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While you can experience my full story on mobile, it’s best viewed on a desktop computer or tablet.
Rotate device sideways to explore Muzafar’s story.
Windmill Theatre Co’s production of Amphibian is the fictional story of a young refugee who travels from Afghanistan to Australia in search of a better life.
Many refugees take this difficult journey – like me, Muzafar. In 2012 I left Afghanistan with my family to find a new home in Australia.
Would you like to hear my true story?
Now that you’ve learned about my life, you might be thinking ‘what can I do’? Below are some suggestions on how you can learn more about refugees and make a difference in their lives.
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In 1986, in a small village called Khalaj in the Gizab District of Afghanistan, I was born.
My Dad’s name is Taimoor. He worked as a farmer in Afghanistan, but later we moved to Pakistan and he worked collecting firewood on this mountain and selling groceries.
My Mum (she’s on the right!) is called Shehr. She was always very busy keeping our house and looking after our family.
Mum and Dad, and everyone in our family, are part of a group of people called the Hazaras. Hazara people have lived in Afghanistan for many hundreds of years.
When I was only three months old, my whole family moved to a town called Quetta in Pakistan.
There was a war happening in Afghanistan, and my parents didn’t want to be a part of the fighting and violence - so we moved to a whole new country, and that’s where I grew up.
I loved soccer so much, I would play it anywhere - I didn’t need a field.
Sometimes we played in formal competitions, as well as just for fun.
I was a really good player - people always wanted me to be on their team.
Being obsessed with soccer helped me to learn English – I had to learn it properly because I wanted to read the articles about famous players like David Beckham in magazines I found from overseas.
Soccer was almost all I thought about, and all I wanted to do.
The town where we lived, Quetta, was at the bottom of a mountain in Pakistan.
Lots of Hazara people live right near the bottom of the mountain. There are almost half a million Hazara people living in Quetta - so my family were just a few of many.
At night, you could see the city all lit up.
You could do lots of different jobs in Quetta - some people look after sheep.
Other people run roadside stalls where you can grab a snack or groceries on the way to or from school.
And there’s lots of stores like this one, which are just like corner stores you’d find in Australia.
Barbershops seem to be pretty much the same all over the world.
This is an electronic repair shop in Quetta - I think this man has a lot of work to do!
Hazara people are really good at making shoes, so there are a lot of cobblers in Quetta.
A lot of people walk in Quetta, so there are always people around on the streets.
But there’s definitely a lot of cars and motorcycles too.
And even some horses! But I never learnt to ride.
When people want to see each other in Quetta, sometimes they just meet and hang out on a street corner talking.
And it gets really, really, really cold in winter!
I didn’t return to Afghanistan until I was 18 - that was in 2004.
I went back to Afghanistan because it was getting more dangerous in Quetta - there had been bomb blasts, and people I knew had been killed, so I was very sad and scared.
But I also went back to Afghanistan because I wanted to know my home country. And I’m very happy I did, because while I was there I got my first job, I met my wife - Zahra, and my wife gave birth to our daughter, who we called Natiqa.
One of the first things I did when I arrived (of course!), was find a local soccer team that I could join.
This is my team - I’m on the far right in the bottom row. We had fun playing on this team, but things were not all perfect in Afghanistan. There was a war going on.
I was so good at soccer that I became captain of this team full of players from different provinces. Meeting people from across the country, I realised that the war was making some places very dangerous.
The war was being fought by the USA and their allies, against a group called the Taliban – who wanted to be in control of Afghanistan. There were also international organisations like the United Nations working in the country, trying to keep people safe. So I joined their soccer team too!
This is me (I’m bottom left this time) with the United Nations team. It was through the team that I met the people who gave me my first job, which was - you guessed it - working with the United Nations.
I was 19-years-old when I got my job with the United Nations in Afghanistan.
My work was in very remote parts of the country. We would travel out to small villages in Daikundi province - often there were no roads, and it would take many days to get places.
The villages were so remote, sometimes they had no electricity, no phone reception, nothing!
Even though we were so far from the city and it was often very dangerous to make the journey, I thought the country was beautiful.
This is a photo of school girls walking to lessons in Daikundi that I took while I was on a work trip.
My work was dangerous because it was remote, but it was also dangerous because of what I was doing. A lot of it involved confiscating weapons, like these ones.
Mostly, my job involved talking to people like this Commander who ruled a town. I would try to convince him to hand over the weapons he wasn’t allowed to have, to make sure he didn’t use them to hurt people.
Sometimes there were so many guns and weapons, it made me feel very nervous being around them, but I knew we were doing important work. Even when I was scared, I felt good because I was doing essential work for my country. And I met so many amazing people as part of my job.
I was also happy because I used money from my salary to buy a camera, and I have been taking photos ever since. Photography became one of my most favourite things, like soccer.
Things were getting worse for me and my family in Afghanistan. We were being threatened because we are Hazara people and because of the work I did with organisations like the UN.
I decided it would be best if we went back to Quetta, in Pakistan, but things weren’t much better there. Just a few days after we arrived back, there was a series of deadly explosions in the town.
After that first attack, lots of Hazara people decided to stay out in the street and protest that our community wasn’t being kept safe.
They sat out all day and all night for more than three whole days, trying to bring attention to the horrible attacks.
There were hundreds of people protesting - we blocked the streets.
We were all very sad that our friends and family had been injured and killed, but we knew it was important to keep protesting peacefully.
We were protesting because we wanted the Pakistan Government to protect Hazaras from attacks. We wanted to feel safe.
Eventually, after days of protest, the Government promised it would make some changes to try and help our community.
The protests had been so strong, but the Government didn’t really make many effective changes.
It wasn’t long before there were more explosions in Quetta, and more people were hurt. I knew that it wasn’t safe for us there anymore. My family and I had to leave, again, and we couldn’t go back to Afghanistan this time. Now, we were refugees.
Other people I knew had already fled the danger in Pakistan, so I decided to follow in their footsteps. We wanted to make it to Australia - a country we knew was safe, but we knew we couldn’t go there without first waiting for permission from the Australian Government.
We couldn’t wait in Pakistan though - it was too dangerous. So, we headed in the direction of Australia to wait out our time as refugees nearby. First, we flew to Malaysia, and from there we headed to Indonesia by boat.
Taking this journey was very difficult.
We were citizens of Afghanistan, not of Pakistan, and we didn’t have permission to travel from Pakistan to other countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.
But, we were scared for our lives, so in order to make the trip I paid people smugglers to help us. We paid more than $7,000 for each of my family members who took the journey, and we were given false passports.
At every stop along the way, we were very worried. In Malaysia we had to hide in the bush at night before we got on the speedboat. In Indonesia we had to run ashore from the boat without being seen.
It was only once we were in Indonesia that we could tell people our real names again, and begin to make applications to see if we would be allowed, eventually, to live in Australia.
A few days after we arrived by boat in Indonesia, we met my Mum in the town where she had been living since fleeing Pakistan many months before.
That town is called Cisarua and it was our new temporary home. We were anxious there, because we didn’t know how long it would be before we were given permission to come to Australia – we knew that most refugees wait for years.
But, even while we were waiting there, we met some amazing people, and together we did some amazing things.
At first, life in Indonesia seemed very strange to us. All the food was different to what we were used to back home.
The weather was different too, and the way people behaved was different. But I still wanted to talk with the people from Indonesia - I knew they were good people.
The living conditions were hard as well. When you are a refugee, you have no rights. You can’t go to school and you can’t work - so you get very, very bored.
And because I couldn’t work, we had very little money. There was eight of my family members there, and we were all living in a very small house.
It was all we could afford and it was very cramped. Everyone I knew was in the same situation, so I decided to get everyone together and try to do something positive for our community.
Through the school, and through things like soccer (I still loved soccer!), I made many wonderful friends in Indonesia.
We were all in a hard situation, but working together made our lives a little easier.
All of these people were like me and my family - they had applied to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to be allowed to live in a safe country like Australia.
We were all in it together, waiting to get some news about our applications.
After two years, my family was given permission to come to Australia. We were happy, but we were also sad because we were leaving our friends behind and leaving them to keep waiting and waiting.
In 2015, my wife, my daughter, and I arrived in Australia. We landed in Sydney, and then flew to Adelaide - and that is where we live now.
It was a long journey, but this is the end. We are finally safe. We are finally home.
We felt very lucky to come to Adelaide, because we already had friends here. We had met Jolyon and his wife Caroline in Indonesia.
When refugees are given permission to settle in Australia, they are given some help to start them off. This house was found for us, and I was given advice on work and study.
We’ve made a lot of friends in Adelaide, and now my daughter is at school and making even more friends.
And we’ve visited all Adelaide’s icons like the Malls’ Balls. I love exploring the city in between studying at university and sharing stories from my journey with people like you.
And we’ve also discovered the beach. Australia is a very beautiful country.
Now that you’ve learned about my life, you might be thinking ‘what can I do’? Below are some suggestions on how you can learn more about refugees and make a difference in their lives.
Learn
Get the facts on refugees with this resource from the Refugee Council of Australia, including why people leave their homes, and what challenges they face once they settle in Australia. You can learn more about my life as a refugee in Indonesia, and the Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre in the documentary The Staging Post. Or you can read The New Yorker article – one of the references that inspired playwright Duncan Graham as he wrote Amphibian.
Engage
Settling down in your new home in Australia is challenging for many reasons, but anyone can help refugees feel welcome. Contact your local refugee associations and find out about how you can be involved, whether it be through attending community events or becoming a volunteer. Invite a local group of refugees to your school and ask them to share their story, or host an event welcoming new arrivals to your community.
Support
While not everyone can afford to give to refugees, you can contact your local refugee associations and find out what food or material items are in need. You could hold a food drive at your school to collect items. You could even screen The Staging Post as a fundraiser where your donation goes to your local association, the Refugee Council, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, or one of the many other incredible not for profit organisations assisting refugees.
With thanks to Muzafar Ali, Farrin Foster and Love + Money Agency.