Tampa refugees marry

Ali and Zahra got to know each other at university. Photo / Supplied

As the waves battered their rickety, overcrowded Indonesian fishing boat, Ali Rajaiy and Zahra Sarwari wondered whether they would survive the night.

They did and now, 10 years later, the two former Afghan asylum-seekers - who were thrust into the centre of an international diplomatic stand-off - have married in New Zealand.

Ali was 17 and Zahra just 12 when they were rescued by the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa from a fishing boat stranded in international waters north of Australia on August 26, 2001.

Speaking on the 10th anniversary of the incident, Zahra remembers the fear of the treacherous journey from Indonesia.

She said: "The ship was broken, water was coming in from one side and leaving from the other. We were in the middle of the ocean, we couldn't see any land, just water everywhere.

"I was thinking 'how are we going to survive the night'? I get the shivers just thinking about it."

Zahra's mother Fatemeh tied the family together and then to the boat in an effort to keep them alive.

Ali remembers the overpowering stench onboard, with 438 asylum seekers, many fleeing from the Taleban, packed on to a vessel designed to hold around 80.

"I remember every single moment. It was terrifying, we had no idea if we were going to survive."

The ship's mayday call was eventually answered by the Tampa, skippered by Arne Rinnan, who rescued the stricken horde.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard prevented Rinnan from landing his passengers on the Australian territory of Christmas Island.

The asylum-seekers, mainly Afghans and Iraqis, did not want to go back to Indonesia, their point of departure, and Jakarta did not want them either. They were transferred to the Manoora, a Royal Australian Navy ship, and left in limbo.

In time, 131 people (including 40 "Tampa Boys", of which Ali was one) were accepted by New Zealand - a decision Helen Clark labelled among the proudest moments of her prime ministership.

The other 302 were dispatched to Nauru, as Howard's Pacific solution to stop boat people arriving on Australian shores was created.

Zahra said: "My dad used to tell us that it's not the Australian people that didn't want us, it's just the politics of that time."

When Ali arrived here he could barely say a world of English. But in 2009 he graduated with a bachelor of engineering from Auckland University and now works as an engineer in Hamilton.

"I had to work three times as hard as the other students," he said.

He and Zahra knew each other to say hello to at Selwyn College in Auckland and got to know each other better at university.

As is customary in their Hazara ethnic race, in Afghanistan, Ali asked his parents to propose to Zahra's family. Zahra said she was consulted.

"We both liked each other," said Zahra. "It was perfectly natural."

More than 600 people, including all of the Tampa survivors and their families, attended their wedding in February in New Lynn, West Auckland.

Ali's five sisters and brother, who joined him in 2004, are all studying to become accountants and engineers.

Zahra was the first of the young Hazara women to graduate, with a double degree in nursing and health education from Auckland University, and recently started working at the Auckland Pacific health clinic.

Ali returned to Afghanistan three years ago and said the country had improved from the one he left in 2001.

Their families are both from the Hazara ethnic minority, which is from the Bamiyan area that the NZ Army is helping to reconstruct. "The NZ Army is doing a great job over there."

About two-thirds of the Tampa boys have married and many of them are fathers.