Joseph Heller was very particular about what is, and what is not, a catch-22 situation. He insisted it must be “perfectly, cruelly illogical, with life-or-death peril”.

Moz Azimi has a good case to argue that he fits those criteria.

The young Kurdish man who spent nearly six years on Manus Island was on track to be accepted for resettlement by the US. He was brought to Port Moresby for his first interview, where the US insists the process must be carried out.

For reasons Azimi doesn’t understand, they said he had to go back to Manus before they would let him be brought back for the second interview. But he was so traumatised by what he had experienced there that he could not endure returning.

'Six years and I didn't achieve anything': inside Manus, a tropical purgatory Read more

As a result he lives in limbo in Moresby, taken in by a sympathetic local family, with few other means of support. He must be interviewed in the Papua New Guinea capital to have a chance of escape, but it cannot happen unless he returns to Manus Island first.

Azimi is one of many individuals caught up in Australia’s offshore processing network whose lives are on hold thanks to “perfectly, cruelly illogical” circumstances.

They include a refugee who wants to live on Manus Island, but can’t, and another who has permission to go to the US, but doesn’t want to leave his disabled toddler, from his marriage with a Manusian woman.

‘I have nightmares every night’

Moz Azimi lives in Port Moresby now.

“They called me a few times but I didn’t accept their offer to go back,” he says of the US assessors. “I cannot stay in detention. Because I was traumatised terribly when I was on Manus.”

Down one of the city’s suburban backstreets, the young Kurdish man lives with a Papua New Guinean family who have taken him in as one of their own.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kurdish refugee Moz Azimi with a framed photograph of Australian advocate Christina Combe, who passed away earlier this year. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

“A pastor introduced me to them and I paid for a few months because they didn’t know me,” he says.

“[But then] I didn’t have any money and I packed my stuff and talked with – I call her Mum – and said I should go … back to Manus. And all of them came around me and said we will never let you go back to Manus.

“I just cried. They said you brought a smile to our family.”

Azimi, who has been in Papua New Guinea for more than six years now, says he was hit with a metal pole by a PNG officer when authorities forcibly emptied the detention centre at the end of 2017’s 24-day standoff.

“I can’t remember a lot from that time. When they moved us forcibly to East Lorengau, after a few days I got a stammer,” he says.

Azimi became close friends with an Australian advocate, Christina Combe, who passed away earlier this year, and who also supported him when he decided to stay in Port Moresby.

“When I was listening to her voice I felt I was very lucky.”

Azimi sits in his room upstairs at the family’s small motel. His belongings are neatly stacked around the edges of the wall, and a guitar sits on the bed. On a small table is a framed photo of Combes.

“When I play music it helps me to not harm myself or think about many terrible things. I have nightmares every night, but I think playing guitar is helping.”

Because he refused to return to Manus Island, Azimi says he was cut off from the financial and medical support provided to refugees. Now he lives a largely anonymous life in the Port Moresby community, but isn’t legally able to work, and struggles to afford healthcare.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Moz Azimi plays guitar in his room in a motel run by a Port Moresby family. Azimi refuses to return to Manus Island because of the trauma he suffered there. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

“I think I cannot go to other provinces [either], and if I go to the airport I think they will arrest me,” he says.

For now he says he has accepted this is his life. If he won’t go back to Manus Island he can’t continue the process for US resettlement and is destined to eke out an existence in Port Moresby.

‘They’re just kids. They’re innocent’

Iranian refugee Paul Papi is leaving PNG for the US, but wants to take his son with him.

Guardian Australia meets Papi shortly after church, at the Lodge 10 hotel in a leafy part of Boroko, Port Moresby. No one is allowed guests in their room so we sit on a small leather sofa, behind a dividing wall and in earshot of Paladin guards.

A former Sunni Muslim and now devout Christian convert, Papi is dressed in a shirt and tie, a small manicured beard and grey hair belying his 38 years. He carries Cyrus, his “sunny boy”, who is 13 months old, and not yet walking or even crawling.

Papi met his wife on Manus Island, like dozens of his fellow detainees.

He and Judith had Cyrus and moved to Port Moresby. Then they learned he had disabilities. Medical documents seen by Guardian Australia say Cyrus has suspected clubfoot, and Erb’s palsy in his left arm.

“It’s his bone, it’s twisted,” says Papi. “But the doctors here can’t do anything, just support his leg ... Nothing else. I don’t know [if surgery can fix it]. He needs to go to Australia or another country because of his problems.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Thirteen-month-old Cyrus needs comprehensive medical treatment for his disabilities. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

Papi takes off the brace bandages to show Cyrus’s hand and foot. The toddler giggles and grabs at his father’s dangling tie. He’s happy now, but Papi thinks his son is in pain.

Refugees at Lodge 10 are waiting to go to the US for permanent resettlement, a process which can take months from when they are first told they’ve been accepted. Papi is at the end of that process and is expecting to go to the US any day.

He says he was “proud” to be going to the US but doesn’t want to leave until he knows that Cyrus can either come with him or get medical treatment in Australia.

“I have been to the [local] hospital, the one at PIH,” he says. “But they said they are not caring for the refugees’ kids, just the refugees. They’re just kids. They’re innocent. I made a mistake but he didn’t make a mistake.”

Cyrus’s mother, Judith, says she would like to follow her husband and child to another country, but failing that, she wants them both to go. Judith has signed an affidavit to say as much.

“I’m not worried about me, I’m worried about my son because he’s got a big problem with his bones,” she says later.

“I want him to be fine, well. I know that my husband can take him to Australia or USA and they can operate on his bones. I want my son to walk and stand and crawl, because now he can’t.”

Judith, who speaks with Guardian Australia via videolink assisted with some translations by Papi, says she met her husband four years ago on Manus Island.

“I trust him and I know him very well, that he can look after my son,” she says. “He can give a good future to my son. He also protects my son, not like my family do.”

She says she won’t go back to Manus Island even if Papi and Cyrus leave because her family mistreated her.

Play Video 0:34 Child of Manus Island refugee has disabilities and 'needs to go to Australia' – video

The US state department told Guardian Australia a refugee can file a “follow to join” petition to have a family member resettled with them after they arrive, but the process can take months.

‘It’s so difficult to have a child with no father’

The cases of refugee men who have met local women and had children has caused issues on multiple fronts. The number of children born to these relationships isn’t clear, and reported to be anywhere between seven and 39.

The PNG authorities have also been slow at providing adequate documentation for the children, prompting concerns over their future rights as citizens.

And some members of the Manus community have said the relationships have “destroyed” the fabric of the remote and traditional community, especially in the cases where the father has left.

While a handful of the fathers remain in Papua New Guinea, many have gone, leaving their wives and children behind.

Helal Uddin didn’t want to leave PNG.

The Bangladeshi asylum seeker made headlines in 2018 after he was deported back home only to smuggle his way back to PNG, to reunite with his wife, Alice Michael, and their young son, Mohammad.

Now two, Mohammad fidgets as he clings to his mother, sitting under shelter in a crude outdoor kitchen behind her family’s small shop in Lorengau, Manus Island.

“Mohammad likes dancing and playing a lot, he can’t stay quiet,” she says, laughing.

On cue, the young boy starts dancing around the benchtop, giggling.

“He knows his dad,” Michael says. “When we call to talk to his dad [about] what he’s eating, he tells his dad everything. When people asked him where is your dad, he used to tell them, my dad is in jail.”

The couple met when Michael was working in a nearby shop which has since burned down. They married and she says the community didn’t treat her husband as an outsider.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alice Michael and Helal Uddin with their son Mohammed in happier times. Uddin, a Bangladeshi refugee, is currently in prison in Port Moresby. Photograph: Supplied by Helal Uddin

“Then when I got pregnant with this little boy I went back to [my] island, but he called me to come back so we lived together,” she says.

But one day Uddin came and told her he had to go. “He said they’ve come and told him they’re bringing him back,” she recalls. “They put him in the cell and the next day took him to the airport.”

Some months later Uddin found his way back to them, by boat from Indonesia. Michael met him in a neighbouring province and they returned to her home island. But he was discovered and jailed in Port Moresby’s Bomana prison.

Michael tears up and says she doesn’t get to see Uddin but she does speak to him most days.

How many more people must die on Manus before Australia ends indefinite detention? | Behrouz Boochani Read more

“Helal is good, whatever he says he will do he will do it, he never lies,” says Michael. “I would like [people] to understand that it’s so difficult to have a child with no father … I want Mohammad’s dad to stay with us so he can help with the looking after of Mohammad.”

Uddin has pleaded guilty to illegally entering PNG, and paid a 2,000 kina fine. He has served more than the three months handed down, but remains at Bomana because there is no immigration accomodation available, his lawyer Agnes Peter says.

Peter says Uddin will likely be sent back to Bangladesh but is confident he’ll be allowed to return on a working resident visa. It’s the visa he should have gone for previously, on the basis of his Lorengau shop, she says. He can’t apply from within PNG.

They are now organising paperwork with PNG business authorities, and Peter says she has been told by immigration department officers that they see no reason why they wouldn’t approve his application.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A supermarket in Lorengau, the main town on Manus Island. Photograph: Helen Davidson/The Guardian

…

Of the thousands of people Australia sent to Manus Island under its six-year-long offshore processing regime, the few who are left – like Azimi, Papi and Uddin – are complex cases in ways likely never envisioned by the scheme’s architects.

Australia’s Coalition government maintains that the hundreds of people brought to Australia for medical reasons will be sent back to Manus Island and Nauru, but it also refuses to accept a longstanding offer from New Zealand to resettle 150 refugees annually. At least one government MP has publicly opposed this stance.

There is no apparent solution to return those who have not been found to be refugees but who refuse to be sent back to their country of origin. Iran, for example, will not take involuntary returns of its citizens.

The US will not reach the threshold of 1,250 resettlement offers it offered, and there is no other third-country option on the horizon despite years of searching.

As the Australian government faces increasing pressure to end the system, it’s also becoming increasingly apparent that the system was implemented without a complete exit plan.