Sarwar was the only one of this 2012 group to have missed out on resettlement in Australia. Credit:Michael Bachelard A year and a half later, all the people who were sitting with Sarwar outside their villa that day have made it to Australia. He has not. In September last year, Australia rejected his application. There is no right of appeal. Refusing the boat option might avoid a dangerous sea voyage, but choosing resettlement has its own reefs and carries its own risk of sinking without trace. Sarwar, like many ethnic Hazaras, is twice a refugee. A shepherd from the village of Baghe Chahr in the war-torn Afghan province of Oruzgan, he fled over the hills on the back of a donkey one night in 2000 after the Taliban hacked him on wrist and ankle with a sword for being a ''kafir'', or infidel. They had earlier killed his brother. Sarwar went to Quetta, Pakistan. But in 2010, as the security situation there became unbearable for Hazaras, he fled again, heading towards Australia, promising his wife, two sons and four daughters he would send for them when he was settled.

Once in Indonesia, Sarwar tried three times to go to Australia by boat. Each voyage failed. He endured a year inside the Belawan immigration detention centre in Medan, by some accounts Indonesia's worst. He was locked in a tiny cell for long periods, occupying himself by cooking for 160 inmates. Unknown to him, his daughter, Sadia Batul, had made it to Australia by boat. He was also unaware that his eight-year-old son, Sher Ali, had died in a bomb blast in Quetta, one of 11 people killed. Only months later, in December 2011, having been declared by the UNHCR to be a genuine refugee, did Sarwar hear the news. ''Outside [the prison] I come,'' he says in his halting English. ''I call, my wife, she says, 'Your little son, Sher Ali … is dead.' After that I am very [upset].'' His friend Farmanullah Zazai cuts in: ''When he heard his son was dead, the news, he mental, his mind, brain, not working.''

''For three months,'' Sarwar adds. Daughter Sadia says Sarwar could not speak. She had never seen her father cry, now he did little else. The refugee service providers were sympathetic. ''UNHCR is come, they say, 'I am so sorry. I am so very sorry','' Sarwar says. ''They say, 'Be patient, we will send you to New Zealand.' But then I wait, wait, wait. Then I say, 'I'll go by boat'.'' I made my trip to Cisarua, nine months after little Sher Ali died, when Sarwar was waiting for that boat. My visit was prompted by another tragedy. On June 21, 2012, a boat carrying 207 people sank on the way to Christmas Island, with the loss of 96 lives. The Australian Parliament was in uproar; Julia Gillard again proposed her Malaysia solution but it ran aground on Tony Abbott. Ms Gillard appointed the Houston panel and I was sent to gauge the mood in Cisarua.

The two men I interviewed that day who could speak English, Imayat Ali and Hameed Ullah, said they were still determined to take the illegal route. Sarwar was a silent figure among a large group who sat nearby and nodded. And then they asked my advice. For Sarwar at least, what I said - no doubt about the terrible dangers of the sea voyage - was enough to make him wait. At first, the waiting seemed to go well. In October 2012, he was interviewed by the Australian embassy for resettlement. He mentioned his encounter with a journalist during that interview, a revelation that seemed to anger his Australian interviewer. But the man promised Sarwar he would have an answer in four months. In the 11 months following he heard nothing. As time dragged, in Quetta his other son, Hadi, 18, disappeared. Nobody knows whether he is alive or dead. Sarwar's wife has had a breakdown.

''I call my wife. She says, 'Who are you?','' Sarwar says. ''I say, 'I am your husband'. She says, 'You are not my husband. If you are my husband, where is your son?' I say, 'My son is there with you'. She says, 'He's not in here. He's with you'.'' Hadi was 15 the last time his father saw him. Last September, a letter arrived from the Australian Immigration Department, emblazoned with the words, ''People our business''. It was a rejection letter. There was not - there never is - any explanation, only the line, ''I was not satisfied that you met the relevant criteria'', followed by a series of numbers signifying clauses in the Immigration Act. It was signed illegibly by someone identified as ''Position Number 5928'', a senior migration officer. I know all these things because Sarwar called me recently. He remembered me and found my number, but this time he wanted more than advice, he wanted help.

I found him a refugee lawyer in Australia to talk to. The lawyer said there was no right of appeal. The UNHCR says it will try to resettle him elsewhere, perhaps Canada, New Zealand or America. But he wants to join daughter Sadia in Australia, where she is now a permanent resident, living with a husband Sarwar has never met. He also has a grandchild - Sadia was pregnant on the boat in 2011 - and another is on the way. Sarwar and I met at the offices of the UNHCR. Clandestinely (journalists are not allowed to interview people there), we look at the photograph from our first meeting in Cisarua. He looks at all the faces who flank him. All went by boat; all are now are in Australia and living on various kinds of visas. Sarwar has seen many others granted refugee status through the UNHCR process. Some he says were agents for people smugglers. His experience tells him that, in this process, it pays to lie. Since Australia's final crackdown on boat arrivals, an increasing number of asylum seekers in Indonesia pin their hopes on legal resettlement. But to the thousands of those waiting, the process appears interminable and little better than random. Sarwar says he stayed in Indonesia because of me. But he has no anger. ''My luck is bad,'' he says.

But once again he is asking for advice. Loading ''Now I am thinking where I go? Not go back in Afghanistan. They kill me. But every day here I am killed by waiting.'' As usual, I have nothing to offer.