Wow, this one knocked me sideways

The feature ‘Another Country’ from the Good Weekend Magazine, gripped me from beginning to end. An insight into Australia’a largest regional Sudanese community in Toowoomba, this article cleverly combined social comment with several very personal stories of survival.  The article looks at the right wing extremist reaction to the refugees, and ways in which the community has embraced their arrival.

Even if a reader was unaware of the despair seeping out of Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, the morbid quote from Corman McCarthy at the start of the article was a clear warning that tragedy would unfold within the lines which followed it:

“He said that journeys involving the company of the dead were notorious for their difficulty but that in truth every journey was so accompanied”

There is however nothing which could prepare for the shock unveiled in the fourth paragraph, which begins…;

“There is no avoiding its immediate cause: on November 22 last year, Sula’s wife Rita bashed their 21 year old son, Jerry, senseless with an axe, then used it to kill their daughter Connie, 15, before dousing the house with petrol and setting it alight”

The placid descriptions in the first three paragraphs lull the reader into false sense of calm, which in turn deepens the effect of the revelations in the fourth paragraph. Once the reader has reached the fourth paragraph there is no turning back, you are hooked.

The journalist, Frank Robinson, very effectively captures Sula’s grief, not just through emotional quotes but descriptions of the physical appearance of his misery:

“Charles Sula appears strangely burdened – as though gravity may have singled him out”

“There is no bitterness in Sula’s tone, only a weariness so pervasive it crushes the inflection of his words”

Interestingly Robinson even brings his own presence into the article on a couple of occasions. This works well, as his awkward appearances in the story effectively symbolise the inability of the Australian people to fully understand the scars these people carry. The feature addresses the difficulties faced by Sudanese immigrants in adjusting to life in Australia and the failure of the local community to really connect with these new comers despite some good intentions. This divide manifests itself in the brief exchanges between Robinson and his interviewees:

“He breaks off covering his face. It’s my turn to look at the wall. (an enraged owl I hadn’t noticed before glares back from it’s tiny portrait above the mini bar”

“I find myself blurting out an invitation for him and his son to visit me in Brisbane. He smiles and grasps my shoulder, yet we both know he won’t come”

The feature begins and ends with the story of Charles Sula, which gives the article a comfortable neat feeling. Furthermore, this return to the tragedy of paragraph four provides a powerful finish.