Dear Hal

I have left Australia with my father due to our visas expiring. I know I said I would stay with you, but I cannot leave my father as he means so much to me, so do you of course. After all at least I can find ways to contact you but if I had left my father to leave by himself, I may never see him again.

We are currently living in a detention centre in Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan. The air is thick and humid at the moment in this part of the world and the lack of electric fans doesn’t help. I am not used to living in these conditions after living in a comfortable house for the past year but I’ll get used to it here. I wanted to send you this letter to let you know how I am going and to communicate as we do not have a phone yet. When I leave, hopefully I can get a job so that I and my father can buy a computer to use as a tool to communicate with you. When I do this we can talk about all kinds of things but at the moment I’d like to tell you how my time was like with you and my short time in Brackley.

The first few weeks of school I found really upsetting. I had no friends and some of my peers were even being racist with or without realising the significants of my scarf when they were taking it. Outside of school wasn’t very good either. Some of the people I met showed little or no respect for me or my culture and I always felt uncomfortable around a few of the locals. But then a few weeks later when I was being bullied, you were the first person to show kindness to me. You gave me confidence knowing there were people like you in Brackley that would stand up for me. After that I felt a bit better about myself and even got some friends. Life in Brackley started to seem a little more enjoyable while spending time with you. But when we went to the party, I saw a sad and depressing side to Brackley. The culture of the town had been consumed by alcohol and drugs. They claimed that this behaviour was relieving them of stress, that they could escape reality when in fact they were digging themselves a bigger hole. Over time I grew to appreciate these people despite their crude humour and racist opinions as they were friendly to me.

Nearing the end of my time in Australia and all was well until the terrorist attacks in America happened and caused suspicion in Brackley. The citizens of the town found a new target to abuse, the Afghani people and refugees. During this period of time I was nervous and at times anxious and then came the night that changed the way I felt about Brackley, the night that my house was set on fire. The thing that annoyed me the most about this was how these people could assume I was a terrorist when they themselves committed a terrorist attack on me and my father. Hypocrites, discriminating hypocrites is what they are. This made me think to myself, was Australia the land of the free? If not where is the land of the free if there is one at all? Pass this stage I realised that even in wealthy countries there is corruption and violence but wealthy countries there is corruption and violence but definitely not to the same extent to that of a third world country.

I would like to end this letter hoping that I might see you again. I am optimistic and believe I will meet with you in the future.

                                                                        Love Randa