October 2003

Betty Dixon from Goulburn called this morning. She had some information about one of “her boys” in the Baxter detention centre, Ebrahim Sammaki, whose wife, Endong was killed in the Bali bombing. Ebrahim is to be allowed to go to Adelaide for a memorial service for the anniversary on the weekend. As the anniversary approaches I have been thinking of Ebrahim, struck by a double tragedy: the separation from family and imprisonment that is the fate of asylum seekers in Australia; and the appalling bad luck that saw his wife passing down a Kuta street on the night of the Bali bombing. Fate has stuck the knife into Ebrahim, and twisted it.