Ahmed Zaoui
With news today that Ahmed Zaoui has been arrested in Algeria, I am reposting this piece I wrote 17 years ago when our family first met him. Prefacing it with these thoughts: He is the best of people – a politician who is also a poet and a man of peace. And what just happened in Algeria is what we feared would happen back then. We hope he will be safe.
Let Them Eat Couscous – September 2006
One of the superb things about having a child is that you have to serve up big, complicated ideas in bite-size pieces. Over the past 13 years I’ve learnt that, when I’m stuck about a piece of writing or comedy, the best thing I can do is try to explain it to my daughter. That way, we find the simple version, which is closer to the truth.
So explaining why Ahmed Zaoui is an Enemy of the State and a Threat to National Security has been an interesting exercise for us. Made more interesting because she’s met him.
I met him first (it’s my fault Holy has been consorting with suspected terrorists) when I parlayed myself into Auckland Central Remand prison a couple of years ago, under the guise of taking comedy to alleged criminals, but really just wanting to meet the man who was making news headlines. The reports were fascinating – a Muslim Imam and Algerian politician who fled for his life with his family when he found himself on the new regime’s death list. Not wanted by other countries with political and economic ties to Algeria. Regarded as a Political Prisoner by Amnesty International. Held without charges and without trial in our own backyard. Really? That could happen here?
So I did 9 shows over three days at 8.30 in the morning in a prison gym, just to catch a glance of this Algerian who had arrived in New Zealand in December 2002 (he’d heard we were nice people) with no passport, on the run from a whacko Algerian government that would quite like to kill him, and had ended up first in solitary confinement for almost two years (no books, no radio, someone snuck him a pencil) and then found himself in a prison wing with drug and alcohol rehab prisoners. (Who, by the way, make the best audience. We connected.)
And I did catch a glimpse – bumped into him in the kitchen, which, in his early days of learning English, he insisted on calling the “chicken”. I recognised him from the news. He recognised me from late-night repeat screenings of “Pulp Comedy”. We got on.
When he won a kind of limited freedom – on bail under the wing of a houseful of Catholic priests – we had dinner a few times. Most recently, in September 2006, he invited us again, and particularly wanted to make sure Holly was there. He misses his kids – four boys from her age to late teens – and has a fondness for Holly since she suggested, on one of our visits, that if the NZ government tried to send him out of the country, he was more than welcome to come hide under her bed.
There are some complicated legal issues with Ahmed’s case. I’m not a lawyer, but here goes: He’s been granted Refugee Status (which is good) but then also issued with a Risk Certificate (which is bad). Ahmed’s lawyers aren’t allowed to know what they’ve got against him, as the information is too sensitive. “You’ve done some bad things.” “Like what?” “Can’t tell you. Now defend yourself!”
Anyway, having Refugee Status (good) but also being tagged as a security risk (bad) are two things that don’t go together, so the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security is “preparing to review” the NZ SIS decision on the Risk Certificate.
How long should that take? Years, apparently. There are meetings, there are schedules, there are goal posts being shifted… He arrived in 2002. He’s been living in limbo for four years. At these occasional meetings (often postponed by months) set up to make a decision about his life, his lawyer says the major topic of Crown discussion is who is catering the lunch.
Meanwhile, Ahmed’s wife and four sons are stuck in another country, and the NZ government announced on Thursday that it won’t let them come to visit him here. He’s on bail, and unable to leave New Zealand to visit them. He fills his days with writing poetry, discussing the parallels between Catholicism and Islam with the Brothers, giving lectures at Auckland University, playing soccer… Surprisingly, for a suspected terrorists, he hasn’t actually blown anything up yet, apart from a tin of something he put in the Priory’s microwave. Though I hear he’s a bit dangerous on the football field.
He cooks a lot. He does a fine sweet pastry, and his coffee flavoured with cardamom is delicious, but his speciality is couscous. With honey sauce. It’s Holly’s favourite.
On the drive home after dinner, Holly asked why they were taking so long to decide if he could stay in New Zealand. I told her about the lawyers’ meetings, where they argue mostly about the catering. She asked if Ahmed was at the meetings. I explained it was a “lawyer-only” thing. She said they should let him go to the meetings too, and that he should do the cooking. “If they tasted his couscous, they’d know he was a good man,” she said. And she’s got a very good point. Let them eat couscous.