Going home

Australia seems unable to exorcise the cruelty of exile from its DNA.

- CHARLOTTE GRIMSHAW

We were in the transition lounge at Auckland City Hospital. Here, for M, was a limbo (armchairs, festive decorations, a television showing how to craft Christmas wreaths) between leaving the ward and actual discharge. Here, the inmates, slumped in postures of exhaustion, nausea and resignation, waited until the doctors could complete the paperwork. The staff were heroic; the service, in crowded conditions, had been exemplary. This was the exile of illness, alleviated by the kindness of strangers.

M sat wearing dark glasses, D made funny jokes. “Leather is such a timeless material,” the television said. A nurse wheeled in a trolley of sandwiches as the news came on, with its roundup of tragedy and crime. We watched an item about 501 deportees.