Zaoui family arrives in New Zealand

The last time Ahmed Zaoui hugged his son Youssef, the little boy was 4. Yesterday, Youssef, now 9, could not stop hugging his father and beaming.

Mr Zaoui’s family slipped almost unnoticed into the country after a 10-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia where they have been living for seven years.

Mr Zaoui and his wife Leila Tidjani have been apart for 11 of their 23 years of marriage. Since the military coup in Algeria in 1991, which forced Mr Zaoui to flee and lead his family into a nomadic lifestyle, they have lived in five countries but have always been fearful and ready to flee again.

Yesterday, in a tiny lounge in a house in Newton, central Auckland, they said that for the first time since the coup they feel safe and at ease.

They have swapped cramped accommodation on the 19th floor of an apartment building in the crowded city of Kuala Lumpur for a temporary home in a ground-floor house with a backyard, next door to where Mr Zaoui had been living with Dominican friars since his release from jail in 2004.

As soon as the family sat down they marvelled at how peaceful New Zealand seemed. The two older boys, 22 and 19, had been thrilled to have been welcomed to New Zealand as “Kiwis” by staff at Auckland International Airport.

There were no tears, just the wide smiles of a family relieved they no longer have to fear the police and authorities, and ecstatic to be able finally to make plans for a future together.

Read the full story here.

Malaysia/New Zealand

Here’s something interesting.

According to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Malaysia’s GDP output for 2006 was US$150 billion. New Zealand’s GDP output during the same period was US$103 billion.

Malaysia has a population of 27 million.

New Zealand has a population of 4 million.

You do the math.

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

~ William Butler Yeats ~

Leave No Man Behind

In April 2002, professors at Yale University gathered to discuss an incident that had taken place the previous month.

During an operation in the mountains of Afghanistan, a Navy SEAL had tumbled out of a helicopter and hit the ground.

His body was dragged away by Taliban fighters.

Over the next 12 hours, other American soldiers pursued the enemy across the rugged terrain, eventually retrieving the body of their comrade, but not before suffering six more deaths and 12 injuries.

Was any of this worth it?

To retrieve one dead body?

The professors at Yale didn’t think so.

From a philosophical, psychological, and even political standpoint, the costs outweighed the gains. They judged the military’s policy of ‘LEAVE NO MAN BEHIND’ to be illogical at best, foolhardy at worst.

What do you think?

Teach them…

“Teach them politics and war so their sons may study medicine and mathematics in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, and architecture.”

 ~ John Adams ~

The Arrival

 

A man bids his wife and his daughter goodbye, and embarks on a journey across the ocean.

He arrives in a strange new land, clears immigration, and steps into a society rather different from his own. As he struggles to find his footing, he seeks out a place to stay, finds a place to work, and encounters good people who help him settle in.

Later, he sends for his wife and his daughter to join him.

There are no words in THE ARRIVAL.

None are needed.

It is a universal story of the immigrant experience, told in panels that look like old sepia photographs.

THE ARRIVAL is a graphic novel in the truest sense, authored by Shaun Tan, whose own father was a Malaysian immigrant in Australia in the 1960s. Tan spent two years laboring on the project, creating a blend of fantasy and reality.

The result is deeply profound and deeply moving.

A two-page spread depicts giants striding across the old country, vacuuming the life out of the landscape. It is a metaphor for why many choose to emigrate; to be free from fear and oppression.

Yet another spread depicts the immigrant staring out at a cityscape that is both surreal and alien. It is a metaphor for the strangeness and nervousness we feel when we settle into a new land.

I am no connoisseur of art, but THE ARRIVAL touched me on a level that I can’t even begin to describe. It comes in a high-quality hardcover format; so achingly beautiful, I couldn’t help but buy two copies.

It is about the hope for a better life in a better land.

Utopian, certainly, but isn’t that what we are all seeking?

 

 

Malaysia Truly Asia

Sharanya Manivannan writes:

But to backtrack, my sister and my grandfather went to the Malaysian High Commission here in Chennai.

They went to the counter and he began to introduce himself to the man despicable creature behind it.

“So?” shouted the despicable creature. “Did I ask you your name? Did I ask you who you were? Do you think I care?”

“We have come to apply for a visa,” ventured my shocked sister.

“You want a visa? I won’t give you a visa. What are you going to do about it?”

He then picked up my sister’s passport and threw it at my grandfather’s face. And walked off.

Yes, Malaysia Truly Asia. Where Differences Are Celebrated.