Finding My Place Page 22

  ‘Why not? It’s the project you’ve been assigned. I need someone to do it. You can’t just tell me you don’t want to work on it.’ I watched the tears well in his eyes.

  ‘But the stories are so sad,’ he said.

  ‘Sad? Why are they sad?’

  ‘Because they all died.’

  ‘Why did they die? What did they die for?’ I asked him.

  ‘For nothing. They died for nothing.’

  I looked at young G and wondered how so much youth and idealism could be led astray so easily, but I knew he wasn’t prepared to talk about that. Not yet anyway.

  ‘Okay,’ I said finally. ‘You don’t have to work on that project anymore. I’ll find something else for you to do.’ It was of course always my intention that he would do something else, but I needed for him to come to a conclusion on his own. I had met enough formers, victims, survivors and extremists in my time to know that nothing I said or did could really change him or his world view – it had to come from within.

  One day I asked G to accompany me to a media interview. We drove in silence and I could tell there was something on his mind. When he finally spoke he told me everything. He told me that Thorne had first approached him to play soccer with the ‘brothers’ and he had gone along because he liked soccer and he wanted to play and because he had no real brothers. After soccer they would sit around and discuss religion, with Thorne taking the lead and delivering his makeshift self-styled sermons. The sermons became more and more political and G started to become suspicious of Thorne’s agenda. I didn’t ask too much. I didn’t need to. This wasn’t about me and my need to know. This was about G and his own journey of self-discovery.

  I grew very fond of G as the months went by. So did Dave. He became like a son to us and I often called him son. He flourished in his job and in the projects he became involved in. His smile grew bigger and brighter with each passing day, and though he faced challenges at home as the only son of a widowed mother and an uncertain future in Australia, he seemed to have found a kind of resilience to face those challenges with a positive attitude and an optimism that had once been lost amid anger and confusion. He’s now in his second year of university (at the time of writing) and well on his way to becoming a role model and leader.

  After that day in the car, nothing more was said about G and his close encounter with violent extremism that could have had a very different ending but for the attention of a couple of his friends. Nothing except when in a quiet moment he whispered to Dave, ‘If it wasn’t for Anne, I’d be dead or in jail.’

  26

  365 Days

  In the big scheme of things 365 days isn’t very long. It doesn’t happen very often in life, but once in a while you get a year that could have been a decade. Those are the milestone years – the kinds of years people write books on or make movies about – coming-of-age years, getting-of-wisdom years or living-dangerously years. Time is never really constant, even though we measure it in these neat little units – minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. You can have 365 days of sameness where you find yourself saying things like, ‘Oh goodness, it’s June already, where has the year gone?’ But you know where the year’s gone because it’s disappeared among the mundane and the days that merge into weeks and weeks into months. It gets lost among the school lunches and Friday-night takeaways. And then there are the years with beginnings, middles and ends. The years that stories are made of.

  We were visiting my father at the nursing home when I got a call from the United States Consul General in Perth. I was aware that the White House was organising a global summit on countering violent extremism in February and had been keeping an eye on the arrangements, eager to see if there would be any practical outcomes. I didn’t expect the call checking on my availability to attend. I hung up the phone, turned to my family and said, ‘Looks like I’m going to the White House.’

  The day I landed in Washington was the coldest February day the city had seen in a decade. I’ve never been attracted to the snow. ‘You should see snow before you die,’ people would say. Why? What for? I know it’s cold and I know it’s wet. What do I need to see it for? I much prefer the tropics and the desert – what can I say, it’s in my blood. I looked out the window as the captain made his announcement that sent the cabin crew to their seats at the front of the plane. Gone was the patchwork of brown rooftops and green parks hemmed by black streets that cross-stitched their way across the landscape. From the sky, the city looked like a rough sketch on a blank canvas – like someone had washed away the colour and started all over again.

  My plane had been delayed overnight in Sydney, so I was grateful that I was scheduled to arrive the day before the White House Summit. I checked into my room at the George Washington Inn and settled in before heading out in the snow to meet up with Quintan and Tony.

  I’d first met Quintan a year earlier in Abu Dhabi. I was there for the second annual CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) Conference that I had first started in Perth in 2013. I’d partnered with the International Center for Excellence in CVE in Abu Dhabi and we had an arrangement to co-host the conference on an annual basis. Quintan and his business partner, Shahed, were there to conduct a hackathon – a two-day event that brought together teams of professionals in different fields to come up with new digitally based solutions to the problem of violent extremism. I was immediately fascinated by the whole process and was in discussions with Quintan and Shahed to bring the concept to Australia and run our very own hackathon here. It would have only been a few weeks after our meeting in Abu Dhabi that I got a call from Quintan. ‘Hey, Anne, a friend of mine is doing this really cool project and asked if I knew anyone crazy enough to take it up in Australia. And I thought of you.’ I wasn’t sure about the whole crazy bit, but I let Quintan finish and told him to pass on my contact details to Tony.

  Not long after, I answered the call from Tony. ‘Hey, Anne, so Quintan tells me you’re crazy enough to do this in Australia.’ Again with the crazy! I could see a theme emerging here. Tony’s company, based in California, was running a worldwide competition funded by the US Department of State. Tony had managed to recruit forty universities from around the world to take part in the challenge to develop a social media–based program or service to challenge violent extremism. He was looking for an Australian university and had all but given up when Quintan mentioned that crazy woman he knows who lives in a place called Perth. Tony asked if I could get together a team of ten students to participate in the competition called P2P (Peer to Peer) under my supervision. I hadn’t taught any courses for over a year and didn’t have much contact with students by those days other than my research interns, but the idea of taking part in, and possibly winning, a global competition was too good to pass up. Quintan was right. I was just crazy enough to commit myself to this. In the middle of the coldest Washington February in a decade, I traipsed through the snow in my leather-soled boots (not a good idea by the way) to meet two men – one I had only met briefly and one I had only spoken to on the phone – who both thought I was kind of crazy.

  I got up extra early the next morning. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get from my hotel to the designated entrance at the White House, where those of us participating in the summit were told to meet to pass through security. When I arrived at just after 7 am, the gates had yet to open so I struck up a conversation with another early arrival – a man who ran a software company that worked on some kind of secret squirrel stuff that was way above my security clearance levels – and we decided to walk to the corner cafe and continue our conversation over hot coffee. By the time we emerged from the warm cocoon of the coffee shop, the line to get into the White House had stretched halfway down the road. We took our place in the line and waited. An hour later the line hadn’t moved very much. I had lost all feeling in my feet somewhere between the conversation with my software developer companion and the discussion about deradicalisation programs with some Nigerians. I was starting to think
I hadn’t really prepared myself very well for the snow. I had chosen a silk dress for the occasion of my first official visit to the White House, where I would be sharing the same breathing space as President Obama. I layered it with a light thermal underneath and a coat I had bought especially for my trip (I’d never really needed a coat in the mild Perth winters, and since I had always avoided snow had never needed one for my travels either). My legs and feet were exposed to the cold, covered only by the thin layer of my pantyhose and thin-soled heels.

  ‘Ma’am, ma’am you need to come with us.’ Two black suits who bore an uncanny resemblance to the FBI agent from the American Dad cartoon show grabbed my arm and started to lead me away. A smallish woman next to them piped up with a heavy American drawl. ‘You need to take her away now.’ My heart skipped a beat. Had my coffee-drinking software guy said something I wasn’t supposed to hear? Did the Nigerians sense something suspicious about the way I pronounced ‘radicalisation’? Did someone tell them I was Muslim?

  I started to protest. ‘But I’m supposed to be here. I have an official invitation. I’m presenting tomorrow. Call the Australian Embassy. They know me.’

  ‘Ma’am, you need to go,’ said the little woman with the southern accent. ‘You’re showing signs of hypothermia. These men will help you.’

  Hypothermia? Isn’t that where your nose turns black then falls off? The two big men tried to tell me that I was babbling and incoherent and I tried to tell them that I always babble and am usually incoherent, but they insisted. As we pushed our way to the top of the line, people offered me their coats and gloves to keep me warm and ensure that my nose didn’t fall off. My first hour at the White House was spent recovering from my near-death experience and for the next two days I was known as the Australian woman who has never seen snow.

  I could see why he became president and inspired a nation. Obama commanded the room. He spoke with a rare conviction and a passion that is the mark of those who lead naturally. Nothing he said sounded contrived or like a stilted string of soundbites – though I’m sure every word was carefully chosen and every sentence pored over again and again. I have never seen anyone address a room that had fallen into absolute silence as he did that day. As he spoke I looked around the crowd that had doubled in size with the addition of reporters and camera crews. We were all in awe. All hungover by the weight of his words and his presence among us. Obama’s talk was a brief break in a day bloated with presentations and panels comprising some of the world’s foremost experts on countering violent extremism, as well as some quiet achievers who I had never heard of.

  In the evening we headed to the Department of State for an exclusive reception. Not all the civil-society representatives from the day were invited to the reception with government representatives. I figured my invitation must have something to do with being asked to present on the following day along with foreign ministers, ambassadors and people who make me feel like I should be working harder. I was introduced to Madeleine Albright and John Kerry, and was deep in conversation with a senior official from the US team when I spotted the Australian Government representatives. I excused myself and strolled over to say hello. I introduced myself to the Secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department, who recognised me and made a remark about some of the criticisms I had made about the government in the media. ‘Well,’ I responded, ‘I think I’ve been fair in giving the government credit where it’s due and highlighting where you’re going wrong. It’s my role as a researcher to be analytical about these things.’

  He smiled and I took that as acceptance of my explanation – not that I should have to explain myself. ‘Have you met the Attorney-General?’ he asked.

  ‘Once or twice, but I doubt that he would remember me.’

  Before I knew it, I was being introduced (again) to George Brandis, who also immediately recognised me. Brandis was not as gracious as his colleague. He looked me up and down, sneered and turned away. I was neither surprised nor disappointed, though a little embarrassed for the other bloke. Moments later I spotted Quintan having what looked like a pleasant conversation with Brandis. Brandis was nodding and telling Quintan that he would love to have him come to Australia to run a hackathon. Quintan has that effect on people – his passion and enthusiasm for what he does is contagious. As I turned to walk away, I felt Quintan’s hand on my arm pulling me into their conversation. ‘We’re already organising it with Anne. Surely you know Anne. She’s amazing.’

  Brandis smiled. ‘Yes of course, of course, Anne,’ he exclaimed as he extended his hand, beamed a smile and nodded my way.

  I flew back from Washington and immediately into the media spotlight surrounding the young man from Perth who had become the latest ISIL recruit from Australia. I spent the next few months engrossed in supervising the P2P team. Our home became their base and our weekends were spent with a house full of students working on the project. Their hard work paid off and in April I got the phone call from the US Consul General that our team had made the top three. On 1 June I headed to Washington again. This time with ten energetic students in tow. The team placed second overall and four days later I said goodbye to them as they headed on a three-week leadership program around the United States (their prize for coming second) and I headed to Sydney to join Quintan and Shahed in running Australia’s first CVE Hackathon at the Regional CVE Summit hosted by Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

  I’d been away from home for two weeks in Washington and Sydney when I arrived to the news that my dad had fallen ill and was in hospital. I dumped my bags at home and went straight to the hospital to see him. The news wasn’t good. The doctors were telling us that the best they could do was keep him comfortable. I knew what they were saying was cryptic for my dad was dying.

  My brother, Hosam, sister-in-law Birsena, Dave and I took it in shifts to stay with him at the hospital, making sure that he was never alone. There were minutes or even hours when our hopes were raised – when he would sit up, eat, have something to drink or talk to us – but most of the time he just slept. I’d just done a long shift and decided that I could take a break, go home, have a shower and something to eat. Dad’s condition hadn’t changed much over the previous few hours and Hosam and Dave had arrived to take over. I was home for close to an hour when Dave rang and said I should come to the hospital. ‘I don’t think he has long to go, babe.’ Dave’s father had passed away quietly in his arms three years before. Both his grandfather and his grandmother had also passed in his arms. There’s a running joke in Dave’s family that he has the kiss of death. When I got out of the car at the hospital, Dave was there to greet me. He shook his head and said, ‘I’m sorry. He’s gone.’ I pushed him away and raced through the hospital, not wanting to believe that I had missed my father’s last moments on this earth. I held his still-warm body in my arms and wept my final goodbye.

  My dad’s death was the first significant loss I had ever really had in my life. I had never been close to any other relations – not aunties or uncles or cousins who had died. I guess I’m pretty blessed to be able to say that I hadn’t experienced the death of a significant someone in my life until my late forties. I don’t know how I would’ve coped with death in my younger years, but I imagine that the death of a parent is significant no matter when it happens.

  In August I received a request to address the Club de Madrid+10. Sadly, it’s not a disco. The Club de Madrid is a forum of former world leaders first started by Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan. In 2005, they produced a series of policy papers on terrorism and democracy. To be invited to the dialogue ten years later was a real honour and it meant that my work was being recognised around the globe. The Club de Madrid was being held in Spain in late October. It coincided with an experts’ meeting at the United Nations in Vienna that I was to speak at in mid-November. Dave and I planned a tour of Europe in between. I wasn’t really that excited about flying around Europe to end a particularly busy year. In the previous twelve months, I’d flown to Washington, Singapore, Abu
Dhabi, Kenya, Indonesia and done almost weekly trips to the eastern states of Australia. But the opportunity to present at forums as significant as the Club de Madrid and the United Nations was something that I had once dreamed of and it seemed that my career as a pracademic was reaching a zenith. I was finally part of the purple circle of researchers, academics and practitioners in the field. A handful of experts whose presence at every international forum was sought after. We all knew each other, knew of each other’s work and frequently caught up at different locations around the world. This was what I had been working towards all those years – all those nights I had dreamed of scaling mountains.

  Dave and I landed in Madrid on 26 October, the day before the two-day policy dialogue was to begin. I was due to speak on the second day on a panel in the final session with the former prime ministers of New Zealand and Ireland and the current head of the World Bank. Our session was described as a wind-up before the dialogue closed with an address by Ban Ki-moon – the then Secretary-General of the United Nations. I arrived at the venue in the morning – not a snowflake in sight – bursting with excitement about the next forty-eight hours.

  There’s a reason I don’t like to have expectations. Because nine times out of ten, expectations lead to disappointment. I had anticipated a day filled with new insights, commitments to action and the beginnings of a new paradigm of international understanding and cooperation to combat terrorism. Before lunch on the first day, the dialogue had descended into a verbal match of finger pointing and blame by people who had squandered their positions of power. A hundred or so former and current world leaders gathered in a room and all they could do was blame each other. If these men and women of power and privilege couldn’t make change, what hope did I have? I had knowledge and information, but all that is useless without the power to make them mean something.

  I put aside my feelings of despondency and hoped that my experience at the United Nations in Vienna three weeks later would prove me wrong. As I walked into the UN building, I stopped to take in the enormity of it all. I stood in front of the UN flagpoles and watched each member-state flag dance to the chill of the mid-November wind. Outside the building, the Christmas marketeers were preparing to display their seasonal wares, and somewhere on the streets of Vienna, Dave was exploring the coffee shops and trying his first authentic schnitzel. And I was here – in a place I could not have imagined I would be just a few short months earlier, preparing to address experts from member states on the research I had lived and breathed for the past decade. It should have been my time to shine. It should have left me with hope, renewed enthusiasm and a feeling of accomplishment. It didn’t.