From next week I will have to spend two weeks in taxpayer funded quarantine in order to be able to enter the country. This is a tiny fraction of the time that many asylum seekers have to spend in confinement. According to the Refugee Council of Australia, the latest average time people spend in detention is 584 days  - and that number is steadily increasing. 

Once asylum seekers leave detention, life is not necessarily easier. While waiting to lodge applications for protection, and while waiting for their applications to be processed, people have had inconsistent access to work rights, study rights, Medicare and income support. Once they receive a Permanent Protection Visas, refugees have to navigate language studies, work, family reunification and, for many, trauma from past experiences in their countries, on their journey to safety and in detention. 

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is an invaluable resource for many asylum seekers and refugees in Australia. The centre relies on community donations and philanthropy for 95 per cent of their funding, but still manage to deliver services to over 1350 asylum seekers at any one time through programs such as material aid, health, legal, employment, casework and a Foodbank.

I would like to raise money for the ASRC by setting myself a challenge to learn basic Persian-Farsi while in quarantine. I will do a little test on Zoom with a friend at the end of my two week quarantine period and  will record it for you all to see! I enjoy learning languages and studied Arabic at university, so Persian is a great next step. Also I hope it will keep me busy in hotel quarantine (there is only one wordle a day). 

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There are 34,161 Persian-Farsi speakers in Australia and a significant number of Persian speaking asylum seekers are living in Australian communities, waiting decisions on their claims for asylum. While Persian may not be their first language, it is a well understood language for many asylum seekers from the region. Persian is the official language of Iran and is very similar to the language known as Dari, spoken by about 25-30% of the population and widely used as a lingua franca in Afghanistan.  

Persian has an important linguistic relationship with many neighbouring languages and a rich literary output that I would love to be able to read in its original form one day. Just one example is Attar's Conference of the Birds - if you've never read it, find it today and enjoy!