The Infernal Optimist (2006), by Linda Jaivin

Jaivin’s Zeki tells an horrific story in the way that some outlandish Ali G – Pizza hybrid would tell it, laced with irreverent humour and simple insight that always allows the reader to appreciate the injustice of his position.

Jaivin’s name is associated with erotica in various forms. Her previous works include Dead Sexy (a murder mystery with a sex columnist in the lead role), Rock’n’Roll Babes from Outer Space (aliens land in Sydney in search of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll), 1998’s self-explanatory Eat Me and her autobiographical collection Confessions of an S&M Virgin. The product of many visits to the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre since 2001, The Infernal Optimist, in which the undescribed sex is relegated to a peripheral, mostly comedic, role, constitutes a bold literary departure for the author.

Despite the number of writers who have identified publicly with programs such as A Just Australia: Australians for Just Refugee Programs, there are surprisingly few novels that tackle Australia’s regime of mandatory detention of ‘unlawful non-citizens’. Tom Keneally’s The Tyrant’s Novel (2003) placed its main character inside a detention centre, having escaped an oppressive dictatorship which could only have been Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Morris Gleitzman’s children’s novels Boy Overboard (2002) and Girl Underground (2004) each told fictional stories of great escapes, throughout which the detention regime figured prominently in the experiences of the protagonists. (While Phillip Ruddock largely ignored any popular culture references to refugee policy, his successor as Minister for Immigration, Amanda Vanstone, accused Gleitzman in 2004 of peddling political propaganda, saying without any apparent hint of irony that ‘one of the greatest things we can give kids is a childhood. Let them have a childhood as long as they can without burdening them with some of the difficult decisions that have to be made later in life. There’s no political gain to be had here. Kids don’t vote. Why ruin their childhood?’[1])

Jaivin’s Zeki was born in Turkey, but arrived in Australia at the age of six months. He neglected to properly follow through with his naturalisation; now in his twenties, and as a permanent resident rather than a citizen, he’s fallen foul of section 501 of the Migration Act, which allows the Minister to revoke a person’s visa if s/he spends more than 12 months in jail.[2] Zeki’s habit of stealing, which he views as evidence of ‘Australianness’ given this nation’s convict history, lands him initially in prison for 13 months and then in Villawood indefinitely. There, he awaits deportation to Turkey, where he won’t even know the language. (This mirrors the recent real-life cases of Robert Jovicic, who was deported to Belgrade despite not knowing any Serbian, and despite having lived in Australia since he was two years old, and Fatih Tuncock, who was at one stage facing deportation to Turkey despite having arrived in Australia when he was six.)

Through his ignorance and foolish confidence, Zeki manages to stay positive for most of his time inside Villawood IDC, even as those around him sink into chronic depression (and worse). Presumably, Jaivin wrote the cheeky and untroubled Zeki to appeal to as wide an audience as possible; through him, she manages to recount many of the major IDC incidents that occurred across Australia between 2001 and 2005 without seeming too preachy or political. While in Villawood, Zeki endures a fictional version of the riots, protests, escapes and hunger strikes that dogged Woomera between 2000 and 2002. The Bakhtiyari children, who escaped Woomera in June 2002 and resurfaced in Melbourne, resurface again in Zeki’s Villawood, as did the forty asylum seekers who escaped Villawood in 2001. The accounts of detained children recall the sad case of Shayan Badraie who, after arriving as a five-year-old by boat with his parents in March 2000, developed severe psychological trauma after witnessing hunger strikes and suicide attempts, was separated from his parents for periods and was continously detained despite pleas by medical professionals.[3] The accounts of severe chronic depression are consistent with the work of psychologists Zachary Steel and Derrick Silove and Iraqi medical practitioner (and former detainee) Dr Aamer Sultan, who identified that people in IDCs for more than 3-6 months would invariably develop lasting psychological disorders similar to post-traumatic stress disorder.[4]

All writing is political, in the sense that it is based on the assumptions and biases of its authors, and privileges a particular world-view. The Infernal Optimist is more overtly political than most novels, in the sense that it takes a principled stance against current government policy. Its package is somewhat eclectic; its intended audience is obviously wider than the ‘converted’ to whom, say, Bob Brown preaches in his Memo for a Saner World (2004), and so its aim is to challenge and influence, rather than to merely confirm. Published by HarperCollins’ ‘independent’ Fourth Estate imprint (ultimately owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation since 1990), its cover reveals little of its ‘controversial’ content, as if it somehow hopes to entice readers who wouldn’t otherwise be attracted to a ‘political’ story. The voice of Zeki is ostensibly ‘neutral’ and ‘apolitical’, giving the reader the opportunity to grow into political awareness with him.

There is a nagging inauthenticity to this approach. Jaivin is clearly passionate, and occasionally drops Zeki’s first-person voice to make points Zeki never would. And even if the book’s ‘apolitical’ presentation and Zeki’s ‘neutrality’ were to somehow attract ‘unconverted’ readers, there is the very real chance that the flawed nature of Zeki’s character will make him an object of judgement (‘he’s a criminal! He deserves all the punishment he gets’) rather than the bridge to compassion for asylum seekers, visa overstayers and ‘unlawful non-citizens’ detained in IDCs. (Those who were unable to identify with Amir in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner – and there were a few – will not emphathise with Zeki.)

The presentation of The Infernal Optimist is in stark contrast with that of Miles Franklin Award-winner Andrew McGahan’s next novel, Underground (due out in October). Set in approximately 2020, with the Liberal Party still in power, the War on Terror has assumed gigantic proportions, and is being used to justify a constant State of Emergency whereby Parliament has been disbanded and the Prime Minister has assumed the functions of all three powers of government. Despites its ‘airport novel’ tone, its publisher, Allen & Unwin, is unashamedly targeting the ‘converted’ with a huge ‘guerrilla marketing campaign’ directed at that 'half' of Australians who have been 'waiting' for just such a book.

So The Infernal Optimist isn’t for everyone. Indeed, Zeki’s distinctive and improper vernacular, full of ‘me’ instead of ‘my’, ‘a’ instead of ‘of’, and the consistent misuse of particular words (‘me and me boy had a conversational with Mrs Palmer’; ‘I’m virtuosically outta here’; ‘me snoring made it hard for the others to mediterrate’), may put as many readers off as it charms.

I, for one, was charmed by Zeki’s innocence, his unique colloquialisms, and his plight. But then again, my own awareness of the inhumane horror of the federal government’s refugee policy dates back to 2001-02, and, specifically, newspaper articles by Julian Burnside and (of all people) Gerard Henderson. Jaivin should be commended for attempting to draw attention to a government policy that unapologetically denies individuals basic human rights, goes directly against the spirit of international law, and breaches all standards of common decency and respect for fellow humans. Whether Jaivin influences any readers, which seems to be at least one of her intentions, remains to be seen. [Russell]

[1] Senator Vanstone, quoted in Sue Williams, ‘Vanstone attacks children’s author’, the Australian (Sydney), 3 July 2004, p.5.
[2] Migration Act 1958 (Cth), s.501(2) (‘The Minister may cancel a visa that has been granted to a person if the Minister reasonably suspects that the person does not pass the character test, and the person does not satisfy the Minister that the person passes the character test’); s.501(6)(a) (‘a person does not pass the character test if the person has a substantial criminal record’); s.501(7)(c) (‘a person has a substantial criminal record if the person has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 12 months or more’).
[3] For further information on the Badraie case, see: ABC TV, 4 Corners (13 August 2001); Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Report of an Inquiry into a Complaint by Mr Mohammed Badraie on behalf of his son Shayan regarding acts or practices of the Commonwealth of Australia, Report No.25, 2002.
[4] See for example the Medical Journal of Australia, volume 175, issue 11.