Finding My Place Read online

  I watched the deadly attacks in London in July 2005. I saw the gritty images captured on mobile phones and read the stories of the four bombers in the newspapers. Four pretty unextraordinary blokes with nothing in common with me except an association with a common belief system. And I despaired. I picked up my copy of the Quran in translation and began to read it – I wanted to find the beauty and the light that my father had told me about: ‘The Quran is like an ocean. You can stand at the shore and collect shells or you can dive deep and find pearls.’ I desperately needed to find those pearls.

  Flicking through a newspaper one Saturday morning, I saw a small advertisement in the corner somewhere between pages 20 and 24. I decided to apply for the scholarship to do a PhD on the topic of terrorism. I got the scholarship.

  Dennis didn’t seem to be too happy about it. ‘You’re going to be a doctor and I’m nothing,’ he lamented.

  I felt like I couldn’t own my success – like my success was always going to be a measure of his shortcomings. Perhaps that’s why he could never bring himself to give me that A plus.

  I did the maths (it was simple maths involving addition and multiplication, not trigonometry, which I still haven’t found a use for). If I put in eight to nine hours a day, every day and treated this like a full-time job, I could finish my PhD under the allotted three years. Besides, I couldn’t imagine just how I was going to sustain my interest in one project (albeit a really, really big project) for a full three years.

  Three years. That’s thirty-six months, 156 weeks, 1095 days. When doing a PhD, your life is taken over for at least three years as you devote every waking hour (that’s roughly around 17,500 hours in case you’re wondering) to the production of an 80,000–100,000-word document designed to prove to a handful of your peers that you know your shit – well, at least that you know it well enough to be called doctor and get those letters after your name.

  The truth is that, for all the blood, sweat and tears (and there are a lot of tears that go into the making of a PhD), only three to five people will ever actually really read your thesis with any intent or purpose, and not a single one of them will read it voluntarily – they are all paid to read it. I’d heard about people who completed PhDs on the most obscure topics, like the use of the apostrophe or the migration patterns of Argentinian ants or why people collect pet rocks, and I cringed at the thought of being one of those people. If I was going to do this, it had to mean something and it had to give me the answers that I was craving.

  I interviewed 180 people about terrorism – how did they define it, did their ideas change, what were their impressions, who are terrorists and what are they fearful of. I met people who had survived terror attacks, people who had lost family and friends in the September 11 attacks, Bali and London, and people whose lives were irreversibly changed by terror. I came face to face with the reality of a world where peace and security had been shattered by actions that were incomprehensible.

  I heard the story of a man who lost his memory in a car accident. He had to be completely reintroduced to his family. He couldn’t recognise his wife, or his children or his own siblings. He had to be told his name, his profession, his address, his favourite food and whether or not he liked fish. He had to have his entire life reconstituted for him by others who knew him through their own lives. He had to rebuild his identity like one trying to glue together a favourite vase that has been smashed to smithereens with only a blurred and faded picture as a reference. Among the few memories he could recall was the image of that lonely man plummeting from the smoke of the Twin Towers – the man the world watched die. That’s the power of an image. That’s the power of terrorism.

  The more I spoke to people the more I got a sense of just how much people wanted to understand. The search for answers overwhelmed so many of the people I interviewed, almost as much as it overwhelmed me. I also got a sense of just how much influence the media and politics had on so much of what people think.

  Ask anyone how much they think they are influenced by politicians and/or the media. The answers are invariably the same and along the lines of: ‘Me? Nah. I’m not influenced by the media at all. I like to read or listen to it, but yeah, nah, I make up my own mind. I form my own opinions, do my own research, you know. I like to think I’m educated enough to do that. Maybe not in a formal sense, but you know, I’ve got experience and stuff. Politics! Yeah nah. I don’t buy any of it. I don’t trust ’em and I don’t listen to anything they say. They have no influence over what I think. I’ve got my own mind.’

  Lovely. Next question. What do you think terrorism is and who are the terrorists? ‘Oh well that’s obvious. Terrorists are Muslim men from that country. What’s it called again? Arabia. Yeah that’s it. They come from Arabia – well, mostly. And they hate us. That’s why they do it. They hate us and they hate our freedom. Yeah. That’s what terrorists are.’

  Interesting. And where do you think you get that from? ‘Oh well. Yeah. I saw it on television and John Howard said so.’

  It didn’t matter if the person answering my questions was white, brown, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, atheist, young or old. Almost every single one of them had made up their own mind about terrorism all on their own (or so they claimed)!

  Part of my research involved sessions with different groups – Muslim and non-Muslim, young and old. I visited a senior’s group to talk about how they experienced terrorist attacks. Nestled in the safety of their retirement village in the sleepy suburbs where their golden years were spent playing bridge and sipping tea, they had experienced the terror of September 11, the Bali bombings and the London terror attacks like most people – through their television screens. But the ways their voices trembled and the anxiety in their eyes revealed the reality of terrorism no matter where it occurs. They spoke to me of a shattered sense of security; of a safeness that was now gone from the world and from their own lives – even here in the leafy suburbs where the day was broken up into morning tea and afternoon naps. They spoke candidly of their fear of Muslims – especially Muslim men – and of being physically harmed in a terrorist attack. And even though they all admitted that they actually didn’t know or had never met anyone who was Muslim, they simply could not shake the feeling of insecurity that had swept into their lives.

  I shed a tear with an elderly man who opened his home to me, served me tea and told me how the terrorist attacks reminded him of running through the streets of Britain as the sirens had sounded. I pictured him as a child holding tight to his mother’s hand and looking up at her desperate face as they fell to the ground, shielding themselves from the bullets that rained down from the sky. We shared a fleeting moment of connectivity before he launched into a long tirade about how the Muslims were no good but the Jews were no better. It was one of the more awkward encounters.

  I held one of my focus groups with young Muslim men from various backgrounds. They were bro types who wore their pants low, their caps backwards and their manhood like a cloak of invisibility. But in that small room at the university campus just north of Perth city, where six of them had gathered to talk to me about terrorism, they managed to let their guards down.

  ‘I used to know who and what I was,’ said one as his eyes welled with tears, ‘I used to know I was Australian. That’s what I called myself. That’s how I saw myself. I never questioned it. Then suddenly, it’s like I’m not allowed to be that anymore. Like now I’m always told you’re not Australian, you’re a terrorist. And yeah, I just don’t know. Don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’

  The other young men in the room nodded along silently. As I scanned their faces I saw something familiar in their eyes. Something I had seen in my own eyes when I washed away the tears I had cried into my coffee cup in the toilet that morning before work.

  The conversation then turned to the media and I wasn’t surprised to hear them all agree that the media had a lot to answer for. ‘Look at how they’re reporting on the fight,’ started one. The fight he was referring to
was the upcoming bout between Danny Green and Anthony Mundine. Green was the media favourite. He was, after all a Western Australian boy who had made good in taking out the national championships. Mundine, on the other hand, was the media’s quintessential bad boy. A professional footballer turned boxer, he had courted controversy for much of his public career.

  ‘It’s because Mundine’s a Muslim brother. That’s why. They’ll never back him. They’ll always put him down.’

  ‘It’s true,’ another said, nodding his head thoughtfully, ‘they never say anything good about him. They’re all backing Green. We know why.’

  Mundine had converted to Islam several years earlier. He’s been a Muslim for around a decade now. He’s been an Aboriginal man all his life.

  They nodded in agreement, congratulated each other for being the vanguards of Muslim media watch, pulled their pants low and bro-walked out of the room, completely oblivious to the fact that their lens was as much a reflection of their own perceptions of themselves.

  I thought about my own two sons, who were then young teenagers themselves, and I wondered about how their own experiences were shaping their identity. Were they questioning their belonging too? I had sheltered them as best I could from the kinds of things I had experienced. Had they had their own experiences? Were they yelled at and called terrorist by sneering passers-by? I didn’t know. Fact is, I had never thought to ask.

  I realised that I had done to my sons what my parents had done to me. I had assumed that things were different, actually easier, for them than they had been for me. I had been viewing their lives through my eyes instead of through theirs, and I had imagined that their lives were lived in an innocuous cocoon, where their greatest point of difference with their peers was because they were more, not less, Australian. I assumed on their behalf that growing up more Australian would be less painful than growing up less Australian. That their greatest battles would be having to answer questions about their white step-parent and Vegemite sandwiches for lunch (which actually had everything to do with my lack of culinary imagination and nothing much to do with being Australian). I had never given thought to the fact that perhaps these were questions that made them long to be more like their friends or that white step-parents and Vegemite sandwiches weren’t exactly the markers of their identity.

  As parents we try not to repeat the mistakes our parents made – or at least the things we think are mistakes. But it’s kind of inevitable that we are going to do some things the same. Sure, we like to think that we are so different as parents and that our kids are better off for it, but just like the media, the invisible hand of our parents seems to show itself at those times when we are handed a mirror to our own thoughts.

  For the first time in my adult life I felt like I could pursue something that I had chosen for myself. For so long I had made my choices without really having a choice. I had taken the opportunities presented to me because it was necessary to pay the mortgage or put food on the table. I realise that sounds strange considering some of the incredible opportunities that I had been presented with – opportunities that a lot of people don’t get – but they were not always the opportunities I would have chosen for myself. I had felt like my life was lived on a conveyor belt controlled by something or someone else – like it was all kind of mapped out for me and all I could do was follow the path that had been laid before me: never free enough to step off that conveyor belt and linger for a while here or there.

  In the final years of my studies I was invited to present at an international conference in Oxford. I took the opportunity to extend the trip to Barcelona and Paris. I had spent my teens being dutiful (or at least trying to seem dutiful), my twenties and thirties raising kids and now, with my fortieth birthday looming, I finally had a chance to travel.

  Stepping off the plane at London’s Heathrow Airport, I panicked. What was I thinking? Did I really think that I could leave my family behind and spend the next three weeks traipsing around the Northern Hemisphere? I had never spent so long away from my boys. ‘Turn around,’ I told myself, ‘turn around. You don’t belong here. This isn’t you. Turn around and go back to your home and your family and everything that you have always known.’ It took all the strength I could muster to move forward.

  I imagined myself as some kind of intrepid traveller with my backpack, rolled-up jeans and a savvy knack for venturing off the beaten tourist track. I booked the cheapest flights and cheapest hotels I could find. I romanticised about the rugged little pension in Barcelona that turned out to be a dingy dive with a questionable reputation. I booked the Le Jardin hotel on the outskirts of Paris only to find that the ‘le jardin’ in the name referred to a dusty collection of faded plastic flowers that adorned a small fake planter box in the hotel’s foyer.

  Barcelona was my first stop after Oxford and the first time I was alone. I woke to the sound of a couple arguing loudly in the street below and surveyed the dirty pink walls of my single room with its single bed and single wash basin and single cold water tap. I flicked a cockroach off my bed, got dressed and headed downstairs to start my great adventure, planning my day in my head as I made my way to La Rambla. First, I would find a place to have breakfast where I could watch the people come and go. I walked past several cafes and eateries but dismissed each one. After an hour of walking, I stopped in the middle of a mall and cried with the realisation that something so simple as choosing a place to eat could be so difficult. It dawned on me that in all my life I had never really had to make a decision just for me that was only about me. Something as simple as having a meal had always been made on what other people wanted – Adam would only have orange juice; Karim wouldn’t want tomatoes in his omelette; Dennis can’t eat eggs. I had never really had to make these simple everyday decisions based on what I wanted and, as I was now coming to realise, I didn’t really know what I wanted. It’s those small moments, the ones that often seem trivial, that can be some of the most consequential in our lives. I spent the next six days in Barcelona and every morning I went to the same cafe and ordered the same breakfast: poached eggs, toast and coffee.

  I completed my PhD in just over two years by sticking to a pretty gruelling schedule of researching and writing, though it was a full three years by the time I finally got to call myself a doctor and put those letters after my name in 2008. By then I had already published a few articles, presented at conferences, got a job at the university and signed a contract to publish my first book. And I had found myself with more unanswered questions than when I started.

  By the way, people collect pet rocks for a number of reasons, including the fact that they’re just bloody idiots. It’s true – there’s a PhD study on it.

  21

  Terrorism 101

  Somewhere in the mountains between modern-day Syria and Iran, there lived an old man named Hassan Sabah, known as the Sheikh of the Mountain. Fascinated by the sheikh and his band of followers, Marco Polo, the great explorer and historian, wrote about him in his travels. According to Marco Polo, Sabah had constructed the biggest and most beautiful garden ever known to humankind fashioned on the sacred concept of jannah – the garden of paradise in Islam. Unlike that ‘le jardin’ on the outskirts of Paris, Sabah’s garden was ‘planted with all the finest fruits in the world’ and ‘the most splendid mansions and palaces that were ever seen, ornamented with gold and with likeness of all that is beautiful on earth.’ Sabah even ensured that the garden was complete with ‘fair ladies there and damsels, the loveliest in the world, unrivalled at playing every sort of instrument and at singing and dancing’:

  Now mark what follows. He [Sabah] used to put some of these youths in this Paradise, four at a time, or ten, or twenty, according as he wished, and this is how he did it. He would give them draughts [hashish] that sent them to sleep on the spot. Then he had them taken and put in the garden, where they were awakened. When they awoke and found themselves in there . . . they believed they were really in Paradise. And the ladies and damsels stayed wi
th them all the time, singing and making music for their delight and ministering to all their desires . . . When they awoke they, believing they had been in Paradise and longing for it, were willing to go out and kill, and looked forward to the day of their going. In this way he was able to send out the Assassins where ever he might wish and that if they died on their mission they would go to Paradise all the sooner.

  Polo’s tale of Sabah and his virile young followers has been written into legend. The Hashasheen – literally Arabic for those who indulge in hashish – became written into history as the Assassins – a reckless troupe of religious zealots who carried out their brazen murders in broad daylight under the influence of narcotics. It’s a compelling tale that explains how young men could be willed to obedience with a resolute conviction that, in death, they would be rewarded with happiness, glory and seventy-two beautiful singing virgins with a remarkable ability to play every single instrument, even obscure ones like the bassoon, while simultaneously tending to all sorts of pleasures and singing and dancing (talented young lasses). It sure does sound like heaven – if you happen to be a bloke.