The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir (21 page)

‘You can’t move it now. Once you take your hand off a piece it has to stay there.’

Well what the hell do you want me to do, Einstein?
I couldn’t leave it there, I couldn’t move it to another spot—what was I supposed to do, make it float in mid air or something?

‘Okay, you can leave it there,’ he said. We started trading moves and I’m thinking,
What a condescending smarty-pants. Now I’m going to really kick his arse. I’m going to take this guy apart piece by smarty-pants piece. I’m going to
…

‘Checkmate.’

What? In eleven moves? Is that some sort of record?

Terry had told me at lunchtime that when they say ‘checkmate’ it meant they’d beaten you—game over.

My opponent grinned, then sighed: ‘Have you ever played chess before?’

‘Of course I have. Heaps. I just have good days and not-so-good days, and you are lucky ’cos today is probably one of my less good days.’

‘You’ve never played before, have you?’

‘Nuh.’

‘My mum’s not picking me up till five o’clock. Wanna play again?’

‘All right.’

The second time he beat me in nine moves.

His long, scrawny fingers put one of my pieces back on the board and he said, ‘If you did this, that would’ve stopped me from being able to beat you, that’s why I said check. It means I am in a position to win so you have to defend yourself.’

‘Right. And that piece can move anywhere ’cos it’s the queen?’

‘Correct. And that horsey piece is actually called a knight.’

Over the next hour and a half this guy taught me how to play chess. He even showed me a couple of tricks you can use against novice players that hand you the win very quickly.

Five o’clock arrived and I bid farewell to my former chess opponent and now mentor. I rushed out of the room and eagerly asked the others how they went—did I take a bullet for the team for a worthy win?

‘Terry?’

‘Lost.’

‘Phil?’

‘Lost.’

‘Lloydy?’

‘Lost.’

We realised that we could’ve forfeited, kicked a footy around for two hours, and achieved exactly the same result.

My high school also had a lot of volunteer programs with different charity groups and strongly encouraged students to lend a hand as a way of developing empathy and compassion for those less fortunate. The program wasn’t compulsory but my mother was absolutely emphatic about me participating in it.

‘You have to do it. This is just as important as getting good marks.’ Charity work touched a chord with her.

At fifteen I spent a few weeks as a volunteer at a homeless shelter. There was an old man, about sixty, who was withdrawing from drugs. One day he walked past me to get to the bathroom. He didn’t make it. Suddenly he threw up everywhere. The vomit came out of his mouth, his nose and his eyes.
Out of his eyes for god’s sake!
This browny liquid just oozed out of him and a strange odour of rotten fish mixed with diarrhoea filled the air. I had to try my best not to vomit myself. In that instant, which I have never forgotten, I vowed never to touch drugs. So, even later on in my comedy years, when temptation started popping up everywhere, I may have played up till all hours, but I never touched drugs.

I’m pleased to say I never once suffered any racism at school from my mates or fellow students. My only experience of something odd in relation to my nationality came from one of my teachers—a history teacher.

I first sensed something strange in the way he would use particular words that even back then weren’t a hundred per cent okay in the classroom. The first lesson we had with him he held up a dark folder and described its colour as ‘boong black’, and the kids laughed. At the time I knew boong was a derogatory term for Aborigines but I didn’t think too much of it. Maybe he was just trying to get in with us by being politically incorrect to get a laugh, so I let it go. Then in the second lesson we were introduced to the 1850s gold rush in rural Australia, and he gave the class an unusual assignment. We had to make posters from the gold rush period but not just any old posters. He wanted us to create modern-day versions of the anti-Asian posters that the settlers made during the time following the arrival of Chinese prospectors in the goldfields. Basically, the class were told they were to spend an entire Year 9 history period drawing up posters that made fun of Asians.

What the hell is the point of this?
I thought to myself.
What are we learning here?
He showed us pictures of the posters made back in the 1850s with the exaggerated Asian man’s face with buck teeth, slanty eyes and racists slogans: ‘The Yellow Peril will steal your livelihood and rape your women,’ etc., etc. Was I supposed to join in or sit on a stool and pose, like it was a ‘life drawing’ class?

So everyone started working on their posters, and the teacher encouraged us with examples of negative behaviour by Asians throughout history. Then towards the end of the period he asked if anyone wanted to come up the front and show everyone else their poster. So fourteen-year-old boys began getting up in front of the class and were not just allowed, but were encouraged, to say racists things.

I was the only Asian student in the class and I felt terrible. I was especially angry at him for the insidious way he was getting my mates, whom I knew weren’t racist at all, to say things they would never say to me. It wasn’t enough that this guy hated Asians and Aborigines, he was trying to convert the class as well.

It was such a strange situation. I had a whole year of this subject ahead of me and I knew the guy had a problem with the way I looked, my race—something I couldn’t change or do anything about. It never occurred to me to tell another teacher about him, so I did the only thing I knew to do with a teacher: I tried to win his approval. And I think I did. Weirdly, by the end of the year I think the guy quite liked me.

I look back on it now and I believe if I had my time again I would do things differently. A part of me is quite ashamed of my cowardice at the time, for trying to make this guy like me. But mostly I am understanding of a kid who was merely trying to not stand out.

What I’ve found with racism in Australia is that there are isolated and one-off incidents, but wider Australia is appalled by it. The reaction against a racist act is always quick and severe. The Cronulla riots in 2005 are a good example. A few incidents had occurred to set off a group of young men who got drunk, draped the Australian flag on their shoulders and began bashing anyone of Middle Eastern appearance. When the rest of Australia saw this, the wave of disgust was enormous and all-encompassing. I found the same thing to be true on a much smaller scale, like on the football field.

I only ever experienced racism on the field a handful of times, and every time someone made me feel like an outsider, my teammates very quickly let me know I was very much on the inside. When I was playing for my beloved Merrylands Rams, an opposition player called out, ‘I’m going to smash the gook.’ Immediately my mates rallied around me.

‘Number four’s just called Anh a gook!’

The message went around and for the rest of the game my Aussie teammates belted the living daylights out of this guy every time he got the ball.

In my final year, a man from the army came to our school and told us about the army reserves. He said a whole bunch of stuff that I don’t really remember, trying to get us to join. He was a pretty boring guy, and the only time I laughed was when Phil said to me, ‘Man, imagine getting stuck in a foxhole with this guy? You’d listen to that voice drone on for maybe one or two days at the most, and then you’d have to shoot him yourself.’

The monotone army guy then said something that suddenly made him very interesting.

‘You get paid $15 000 a year.’

Fifteen grand a year!

‘For a few weeks of training and a commitment to the Australian armed forces, we’ll pay you $15 000 a year.’

An extra 15K a year would just about double what Mum was bringing home. All of a sudden this big doofus talking to us didn’t seem so bad.
Geez, he isn’t that boring after all, compared to Mr Finch he’s a natural orator.
(Mr Finch was our Religion teacher who dribbled a bit when he talked, but didn’t realise it until his saliva was halfway out, and then he sucked it back into his mouth without breaking his sentence.)

I signed up for an army scholarship as soon as the talk was over. They scheduled an interview for me for the following weekend. For the rest of the afternoon I daydreamed through all my classes as I entertained the thought of joining the army. I got incredibly excited about it. All these years of listening to my dad and uncles talking about the amazingly brave things they did during the war, and here was my chance to out-do them—even though there was no war going on at the time, or at least none that Australia was involved in.
Doesn’t matter, I’ll become one of those special ops guys that go into war zones and saves the president with only his bare hands.
The movie
Navy Seals
had just come out with Charlie Sheen
in the lead role, and I reckoned I would look pretty good in black cargo pants too. The army guy had mentioned free clothes.

I ran home that afternoon and told Mum all about it, how I was going to double our income, and how we were going to be sweet, and how she might as well go out to Kmart right now and buy herself a new dress!

‘You’re not joining the army,’ she said.

‘
What?
Didn’t you hear me?
Fifteen thousand dollars!
’

‘No.’

Mum was adamant. I was adamant too. I decided to go ahead with it and forged her signature on all the forms and enrolled. I figured I’d sort it out later, maybe after they paid me and I showed her the cash; that would bring her around. I’d get her those new shoes she’d been checking out in the latest Target catalogue. I would walk right in through the front door and wave those red loafers around. Once she got a whiff of that genuine imitation leather she’d change her mind and congratulate me for disobeying her.

The enrolment was quite a long process. They screened you for a whole bunch of stuff, from academic marks to IQ to your involvement in sport and athletics, and I passed all of it. Then came the interview.