I don't quite remember how long.

And then it was in the top 10 for about four or five months, incredibly surprised.

I remember distinctly when we literally pressed print on the final manuscript and I was talking

to Jen and I said, I said, babe, you know, we spent the last 18 months riding and pouring,

you know, blood, sweat and tears into this thing.

What if it comes out and, you know, we sell like a hundred copies and 90 of those are

my best mates, you know, just doing it because they feel pity.

Yeah.

And he said, well, at least, at least you did it, right?

Not many people can say they published the book and, you know, she's awesome like that.

So to go the complete opposite way and it just kind of sell out and there was a shortage

of copies obviously because we're in lockdown and it was locked in a warehouse here in Auckland

and Melbourne and couldn't get it out and meet the demand.

I was just incredibly, incredibly humbled by it all.

And it was a moment of vulnerability for me to be honest because it was the first time

I'd shared, I know I say it's my story, but it's not really my story.

It's our story.

It's my family.

It's our Tampa families and I guess Afghan refugees generally.

It's a very common story.

The opportunity to share it, there's a lot of moments of vulnerability in there.

A lot of back and forth in my mum and dad over WhatsApp and FaceTime while I was in

the States during lockdown and they were in New Zealand.

Interviews with other Tampa families in Christchurch and all around the country and I really wanted

to do it justice because there's a lot of raw emotion that came through that process

and when we pressed print on the final manuscript I was like, oh man, I really hope I gathered

those voices and those emotions in these words and so for it to come out and then be received

the way it was, it kind of proved to me that maybe we've done that and it was an incredible

feeling.

Was there a moment, was it days or weeks or months or how soon did you realise this was

a bestseller?

I think the Booksellers Association or I think it's, every time the barcode is scanned there's

a little counter somewhere on the softwares around the country that sells and so they

do like a weekly or a fortnightly wrap up of similar to I guess your guys podcast listens

and so we found out within that week that at the end of that week we were number one

and it repeated again, number two, sorry, week two, week three, week four so every week

we kind of get an update and that's when you can officially say you know number one

bestseller is just like stoked.

I'm curious to understand and we're going to get into some of the detail of the book

without revealing the whole story.

But was that story retold in family circles and friends circles or was the process of

researching and retelling the first time that maybe some people had given ear to what had

happened?

That's a really good question.

So I don't think there was ever a time prior to me starting the book where anyone whether

it was my family or other temporary survivors had actually told their story from start to

finish.

Maybe they told snippets of it, maybe over dinner conversations you know dad would talk

about little aspects of this like do you remember when we were in Indonesia and this happened

or that happened?

But it was the first time we had proper sit down interview where I was recording and writing

down notes, we're putting the whole thing together.

And I guess in hindsight there's like two perspectives.

One was the physical journey that we went on from our perspective of this is how we

felt, this is what we smelled, this is how we you know what the pain here or the distinct

faces and memories that we had and then there was a lot of research involving the situation

we weren't involved in like what was the conversations happening in Canberra?

What was the conversations happening in Wellington?

All of that stuff that we weren't privy to at the time that I'd have to dig up newspaper

articles and all that kind of stuff from the time and kind of piece it up.

So there's a lot of just straight up conversation and then there's actually quite a lot of research

behind the scenes as well.

Sounds like a podcast.

Yeah.

There we go.

I went and read some reviews after the book, I was like shit this is so good I want to

hear what other people are saying about it and I wanted to read a part of a review which

I thought really accurately spoke to why I think it was so successful.

He said, but the script of this drama is the most astonishing thing.

By script I mean the tone and voice of the narrative.

Nazari's writing is powerful and its power derives from its simplicity.

I do not mean that as a criticism, it's the absence of any overlay of bitterness, negativity

or complaint that makes this narrative so compelling.

Facts speak for themselves and if we are aghast at the acts of the Taliban, the unsanitary

conditions endured by seven year old Nazari and his siblings and the appalling attitude

and behaviour of the Australian government of the time, our reactions are mitigated by

Nazari's practicality and sense of reality.

And I was talking to Shea about this before, it's the breaking down really complicated

concepts and really complicated passages into simple understandable terms and very unrelatable

content made relatable.

Yeah.

I'm glad you picked up on that.

Writing a book you go through multiple iterations.

I think we were on version 18 by the time it went through.

And if I compare version 10 to version 18 that eventually got published, the first few

articles, the first few versions were, is very angry.

It was academic in nature, it was angry at times, it was very kind of one sided and to

be honest, I could understand that, right?

But I always thought to myself throughout the writing process, what is the point of

writing this book?

What am I trying to achieve with this story?

And I didn't have an answer for that at the beginning.

I didn't have an answer at all.

But it was throughout the writing process that the answer finally revealed itself and it

was this.

I said, I want someone who maybe in a small town in rural Queensland who might have voted

for Howard, or maybe who has very strong opinions against refugees and asylum seekers.

I want them to pick this up at their local bookstore, have a read, or maybe their family

member picks it up and buys it for them to have a read and not feel like here I am pressing

my finger in their face through the words in this book, to be able to read it.

Not neutral, but trying to cool, calm, collected, remove some of the emotion out of it, remove

some of the anger and the bitterness out of it so that that person can have a time to

reflect.

And that's where I guess that change that we talk about happens.

Whereas if the first version came out, right, where I'm just doing this, pointing my finger

in their face, getting angry, you know, bloody racist Australian, this or ignorant, all that

kind of crap, I doubt you'd get, you know, you wouldn't get a response.

That person will just dig their heels in even further, right?

So that's what I'm most proud about that the book came out.

It's factual, there is emotion in there, but I've kind of tried to maintain kind of

that calmness and collectedness throughout.

And I think a lot of people appreciate that.

Yeah, I think you've done a brilliant job in there.

And I definitely, myself, while I haven't finished the book, listening to you retell

passengers of it, I definitely found myself who's a pretty tolerant person as well.

But reflecting on my own prejudices and my own thoughts and my own belief structures,

I mean, it's amazing to present the different side of the argument and I guess the term

is to humanize the story.

Because I think as general people, we see a refugee family, someone who's not from here,

we don't know the story behind it.

And everyone, yours is a particularly gripping and arduous journey and not everybody's is,

but there is a story behind everybody's situation.

100%.

And with the Tampa incident in particular, those listeners of the podcast may recall

the Tampa affair of 2001, they probably saw a picture of a bright red hulled boat out

there in the water or, and they can't maybe remember seeing videos about it on the six

o'clock news, but it was all one sided.

So we were held on the Tampa and we had no access to the outside world.

No media, no lawyers, no doctors, nothing.

There wasn't a face or name to the story at all throughout the entire, entire process.

And so it was all very well stage managed and controlled by, you know, the Department

of Prime Minister and Cabinet and Canberra.

And here was a chance for us to finally put a face and name to the story.

So it was a powerful, I guess, platform to have to make sure we do it right and do it

well with our book, but also not do it to the point where we, you know, you kind of

end up putting people off.

So yeah, pretty proud of it actually.

It should be.

It should be.

We'll be right back after this short break.

So there will be listeners who are just being teased by this.

So we want to get into the story.

We're not going to tell, retell the whole book, but there are lots of parts that we

want to sort of share with our listeners.

So I figure the place to start in the beginning, there was Sangjoy, you know what I'm saying

that right Sangjoy?

Yeah, beautiful.

Tell us about you, where you grew up.

That's right, man.

Sangjoy, Afghanistan.

Sangjoy, the actual word itself translates to rock creek.

It's sung meaning rock, joy meaning creek.

So rock creek and it got it got it got its name because there is a rocky creek that runs

down the middle of this valley, you know, fed by alpine lakes and snow melt far, far

away.

And Sangjoy is very typical of many, many villages in kind of, I guess, that central

plateau of Afghanistan, incredibly kind of hot, dry summers, you know, really blistering

cold winters, you know, my memories as a child growing up there were kind of those two extremes

of cooling off in the little creek that ran down during the summer months and then some

days if there had been, you know, a particularly bad snowstorm overnight would wake up and

would immediately start shoveling our way out through our house and literally cutting,

you know, they seem giant trenches because you're a little kid, but if I look back on

the photos now, you had to cut, shovel your way out through the snow and the snow would

be, you know, to an adult it would be kind of waist high and just cutting little trenches

out through the snow like that, you know, it was idyllic, it's beautiful and I guess

to listeners of the podcast imagery I want to put in their head is one of central Otago,

right?

But the snow-capped mountains and the lakes and rivers and the climate and geography of

I guess Cromwell, you know, the weather lends itself to growing great stone fruits, I remember

peaches and apricots and all of that stuff, those trees were in abundance over there.

And that was life for us growing up, you know, most Afghan families in rural Afghanistan,

they own a patch of land that they would harvest throughout the year and if they got a particularly

good harvest, they would carry them through till the next season and any excess would

be kind of sold at the local markets and the cycle would just continue on, you know, kids

once they reach a certain age that kind of start helping the dad or the, you know, the

local farm, maybe the dad might have a secondary job where there was a truck driver or a mechanic

or some sort of trade, but they also have the land and the animals to deal with as well.

I think that's one of the things that I enjoy is also what we call, I'd say, a Hazara village,

you know, Hazara being the people that, you know, the ethnic group that I belong to.

And so I guess we're a bit more socially progressive in that regard, you know, girls and boys going

to school.

It was safe, that's what I remember, you know, we didn't, in my childhood, didn't think about

too much about the war that was going on in the rest of the country.

We were tucked away, shielded away by kind of the mountains.

Can I just jump in there and ask a question, which is what is your world view when you're

growing up in that environment?

Are you aware of everything else that's going on in the world or are you really localised

in your village?

Very localised, very localised, both, I mean, as a young child, you're not much aware, but

even adults, you know, thankfully, our isolation meant that much of the problems and I guess

the progress of the outside world didn't affect us.

So for example, we didn't have running water or electricity or all of those things that

were common in the cities.

I've been saying they didn't have much of the violence or maybe the diseases and stuff

that also took place in the cities as well.

Our world view was just the, you know, by some estimation, maybe four and a half, five

thousand people that lived in our little village and the cluster of villages around us, the

rivers and lakes, the school or the local mosque they used to go to, the bazaar, you

know, the central markets they would go to maybe once a week and so on.

That was our world and that was it that had been our world for multiple generations of

the Nazare family.

And then, so to timestamp things, let me pick up the story around 2000 or 2001.

You were six or seven and then what changes?

That's right.

So basically, you know, the Taliban are in power throughout the 1990s.

They control 90% of Afghan territory and Afghan population.

It's not a great time, I guess, economically.

Many listeners of the podcast are aware of, you know, they probably have imagery of Afghanistan

throughout the 1990s, right?

You know, scenes like the kite run out, the movie, the kite run out and that kind of

thing, right?

So that was life in Afghanistan.

A lot of people ask me about why, what was the exact reason that you or your family had

to flee?

I guess the answer I have for that is, you see, the Taliban, they, I delve into their

politics and their theories in the book a little bit, but essentially, they wanted to

make Islam great again or they wanted to make Afghanistan great again.

And in their vision of trying to rebuild this new society, this new country, there is no

room for anyone who doesn't fit the mold, right?

And you can see where I'm going with this.

This is a story told time and time again in different situations and scenarios across

the world.

And in their vision, there was no room for minorities, people who looked different or

spoke a different language or maybe they held historical grievances against and so on.

And in particular, that was our people.

So I mentioned it before, you know, the Hazara people of Afghanistan, you know, we make up,

there's never been an official census in Afghanistan, right?

So these numbers, please don't quote me on this, but we probably make up, I don't know,

16, 18% of the population, maybe more, but around that, maybe one in five, I don't know.

So we look a little bit different physically in our facial features, you know, we look

a lot more Asiatic, you know, Central Asian, high cheekbones, you know, a lot more Asian

in our facial features.

You probably don't know it looking at me right now, right?

I look a lot more Samoan.

Yeah, yeah.

You saw me down the street, you think I was Samoan, I get that a lot, but you know, look

a bit more Asian in our facial features.

We speak a different language.

We speak Dari, which is a dialect of Farsi, which is what they speak in Iran.

We, you know, worship differently, you know, the majority of Hazara are Shia Muslim, which

is the minority compared to the majority Sunni Muslim, which is, you know, the different

sect.

And we generally keep to ourselves in the central highlands of the country, particularly

Ghazni and Bahmyan province, which I think many listeners of the podcast are probably

aware of is where the New Zealand Defence Forces were based, like Kiwi based in Bahmyan,

where the giant Buddhas of Afghanistan are based.

And there's a lot of historical, you know, acts of aggression and somewhat even called

genocide against the Hazara because we don't really fit the bill.

And when the Taliban took over, that just continued.

And it would be either small or large scale, you know, might be going into a Hazara neighborhood

of Kabul, for example, and essentially ousting people out and giving them a seven day ultimatum

to leave, you know, your assets will be dispersed out to our supporters.

Just leave the country, you're no longer true Afghans or you've never been true Afghans.

And then there was actual, you know, genocidal massacres that took place in some of the major

major battlefields across the country.

And so we start to hear rumors about this happening, then we start to see it and hear

about it about people that we know that have been either killed or being displaced and

so on.

And that was throughout the 1990s.

And so to come back to the starting point of the story, it was only a matter of time

before we actually had to flee, we thought, you know, the Taliban will come for us.

And not for us, you know, the Nazari family, but they just come to our village and destroy

our way of life.

And, you know, our choice was either to be killed or, you know, killed or maybe flee.

And that was it.

That was the starting point.

It was about 2001, I believe, started 2001.

And there were few and fewer kids in school every day.

There was more and more houses boarded up on our way to school.

There was fewer livestock grazing the lands, all telltale signs that people just packed

up and left.

Most of them had left and displaced internally, right?

They went to provinces where maybe they had family connections where they thought they

might be a bit safer or some people had packed up and fled and who knows where without kind

of saying anything.

And so, you know, Dad says, look, tomorrow is the last day here, you know, go to school,

say goodbye to your teachers, come back and, you know, I've hatched the plan and we'll

get us out of here.

You know, Dad was a truck driver and he had a friend of his who was also a truck driver.

He's going to come pick us up tomorrow and take us out of here.

And it was as simple as that, you know, went to school, said goodbye to our teacher, kind

of, you know, he was used to it by now, lots of kids had done that or maybe that left without

even saying goodbye, depending on their marks, I don't know, but Dad was always, Dad was

always very respectful of teaching and education and that comes through later when we arrived

to New Zealand, you know, say, you know, shake his hand, he's this big bearded guy who I

was very, very scared of.

As one teacher for 300 students, I remember that all of us were in this one single hall

and we're all just kind of read whatever text was there, just kind of wrote learning

about the Afghan education system was great.

Came home and that was it, you know, a mum had packed up a few trinkets and belongings

and things that she thought we might need, things valuable, bit of jewellery, there's

a Quran that kind of sat above the door of our living room that she packed up and put

in her bag, just, there's a clothing here and there, not knowing when or if we'd ever

come back.

So, you know, things that we didn't want to carry along the way, she just packed up

and put in boxes at home thinking maybe we might come back, I don't know.

Yeah, and this lorry came by, I remember it was, I think it was a blue cab and we jumped

into the back of this thing, right, and I think I was at the front in the cabin with

my dad because I was a little kid at the time and the rest of them were all in the back

covering ourselves, covering themselves up in Tarpaulans and that kind of thing and sure

enough, this lorry drives us through our village one last time up over the mountains

and our childhood disappears just like that and so begins our journey.

How far had you travelled outside of your village prior to that moment?

That was it.

It's like, honestly, one of my favourite movies ever is Lord of the Rings, you know, that

scene where Sam and Frodo, Sam just suddenly stops and he says, this is the furthest I've

gone.

That was it for me, I think, I mean, again, I was a little kid at the time so it's not

like we could travel further but that was it, going over the mountains and not seeing

our village and now being in a different valley and again, I started to go into nightfall.

We were in a whole different world, whole different world and the irony of it was that

this is our first time seeing our own country but it might also be our last time too.

So a plan had been hatched and this is a part of the book where it starts to, like, it's

so well done, the beginning and you're describing where you grew up and then you're on this

journey and it's so, the writing is so very clear about this treacherous path which starts

with a trip to Pakistan and it's uncomfortable sitting in a truck for hours upon hours and

hours and Taliban road stops and just being fearful for your life basically for the next

little while.

Take us to the journey to Pakistan.

Yeah, so I think over the course of four or five days, Afghanistan is a very mountainous

country with no real developed roads and so it took us forever to make our way south.

There is a map in the book, make our way south to the city of Kandahar which is kind of,

you know, the hotbed, Taliban headquarters, right, it's on the border with Pakistan essentially

and make our way there and next day I've got to make a crossing, a border crossing to try

and get over the border into Afghanistan, into Pakistan and I remember that border crossing

so well, it's like a, you know, kind of a dash where you kind of put your head down and

just kind of, all Taliban patrolled obviously and just kind of hope that you're not singled

out, right?

This is an awesome opportunity for thieves and bandits and, you know, even people pretending

to be Taliban gunmen and militiamen just to kind of just seize and knowing people were

leaving and they probably had cash and jewellery and elsewhere and so, you know, it was just

running the gauntlet and we jump into this, I guess, these, I think it was a cab, like

a taxi and that, you know, the driver was risking his life too but, you know, he knew

there was a reward in it too if he made a successful crossing and we get to the border

crossing and I remember it so well, these guys, big bully guys, beards down to their

chest, you know, wrapped up in the turban, you know, generally Taliban gunmen are taller

in stock here, that's their, that's their build but when they put a turban on and you

go beard that long and they look quite, quite large, you know, they could fit in the front

row pretty, pretty easily and they all, you know, got their AK strapped either in hand

or across their chest or slung around their shoulder, very menacing and, you know, our

taxi, we were in this line and the taxi in front of us, I don't know, maybe they didn't

have their paperwork or something happened, maybe the driver talked back at the person

checking something and he gets pulled out and he just gets given the beating of his

lifetime right in front of us and we all saw that, me and my brothers are clutching on

to my mum's hand at the back seeing that and in our cab was our driver and my dad and obviously

the same guy who's just delivered a good beating to that guy, he's now going to inspect our

car, walks up towards us and we're all just, you know, hearts beating trying to figure

out what's going on and he pulls dad and our driver out and again, different language

I can't speak at and he just points to the little shed where I guess his commanding officer

is and he said, go there and through the little slit in the window and maybe we can see dad's

kind of being interrogated. Obviously there's a chance to kind of get anything, strip people's

pockets right and in there I think dad gives a bit of cash over, that's not enough, you

know, hands over his watch, that's not enough, wedding ring, whatever and finally I think

that appeases the guy and he just, dad doesn't look back, gets in the car and then we're

out of there and make this border crossing and that's it, cross the border again, just

not, don't look back, just hoon it straight forward and it's incredibly mountainous right

so most people probably know Afghanistan, Pakistan surrounded, you know, they've got

their mountains there and it's just valleys right, the road isn't like a highway, it's

like this cliff edge where the road just kind of snakes up and down through these windy

mountain paths, all of us are incredibly seasick, not seasick, we'll come to that later,

incredibly car sick, just fearful, it was just a miserable time until finally made it

through the mountains and then we're on flat ground and we're in a new country.

So the plan, the long term plan is to get to Australia but in order to get there you've

got to go from Pakistan to Indonesia on a flight, first time you've been on a plane

and I was talking to Shay about this part, where you're in customs and you're going

through the line and this big plan is this guy's been paid off right, so you have to

go through this one agent but someone else comes and tries to direct you a different

way, so in that second the whole thing, the whole world, all this could potentially come

unstuck and you bring it to life.

Yeah 100%, I remember that, you know, being in an airport for the first time, I guess

just take one step back, the original plan just to leave our village was to just get

to Pakistan, right, because different country, safer and then try and figure out what's next.

So the original plan was never like okay we're going to go to Pakistan, get to Indonesia,

get to Australia.

The second phase of our journey just kind of all got pieced together along the way,

we were making the parachute as we were free falling in the air and the reason for that

and is, again this is going to be a really good segue, but kind of get us readers a

bit of context, I guess when you talk about the refugee experience, I talk about it as

the complete absence of choice or your agency to impact your life and I want to kind of

talk to our readers about why we actually settled on Australia in the first place, why

there.

So when you're a refugee camp, so we were in a refugee, found ourselves on the outskirts

of the city called Quetta Pakistan, a city of over a million and there's informal settlements

and there's tens of thousands of other refugees, mostly Hazara Afghans just like us, people

in all sorts of shapes and faces and so on and if you had money you might be renting

a hotel room, if you had connections maybe you might be staying with family, otherwise

you were in a UNHCR tent, you might be sleeping on the side of the road, so on and so forth.

And that was the extent of Dad's plan, get there and we'll figure it out, we'll figure

it out.

So when you're a refugee you've got one of two choices, both of them involve a very,

very long waiting game.

One is that you wait it out wherever you are and you hope that the situation in your home

country improves so that you can head back, right?

Head back home, head back to the farm, head back to your business and maybe just press

play on life like nothing had happened.

But the obvious problem is that you don't know when or if that day will ever come, right?

And I'm sadly more recent examples of being that when the war in Ukraine kicked off February

last year, you know those people who fled into neighbouring Poland and Germany and elsewhere,

they probably thought to themselves, you know what, we're part of the West, we're educated,

there's been no war in Europe for decades, this thing won't last 30 days, we'll be back

by the end of the month.

And 18 months on, they're still waiting it out, hoping for the best.

Syrian civil war kicked off 2010, 2011, a lot of those Syrians thought no, no, no, where

higher incomes were more educated, this thing will not last, we're not like the rest of

the Middle East, this is not, civil war is not going to happen in Syria.

And 12 years later, those people went into neighbouring Turkey and Jordan and Lebanon

and elsewhere still trying to figure it out.

So that's obvious, just wait it out, hope for the best.

The other option is to wait it out, hope for the best, but also apply through the UN

refugee agency and hope for overseas resettlement.

So the way that works is that you give them everything, your medical history, security

background, genealogy check, you provide every bit of evidence, you make sure your story stacks

up and you just hope for the best and you apply through the UN and the UN compiles a

database of people and then they give them out to, I think, 50 different countries and

say these are the people who need resettlement this year, do you have space?

And different countries like Australia and New Zealand and, you know, signatories to

the UN refugee convention, every year they say, look, we can take on, in New Zealand's

case, 750, more recently doubled to 1500 refugees a year, Australia might be 15,000, whatever

their numbers are, America half a million every year and so on.

But obviously it's a supply-demand issue, right?

And so I want to provide this context for listeners of the podcast about why refugees

end up taking the road that they end up taking.

So 0.1% of refugees who apply for overseas resettlement every year get resettled.

So 99.9% of people, even if they meet the bill and meet the criteria, they just supply

demand, right?

They just don't make the cut.

And so the average wait time from application through to processing, through to finally

jumping on board that plane to whichever country, given you don't have a choice in the matter,

whichever country has accepted you, is 12 to 15 years.

It's a long time living in a tent.

It's a long time.

And that's why those kind of tent cities and stuff that you see in Sub-Saharan Africa

and Latin America and South Asia, those tent cities are cities in itself.

They were supposed to be temporary, but they've just kind of become permanent settlements

where people have just kind of said, this is my life now, I guess.

So that is why, after kind of scoping out the situation, we decided to go further.

We're going to seek asylum in Australia.

Again, go ahead.

Sorry.

How long was it between arrival in Pakistan and the decision to make a play for Australia?

I think about, memory is a bit hazy, but probably about three, four months, four months

or so.

Because it would be easy in the retelling of it to think it's a linear one day journey.

We jumped in the truck, we got through the border, we got to Pakistan, we jumped on a

plane and then the rest happened.

But it's a long period of time.

So the whole journey from the time we left Afghanistan to eventually being resettled

to New Zealand was just under a year long.

So we're in Pakistan for months and then it becomes obvious, okay, that if these are

our two choices, we have to find some other way out.

And that other way out was to seek asylum in Australia.

Seeking asylum, again, for content readers, listeners of the podcast, is a right that

we always have.

You know, there's a sports-ish podcast, so I'll give an analogy, right?

Suppose there's a North versus South Island civil war, right?

I live in Wellington now, but I support the Crusaders, so I know who's winning that war.

Surprise, you guys got two eyes.

I didn't realise when you turned up, I thought, oh, man, man's got two eyes.

I thought they all only had one down there.

So, you know, I support the Crusaders, so I know who's winning that.

And all the blue supporters, you know, they have their houses burnt down and they've got

their blue skits and they fly or they jump in boats or they try and swim across the Tasman

Sea to try and get to Australia.

And some of them make it and they go to the Australian government and they say, I'm seeking

asylum.

There's a North versus South Island civil war in New Zealand and, you know, being hounded

and here's my story, here's my family, here's my security check if you want to run me through

the system and so on.

The Australian government then has a duty to provide temporary protection for those

seeking asylum.

Here I'm out, and if their story stacks up, then provide temporary protection that could

be 12 months, that could be three years, some sort of pathway to kind of continue employment,

education, whatever.

That's how it's supposed to work.

So we all have the right to seek asylum.

Sadly, I mean, no, thankfully we don't have to do that here in New Zealand, but I guess

in some countries and some societies, you do have to seek asylum.

And so we were going to seek asylum in Australia.

Second part of that question is, and I got asked this exact question at a book event

in Melbourne last year, this guy gets up and he says, a bus mate, great talk, but I

got to ask you, why'd you guys choose Australia?

Here I am trying to put on my best Aussie accent.

It's good.

Why'd you guys choose Australia?

And I think he was serious.

He added the second part of this question in there as well as he goes, was it because,

you know, we just hosted the Sydney 2000 Olympics and we'd done a bloody good job of

it.

Maybe Australia looked attractive on TV and I was like, I took him seriously and then

I gave him an equally serious answer back, I says, you know what, mate, you know, when

we were fleeing for our lives from the Taliban, we didn't quite have time to watch the Sydney

2000 Olympics, but we might have seen an ad in the local paper or something like that

when we were queuing up for World Food Programme food parcels, we said, Australian Tourism

Council asking us, where the bloody hell are you?

And it kind of said, look, you know what, Australia's a welcoming place.

That's maybe that's where we need to go.

I was taking the piss, but you know, I got the gist of what he was saying and that was,

why would you go all the way to Australia when you're in Pakistan?

It's a long way away.

And it's actually a talking point in far right and not far right, but in kind of conservative

political circles around these people trying to get to further reaches of the world.

And the sad reality of it is that if you draw a circle around where we were, no neighbouring

or nearby country would ever grant the rights of people seeking asylum.

If we went to Iran, which hundreds of Afghans try to cross the border into Iran every day,

you know, you get shot at or killed at the border, just like people in the United States

Southern border do.

If we went into the Gulf States, you know, you just get turned away, assuming they had

some sort of political stability, they might turn a blind eye to your arrival.

If there was no country nearby, we could seek asylum into that might give us some sort of

peace security and some kind of pathway forward for us nearest countries are Europe or Australia

at the bottom of the world.

And for some reason, I'm still still don't know to this day, Australia was, it's not

like we headed for New Zealand.

No one knew about New Zealand's existence.

There's a passage in the book when we're told that we're going to be resettled in New Zealand.

And some guy says, who's that?

Yeah.

Who's that?

So Australia was.

And so to answer your point from 30 minutes ago, that was a bloody, that was one of the

great scenes.

Exactly.

Answer your point from 30 minutes ago, Australia was.

And so, you know, we get in touch, not that, you know, it was easy, but other people managed

to find us and they're going to try and get us across all the way to Indonesia.

And that's the passage that you're talking about, you know, make it first time on a plane,

this kind of horrendous airport incident where the whole thing could have been derailed

because we weren't in the right queue.

Because there's, you know, literally, like you said, if, if we'd gone the wrong queue

or maybe the security guard had pulled us over for whatever reason, we would have missed

our chance.

The whole thing could have collapsed right there.

But you know, luck would have made it across and made it all the way to Indonesia.

Yeah, you've invested your whole life savings in this, like to make that point too.

And it's your large family, like it's, it's everything on the line.

So you get there, you make it through to Indonesia.

And again, as I keep saying, this is the gripping part, but talk to us about the boat.

Yeah.

The first time you saw the boat, the Palapa.

Yeah.

Palapa too.

Palapa too.

Yeah.

We'll come back to that.

There's a joke in there as well.

Make it to Indonesia.

And we're staying at some, I think, dormitory or some sort of, it used to look warehouse

looking thing.

Again, kind of weeks go by because the final passage is to try and get across this little

strip of water that, you know, divides Indonesia from Australia known as the Indian Ocean.

Yeah.

Right.

You just got to get across the Indian Ocean.

And the goal is to try and hit this little rock known as Christmas Island, which is an

offshore territory of Australia.

And one night, middle of the night, you know, get woken up at two nights the night, a boat

had been found and the crossing was to be tonight.

And get bundled up into this mini van and driven through the city, through the jungle,

right towards the shore, you know, I think I fell asleep on that ride and find myself

being bundled out again.

There's more and more van loads of people keep arriving.

Some people I recognise because by now, you know, quite a few families had coalesced,

you know, and a few kids I recognise and it's pitch dark and we get walked down this kind

of rocky cliff edge thing and then keep walking down further down the beach and there it is.

The handlers that were dealing with us, they, you know, they pointed to this thing, again,

very dark kids and babies and parents and everyone's trying to stay hush hush and there's a lot

of commotion and they pointed to this thing and say, there it is, there is your butt.

And, you know, the good people that these handlers were, you know, as promised, it was,

you know, five-star fully serviced P&O crews that was going to take us across, right?

It's a wooden piece of shit, right?

It was a rickety old wooden piece of shit that was tied up to some rocks with some bits

of rope.

It's funny reading the book and having an image in my head of how shitty this boat was

and then I went and saw footage of the boat and I was like, well, way worse than I thought.

Way worse.

Yeah.

So here's the thing, right?

It was pitch black and you can see the outline of it.

You can't really make it out and it's kind of moving slowly as the waves keep coming

by and instantly there's a massive commotion.

You know, people are, there's a fist fight to their breakout with some of the Indonesian

handlers and to this day, I don't know if there was some people who instantly turned

back and said, no, this is not what I paid for.

This is not safe.

I'm no way I'm getting it.

Maybe there was.

I don't know.

Is that many people?

Is that dark?

And then there's commotion about I'm not getting on.

That's not what I paid for.

How can I get my kids on board this thing?

Which seems to last for hours, but gradually, you know, people start saying, maybe this

is it.

Here I am.

I've been on the road.

Some people, by the way, had been on the road for years, right?

They lived in the nineties.

They made it this far.

Some people had walked from Afghanistan across the Indian subcontinent, through Myanmar, down

through Thailand, all the way.

So some people have been years on the road.

A lot of the young men recently married or maybe young fathers had left their wives and

kids behind with the appearance, maybe in a safer village somewhere, said, I'm going

to try and make this.

If I make, I'm going to apply to bring you over.

So there's a lot of fathers and eldest sons and those traveling alone.

And then there were families like us as well, you know, families with mums, kids and that

as well.

A lot of people.

And the first people to get on board are those people who have left their families behind.

They said, look, I've got nothing to lose here.

You know, I've made it this far.

I've been years on the road.

Some people had made multiple crossings as well.

You know, for us, it was our first, but some people had done multiple crossings where maybe

they'd gone out this far.

Maybe their boat had sunk and that swam back, or maybe they were caught by the authorities

and towed back.

Some people had been imprisoned and escaped out of prison and come back.

And there's many stories of this, but for us, it was our first one.

And so there it was.

You get on board this thing that you're 99% of the way there.

It's, they promised us it was a two day or a 48 hour crossing.

We'll point the compass south and hope for the best.

That's what people have packed, right?

Food and water for two days, not much luggage, just enough to get by.

And yeah, one by one, we climb up the ropes and the netting that was on the side of this

fishing boat and up we get and then down this little hatch and then we get kind of bundled

into the hull of this thing, right?

All the first people that loaded up, obviously all the fitter younger guys right at the bottom

along with the cargo and the luggage and the fumes from the engine.

They were down there and all the kind of older or those with families, we were kind of up

top where there was a bit more fresh air.

And sure enough, after a couple of hours, we could feel it moving again, pitch black,

right?

We could feel this thing moving and come sunrise.

We were out there in the open ocean.

Which you'd never seen before.

Never seen before.

Not sure if readers of this podcast, no, not sure if listeners of the podcast, no, Afghanistan

is a landlocked mountainous country, right?

We are a mountain people, not a seafaring nation like Aotearoa, so instant seasickness.

Just instantly.

I remember it.

So to this day, when I go to the beach or if I'm like even on the ferry here, you know,

crossing, you know, or when I think of the ocean, I think of seasickness because that

was my formative experience.

Just two, three, five days of just absolute, just vomit everywhere.

And you know the smell of that, right?

Am I right in thinking that the max was meant to be like 43 people on this boat and there

was 433.

That's right.

So this thing was, we found out the next morning when there's more light and we found

out our situation, just exploring this thing was tiny.

I don't know the dimensions off my heart, but I think it was about, it's a fishing vessel

that had been repurposed.

So they put in an extra level of decking and it was ancient, but you could tell maybe

a bit of paint, but you could tell that this thing was rotted on some, some timbers and

so on.

But yeah, it was a fishing vessel that might have comfortably fit maybe about 50, 40, 50

people or so.

And, and during our rescue, which would later get on, we found out there was 438 people

on board, 433 asylum seekers and five Indonesian crew members.

Absolutely packed.

You know, I remember in high school when we were learning about the Atlantic slave trade,

there's that really famous, I guess, diagram or image of, you know, when people are huddled

like this in the final passage across, where they're just kind of just like this, literally,

you know, just hands and feet next to one another sitting down.

That's, that was us just bundled in with luggage and babies.

And it was just a terrible, horrific situation.

I still don't know to this day how we survived it, right?

The fumes, the seasickness, the dehydration, the constant, constant, you know, the pregnant

woman on board.

You know, kids as young as one or two, it was just insane and the smell, God, I mean,

obviously no running toilet or whatever, so just the smell was just absolutely disgusting.

But yeah, you know, that was, that was it.

But we knew that this was the final step.

This was that we'd made it this far.

Just hold, you know, hold your breath tight for the next 24 hours and we'll get there.

But, but, you know, we had to be tested one more time.

We had to be tested one more time.

And so, you know, smooth, smooth sailing, I guess, for the first day and then the next

kind of, I think on the evening of the first night, start hearing funny noises coming from

the engine room.

Engine stops and starts for a couple of hours.

A couple of people on board who used to be, I think, truck mechanics in a former life,

they try and put this thing back together and they're successfully for a couple of hours

and then it gives up completely.

This thing is just kind of dead in the water.

There's no way of fixing it.

Panic starts to set in.

There's no radio equipment on board because you don't want to be caught by the authorities,

right?

Nothing.

People are just floating in the Indian Ocean.

Panic immediately starts to set in.

Again, it's pitch black and people are trying to figure out what to do, where to go from

here next.

And people have the bright idea of, you know, starting to strip some of the planks off to

try and create paddles.

You know, maybe we can row this thing back, but obviously you're in the open ocean.

There's not much.

This thing is too big for that.

So past that day, the next day, trying to figure out where to go from here, we caught

in this, start to see the clouds are starting to darken up over the morning throughout the

day and then in the evening, you know, the swell starts coming in.

And I guess that's the crescendo of this whole story of just how close we were to death,

right?

The waves are dumping on top.

And there's in between the cracks of the planks, freezing cold seawater keeps coming down

like many waterfalls.

And like I said, we're in that first layer, so it's all kind of dumping on top of us

and going down to the bottom.

And there's people starting to create a human chain using buckets to try and take some of

this thing out.

Obviously, we've got no control, no way to kind of control this thing.

So every which way that we get pushed and pulled, we're going that way.

And every time there's a wave that pushed us this way, inside, we're all kind of sliding

across.

I remember distinctly my dad, I think, using his belt and other dads using a towel or whatever,

just kind of looping it up around one of the rafts, creating like a handhold so that every

time we slid this way and that way, he'd hold on to us, would hold on to his legs or his

arms so we would go too far away and then pull us back in until we got pushed the other

way.

Very hard to describe that scene, I guess, for anyone who hasn't been in the middle of

a storm in the Indian Ocean, very hard to describe.

But I guess in terms of imagery in your mind, think of it as, you know, in the morning when

you make your morning breakfast smoothie and you put in all of those ingredients, literally,

that's what I imagine it to be like.

You put yourself, you're in a blender of bodies and luggage and human waste.

Keep in mind there's no toilets or some people have been vomiting and going to the toilet

and little plastic bags and you're just rolling around there with freezing cold seawater being

dumped on top and all in pitch black.

That's what it's like for hours on end and there's people, absolute pandemonium crying

and kids just absolutely, you know, absolutely losing it, fear, like it went from panic to

absolute fear and desperation is just Saturn.

And then, I guess, in amongst all of that carnage, there's this, when I was writing

the story, I just remember it so well, trying to find the words to put it on.

There's this kind of beautiful moment.

It's like that scene in the movies where there's like a light begins to glow or whatever, I

don't know, hard to describe, but there's this beautiful moment where the absolute carnage

and pandemonium of people crying and shouting and screaming and the beams splitting and the

wood creaking and cracking, everyone, without being told or whatever, in unison, someone,

I don't know who, begins this very famous prayer and from, I think it was from the bottom

bottom level of where all the guys were.

And that starts to echo up through the ship and I didn't know the words, but it's here

all of the parents, just in unison, kind of at the top of their voices, just belting

out this beautiful Arabic prayer that I have some passages of it in the book that was just

essentially begging for forgiveness, you know, that most people had accepted that this was

it, that this was to be their final few hours and they were just kind of praying for forgiveness

and saying that if this is to be my final moments, then please forgive me of all my

sins and accepting that that was it.

And I remember that so well because it was, it just drowned out the waves and the crashing

of the boat this way and that way for hours on end.

I don't know how long it went on, but it went on for all the night.

And I remember it so well just, and people just kept repeating and this prayer is long

enough, I think it's, it's, you know, it goes for quite a few verses, it would finish and

then people start again and it would just go on and on and on and, you know, I'm a man

of faith myself, you know, selectively, but it, that moment was probably the most powerful

moment when it comes to, I guess, faith and just being tested, you know, being pushed

right to the limits.

And you know, whenever I tell this story, I say, I don't know to this day whether it

was luck or an act of God or sheer fortune that carried us through the night of the storm,

but you know, that carried on until the sun rose and the, and the waves kind of started

gentling down and, and, you know, the clouds disappeared and we survived and we survived

and the next day trying to figure out where to go from here and it was the most powerful

experience I've ever been through.

We'll be right back after this short break.

You have done this story 43 times in engagements.

The emotion is still there every time you retell it.

Like is it hard to retell these stories?

For me, when the offer to write this book came through, I, you know, I said, no, I got

a Fulbright scholarship in 2019 and got a bit of media coverage off that and my wonderful

publishers at Allen and I went and approached me and they said, I bust this and make an

awesome story, what you've done, what you've achieved.

I think there'll be demand for this kind of feel good, rags the riches, try-up story.

And I was like, no, no, thanks.

I remember there's a contract literally put in front of me and I just go, I said, pushed

it back and said, no, thanks, just not comfortable telling my story.

So the answer was, no, initially.

I literally just pushed the contract back, forgot about it.

And then lockdown hit and I just needed something to do and I just couldn't get the idea out

of my mind that this would be really cool to retell this while I remember it and while

my parents are still alive and while many members of the Tampa community are still alive,

just to kind of commemorate it and how cool it would be if it came out on the 20th anniversary

too.

So I started writing and over time I got comfortable with sharing the story because I saw it as

an opportunity and actually an absolute privilege to do so.

You know, here I am, you know, educated, I've got time and I want to do the story justice.

And every time I tell it is an opportunity for one or a thousand people in the audience

to...

20,000.

20,000.

I'm my largest audience to date, thankfully you're not all in the room right here.

To listen in and just get that perspective.

They don't have to agree.

It doesn't have to shift their political or their social opinions this way or that way.

But hopefully, you know, let's say, I hate to be stereotypical, but let's say, I don't

know, you're in a taxi and your driver is an Afghan taxi driver and you listen into this

podcast, there's that moment of connection.

Sure, maybe that taxi driver hasn't gone through what he's gone through, but aspects

of my story would resonate.

And now listeners have that, it's the opportunity to help bridge that gap a little bit.

And so I take great pride and realise that not so much as a right, but rather a responsibility

to share my story and do it really well.

You do it exceptionally well.

When you're in that hardest moment and people are thinking this is the end, you're seven

years old, so it's hard for you to probably remember exactly what you were thinking.

But I assume in writing the book and talking to your parents, did you have really hard

conversations about how they were thinking about their family perishing at the hardest

moment?

Yeah, man.

That was the hardest part of the whole thing because, like I said, we hadn't really talked

about the whole thing before, like in one sit down piece, let's go from A to Z. I'd

heard snippets of it.

And meanwhile, I was doing this while I was in the US and we were doing it over FaceTime

and WhatsApp, so it wasn't like it was face-to-face like it is right now.

It was hard for them to initially start.

When I asked them a question, like, hey, do you remember what it was like living in Quetta

Pakistan or what was it like when we arrived to Indonesia?

What was the weather like?

What did we eat?

Those kind of stuff, you know, they just have answers for that.

But then once we got into the meat of it, like, how were you feeling when you saw this boat

and you thought to yourself, should I get on?

Should I take my kids on?

Their answers wouldn't be as forthcoming, you know, to have a short answer and then

Mum would kind of sit there and think about it and say, no, no, no.

And then she'd give a much longer answer and then a much longer answer after that.

And so did so many others who I interviewed for the book as well.

I remember, so well, we had like what we call a mere money, which is like an Afghan dinner

party essentially happens quite regularly in our community in Christchurch where it's

usually, you know, when someone buys a new house or it's like a housewarming essentially

and invites members of the community along and just kind of sit down, play cards, you

know, have good food and talk and so on.

And I said, hey guys, I really want to just kind of talk over, this is me trying to pick

nice social cues.

Can we go over some of the trauma that we experienced on this journey, please?

We can unbox then it's like 12, you know, bearded older guys who'd never, ever talk

about their emotions ever.

Can we just unpack that, please?

So we start again, exactly the same people would just kind of light short answers and

then it'd grow and grow and the whole, it went well into the night and I just put my

phone there in the middle, press record and got the whole thing and it was awesome.

So to answer your question, it was very hard to initially talk about it, but once people

got going and they realized, I really do want to tell my story, mostly, I think their number

one motivator was mostly because as the years go by, you forget and they wanted it written

down somewhere so that my kids and you know, grandkids and so on will be like, wow, you

guys went through this and here it is.

I'm sure, excuse me, you're incredibly thankful to your parents for making that decision,

but in the process of unpacking that, as you said, not only with your parents, but with

the other community, did that relationship or that admiration change in any kind of a

way?

Was there a deeper level?

100%.

Like you said before, I was a little kid at the time.

I understood only the physical elements of our journey, that we were on some great adventure

going across different countries and climates and weather and now we're on a boat in the

ocean.

But I never understood the gravity and the emotional toll that adults and parents went

through every step of the way because they had to make that journey.

Me as a kid, I'm just following my parents.

I didn't choose to get on that, but I just, yeah, mom and dad going, I guess I'm going

too.

But as adults, you make that conscious step whether or not you want to climb that rope

and go onto this boat or to get onto this train or whatever and the consequence of that

good and bad you live with.

And so to answer your question, it definitely helped me as an adult now reliving it, a much

deeper sense of admiration, understanding for what my parents went through.

And so what so many other Tampa families went through and now whenever I hear a refugee

story, I'm like, I know exactly what you're talking about when you talk about the indecision

that kind of paralyzes people.

And just to your point, you know, this book in the dedication page, I knew there was

only one person that I wanted to dedicate it to and that was, you know, the dedication

is to mom and dad, thank you for giving up your today for our tomorrow.

You know, just understanding that they made those sacrifices to give us a chance at a

better life.

You know, and that gives me an enormous sense of, you know, a weight on my shoulders to make

sure that, you know, you make good on that promise.

This is a deep question that I'm going to kind of navigate my way around.

But is there a sense of, because you describe it so incredibly eloquently, when you leave

your home as an adult, as a parent, and you become a refugee, you become an asylum seeker,

there's elements of your dignity that are stripped away.

You're stripped right back to who you are as a person.

How hard is it then for your parents to rebuild that sense of dignity when they get to their

final destination?

And does it is a scarring still there?

100%.

That's probably one of the best questions I've ever gotten.

And allow me a couple of minutes to gather my thoughts on that.

Going through the refugee experience is you get stripped of all of those things that you

kind of take for granted, right?

Who you are, your sense of purpose, your role in your community, your identity, your skills,

your trades, your, the amount of money in your bank account, the kind of passport that

you have, all of those things that we don't even think about.

Now don't mean anything, right?

You are just a number in a sea of numbers, you're just a face in a sea of faces, right?

And so when you go through all of that, and you're stripped right back down to not even

your name, right?

You might as well just have a little tag on your chest, say your number 27 out of 60

million.

You don't really matter.

There's not even a government behind you that's willing to stand up for your rights.

I mean, we were pretty much stateless, right?

It's not like there's a government in Kabul who'd advocate for the Hazara Afghans that

were living in the refugee camps, right?

There was no one.

It was just me, my family, the people around me, the other couple of families that had

we kind of gotten close with on this journey.

That was it.

That was all that we knew.

And so to go from absolute nothingness like that, go through our journey and then eventually

arrive to New Zealand and be given back those things, right?

To be given back identity, a sense of self, security, all of those things back slowly,

bit by bit.

As a young kid, you learn to absorb it because you're like sponges, right?

You learn to absorb it.

You roll with it.

You know, you roll with it.

You don't think too much about it.

And the journey is just kind of on an accelerated pathway trajectory upwards.

But as adults, it's incredibly different.

Like I speak about it from my parents' perspective, but this could be any kind of parent of refugee

background.

Imagine trying to rewire your brain in your mid-40s or late-50s, who you were, let's say

you're a tradesman or you're a well-respected member of your village back home.

That is the central part of your identity.

You're a man of mana.

You're a leader in your community.

People know you and recognize you.

There are cultural nuances when it comes to respect and how you should be talked to and

all that kind of stuff.

And that's who you are.

That's hardwired into your brain.

And now you're a toddler in a new culture where you can't understand the language.

You don't have any connections or community.

You don't, who you were doesn't mean anything.

You don't even know how to navigate the bus timetable anymore.

You need to go to your doctor's appointment with an interpreter who now you need to talk

about your medical history with.

It is, you lose, you've lost all dignity.

And so it's a tough, tough journey for adults or refugee backgrounds.

And that's the biggest challenge by far.

The journey, the physical journey, that's part one.

Getting there, getting to safety.

That's part one.

Kids, sweet, I'll take it from here.

Adults, the real journey begins then, learning the language, getting accustomed to a whole

new culture.

I always say there's no two societies or countries that are more polar opposite than

Sanjoy, Afghanistan and Christchurch New Zealand, you know?

And my, my appearance, you know, my mom, she is illiterate in her own language, right?

She'd never sat in a classroom before.

Obviously she can speak, but she couldn't write or read Farsi.

And now she was learning ABCs, a second language, but sitting in a classroom for the first time

in her 40s.

And she took it in her stride.

My mom's way smarter than dad anyway, but, you know, she just put her head down, got

to work.

But for some people, that's incredibly, incredibly, that's a whole other mountain to climb.

And the dynamic changes between parent and children, because the children probably end

up taking the lead.

Yes, that's right.

That's a, that's a story time, time and told again, you know, thankfully I was one of the

younger siblings.

So it didn't fall on me as much as it did fall on my older brothers and that.

The parents, sorry, the children end up taking the parental role.

You know, they're the ones, I'll talk about it, they're the ones, you know, we had parent

teacher interviews.

I'd be sitting there and my older brother or my sister would be sitting next to me and

the teacher would say, you know what, our boss missed a couple of days of school, his

grades are slipping and my brother would translate that, oh, you know, our boss overhears, number

one student.

So, it's so ironic in so many ways, you know, or like going for your driving test, you know,

because I knew how to, how to sit the test because I could read the questions on there

and or like you're allowed a translator to sit in the back, so dad would be sitting his

test then and the instructor would be sitting there in the passenger seat and you're allowed

to have one person sit in the back and the instructor might say, after the next light

turn right and then you're only supposed to translate that and then my sister or whoever

else would be like, all right, make sure you be sure to indicate, give plenty of time to

that cyclist coming down, all the extras, but you know, we'll get there, we'll get there.

We've got to finish off this.

Sorry, we've jumped the head.

You're still in the middle of the ocean.

You're still in the middle of the ocean.

There's listeners.

Yeah, hang on a minute.

Did they survive?

Yeah.

So you didn't die?

Yeah.

You survived.

I'm here.

Yeah.

Yeah, I guess.

Well, into the temper, right?

Yeah, that's right, man.

So, oh, man.

So we survived that night.

A key piece of information I missed about the night of the storm was just before things

got really hectic, someone mentioned that they had heard propeller planes the night

of the storm.

And you're calling bullshit on that.

Yeah, exactly.

Someone had mentioned, and I write that in the book that I don't remember it, but some

people that I interviewed said, no, no, I distinctly remember hearing propeller planes

and that kind of thing that just before the storm got really bad, you know, and when there

was still a bit of light in there.

Turns out after research that there actually was, Australian Coast Guard plane that had

spotted us.

And radio had signalled back and saying there's what they called a CF, S-I-E-E-V, suspected

illegal entry vessel that that's spotted.

And I think I've got the quote in the book somewhere, they said that it looks like it's

in distress, you know, should we mount a rescue?

And there was radio back and they said, no, it's all right, essentially.

And so had there been rescue the day before, it wouldn't have gone through or it went through.

And so the next day, same propeller plane, but the time we see it, no, sorry, we don't

see it because it's too high up, but we can hear it.

And yep, definitely.

And then someone says, there it is.

And so I started circling, I was clearly seeing us because it was doing circles above and

everyone's gets, you know, incredibly, incredibly happy that holy shit, we're about to be rescued

and start waving flags and holding kids up in the air and just clearly saying, hey man,

help us out here.

And it just disappears.

And then in the middle of all that, someone, the one person who could speak English says,

oh, you know, let's write the letters S-O-S.

I think he'd seen it in a movie, the S-A-S means save our ship or save our souls.

And they used engine oil.

And they wrote it on bits of scarves, head scarves, white head scarves that some of the

ladies donated and wrote the letters S-O-S on top of the palapa.

And sure enough, when the thing, when the propeller plane came back later that afternoon,

it saw it.

It needed, they knew we were in distress, but it was literally waiting because it'd been,

you know, the Australian gun was apprehensive to get involved in any way.

They were like, oh, just leave it, all right, unless there's a clear desire for rescue,

we won't touch them.

And so here was that clear signal that, OK, these guys aren't just on a fishing charter,

right?

So, and then it radioed out.

They said, all vessels within, I don't know, this proximity is a vessel in distress.

Please, you know, go and help.

And the first vessel to respond was the Tampa.

Hence the name of my book, hence the name of the Tampa Affair of 2001.

The Tampa was a, I think, a 260-meter-long container ship that was heading from Fremantle

in Perth in Western Australia up towards Singapore.

And it was loaded up with, you know, construction equipment and all this other stuff.

And it was a few hours away.

Finally, just a quick interlude.

I was chatting yesterday to the CEO of the Chiefs, Rugby, and knowing that you were

coming on, who's a big fan of the show, shout out Simon.

And he said he was working for Fonterra at the time and there was a container load of

bluebird chips and some ethanol or something like that.

So like, like connections on the boat, on that very boat, because they were waiting

for it to be delivered to Singapore and keeping track of it.

So just the connections that they're actually in New Zealand to that vessel.

God.

Oh man, that's awesome.

I hope they would have opened up that container.

Well, he said if you guys had known the chips with it, you would have had a better experience.

I love bluebird, by the way, Southern Vinegar.

Shout out bluebird chips.

Yeah, exactly.

You're not a sponsor, are you?

Not yet.

But anyway, so again, sure enough, out of the horizon, this giant red-hulled container ship

appears, almost out of the blue.

Looks like a mirage, to be honest.

Nobody believes this thing.

We all lurch dangerously to one side.

We almost capsized the falapa.

And this thing appears and is just hurtling towards us.

Can't tell if it's actually seen us.

It's that big.

Like, you know, you know, container ships, right?

They're huge.

This thing was, you know, 260 meters long, like two and a half rugby pitch is long stacked,

sky high with colorful containers.

And they just come to rescue us and did this big old circle around us.

So you could tell, OK, it's seen us and it parked up right next to us.

And the photo of our rescue, it's in the book.

This thing parked up right next to us and blocked out the entire horizon.

It got so close that if we stood on the edge of the falapa, we could almost touch it.

Like, excellent parking skills.

I think it was a manual, too.

And two sailors in the orange jumpsuits, they climbed down the flights of stairs

and they jump on board the falapa and they speak English and Norwegian.

And I think there's like two or three people amongst our cohort who can speak English.

And they say, look, up you get one by one, you know, carry nothing like all rescues, right?

Carry nothing with you.

And just given our formation of the families and stuff being first, you know,

the kids all went up first and the woman and anyone who needed assistance.

And then all the younger fitter guys would go last.

And first off is a Christian Malto, who is, you know, the guy in charge of the rescue.

You know, later on, he described it as like fishing one by one.

We just go into the house, say, up you get and then boom.

I remember so well, there was like a two meter height difference between the top of the falapa

and the bottom of the stairs.

So there's one sailor up top, one sailor underneath, and adults could jump up and reach.

If they needed assistance, they'd kind of get pushed up from the bottom.

But kids, we couldn't reach two meters up, right?

And I remember distinctly there's a sailor there and the sailor at the bottom.

And I think my dad went up ahead of me and he's like, you know, I'll grab you.

And the sailor kind of tossed me up in like a line out.

Wow.

Being sure not to fucking fall in the little one meter gap.

And then I got caught and then he says, all right, up you get.

And we just climb up, hands and feet.

I was that nervous.

I remember so well shaking because there was steel ladders, right?

You know, they got holes in them.

You know, those little, every step has holes, right?

And you look through the holes and all you see is just the water in between the two ships.

Just, it was just insane.

And I'm just shaking like how dad's from behind saying, up you get, move.

You know, you're holding up the queue and I'm like, fuck, all right.

This is new for me, man.

This is all the experiences the seven year old brain has had of like seeing a plane

for the first time and going on a plane and seeing a boat and then being on it

and seeing the water for the first time and being in the ocean.

It was a lot.

And then thinking you're going to die and then seeing the world's biggest

boat appear and then you're getting through.

Like, man, that's, that's insane.

Like when I look back on what I went through, like Jen says this, she's like,

you know what, when I read your book for the first time and I was looking at you there,

you know, I remember it.

So just segue again.

I got the first copy of this book in MIQ in August, 2021.

I just come back from the States.

I was at, I think, is there an overtell in Rotorua?

I was staying at a hotel in Rotorua and my publisher was like a bus first copy.

Boom.

We've just posted it to you at your MIQ hotel.

And August 21 was also when the Olympics were on, right?

So here I am.

We'll just, I'm literally, I bought it, opened the package and I'm like, oh man,

that's so cool.

And I just put it down again.

And then because the Olympics were on, I think it was Tom Walsh, the shot put was on.

I remember it so well.

The shot put was on and I used to do a bit of athletics in high school and I was just

watching that.

And Jen starts reading it.

She's like, you know what, here I am reading this book, looking at you, just kind of, you

know, scratching your nose, watching the thing, the Olympics.

And I was like, how the hell did you go through all of this?

It seems like, you know, it's just impossible.

But even when I reflect on what I've been through, it just seems like other

worldly, like, was that a dream?

Did I go through all of that?

But you know, I went all through that and yeah, climbed up.

Another sailor on the top writes a number on our wrist to keep track.

And that's when we knew at the end, once the rescue was done, they told us 438

was the final number.

433, mostly Hazara Afghan asylum seekers, five Indonesian crew.

And like I mentioned, this is the first time we're all laid out on the deck of the

Tampa.

We kind of got to see our entire group as one.

And that's when we saw, you know, kids and mums and parents and people in all sorts.

There were people with broken bones from the night of the storm.

There was cuts and bruises and some pretty dark, like, you know, a lot of blood everywhere

from people being, right, right, and a blender when there's splinters and just, but the worst

was the absolute dehydration from being out in the sea for three days of just vomiting.

People fainting and obviously Christian Malto, the first officer and some of the other sailors.

And there's 19 crew members, I think, they all came down to help, you know, provide first

aid.

There's no actual medical doctor on board, but they just emptied out their first aid

kit, IV drips, everything they had, and they did what they could.

I'm a little mined for the time and we've got a lot to get through.

Can you just give an overview of the diplomatic scene and the Tampa and the politics going

around?

Perfect.

It also just leaves enough interest to go buy my book if people want to know the rest

of it, right?

So it's a real good plug.

I like that.

You bring any copies in?

That's really good.

I like that.

Funnily enough, I bought three copies here.

You wouldn't sign them, would you?

I think that's a good idea if we sign them and we maybe do a little giveaway or something

for listeners.

There you go.

Just enough room.

Just enough interest.

I like it.

Just enough interest.

So here's the diplomatic situation here.

So essentially, look at the situation.

We've got a Norwegian flagged cargo ship that is rescued 400 odd mostly Afghan asylum seekers

in the waters between Indonesia and Australia.

And maritime law is in the Norwegians favor and is saying that maritime law dictates that

when you're a vessel that's completed a rescue, especially out there in the high seas, you

are required to go to the nearest port of Kord and drop people off.

That's how it works, right?

And that makes sense.

Go to the nearest port, drop these people off, and job done.

And the nearest port was Christmas Island, which was a few hours away.

We'd made it that far.

And so Christian, sorry not Christian, Captain Arne Renan heads that way.

And as he's heading there close to the island, we can start to make out some of the island

in the buildings.

He suddenly abruptly stops because he's just been radioed by the Coast Guard, by order

of the Prime Minister's office in Canberra, essentially saying, look, stop, turn around,

take them back to Indonesia.

Australia is closed.

That's not our problem.

Don't want to borrow of it.

And Captain Renan kind of gets confused by that and says, you know, I'm not even seaworthy.

I don't even have 400 life jackets on board.

My vessel can't go.

And the Wilhelmsen shipping line in Australia, I think, was in Norway, sorry, which was,

you know, they owned the boat.

They kind of, you know, backed their captain and they said, no, no, no, stick your ground.

You know, I think you're doing the right thing here.

And he has a meeting with a delegation from our, you know, the few people who can speak

English saying where to go from here.

And we tell them explicitly, you've got to drop us off.

There's no way we're going back to Indonesia.

We've made it this far.

Indonesia, I think, was about a 15 hour, you know, what do you call it on a ship?

Drive?

Cruise?

Journey?

Yeah.

Trip?

Journey.

Journey.

Ride.

Ride.

Boat ride.

Boat ride.

Yeah.

Oh, wait.

And there it is.

Literally, we can make out the island.

So why would you go out 15 hours when it's right there?

And he says, no.

Agreed.

And so it begins.

Sail.

Sail.

Sail.

It was a 15 hour sail.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shout out to anyone who knows the right word to get a free sign.

Yeah, that's a good one.

We'll get one away that way.

It's a 15 hour sail.

And there begins this Tampa affair.

Australian government says, nah, Norwegian government says, hold on, there's laws here

that we need to abide by.

Meanwhile, we're just caught in the middle.

We want to go to Christmas Island.

Some people were hysterical.

They said, I've made it this far for years.

There's no way I'm turning back.

I'm willing to jump overboard if I don't get dropped off, right?

People are at their wit's end.

I don't know whether those threats were hollow or whether they meant it.

But some people are like, look, I've been out on the road for five years.

I've left my family.

I can make out the island.

If need be, I'm going to jump off.

All right?

That's it.

It got pretty tense.

And so there it was, the standoff ensues.

You know, John Howard, who was seeking a third term as prime minister.

So this was unbeknownst to us, right?

And this is what I mean by the research.

We were caught in the middle of the 2001 Australian general election.

So we were rescued, I think, August the 26th or 27th, 2001.

So basically almost the, what are we in September, 2023, so 22 years ago, almost to this week.

And John Howard was losing in the polls.

There was a more conservative party called One Nation.

And he was starting to eat away at his voter base, essentially.

And he needed to win back some of those voters in order to win the election come November.

And here, handed to him, was an opportunity to do just that.

There was murmurings all in the 1990s of what they called irregular migration.

But it was never kind of front page news, headline grabbing stuff.

It was always kind of on the fringes.

And so maybe here was a topic that he could wield to his advantage.

Public opinion showed, and I have all the data in the book, public opinion showed that

I think the top five issues for most voters were like GST and taxes and so on,

like as it usually is when it comes to elections.

But here was an opportunity to kind of turn around the fortunes.

And he was going to make irregular migration the centerpiece of that political campaign.

And it worked brilliantly.

It wasn't even a top 10 issue.

But when the Tampa arrived on the scene with the support of the Murdoch press and so on,

it worked brilliantly.

And now we're going to be made an example of.

And so we get held on the Tampa the next day.

The Tampa is boarded, sorry, commandeered by 48 fully armed SAS troops.

Australian SAS were deployed to take over this boat.

It was a national security situation which allowed the government to essentially bar

anyone from covering the situation, being on board.

No doctors, no lawyers, no medical personnel, nothing.

So it was perfectly orchestrated to kind of take control.

It worked brilliantly.

And then irregular migration became the number one issue of that one election.

Offshore detentions and offshore processing and something known as the Pacific Solution was

all of this is in the book, by the way.

I'm just kind of ramming through it was set up whereby here's the deal that was cut.

So you made an example of anyone trying to seek asylum in Australia.

The Australian government kind of negotiated cut these deals with rocks.

I don't want to be disrespectful to countries with small island nations of the Pacific,

like Nauru, I think it's literally the smallest after the Vatican,

the smallest country by land area, cut deals with them.

And the Nauruan government, like they owed quite a lot of invoices for

here's how here's how dirty this deal was.

The Nauruan government owed the Australian government some money relating to the purchase

of petrol to run their desalination plants, their water desalination plants.

I think it was about 10 or 20 million dollars.

And so the Australian government says, look, if you allow us to build a detention

center on top, we'll wipe away those fees.

And we'll, you know, and that was it.

So it's going to be people, yeah, yeah, and minus island.

And that was it.

It was people for petrol.

That was the deal.

And so an offshore detention center was built in the space of a few days on Nauru.

And we were going to be dropped off there.

So we get transferred from the Tampa to an Australian Navy ship known as the Menorah.

And we get kind of harbored along the top of the Australian mainland up towards Nauru.

In the middle of all that, New Zealand comes to the rescue.

New Zealand, someone from Helen Clark's office, I think,

Leanne Delzal was the Minister for Immigration, I think.

I can't remember.

Apologies, Leanne, if I'm getting this wrong.

And the Honourable Leanne Delzal, she's a good friend of mine.

And so she, look, someone said, look, we've got to break the stalemate somehow.

And they made all accommodations.

And they said there's, we'll empty out the refugee resettlement center here in

Mangere in South Auckland.

And there's going to be 150 spare beds available.

So we'll take on 150 of these people.

And kind of just your goodwill, essentially, if you take the rest.

And that was the offer made to the Howard government.

And New Zealand said, we're going to prioritize those in family units, right?

Kids, families, mums, dads, any underage kids traveling alone,

which became known as the Tampa Kids or the Tampa Boys.

And that was it.

That was the turning point in my life.

All up, about 138 or 39 of us came to New Zealand.

So we were dropped off on Nauru.

I spent one day on Nauru before any Zealand charter plane came, picked us up.

Me and my family and brought us over to Auckland, September the 30th,

I believe, 2001.

Yeah, it's a few days after a pretty significant world incident as well.

So here's a crazy part.

You know what I said before about how everything was so orchestrated and stage

managed?

We didn't know about 9-Eleven.

Because our connection to the outside world was so cut off,

news of the outside world was limited.

So we didn't know about 9-Eleven.

We might as well have been on another planet.

So for us, many of us saw the first images of the towers when we arrived to Auckland

and we started to, because it was still obviously just kept on replay every day

on TV, right, September, October.

And then in October, while we were in the refugee center in South Auckland,

you know, the Americans invaded.

So the crazy part of this entire story is that our lives are moving at pace here.

We're about to begin a new life and new chapter in Afghan history is opening up

where the Americans invade in October 2001.

There's the first troops on the ground, I think, October, November 01.

And it's just insane.

And so life begins for us in New Zealand.

We'll be right back after this short break.

So you make it to New Zealand and the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Center.

I've heard you speak about how important that part of your journey.

I'm just going to move through a little bit and I want to talk about your family

because this is like, the whole story is incredible.

But what you've gone on to achieve since you've been in New Zealand

and what your family has done is just needs to be said.

So your sister graduated with a master's in microbiology.

One brother gained his pilot's license.

Another one, an athletic scholarship to California to play football.

Another joined your father in establishing a successful business selling car parts,

Kiwi car removal, which now employs more than 20 staff.

And you yourself run two body fit gyms in Wellington and you're an author.

And like the whole thing is just magic.

When you reflect on the childhood you had and all of what we've talked about,

what do you pinpoint and why has your family been so successful?

Man, that's a really good question, man.

My favorite chapter in the book is called The Kiwi Dream.

And it essentially summarizes that, what you just said.

To answer your question, this probably will be one of my longest answers.

So feel free to take a sip of your coffee if you need, guys.

When we arrived to this country, we literally arrived with just what we had,

what the clothes that we were wearing.

Right, when we were rescued by the Tampa, you know, they told us not to carry anything

like any rescue, no luggage, nothing.

So we literally just the clothes that we were wearing, that's all we had.

I remember so well that I didn't even have shoes on during that rescue,

which I remember because once we were trapped on the Tampa for days on end

under the cooked Pacific sun, I had like blisters.

They were like a centimetre thick on my feet because I didn't have shoes on.

So when we arrived to this country, we didn't have anything.

Our first change of clothing was some Salvation Army donated goods

that were dropped off at Mangari.

That was our first change of clothing.

We arrived here, didn't know the language or the culture or the customs,

didn't have a community.

We had translators and interpreters everywhere we went.

I learned my ABCs at the little school at Mangari

and then we were dispersed throughout Christchurch.

Most of us, more than half of the Tampa families were resettled in Christchurch.

So that was that was rock bottom for us.

Like you can't pick a more humble beginning than that.

Like no money in the bank account, nothing.

We didn't even know how to read, you know, like I talk about in the book,

we don't have mailboxes in Afghanistan.

So they told us, oh, there's a mailbox every house has one

and, you know, people write letters and stuff.

And so we could get letters from, I don't know,

Wins, Work and Income or Housing New Zealand.

And we didn't know what it was or we would get, you know,

back then when they did the pack and save leaflets and brochures,

we didn't know what the hell that was.

And we ended up just stacking everything in the corner of the house

because like, is this important? Should we keep this?

That was that was life for us when we arrived to New Zealand.

And to answer your question, when you, when that is your beginnings,

it's either you look at them and say, look, this is this is the foundation

and I'm going to build from here.

And thankfully with the kind of leadership and the direction

and guidance of my parents, you know, mom and dad, that was what we took.

We saw that as a foundation to be like, OK, let's get up.

We've finally got what we wanted, which is a chance to kind of really

realize our true potential. We're thankfully we're safe.

We've got a roof over our head.

We've got food on the table.

We've got all of the basic necessities that we didn't have.

But now that we've got there, let's make the most of it.

You know, we went on this whole journey to say we want a better life.

Here's here it is. Let's make the most of it.

And that has been the driving force for myself personally, my siblings,

my family, the Tampa families and the Afghan community generally.

And I'd say most most refugee communities that, you know,

you you you risked it all.

You finally got given that chance at a better life.

And now let's do it.

And so we celebrated every little summit along the way, whether it was.

I remember, you know, we were in ESOL classes.

So testing out of ESOL and then going out mainstream, right.

And I knew I was a little book nerd

because I was the first of my siblings.

It took me six months to get my fluent English

fluent enough to to go into mainstream with with everybody else.

But it took like two years.

And and so on.

Here's the one who'd go in the football scholarship.

Shout out to Ali, my older brother and so on.

And then getting a driver's license, getting my first job, right?

My sister, she was the first to get a job.

She worked at Countdown just down the road, Countdown Church Corner.

Something would always follow, you know.

So did you write as a trolleyboy?

Yes, right. I was a trolleyboy.

Countdown shout outs now Woolworths, I believe they're rebranding and so on.

Every little milestone along the way, we just celebrate.

We're like, sweet, awesome job done on to the next.

And that has been the foundation for us.

So to answer your question, it was all the success we owe is

is one, first and foremost to to my parents

who gave us the leadership and guidance that we needed.

And two, I think if there's one silver lining to the entire refugee experience,

it's that it gives you an enormous sense of perspective, right?

We went through hell and back.

It would be an absolute shame to be given this opportunity

to essentially make the most of it and then to throw it all away, you know.

So we knew having gone or we went through.

We fought tooth and nail to get to this point.

Now that we're here, let's do it.

The real work begins now.

And that's been a driving force for me personally.

But that success as well

is amazing for your family.

But does that put pressure on other refugee families

to achieve that same level of success where it's

they don't always not everybody has the same tools to achieve.

100 percent. And this is, you know,

I got to love hate relationship with feel good stories because,

you know, we love to celebrate, you know, big achievements and, you know,

quote unquote, success, you know, but you end up almost becoming

a caricature or a stereotype like, oh, the refugee success story.

You know, look at him, good man.

But to be honest, success looks so different for so many different people.

I think the most the, you know, I get, I get put up as the face

and name of refugee success in New Zealand.

And there are so many others.

But I think success is when I interviewed

at the Tampa families in Christchurch, who they were perhaps

a bit a little bit old when they arrived to New Zealand,

so they couldn't go to school or get formal education.

And maybe they had family back home that needed money instantly.

So they ended up becoming taxi drivers immediately.

And then they got a trade and they became

tireless and plumbers and builders.

And then as devastating as the Canterbury earthquakes were,

there was a boom time for business and they ended up just becoming builders.

And now they're multiple property owners and they're sending money back home

and supporting families over there and so on.

That is success to me, you know, and their kids are, you know,

in nursing school or their real estate agents or whatever.

So that to me is success.

You came here, you put your head down, you got to work,

and now you're part of part and parcel of the fabric of New Zealand.

I wondered whether that was a way to view it as not to look at the extremes.

That's right. The amazing successes and challenging stereotypes

that we have of refugee problems, but rather look at the bulk in the middle.

Yes. That are just part of New Zealand's everyday fabric. Exactly, man.

Like, I mean, I always tell the story about how post-earthquake in Christchurch.

I'd say every second house in Christchurch that needed their tiling done

was probably done by Afghan tireless, by the way,

garden city toils in Christchurch if anyone needs to.

That's my cousin's business.

All right, so that's it.

It's it's it's and that's what I want to celebrate, you know,

the part and parcel of just classic middle old New Zealand.

They've got their mortgages that they have to deal with

and their kids are being real shits at school and so on.

And like you said, you know, we love a feel good, ultimate success story,

whether it's academic or athletic or business and all of that.

And that's really cool to see and celebrate.

And on the flip side of that, we always say, look,

look at this guy, you know, he did this, you know, he's from whatever origin.

Why can't he just be bloody grateful that he's here?

And you can't pick and choose the people.

There are some people here who come who come to New Zealand

and they've got physical mental traumas that they have to deal with.

And maybe they need extra support and maybe they end up going down the justice system.

And then there are others who do extremely well.

You can't pick and choose.

So that's why you're right.

You just got to focus on the middle and say,

what are the bulk of these people doing and by and large, they're doing just fine.

Because there really is no difference in my mind

between the story of the Afghan refugees now and post World War Two,

Polish and Dutch families that came out to New Zealand for a new start,

who are now just accepted as Kiwis.

I'm sure fast forward 10, 20 years, it'll it'll just be the same.

Second, third generation families.

Hundred percent, hundred percent.

I feel like, you know, we'll know we've made it.

If there's, you know, one of my cousins up and coming,

rugby player, he starts wearing the red and black jersey for Crusaders.

All right, that's when I know I've made it.

It was going to be you for a little while, right?

You got you got pretty far.

Yeah, I was pretty good.

You know, I played in the Canary Development System.

But, you know, there's a kid down our street.

Guy's name was Richard Maung.

I don't know if listeners of this podcast have heard of him or not.

But I was in Valentine Ave.

He has about four houses down.

You know, we used to kick it down in the local park.

You know, I taught him how to kick and look where he's ended up.

So that was my gift to New Zealand.

One of my many lookalikes, actually.

Richard Maung, I get that a lot.

You'll be doing well, man.

Shout out to Richard.

Sorry for the name drop for you there, buddy.

But, you know, to answer your point from before, man, it's...

Whenever I do my speaking gigs, I always finish off with,

look, my story is a lot more recent in our arrival to New Zealand.

It was obviously quite irregular and, you know,

quite extraordinary in many, many ways.

But at its essence, it's all the same, you know,

whether your ancestors arrived here on a walker

or maybe on the first four ships to New Zealand,

you know, seven, eight generations ago,

or maybe you arrived as post-World War one or two refugees

or Vietnamese refugees in the 70s and 80s and so on,

or more recent arrivals from Syria.

Everyone's got a journey to New Zealand,

but it's not so much why or how you managed to get to our shores.

More importantly, what are you up to from here?

You know, that's where the story really begins.

We're not wrapping up just yet, are we, though?

No, there's a few more bits and pieces.

I think Adam's got to get on a flight, so we will wrap up shortly.

But I want to talk about Jen because she's the first...

It's the first time someone in your family has married outside of culture.

Is that the right word?

I'm interested in that and how it was with family

and what that dynamic looks like.

Yeah, that's a really good question.

I think it's actually the first question of...

The first time someone actually asked me that question,

but I think it would really resonate with the listeners of this podcast.

Yeah, that's right. So Jen and I met at 2016.

We were both in the same political science program at the University of Canterbury.

You know, if I retell this story, she'd be like,

no, you made the first move or whatever, but basically, you know,

we liked one another from day one and got together

and we've, you know, thankfully got recently married earlier this year.

And man, that's a story in itself.

I feel like that could be a best-selling book right there

about navigating the different cultures, you know?

You know, Jen's, you know, of European and Maudi descent herself.

And so she's navigated both her aspects of her culture,

but then to integrate that into an Afghan Kiwi upbringing.

Man, that's a mixed bag, right?

And there was... There's no playbook for that.

There's no other couple that I could go and have a chat to and see,

hey, how'd you guys feel or how did you do this or do that?

There was actual logistical cultural things that we had to go through.

You were there as paperwork regarding to marriage or that kind of stuff.

But also, just, you know,

you start to have really long and deaf conversation

about what languages are our kids going to speak, you know?

Like things that you don't even think about

if you're just in a, you know, the same race relationship

or cultural relationship.

So that has been an incredible journey.

But it's been hard.

There's been some really, really tough conversation,

especially, I'd say, from my appearance

and to a wider extent, my community, because there hasn't been done.

It's uncharted territory.

People are fearful of what they don't know until it's done.

And then you've got a little bit of experience.

And you're living a life of dealing with uncharted territory.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's always harsh until the first person does it.

And then now it's just the norm.

Nobody bats an eye when she walks into a local community meeting.

I actually, they do bat an eye, but she's used to it by now.

But to answer your question, I think it was just fearful

from my parents' side of how is this going to all work.

Not so much that she's a bad person or whatever.

She's amazing. She's lovely.

But there's just more questions around how we're going to do this.

Right, so it wasn't an issue with her as a person.

There's just more, I don't know, how we're going to work

or does she think bad about this, that and the other?

And there's just more questions than anyone had answers for.

And I said, just don't worry about it.

I think it'll all work itself out.

And I just want to take a shout out to, I guess,

listeners of this podcast who might hear these words

who are going through that exact thing that, you know,

it works itself out.

Don't worry about it.

But that's an important part of leadership and responsibility to...

We talked about the poster boy for refugee success.

As a couple, you guys are blazing a trail for...

A second generation of Afghan Kiwis

that are navigating this new country as well.

So there's a responsibility as well,

which may add additional pressure.

Yeah, for sure, man.

Like, I remember when I told my mum,

look, Jen and I are going to get married.

And her instant reaction was like, you know,

you're going to open up the door to your younger brothers

and all their age group of only dating or marrying.

What you called white girls.

No, there's nothing wrong with that.

My mum says the same thing for what it's worth.

Why don't you go find yourself a nice Afghan girl

from the villages is what she said.

And I said, look, there's nothing wrong with that,

but you're right.

You know, now there's almost a sense of responsibility

that, you know, other younger,

this up and coming generation of Afghan Kiwis

are probably looking up to us

and there's a certain level of responsibility attached with that.

I don't shy away from it one bit,

but it also means that, you know,

we have to set really good role models for them,

especially like my two younger brothers who are coming up.

So, you know, I like that.

I like that.

But like peck society raised by refugee's are really good.

A show that was made again.

It's normalizing what people may not be used to seeing

or even understanding by having that on mainstream TV.

100%.

And there's so many scenes in that,

which I think has just been signed up for season two

or whatever.

It's, there's so many scenes there

with those dinner table conversations

or little experiences here and there

where I think Pax did a really good job of telling that experience.

And I love that.

And for those who haven't seen it, you guys should check it out.

Maybe last little bits for you.

I was just, we've focused really on your ethnicity

and your community and the influence that you've had there.

But fitness is a big part of where you are now.

So how does that your work influence your role in the community?

Yeah, for sure, man.

So I've been personal trainer for a while now.

I've had, I guess, what you call quite a traditional

or a professional career in, I guess, office work.

You know, I did political science at University of Canterbury.

I worked at Treasury in Wellington for about three years.

And then went and got a Fulbright scholarship at Georgetown,

came back and I was going to go back down to what I knew.

But I'd always wanted to open up a gym or a fitness place

where, one, I didn't have to wear a shirt and tie all the time.

But two, fitness has been a big, big part of my role.

It's done enormous positives for my mental and physical health.

But I just love being in a space where people can be their authentic selves,

you know, whether it's, you know, lifting weights or whatever.

And so we set up, you know, BFT or Body Fit Training.

It's a good fitness studio, Wellington Central.

And last week, August the 26th, we opened up Wellington East.

And, you know, there's been a business journey that I've been on.

There's been a personal journey that I've been on

getting to know hundreds of members.

And now I feel like I'm so fortunate I wake up, you know,

4.30 in the morning, go open up the gym 4.45.

And every day, you know, before 9 a.m.,

we've got about 150 people coming through our doors.

And every one of them, I know, by their face and their names.

And that's done wonders to me about the connections that we've built

and the community that we've built across those two studios.

So to answer your point, health and fitness, I think,

is something that more and more people are starting to realise

the importance of, whether it's small changes to their diet

or whether it's competing.

Like right now, I'm, you know, training for a big, big fitness race

called Hirox, H-Y-R-O-X.

It'll come to New Zealand soon and when it does, it'll really take off.

But to your point, one of the things that I really want to do at my studio

is health and fitness isn't looked on favorably

in many kind of immigrant or especially Middle Eastern cultures.

And so what I want to do, especially for, you know, our females,

is to create woman-led, female-only group fitness classes.

So people like my mum and her friends who may not feel as comfortable

working in a mixed environment can do so.

And so we're just trialling that out at Wellington East

where we just have women-only classes three or four times a week

where in out on Wellington East, there's a big, big kind of immigrant

and refugee population, especially Somalis in that.

So to bring them in for two or three times a week,

just get a good sweat on with other women of the same background

with our two female coaches on, I think that'll be really, really cool.

And I think that's just part of what I wanted to get into that space.

We'll be right back after this short break.

But the whole thing, man, is so impressive.

I'm going to start wrapping us up.

Personally, reading the book was quite transformative for me.

I live next door to an Afghani family and I've got three young kids

that are over at our house all the time, all the time, every day.

So we've been there in place for like seven years and the oldest was maybe nine.

So that's like nine, five and three when we first moved in.

Parents didn't speak any English.

So all of our communication came from the kids.

But learning about your journey made me understand what likely was their journey.

I haven't still haven't spoken to them about it yet,

but it's that perspective you talk about.

They would come over and we would talk about birthdays

and they wouldn't know what their birthday was.

And then reading in your book, it explains, you know, it's just the whole,

the way that you're able to cast, put a window into this whole refugee asylum-seeking situation,

which seems so foreign to so many, is just incredibly powerful.

And it's so easy to see why you are one of the most in-demand speakers in New Zealand

because it's so captivating and you're so good at articulating your story.

But I'll throw it a shade for the last words.

Can I ask two questions before I wrap us up?

I love that.

What can the everyday person do here in New Zealand

in terms of their interactions with a refugee or a refugee community or refugee family?

Yeah, I get asked that a lot.

I think if you go by this book called After the Tampa by Abbas Nazari...

That'll help.

That'll help.

I'll just get it.

I just had to do it.

No, it's...

I think this one here, if you were wondering.

Second edition coming out soon.

No, that's a really good question.

I get asked that a lot.

I think one of the most formative experiences of those early years in New Zealand

were by volunteers who saw an ad in the local paper by, I think it was the Red Cross,

who kind of are in charge of, not in charge of, but they helped with the resettlement process.

They said, look, these families are arriving to your town, i.e. Cross Church,

and then do you have an hour of your time a week where you can volunteer, right?

Whether it was helping out with our homework, taking us to the local park,

maybe taking us grocery shopping, taking us to Sunday markets, whatever.

And we're still friends with those volunteers, particularly two of them,

Jan and Chris, who attended our wedding earlier this year, 20 years on, right?

That is a formative experience.

We've grown up with them.

They've grown up with us, and it's just been an incredible ride.

Obviously not everyone is in a position to do that,

but if you see an ad, and I think the Red Cross still does it,

and they say, look, we need volunteers just for a refugee resettlement,

that is by far the number one thing.

Just an hour of your time a week to go help, especially.

And what you said before about the family that lives across the fence from you,

just those conversations are incredibly powerful.

So that'd be the number one thing.

Just an hour of your time a week that helps a hell of a tough.

And where is home for you?

Man, what a question to finish up on.

Home for me is many, many different places.

Afghanistan will always be home.

I think the linkages, no matter how many years go by,

will always, matter of fact, I feel like the more I tell the story,

the stronger the cultural linkages become.

And hopefully, maybe in the years to come when things are a little less spicy,

you know, I might head back.

And I'd love to go back and travel there with my parents again.

Every time I fly back to New Zealand when I see the Southern Alps,

that feels like home.

Some of my best memories growing up in New Zealand,

especially through high school, was me and my friends,

just out there in Arthur's Pass National Park,

going up for a weekend hike that has felt as homely as possible.

And I guess physically, you know, Jen and I now live in Wellington,

and we find ourselves based a lot more out in the eastern suburbs

around Lowell Bay and all of that.

And just going for a run in the morning around that,

that feels like home.

So that's a long way of saying, I don't know.

That's a good answer.

Man, thank you so much for sharing some time with us today.

Your ability to retell and to Steven's point,

to break down really complex ideas into ways that people can understand is amazing.

And I encourage as many people as possible to familiarize themselves

with your journey and with your story and with the messages that are in there.

It's delivered in an incredibly thoughtful way.

Thank you.

And I think one of the best ways that you can retell the story is through humour as well.

So interspersing those really serious moments with humour is a classic Kiwi way.

And you're a classic Kiwi guy.

Oh, thanks, man. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, you sign off things with gratitude.

And I'm incredibly filled with gratitude for sharing some time with you today.

And there's a quote in the start of your book.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

I'm glad you've been able to meet us here today on this field,

which is our podcast and share your message.

And maybe people can have a little think about the rights and wrongs of the world.

Thank you guys so much for having me.

And I guess if there's one quote that I want listeners to leave with,

it's just that we all got our own stories of how and why we arrived to this great country

that we all find ourselves in.

But it's not so much, like I said, how or why we end up here,

but more where we're going to from here on, right?

And that's how I try to live my life.

And thank you guys so much for listening and having me.

Appreciate it.

Cheers, Abbas.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.