Refugee's ordeal to be a Kiwi

22/12/2009

Hungry, scared and battered, 15-year-old Abdul Zullal clasped his hands and prayed to God for deliverance.

Cramped inside a small, old wooden boat, he and 437 other asylum seekers from Afghanistan had been drifting at sea for more than three days after a storm battered their rundown vessel.

"We were drifting aimlessly, we ran out of food and water. That was when I started to pray. I was praying to God to rescue me," says the devout Muslim.

Around this time the Norwegian cargo ship Tampa picked up the boat's distress calls and came to the rescue, plucking the refugees out of the 35-metre Indonesian fishing boat Palapa.

But that was just the beginning of the ordeal for Mr Zullal and his fellow refugees caught in the tumult that followed the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

"We were hoping to be taken to Christmas Island but the Australian government refused us entry.

"This was just after September 11 and there was concern from the Australian government that there were terrorists in our midst and we were not really refugees," he says.

He got the fright of his life when one day Australian commandos stormed the Tampa.

"They were pointing guns at us. I asked myself why they were doing this, we're not terrorists, most of us were from poor communities trying to escape persecution by the Taliban," he says.

They were herded to an Australian navy ship and kept under guard.

"We couldn't see the outside, we didn't know where we were going. They gave us little food and it was too spicy to eat. There was not enough water. There was diarrhoea all around and it was awful," he says.

After more than a month in such squalid conditions, Mr Zullal and 130 Afghanis were taken in by New Zealand as refugees.

His uncle had arranged for people smugglers to take him out of Afghanistan to escape the Taliban regime.

"My father was jailed by the Taliban on suspicion that he was concealing a gun in our home and my mother was afraid the Taliban would send me to the war front so she asked my uncle to get me out of Afghanistan."

After a long trip from Ghazni - his home province 150km southeast of Kabul - he made it to Pakistan with a group of fellow Hazara Afghanis.

Then they took a boat to Indonesia before sailing off to Australia.

Mr Zullal spent his first weeks in Auckland at the refugee holding centre in Mangere and went to Selwyn College where he learned to speak fluent English.

It has been a long and arduous journey for the now 23-year-old Afghani-Kiwi who has since been reunited with his dad Malik, who now works as a cabinetmaker in Albany, and mum Adila.

He is completing a degree in public health at the University of Auckland and is doing first year law.

He now also shares a home with his wife Latifa on the North Shore's Bayview and a new blessing came on August 17 when she gave birth to a healthy baby girl they named Zenat.

"Looking back at the sacrifices we made to be able to make it here, I am grateful to God for answering all my prayers, Mr Zullal says.

"He did not just rescue me from those turbulent days at sea, He led us to a new life in New Zealand and gave true meaning to the saying where there is life there is hope."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/north-shore-times/3176946/Refugees-ordeal-to-be-a-Kiwi