Yesterday I helped one of my students write a resume. He is going for a job as a cleaner at the hospital but they wanted a resume. Having no one else here to ask he asked me if I would help him and I agreed. In the process of creating his resume we had the most profound conversation.

He is an Afghani man who arrived in Australia 3 months ago. He fled the Taliban in 2000 and then spent 9 years getting here (illegally) through Pakistan and Indonesia. I couldn’t understand everything but he kept saying “guns” and “dogs” and “Taliban very bad” I think he was trying to tell me that the Taliban treat people like dogs and that they held him at gunpoint and took his business from him. He told me all this as I tried to piece together his work and education history which as you can imagine having spent the last 9 years as an illegal refugee is fairly sparse. His education history isn’t great either, 8 years at primary school then military training for 10 years where he mostly learned to read and write. I ended up deciding it was probably better to not put in anything. I think most employers would be fairly put off by someone who had primary school education and 10 years in the Afghani military. The saddest thing though is that there is nothing at all to put someone off this man. He is the simply the most gentle, polite, respectful and kind man with me and with all the students in the class. He has so much challenged any stereotyped ideas about Muslim men that I had (and I had them I have to confess but all my Afghani students especially him have made me realise that they may be the most misunderstood people in the world). He actually stands up when I come into the classroom. A habit I am trying to stop as quickly as I can I must say. Especially, as I feel that it is I who should be standing up when he comes in. A man who has been through all that he has but has maintained such a gentle spirit and no bitterness is truly extraordinary I reckon. I don’t think he feels like that though, having been treated in the ways that he has been treated he has lost most of his pride in himself.

As he left he said to me “You are very nice. What can I do for you?” I actually teared up. How could I tell him that I am actually not that nice. That I benefit on a daily basis from the exploitation of people like him, helping him write a resume is the least I can do. But more than that I wanted to somehow explain to him that in the sharing of his story with me he had given me something worth so much more than the resume I had written for him but I couldn’t quite find the words.

Then I came home and watched Q and A and Lateline. As the politicians and the people battled it out about what we are going to do about “boat people” and how we are going to get “the balance right of being compassionate and protecting our borders” I just wanted to scream.