Given pens, Ahoora draws.



They are not the conventional drawings of a seven-year-old child: he draws pictures of children on fire, of sharks circling small terrified boys, of crying faces behind bars.

One of Ahoora’s drawings.

Seven-year-old Ahoora, a refugee, has spent most of his life on Nauru. He arrived on the island as a three-year-old and has only traumatic memories of his life before, and of his journey to Australia.

Hs time on the tiny island has been a further trauma. He is unwell often, succumbing to regular fevers and breaking out in rashes. He cannot go to school on Nauru where he says he was bullied on the one day he went. He wets himself as a reaction to the threat of violence from older children and, because of his disrupted education has not learned to read and write.

He has spent years being heavily medicated with antidepressants.

Ahoora lives with his family in a tent inside the Australian-run regional processing centre.

Over more than five years, he has watched his father deteriorate into listless depression.

He has seen his mother, who has made numerous suicide attempts, write letters, daubed with her own blood, to the Australian Border Force, begging for help.

And he has watched his older brother sew his lips together in protest.

Almost every night, when he falls asleep, Ahoora wakes screaming.

“In my nightmares, darkness surrounds me,” he says. “My mum is not with me. I feel like she’s abandoning me and leaving. Then I see blood everywhere.”

“In my dreams, I keep on dying … everywhere, everything is constantly filled with blood, the floor and the walls.”

A succession of psychiatrists and doctors who have attempted to treat Ahoora have consistently reported it is his detention on Nauru that is damaging his mental health. He has a series of behavioural tics and, when frightened, chews his clothing until he disintegrates it. He is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder exacerbated by his continued detention and the absence of any hope for his future.

“Ahoora is a seven-year-old child under deep psychic suffering along with his family, especially his mother. He has not adapted to life in Nauru, and this lack of adaptation might be worsening his mental health issues ... I evaluate he is unlikely to improve in this current situation,” a doctor wrote this year.

During a meeting with a psychiatrist, Ahoora became emotional talking about his nightmares. The psychiatrist proposed he draw instead.

Seven-year-old Ahoora has lived in the Australian-run regional processing centre for refugees on Nauru since he was three.

“Ahoora made three meaningful drawings. The first drawing showed a child crying under the sun, in a very hot place, stuck in a fire. The second one showed two children in the sea very afraid of being eaten by a shark. The third one showed a face screaming. Ahoora described the drawings and told me these were scenes he sees in his nightmares.

“During subsequent appointments, Ahoora spontaneously took colouring pens and began to draw. His drawings continued to express scenes seen in his nightmares: a sad child burning in a fire; children afraid of sharks while in the sea; a shark having its blood sucked by a ghost; blood and darkness.”

But Ahoora’s deterioration is part of a broader, familial decline.

In situations of extreme and prolonged stress, family structures fray.

Incident reports from Nauru consistently describe children who lose all respect for their parents’ authority – having watched over years that it is camp security guards or the ABF officers who hold all control: over where people live; where they can go; if they can see a doctor; or when they can eat.

Mothers and fathers, too, in those situations, lose first a willingness, then any ability, to parent.

Familial relationships become incredibly close – family members rely on each other to get through each day or disappointment, but the relationships can also be toxic. Family violence can be common. Unruly children are hit, parents are violently defied, or crying babies shaken, out of a sense of overwhelming, desperate frustration.

Every member of Ahoora’s family has been recognised as a refugee. They have a well-founded fear of persecution in the homeland they fled, Iran, and they are legally owed protection by Australia.

The Australian government has consistently declined to comment on individual cases, but the Nauru government has defended the safety of children on the island.

“Children of refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru have access to education, health services, welfare, good accommodation and a range of social services provided by the Nauru and Australian governments. Nauruan children grow up happy and healthy on our island ... To suggest any child is in danger just because they live in our country is offensive,” the government said in a statement.

Ahoora’s family is holding together, but barely. In page after page of bleak medical reports and psychological assessments, doctors argue they are being harmed by the fact of their indefinite detention on Nauru, rather than any one specific – fixable – problem on the island.

Ahoora’s father Hossein said indefinite detention – not knowing what will happen to his family – has left him helpless.

“Hossein stated it’s been very hard on him,” a psychiatric report reads, “because everybody in the family expects him to change the situation but he has no power. Hossein feels overwhelmed and tired.”

Ahoora has also been witness to the numerous acts of self-harm and suicide attempts made almost daily inside the camp.

Ahoora’s mother Masoumeh frequently attempts to kill herself or to self-harm.

She deliberately burns herself with cigarettes, telling doctors she does it out of “frustration” that her son is getting worse instead of better.

One psychiatrists report reads: “Reports that she has lost concentration in attending to activities of daily living, she finds herself burning or cutting herself unintentionally. Currently very frustrated and is unable to deal with her frustrations in front of her children as she does not want them to see her cry.

“Stated that she wants to be away from her current environment, it’s been five years and cannot take any more.”

Masoumeh says she feels constantly helpless in the struggle to control her son.

“I wish someone would take over his care. How can he be well if I am not well.”

In May, she wrote a formal complaint to camp manager Canstruct, daubed in her own blood, accusing them, in Persian, of ignoring her family’s plight, of being vampires and psychopaths intent on destroying them.

She wrote three words in English on the form: “I hate ABF.”

Masoumeh’s letter of complaint is daubed in her own blood.