Writer and activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied says she may never return to Australia and can’t even bear to hear an Aussie accent more than five years after she fled the country to escape the backlash from her infamous Anzac Day Facebook post.
Living in self-imposed exile in London since July 2017, Ms Abdel-Magied has only been back to Australia a handful of times, sometimes only for visa reasons to stay in the UK.
The Sudanese-born, 31-year-old told an interviewer in London that if she even hears an Australian accent now, ‘I will leave’.
In her new book, Talking About A Revolution, Ms Abdel-Magied wrote about giving up her Australian citizenship after deciding that Britain or perhaps the US would be her permanent home in the future.
‘I’ve emigrated, I’m not going back. I’ve emigrated in the same way my parents left Sudan, I have left Australia,’ she told the Sydney Morning Herald.
When invited to Australian writing festivals, Ms Abdel-Magied has begun appearing only by video.
If Ms Abdel-Magied gives up her Australian passport, she would only be left with a Sudanese one and it would be much harder for her to enter Australia.
And despite recently marrying a UK man, Ms Abdel-Magied will have to wait a number of years to become a British citizen.
Ms Abdel-Magied’s 2017 Anzac Day Facebook Post created a storm online and she was hit by death threats after writing ‘LEST.WE.FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine …)’.
Then Immigration Minister Peter Dutton was one of a number of conservative politicians who weighed in.
He called the post a ‘disgrace’ and condemned using ‘Lest We Forget’, a phrase associated with remembering the war dead, to make political points about Australia’s foreign and immigration policy.
Although she apologised and took the post down, the controversy dogged Ms Abdel-Magied for years.
Despite being Young Queenslander of the Year in 2010 and being touted employed a cultural ambassador by the Australian government Ms Abdel-Magied came to describe herself as Australia’s ‘most publicly hated Muslim’.
She told the Sydney Morning Herald the hurt she feels towards Australia runs deep.
‘(Australia) expelled me and it was cruel, and it was cruel in a way it didn’t need to be and it was cruel to somebody who loved it and only wished it well,’ she said.
‘I’ve compared it in the past to an abusive partner because it’s such a complex relationship. On the one hand, there are lots of good times there and on the other hand, there’s been so much harm and hurt that you can never quite be sure what that relationship was like at all.’
Ms Abdel Magied said it was because of the abuse, she chose to appear virtually, rather than in person, at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on Saturday.
Ms Abdel-Magied’s parents still live in Brisbane, where, as skilled migrants, they emigrated with their 18-month-old daughter in 1992.
They might have to wait a while to see their daughter in person again.
‘I grew up in Brisbane, and I don’t really have any problems with Brisbane, but I don’t miss it,’ Ms Abdel-Magied said.
‘And sometimes I feel like a terrible person for that. How can you not miss somewhere where you spent the majority of your life? Yet, I’m very fine [with] not going back.’
Ms Abdel-Magied has become a sought-after commentator in the British media but has built a more lucrative profile as a speaker in the US, where she mainly talks about racial and cultural relations.