Finding My Place Page 20

  Dave and I sat on the two-seater sofa and my mother, ignoring the five other empty seats, wedged herself between us so that I was pushed right up against the arm rest and had to perch on the end of the sofa turned slightly sideways so that we could all fit.

  ‘Now,’ she beamed, ‘Dave he come to me and he say he want to marry you. Yes, Dave?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ Poor Dave couldn’t get a word in when Teta was in full-steam-ahead mode.

  ‘Okay. Now. So you go to mosque this Friday and you get married from the sheikh and you move in that night, you live here and you be married.’

  ‘But, Mama, he wants to ask me.’

  My mother looked genuinely confused. ‘Ask you? He came to me, he asked me, I said yes I agree, you marry her.’

  ‘But I want to give her a ring and ask her – it was supposed to be a surprise.’ Poor Dave. I really should have warned him. But it was strangely amusing to watch him squirm in the presence of an 82-year-old woman.

  ‘Yes okay. You give her the ring on Friday when you go mosque. What is problem?’

  I thought it was about time to save poor Dave so I calmed my mother down and said, ‘Mama, I know that’s what you want, but Dave has done the right thing by coming to ask for your permission. Now we are going to do this our way. He is going to buy a ring and he is going to ask me to marry him and then we will set a date and we will have a wedding and get married and do it that way.’

  Mum let out a sigh. ‘Okay.’ She turned to Dave. ‘Dave. Two weeks, Dave. You have two weeks. You buy this ring. You ask her marry you and do these things. Two weeks, Dave. Two weeks.’ Hamida had spoken.

  And that was that. Two weeks to the day, David Allen put a ring on it. About bloody time.

  The act of marriage is pretty easy for Muslims. There’s no fanfare. No long, drawn-out rituals with string and smoke and stuff. No tea ceremonies or symbolic smashings of things. No long speeches by drunk relatives – no drunk relatives. After the pre-marriage rituals of seeking the parents’ permission, passing the eligibility test and surviving the inquisition, a date is set for the ceremony. The marriage ceremony involves a sheikh and two witnesses at the barest minimum. Usually, the ceremony itself is done in the presence of the parents and close family – sometimes without the bride even present. That’s what my first marriage was like, or at least what I remember of it. I was in one room with my mother and aunts and the men in another room. I only saw the sheikh when he came to ask me to verify that I was indeed the bride and that I had agreed to be married. He was a tall, fat bloke in a long dress (okay, maybe not a dress – one of those long gown things that Arab men wear) with a grey beard wielding a long stick and an angry face, as if marrying people was the most distasteful part of his job – this guy also washes dead bodies – but no, marrying people is the task that makes him turn his face upside down like he just smelled something bad.

  Thankfully, the sheikh I had chosen to perform the marriage ceremony for Dave and me was not like that. He was nice and spoke at length about the importance of forgiveness and listening in a relationship, and explained to Dave every step of the marriage ceremony. My father was there and was alert enough to insist on being the one to give me away. We had a handful of guests to witness the ceremony – a couple of close friends and Amanda, who was my closest friend. We set a date for April 2013, almost a year down the track, for the Western-style wedding. I had never had an actual wedding – not one where I got to wear a white dress, walk down the aisle and repeat vows through tears of joy. At the age of forty-six with two adult children and two divorces, I was finally going to walk down the aisle in a not-so-white dress.

  The year 2012 was turning out to be a year that would herald change. I was not prepared for what was to follow in the years to come. But looking back at the years that have passed since then, I can see that 2012 was the year that something ended and something else began. The five years or so since then have been years of constant flux and mammoth changes – changes that I could not possibly have imagined in my life. And looking back, they were changes that I could probably not have managed on my own.

  I had settled into yet another period of honeymoon wedded bliss albeit with yet another husband. Unlike my first two marriages, this one was much less volatile. Dave has a calming effect on me – he grounds me. That took some getting used to at first. I had grown accustomed to being fiercely independent and always ready for a fight. I wasn’t sure how to adjust to a relationship where my partner actually wanted to do things for me or with me. It takes a lot of strength to admit your own vulnerabilities and accept help from others. I had always seen it as a weakness in others, but I was learning that accepting help is sometimes harder than just saying, ‘Fuck it. I’ll do it myself.’ Something so small and trivial as asking Dave to give me a lift or pick me up from somewhere caused me angst. In the past, I would have walked home with the heavy shopping bags or taken a taxi from the airport – but Dave was always there waiting for me patiently, listening to Led Zeppelin or catching up on the latest scores in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, just being there.

  I continued my research and writing work and taught some units in international relations, terrorism and conflict, and counterterrorism at the university. I wasn’t travelling much, but enough to take me to some places I had never been. I had started my research on the Bali bombings and in October 2012 took my first trip to Bali. It was the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the bombings. Dave came with me and accompanied me to my research interviews and meetings. We met Haji Bambang and the men who were the first responders on that dreadful night. Dave held them as they wept in remembrance of the horrors they had seen. We met the widows of Bali who had lost their husbands (and their livelihoods) to the bombs, and we joined them at the memorial as they paid their tributes to those who perished with their loved ones.

  Amid the preparations for the not-so-big, fat Egyptian– Canadian–Australian wedding, I took Adam and Karim on a final mum-and-the-boys trip to the United States. We visited New York and stopped off in Washington, DC, before heading over to Las Vegas for a few days, and ended with a week-long stay in California near the heart of Hollywood. And I finally got to fulfil my long-ago promise of one day taking them to Disneyland. It had taken over a decade, but I’d kept my pledge. We stood there, my two sons towering over me, watching the fireworks sparkle and flicker against a magical backdrop of the Disney castle as Tinkerbell flew through the sky and Dumbo flapped his giant ears to the beat of the music. I caught a hint of a tear in my sons’ eyes as I looked up at them. ‘We love you, Mum,’ they both whispered to me, their arms tightening around me. I watched the coloured lights dance on their faces and it felt like they were my little boys all over again and I felt grounded.

  24

  Pracademic

  I can always tell when I’m starting to get restless. It shows in my face. I’ve never been very good at hiding my thoughts or feelings – I don’t do poker face very well. Even when I was taking to the stage in my university days, the rehearsals were often stopped by the director. ‘What are you doing?’ he would shout.

  ‘Acting?’ I would whisper back.

  ‘That’s not acting. What are you thinking about? I can see it on your face. In your eyes. You know that your face hides nothing. Now where is your mask? Use your mask.’

  I always knew what he meant and those who know me also know that they can always tell exactly how I’m feeling by the look on my face.

  As each new year draws closer, invariably I find myself in a state of utter exhaustion and restlessness. At those times Dr Google has become my trusted adviser and confidant. He (I’m guessing it’s a he, but it could well be a she) has managed to convince me time and time again that the cause of my exhaustion must be menopause. I have spent a lot of time reading about the symptoms of menopause and not from dodgy websites either – from actual medical journals on the internet. There are around thirty-seven of them. And none of them are pretty – not even one. You don’t get
to go through menopause with glowing skin, boundless energy, a pleasant disposition and a ravenous sex drive. No. Menopause is all hot flushes, old-lady crankiness, lethargy and a general feeling of crappiness. Every year I pay a visit to my doctor and have a conversation with him that usually goes something like this:

  Me: ‘I think I’m going through menopause.’

  Dr: ‘Have you been consulting Google again, Anne?’

  Me: ‘No . . . Okay, yes. But this time I really think I am. I have all the symptoms.’

  Dr: ‘You are not menopausal. Your tests show it’s not menopause.’

  Me: ‘Okay. Well it must be an ulcer, then.’

  In early 2013 I was starting to get restless again. My research portfolio was growing. I had just been awarded an Australian Research Council grant which, to academics, is like winning the nerd lottery. The grant was to expand my research into victims of terrorism and counterterrorism policy. Alongside that, I was also looking into deradicalisation programs and analysing how political events in the chaotic Middle East were causing tremors here in our backyards. The so-called Arab Spring that had sprouted so much hope for a new era of democracy and freedom across the Arab world had faded into disappointment, chaos and instability. I continued my work in terrorism and the internet, and expanded my research to look at how terrorists organised and recruited online. I spent hours and hours analysing videos, messages, blogs and social media pages that were infiltrating the minds of young people with little or no ancestral links to the conflict zones in the Middle East, and an equal number of hours searching for ways to challenge and undermine their influence.

  Though I was busier than ever with research, projects, presentations and consultations, I felt like my work wasn’t going anywhere. I needed more. I needed a way to make my research count, to make it mean something. So what if I had all this developing knowledge and all this understanding about what makes terrorists tick. It meant nothing if it wasn’t doing anything to stop them. It was like eating cheap takeaway – that feeling of not being quite full you still have even though you’ve just wolfed down a burger and fries. Despite all the research and writing I was doing, I still had a fire in my belly, a gnawing yearning to do more with it. I still needed to scale a mountain. I needed to be more than just an academic. I needed to be a pracademic.

  Ten years earlier, as Australia prepared to follow the United States and its allies into war in Iraq under the false pretence of weapons of mass destruction, I stood shoulder to shoulder with my fellow Western Australians in the heart of the city to protest. But even as I stood there, tears in my eyes and a heart aching at the thought of the thousands of lives that would be lost, I was not prepared for the tsunami of terror that was about to rise like a pregnant phoenix from the ashes of war. By 2013, we had been fighting terrorism for over a decade with little to show for it. The traditional wisdom that military action alone could kill the beast had been misplaced. The ‘coalition of the willing’ had decimated terrorist training camps, eradicated senior commands of al-Qaeda, hunted and killed Osama bin Laden and disrupted operations – but it had not stopped the beast. Like the mythical Hydra, with every blow and every head that was slain at the altar of counterterrorism, ten more grew in its place. This was, is, a relentless force. The war against terror started with my generation, but we had left the battlefields like an open wound and in doing so ensured that this was a battle for the generations that followed.

  This time my brainchild happened on a plane. This time there was no housework involved. I had been thinking about the idea of setting up a counter movement to the violent Islamist (aka jihadist aka militant Islamic aka Sunni Islamist aka Salafist aka Muslimic death cult) movement that was poisoning minds. So flying home from Canberra one evening, I stopped thinking, pulled out my laptop and started writing. My vision was for People against Violent Extremism, or PaVE, to be a nationwide movement of Australians of all backgrounds coming together to unite against terrorism. We would hold events like the Million Muslim March against Terrorism in major cities around the world and be a hub of activity for grassroots counterterrorism driven by research and empirical evidence. I drafted the idea for PaVE in the first hour of a four-and-a-half-hour flight, then spent the next three hours thinking about it some more.

  As soon as I landed in Perth, I set about establishing PaVE as an association. I brought in some local partners, called in favours to help develop the strategic plan and spent six months talking to others who had set up non-government organisations in areas as diverse as modern slavery and youth unemployment. We launched PaVE in December 2013 at Australia’s first national conference on countering violent extremism. My research assistant, Carmen, who started working with me three days a week in early 2013, and I had worked tirelessly for six months to bring together national and international experts, law enforcement, practitioners and policy makers to Perth for the conference. PaVE was going to be the platform for connecting research to practice to policy. The conference and the launch of PaVE were well received, but I had no idea just how much work was ahead and just how quickly it would take off.

  By February 2014 we got our first grant to develop Australia’s first online social media campaign to combat the influence of terrorism. It was a humble sum of $115,000 from the Federal Attorney-General’s Department, but it was enough to make three short films, set up a website, get some resources online and start a swell of interest in the other war on terror – the one that was being fought for hearts and minds.

  I was fast gaining a media profile, although I cringed whenever the media introduced me as a ‘counterterrorism expert’, an ‘expert in Islamic radicalisation’ or my all-time favourite, a ‘Muslim academic’, as if that was some kind of qualification I had hanging on the wall of my study next to my Bachelor of Arts, Post-Graduate Diploma, Master of Education and PhD. I’ve never claimed expertise in anything – just an intense interest and a body of knowledge and understanding that I had hoped could make a difference. I’d accept the term ‘authority’ or ‘professional’, but ‘expert’ just seems so definitive – as if there is nowhere to go from there, nothing more to learn. And if that were the case then there really are only a handful of things that I can claim to be an expert in.

  I had just finished doing a radio interview on Hack when I got a phone call from an unknown number. The voice on the other end was deep. I imagined it belonged to a big burly bloke who had spent his youth teasing girls with glasses and stealing play lunch from the kid with too-high pants. But there was a nervousness, a hesitation in his voice that made me think twice about that assumption. ‘How can I help you?’ I asked.

  ‘Um, yeah . . . I heard you on the radio. You were on Hack.’ He hesitated.

  ‘Yeah, I think that was recorded a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Yeah. You were talking about radicalisation and stuff and about like working with people.’ I braced myself. This was either going to be one of those armchair know-it-alls who rang me to mansplain that I had my head up my arse and couldn’t possibly know anything, or it was going to be one of those nutters who would use up all my battery time trying to convince me that the earth was actually flat because water can’t bend (yes, I am regularly contacted by these people – they walk among us). And once again I was wrong.

  ‘I used to be one of them,’ he told me. ‘I used to lead like a gang and yeah we used to like go after Asians and stuff and plan attacks and stuff.’

  ‘Used to? You don’t do that anymore?’ I asked.

  ‘Nah. That was years ago.’

  ‘So why are you ringing me?’

  ‘I just thought that maybe, you know, it would be good to talk to you because the stuff you were saying like it really made sense to me, you know. So I just thought . . .’

  His name was Matt. In the 1990s, he was a disaffected teenager who directed his anger and frustration at Asians and ethnics. Over a number of years, he convinced other young men to join his gang of white supremacists. He lived a life mired by hatred and v
iolence, convincing others that the only reason for their pain was because of those ‘others’, who hated them just the same. He lived in a world of war and enemies and battles to be fought in the dirty back lanes that stink of piss and vomit. When the street fights and the angry exchanges were no longer enough, he became more violent, convincing himself and his followers that the only way was an all-out attack – no prisoners taken.

  I had heard Matt’s story a hundred times before from former white supremacists, jihadists and former IRA operatives.

  On a visit to the United Kingdom, I had arranged to meet Sean O’Callaghan. In the 1970s when he was just a teenager, O’Callaghan joined the ranks of the IRA and became a senior operative during the height of the conflict in Northern Ireland. By the time he turned twenty, O’Callaghan was already an experienced terrorist. In November 1988, he walked into a police station in Tunbridge Wells and handed himself in – confessing to his involvement in the murder of a Special Branch detective inspector, Sean Corcoran in Northern Ireland in 1974. In 1990, he pleaded guilty to a whole lot of charges related to his involvement in several IRA operations as head of their Southern Command. He got a 539-year sentence. That’s pretty huge. O’Callaghan was granted a royal prerogative after serving just eight years of his 500-plus-year sentence. Before handing himself in, he had spent around fourteen years working undercover with the Garda (the Irish police force) as one of their most important informers. O’Callaghan had sabotaged attacks and had even prevented an assassination attempt on the Prince and Princess of Wales.

  Like many people who join violent organisations under the false pretence that they are fighting for a just cause, O’Callaghan became disenchanted with the IRA and its claims of legitimacy. In his own words, he believed that he had joined the IRA to fight a war against British imperialism, but came to the realisation that he was prepared to murder and bomb strangers for a cause that he could not defend as either noble or decent.