Afghani refugee the ‘luckiest man’
To Afghani refugee Ali Mohammad Haidari, New Zealand is the lucky country that opened its doors to him and his family during their darkest hour. Now he considers himself to be the ‘‘luckiest’’ man.
For this reason, he says, every day he ‘‘gives back’’ to his new home by working to rebuild Christchurch.
In 2001 a fishing boat, built to hold around 40 people, was crammed with 438 asylum seekers bound for Australia. One of those on board was Haidari’s ‘‘big brother’’, a Hazara man who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban killed their father.
The voyage was horrific for the refugees. The boat’s engine failed and a storm hit. When all seemed lost, the refugees were rescued by a Norwegian container ship, the MV Tampa, but the Australian government refused them entry to Australian waters.
This sparked an international diplomatic row, known as the Tampa affair, with the refugees as political pawns. Of the 438 refugees, 131 were later granted asylum in New Zealand, with the majority resettling in Christchurch in 2002.
If Haidari thinks hard he can still see his childhood home in a small village in Afghanistan. When he was 7 years old, he left it behind and fled to Iran with his mother and brothers after his father was killed by the Taliban. Then tragedy struck again when his mother became ill and died.
The memories are painful. ‘‘My brother, Ali Dad Haidari, his life was a struggle, coming through with the Tampa. He was so sick on the boat, everything he ate came straight back out. He was floating there for weeks. He said he opened his eyes and saw water, the boat shaking, there is nothing he could do but close his eyes,’’ he says.
‘‘He told me it felt like he was reborn when he got to New Zealand. He was lucky to be alive. If New Zealand had not accepted him I would not be here.’’
Before he came to New Zealand, Haidari says, he ‘‘wasn’t really living. Once we fled Afghanistan due to war we lived as unrecognised refugees in Iran with no hope of a better future under harsh conditions.’’
In Iran, aged around ‘‘8 or 9’’, he worked on a construction site.
There was a civil engineer who would often visit to oversee the work. His name was Ali, too.
‘‘He’d turn up with a flash car, dressed up and looking clean,’’ recalls Haidari. ‘‘I thought, one day, if I get the opportunity, I’ll be an engineer . . . But when I was a kid there were no thoughts about the future; on a daily basis it was just whether you were going to live.’’
In July 2004, with Unicef, orphaned Haidari came to New Zealand to be reunited with his older brother. He and the other refugees went straight to the Mangere Refugee Processing Centre, where they stayed for six weeks, learning a ‘‘little bit of English’’ and Kiwi culture.
From there he travelled to his new home, Christchurch.
On his first school day at Hagley Community College he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
‘‘I had to fill in a form, there was no second thought, I said I wanted to be a civil engineer. The guy was like ‘do you know how to spell it?’ Engineering was the only word I could spell.’’
Learning English was difficult. ‘‘I couldn’t communicate with anyone really for six months.’’
He talked with his feet and joined Christchurch football clubs. ‘‘We used to play in the desert with bare feet. When we came to New Zealand, we played on the grass and it was incredible.’’
He studied hard, finished high school and went to Auckland.
‘‘In Auckland I studied civil engineering and did my degree. I graduated in 2012 and started a job in Christchurch with Fulton Hogan
. . . as a design engineer working on different sites of the rebuild, doing wastewater, stormwater, horizontal infrastructure.’’
He also worked in New Brighton, helping in the most hard-hit areas affected by the Christchurch earthquakes.
This year he has been working as a site engineer on the CNC Alliance, the Christchurch Northern Corridor. The $240 million motorway project is a road of national significance.
Haidari is living a life he once thought impossible.
‘‘It was a struggle, being a refugee and coming to New Zealand as a kid; I still managed to pull myself up, get a degree and a job. I think I am one of the luckiest people here,’’ he says.
In New Zealand, he says, refugees should never forget where they came from but should ‘‘make the most of life here’’.
‘‘You want to pay back, by graduating, by becoming a someone in a society who is useful, to give back to the community. Now is your time to shine. A bright future is here.’’
The vast majority of the Tampa refugees who came to Christchurch in 2001 had stayed, he says.
Haidari, who has now lived in Christchurch for 13 years, says the.community is close and meets regularly.
For him, New Zealand was never a back door to Australia. Instead, it was the front door to a new life.
‘‘Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I was still in Afghanistan or Iran,’’ he says. ‘‘I’m lucky . . . Of all the people in the world, I am one of the lucky ones to be here.’’