I am often asked what it was like being locked up in an Australian-run detention centre in the Republic of Nauru for six years. I wonder if I can provide an answer to this question now, sitting in my home in Los Angeles over a year after being transferred as part of the Australia-United States resettlement agreement. I was traded by the Australian government after six years of incarceration. Who was I traded with? What was I traded for?
My name is Elahe Zivardar, also known as Ellie Shakiba. I honestly do not know how to introduce myself. I have been through a serious identity crisis and I am not sure who I am anymore. I am an Iranian woman; an engineering and architecture university graduate; an artist and journalist. Then I was reduced to nothing but a number: IVL-057.
It has been really challenging for me to remember the person I was before I was displaced and exiled. It is difficult to overcome the idea that being a refugee is not what defines me. To help explain what happened to me in those years, to share my story with you, I am creating a documentary called Searching for Aramsayesh Gah – a Farsi term which may be translated as Abode for Serenity.
