Lahore to Trafalgar
“You’re so lucky!” Arfa Sarfaraz Khan recalls the reaction of her Pakistani friends when they learned she was going to live in Australia.
The reason? Australia was home to the best cricket team in the world, with names that were legendary in every cricket-loving family’s home.
Ms Khan laughs. Seven years later, the legendary cricket team is in a slump and she still hasn’t been to a cricket match in Australia.
Perhaps this summer, she says, when Pakistan plays Australia at the MCG.
Her journey from Lahore (the second biggest city in Pakistan, population five million plus) to Trafalgar (population just over 3000) has been full of twists and turns.
The family first settled in Wollongong, on the NSW coast, before moving to Gippsland in 2012 when her husband, a doctor, got a job with Latrobe Community Health Service.
She arrived in Trafalgar with a two-year-old and a newborn.
“I didn’t know anyone. It was a totally strange environment. Every person moving to a new place – it takes time to adjust.”
In Wollongong, there had been beaches, a library, shops. You could amuse yourself. In Trafalgar, friends were essential.
“We were fortunate to find ourselves among some nice people,” she says.
Having children helped to break the ice, as did her background as a journalist and university lecturer in Pakistan.
“Being a journalist, you can keep on talking. But my being open won’t help if the other person is not also open.
“It won’t become a friendship if the other person is not interested.”
Four years after moving to Trafalgar, she is at the beating heart of this small town as editor of the monthly community newspaper The Trafalgar News and a member of the Trafalgar Development Association.
That involvement, she says, has also made her feel at home.
Asked how different the journalism is from that of her home country, she responds that although the world media covers Pakistan as a country in permanent crisis, the concerns of journalism are not very different from Australian ones: education and hospitals.
The Khans arrived in Australia as anti-Muslim sentiment was on the rise.
While she hasn’t experienced it herself, she knows people who have.
“We have Muslim friends and their neighbours were so nasty. They would say ‘Go back where you came from!’ And they were born here!
“Those things can set you back. But it hasn’t happened to us.”
Nor does she think the antagonism reflects on Australians.
“In every country there are good people and bad,” she says.
“It’s our mindset. No one else can make us happy or content. You accept the change and go with the flow.” And the world is changing. Even Trafalgar. “Four years ago, I don’t think anyone from my background was here. Now I see people coming from different backgrounds.”
Soon after her arrival in Gippsland, she was asked to join a new organisation called the United Muslim Sisters of Latrobe Valley.
Now president of the group, she often addresses groups around the region, seeking to dispel some of the myths about Muslims.
“People have lots of questions. They really want to know about Muslims.
“They want to know about halal food and the do’s and don’ts. “We say ‘Ask anything you would like to’.” This month, she was part of a panel at the Warragul Uniting Church addressing the theme “Courage Doesn’t Have to Roar”.
The group has members from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, so their backgrounds – and practices – are very different.
For practising Muslims, there are five pillars of Islam: giving charity, praying five times a day, belief in God, fasting and the Haj (pilgrimage to Mecca).
Ms Khan prays five times a day but doesn’t cover her head. “For some that means I’m not a good Muslim.” She shrugs. As far as she is concerned, every Muslim must do what is comfortable for them.
Muslims must also abstain from alcohol and un-Halal food.
“My Australian friends make sure there is something we can eat, but when we are out we have to be careful. I love cheesecake but it depends on the gelatine used to make it.”
Asked what she misses about her old life in Pakistan, Ms Khan responds “Family and friends. The dialect. Tiny things. And the food. When we go to Melbourne we eat the traditional food.”
While she would be happy to live in Pakistan or Australia, her daughters Adeena, six, and Aleena, four, definitely regard Australia as home.
“When we go to Pakistan for a holiday, they say ‘When are we going home?’.”