“Sometimes we need to make our own bridge.”
Mostafa Azimitabar gestures at the painting behind him. A sweeping landscape, a strong, and grand mountain stands tall with a subtle face buried in the ridges. A chasm rips through the foreground of the two metre canvas, and a small red toothbrush bridges the gap in between.
This painting is a representation of the unwavering hope that lived inside him while he was held in detention centres for the best part of a decade. This is the truth for thousands of refugees seeking asylum in Australia, who are unjustly and inhumanely treated by our broken system.
Mostafa ‘Moz’ Azimitabar and Farhad Bandesh are two Kurdish creatives who were finally freed from detention after being imprisoned for almost eight years. While they were detained, they built a close friendship rooted in the foundation of their shared love for art and music.
Angus McDonald premiered his documentary, Freedom Is Beautiful at the Sydney Film Festival. This film follows the journey of Moz and Farhad after they found their freedom, and how they retained extraordinary resilience and optimism in the face of inhumanity.
We often don’t get to see such a holistic perspective of what people go through when they leave a war-torn country, but the film offers audiences an extraordinary glimpse into the lives of two strong, gentle, and kind people who have been through something inexplicable.
Talecia Vescio, Junkee: Moz, you described your life at the time as the size of a single room. There were hundreds of people in a small and dirty room, and the ceilings were painted with spiderwebs. Would you be comfortable sharing more about your time there?
Moz: Of course. I learned about torture when I was in my homeland, how the Iranian Government was torturing political activists. I was an activist in Iran. And when I was exiled to Manus [Island], I could see similarity of those kinds of torture.
Everything was white. Whenever I wanted lunch, dinner, breakfast — the reflection of sunlight on the sand, everything [looked] white. For 24 days, they left us alone — no food, no water, no security. We dug in the ground for water. We drank water from the well, we sometimes had water from rain — they even took the gutter so we couldn’t access the rain that was coming from the gutter. They sprayed poison inside the well, so that we would give up. But we didn’t.
In the documentary, I was really moved by something you said. You said you learned to be friends with your pain. You also said that painting was your friend, and it took you to freedom. Could you please explain that concept further?
Moz: I think it’s part of my spirit that I can be friends with objects, with things that are not alive. We give them life. I learned it from my childhood, I grew up in Kurdistan. Nature in Kurdistan is so beautiful — a lot of mountains, hills. I learned from my family. There was a big huge rock beside a river, for example, and I could see images in [it] — I could see eyes. And we were just talking with nature. So when I was in detention, I became friends with my toothbrush. It’s funny, I love it. It’s very sad, but it’s beautiful. I see everyone smile at this story.
The small story of the toothbrush is very unique in my life. It helped me to get through a lot of difficulties. Dragging a toothbrush on paper or newspaper, I could see the colour was not white. I was a house painter. I love colours. So whenever I dragged a toothbrush on the paper, I thought, ‘I’m going to paint like, imagine I am in my homeland in Kurdistan, and I’m painting.’ It helped me not to think about the fences.
Farhad Bandesh (left) and Mostafa Azimitabar (right)
Farhad, something that I really noticed about you in the documentary, is that you seem to really love people. You love helping people, boosting them up and giving them confidence. Have you always felt really connected to others, and would you say that this feeling was heightened when you were detained?
Farhad: I think it comes from my childhood — I care about the people around me. I saw many refugees in detention who were really down and trying to find a private space to be themselves and cry for what happened to them. I had the same experience. I had the same pain. But I found myself to be really strong and fight for these things and encourage people around me to be strong as well.
You mentioned in the documentary that people you met in detention called you Lion Farhad, because you were strong for others. There was a moment in the documentary when you’re on the phone to your friend Don, who was ready to give up his hope, but you stayed on the phone with him. He began to believe your words of encouragement and you said “that’s the face! That’s resistance! That’s the way you fight for freedom!” After you hung up, you broke down. Can you recall a time you couldn’t handle the responsibility of being Lion Farhad?
Farhad: It was really difficult when I was talking to Don. I was traumatised but I could deeply feel him and other people, because I had the same. I was in the same situation and I couldn’t manage myself after the phone call. I cried. And I will cry if I watch it [now] because it comes from our nature, which is beautiful. We humans sometimes need to cry.
Moz, you said you were forced to endure over 400 pat down searches, even after expressing that you weren’t comfortable being touched by police officers, and that it was a trigger for you. And you developed a stammer as a result of physical abuse. What are the lasting effects from that time that you still carry with you?
I was there for medical treatment, and instead I received mental and physical torture. Officers harassed me all the time, they wanted to target my resistance so that I gave up.
Moz: It was the 24th of November 2017. I will never forget that. They attacked us. One of the police hit my shoulder [from] behind me — I didn’t see him, so I could get away from it. Whenever I saw Papua New Guinean Police, I couldn’t breathe, I thought they were going to attack me again. And that is the PTSD. Whenever they searched my body, I thought, ‘something is going to happen to me.’
They trapped me, like a game. I had to visit a dentist [and] they said, ‘you have to be searched, otherwise you cannot see the dentist.’ My eyes are very sensitive, and whenever I wanted to visit an optometrist, each time [I had to] do the pat search. When I wanted to visit a friend behind the glass, I had to do a pat search. When [I was finished] they did [another] pat search of my body.
I was there for medical treatment, and instead I received this mental and physical torture. Officers harassed me all the time, they wanted to target my resistance so that I gave up. Resistance is when we decide to do something, we are going to be alive. We don’t want to die. We don’t want to give up.
You said in the documentary that they would offer Panadol as a solution to serious medical issues. And you felt that they were almost making fun of you?
Moz: Absolutely. Every day, they told us, ‘go back to your country’. I remembered that I survived the way the Iranian government treated me. I survived coming to Australia. They took me to Manus and I got massively tortured. And I survived.
The more they tortured me — the security, the officers, the system — the more I got close to people. And I thought the best people are outside this detention. So I imagined that the room is not 20 metres — [instead] the room is 200 kilometres and 1000s of people in Australia are with me. I don’t want to give up.
Kurdish people, when they’re born, they become political, even if they don’t know it.
I would love to know your experience as creatives during that time. You said you used your creativity as a form of resistance, and also to connect and bridge language barriers. What challenges did you overcome to stay creative?
Farhad: I was growing up in war between Iran and Iraq and there [weren’t] any toys. We [were] struggling for water, food… and I had to create something. I learned to create, you know, in nature. So when I was in detention, I did the same I think. I tried to create something to move me from this situation to another world.
I think sometimes it comes from our culture. Kurdish people, when they’re born, they become political, even if they don’t know it. Musicians — they write political songs. The artists, painters — they paint political paintings. If something is happening in the community, I think it’s the duty of the artists and musicians and poets to do something first.
Yeah, I really love that. Political art and political writing is so important because it’s a great way to communicate with people who may not understand what’s going on. And just the feeling of creating something beautiful in the face of pain.
There is not a small paper in front of me. Now, I paint on big canvases, two metre long canvases. [In one painting] the nature I painted from my memory [and] I put a toothbrush as a bridge. There could be a lot of difficulties in life, but sometimes we need to make our own bridge.
Freedom is Beautiful will screen as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. A new screening date has been added on July 30, as the July 29 screening has sold out. Buy tickets here.
This interview was conducted by Junkee Producer & Presenter Talecia Vescio. Find her on Instagram as @taleciavescio if you want to be friends.
Editor’s note: This interview has been slightly edited for clarity.