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On Fragile Waves: Lyrical, moving, and at times heartrending
On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu
In the opening pages of
On Fragile Waves (2021), by
E. Lily Yu, young Firuzeh, her brother Naur, and their parents are on the start of a long journey from war-torn Kabul to the hope of a better life in Australia. To pass the time on that first leg, Firuzeh’s mother entertains them with a fairy tale. But the novel will be no fairy tale, as the family makes its way through Pakistan to Indonesia to an immigration detention camp on Nauru Island and finally to Australia itself, facing loss and discrimination, poverty and indignity, and a long-standing instability and uncertainty that erodes their family ties. Filled with poetry, fairy tales, and flashes of magical realism in the form of a drowned girl who remains Firuzeh’s best friend,
“I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
Farhad is one of 65 refugees who have been interned in hotels in Melbourne by the Australian Government for the last 18 months.
Through a long and complicated legal process he was granted a temporary visa on 11 December 2020, and described his new found freedom as “a gift”.
This week, it was announced that most of the dozens of men interned in another hotel would also be released on temporary visas.
The fight for freedom for men and women like Farhad has been years in the making.
Farhad set out on his journey for Australia in 2013, fleeing potential prison time in Iran for his role as a Kurdish activist.