No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison

by Behrouz Boochani

We cannot practise contemplative and sincere theorising in relation to monumental concepts such as death and life if we choose to be dispassionate.

From the very first day their work is valorised: ‘You’re an army here to protect the nation, and these imprisoned refugees are the enemy. Who knows who they are or where they’re from? They invaded your country by boat.’ The situation is completely clear to them – here, in their sights stand their enemies, rounded up from all over the place. My god, you should see the look in their eyes: cold, barbaric, hateful.

Whatever the question, whoever you ask within the prison, the answer is the same: ‘The Boss has given orders.’ Whenever a stubborn prisoner makes inquiries and finds The Boss of that individual who has said ‘The Boss has given orders’ and then confronts that person, that person also responds with ‘The Boss has given orders’. It is just a pointless effort. All the rules, all the regulations, and all the questions about those rules and regulations are all referred back to one person: The Boss. It is astonishing how The Boss also responds with ‘The Boss has given orders’. A long chain ascending through the hierarchy.

Young girls were searching for their dreams within the hearts of men rounded up into groups – so many groups – and being led down a road to the front lines of war.

It needs some time; I mean, it needs sufficient time before the space can fully cultivate an identity, before it can absorb a prison identity, absorb the stench of the bad breath and sweat of the prisoners. The space eventually morphs into a prison. The prison takes the colour white; the floor of the prison is white; the fences are white.

The border-industrial complex is insidious and pervasive such that all citizens become complicit in different ways. Therefore, in order to be successful, activism must involve tactics and strategies that directly aim to dismantle the system.

The term ‘kyriarchy’ is a neologism first introduced by radical feminist theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to represent intersecting social systems of domination and oppression.

In contrast to the thriving ‘refugee industry’ that promotes stories to provide exposure and information and attempts to create empathy (if that is at all possible), Behrouz recounts stories in order to produce new knowledge and to construct a philosophy that unpacks and exposes systematic torture and the border-industrial complex.