During the years Behrouz Boochani spent in Australia’s prison on Manus Island, his dream was always the same. “Walking on the streets. Just that,” he says, as we start down Wellington’s lively Cuba Street on a bright, muggy summer evening, Boochani balancing a coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “It’s something that is a part of my identity. The best description of myself is ‘a man who always walks’.”
After his writing about conditions for refugees in Australia’s offshore jails started to appear in the world’s newspapers, Boochani became the recognisable face of those detained. But in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, where he has found a home in the alternative arts scene, Boochani is not the man from Manus prison.
