In my tough early days in Melbourne, when everything still felt slightly unreal, I was introduced to Suzy through a cricket magazine editor based in London. Suzy greeted me with the warmth of someone who had known me for years. She didn’t just offer advice; she guided and helped me understand how to build a career and a life in a country that can feel overwhelming even to those born into it.
This summer Suzy finally managed to visit for lunch in Dandenong, at the food street in the Afghan bazaar. It felt symbolic that our long-awaited reunion would take place there, in a suburb that mirrors so many migrant journeys: once overlooked, now pulsing with life, colour and ambition.
We settled on the Day Light restaurant, run by an Afghan owner from the central highlands. The food arrived fragrant and generous – mantu (Afghan dumplings), shorwa (slow-cooked lamb stew with herbs and chickpeas), tender kebabs and warm naan. We laughed at the owner’s cheerful admission that he wasn’t quite sure whether the place was called Day Light or Delight. English synonyms had confused him. But it looked good, smelled good and tasted even better – and that, we all agreed, was what mattered.
As we walked along the strip, weaving between Afghan groceries and Indian sweet shops, Suzy kept stopping in surprise. The last time she had visited Dandenong, nearly a decade ago, it had felt flat and tired – a place people passed through rather than arrived at.
Now it’s alive. The streets hum with languages, families, commerce and possibility. No longer a forgotten town, it’s a living map of Australia’s changing face.
She missed the Afghan cultural day in the local park – the timing didn’t work – but that festival captured something rare and precious. Melbourne’s southern suburbs, already among the most diverse in the country, were hosting a celebration organised by a vibrant Afghan community that has grown rapidly.
The organisers had come up with an audacious idea: free camel rides. Children squealed, adults laughed nervously and politicians – helmets firmly in place – climbed onboard the towering animals. It was joyful, slightly chaotic and deeply symbolic.
The camels were not a gimmick. They were a reminder.
In the late 19th century, Afghan cameleers – many from what is now Afghanistan and neighbouring regions – played a crucial role in opening up Australia’s interior. Between 2,000 and 3,000 cameleers helped transport supplies, sustain remote communities and, most notably, build the overland telegraph line that connected Australia to the rest of the world. Without them, the nation’s economic and technological development would have looked very different.
That day in the park, the past and present folded into each other.
The crowd was electric with youthful energy. Women in vivid dresses moved freely, laughing, filming, savouring the simple fact of public celebration. Many had fled the Taliban – a regime that strips women of education, work and autonomy. Here, they stood unafraid. Australian flags fluttered along the festival boundaries: we belong.
What struck me most was the gratitude layered with determination. This is not a community withdrawing into itself but one building outwards – forming cricket clubs, opening small and medium-sized businesses, volunteering at schools, mosques and neighbourhood centres.
When the news leaked of a proposed immigration plan drafted under the previous Liberal party leader Sussan Ley, which seemed to “blacklist” countries deemed misaligned with Australian “values”, it landed with particular force, even if the party’s new leader, Angus Taylor, hastened to distance himself from it.
It’s heartbreaking to see Afghans and 13 other nationalities flattened into a single, dangerous caricature. Afghanistan is not synonymous with the Taliban. It never has been. It is also the land of poets whose verses mocked extremism and celebrated beauty, and thinkers whose work speaks to a shared human longing for freedom and dignity. Afghan culture encompasses Sufi mystics, artists, musicians, feminists, farmers, engineers and cricket tragics. Like any society, it is plural, contradictory and alive.
Australians from countries on the proposed blacklist work in places like hospitals and build small businesses, contributing as doctors, academics, tradies and community organisers.
Interestingly, among many Afghan Australians I have spoken to, there had long been a quiet, sometimes surprising, softness toward the Liberal party, despite liking many of Labor’s policies. This is because when Kabul fell in August 2021, Australia under the Coalition government did not entirely walk away. About 4,000 Afghans were helped to evacuate. For those who escaped, that decision meant survival.
Gratitude, however, does not cancel grief. Thousands remain stranded. Families are separated. Visas stay frozen in limbo. But, as one young Afghan Australian once told me: “When someone helps you escape death, you don’t forget it.”
I saw him again this week, not far from the Day Light restaurant, at a mutual friend’s shop preparing for the Ramadan night market. Amid the lights and laughter, he looked deflated. How, he asked, could anyone propose painting entire nations as morally suspect? How could communities trying daily to integrate and contribute be reduced to a risk category?
Our business-minded friend interrupted gently. Politicians, he shrugged, might spread fear for division and rule, but people-to-people bonds are harder to break.
“My eight-year-old speaks in a stunning Aussie accent,” he said, laughing, before the topic of our conversation moved to citizenship applications.
Most Afghan humanitarian visa holders arriving after the Taliban takeover, including all three of us, are eligible this year. There is pride in that. And hope.
Australia’s strength has never come from purity tests or cultural fear. It has come from the beautiful human overlap – from cameleers and poets, from refugees and doctors, from misnamed restaurants serving mouth-watering food.
Any politics that denies this diversity is not protecting Australia’s values. It is betraying them.
• Shadi Khan Saif is an editor, producer and journalist who has worked in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany and Australia
