Marg Hutton
Less than five years after surviving the horrific sinking of SIEVX, Amal Basry lost her three-year battle with breast cancer. She passed away in the presence of her son Rami and daughter-in-law Daniella on March 18.
Amal and Rami were rescued from the Indian Ocean on October 20, 2001, after spending nearly 24 hours in the water fighting for their lives. Only about one in 10 SIEVX passengers survived and most of the 353 who drowned were women and children.
In June 2002, Amal and Rami were finally permitted to come to Australia on temporary protection visas (TPVs). Amal's husband Abbas Akram had made the journey to Australia on an earlier boat, arriving in January 2000. He spent eight months in Woomera detention centre before settling in Melbourne on a TPV.
Amal and Rami had to endure an inexplicably cruel three-year wait before being granted permanent protection visas. It is difficult to imagine how this needless bureaucratic obstructionism affected these already deeply traumatised people. They wanted nothing more than security and were forced to wait for years never knowing if they would be allowed to put down roots and make their home here.
On the first anniversary of the sinking I attended a memorial service at Edwardes Lake Park in Reservoir. At exactly 3.10pm, a year to the minute since SIEVX sank, Amal bravely took the stage and recounted, first in Arabic and then in English, the story of the sinking.
To hear Amal speak was an unforgettable experience. She moved the audience to tears as she told of her son kissing her goodbye for what they both believed would be the final time.
When Amal was rescued by the Indonesian fishermen her son was not among the survivors. Amal prevailed on the captain to turn his boat around and continue the search, and her son and 10 others were eventually found clinging to a small piece of wood.
Amal believed she had survived for another purpose as well — to tell her story. She wanted the world to know what had happened to the people of SIEVX. As she said to Geoff Parish of SBS's Dateline, the story of SIEVX is "a disaster that deserves to be written down by someone. People bought death in seeking freedom."
Amal's story travelled far and touched many. The harrowing account of her survival as retold by Arnold Zable in an essay in Eureka Street was incorporated into a London production of Pericles by the Royal Shakespeare Company and Cardboard Citizens. The Australian folk singer Suzette Herft credits Amal as being the inspiration for her song "Journey on the Wind".
Amal was a patron of Jannah the SIEVX memorial, an online condolence book established by Mary Dagmar Davies — the first memorial to the SIEVX dead. Amal was also involved in the national SIEVX memorial project.
Amal was always prepared to stand up and speak about SIEVX on behalf of the survivors despite her illness and the fears she carried with her from the trauma. In many ways she was the public face of SIEVX.
Amal will be deeply mourned both as the warm courageous person she was and as a symbol of all the nameless women who drowned on SIEVX while seeking sanctuary and a better life in Australia.
[Abridged. For the full text, visit <http://www.sievx.com>.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 29, 2006.
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