Luggage, clothing and plastic bags of vomit became random projectiles. With every toss of the boat we were helplessly thrown about, crushing one another in a sea of bodies. The storm was relentless – the Palapa was like a bath toy at the mercy of an insolent child. With the pump on full blast we seemed to be just keeping up, but after a few hours it too gave up the ghost. It would seem we were making good progress until another big wave crashed over us, undoing all our work. Others worked to seal the hole in the deck using ropes and a tarp, and some used more broken engine parts to hammer posts back in place. Someone fashioned a pump out of engine parts. Men from the lowest level began bailing with buckets and plastic bags, forming a human chain up the ladder. The hatch had been closed, but a large hole had appeared as the decking fell apart. Water crashed over the deck and filtered down between the cracks, drenching us in hundreds of little salty waterfalls. I remember watching the Palapa falling to pieces before my eyes as each wave whacked its hull with a vengeance. In this section Nazari remembers a storm that hit just a few days into the Palapa’s journey. Nazari and his family were among those resettled in New Zealand. The Tampa was then embroiled in controversy: as the closest port Australia should have taken in the asylum seekers, many of whom needed urgent medical care instead, after a long stand-off, it established an offshore detention centre on Nauru Island, and sent many of the group there. The following is excerpted from Nazari’s powerful and deftly-reported memoir After the Tampa: From Afghanistan to New Zealand, in which he recounts a terrifying month spent at sea, first in the decrepit Palapa, then on the Norwegian fishing boat the Tampa, which rescued the refugees as their boat sank. Months later they struck out from Jakarta on a wooden fishing boat packed with 433 other refugees, seeking asylum in Australia. Abbas Nazari was seven when his family fled their village in Sungjoy, Afghanistan, to escape the Taliban.
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