The Unknown Terrorist
By Richard Flanagan
Picador, 2006
RRP $32.95
That Australian author Richard Flanagan chose to dedicate his new novel to torture victim and Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks gives a strong indication as to the underlying theme of the book. The Unknown Terrorist is an unabashed literary condemnation of the attacks on civil liberties and the "terrorist" fearmongering mantra adopted by the Australian corporate media and governments to justify the ongoing "war on terror".
Flanagan claims that two of the most important sources for the book were the 10-second TV "grabs of politicians and the sermons of shock jocks [because] no one, after all, was doing contemporary fiction better" .
The novel — which in title and basic plot sardonically mimics any number of the trashy airport novels that cash in on the media-induced obsession with terrorism — introduces 26-year-old heroine Gina Davies. Davies is a physically attractive, designer clothing addict living in central Sydney who wouldn't be seen dead any further west than Newtown. Her customary inner-city disdain for the "westies" is heightened by the hidden fact that she grew up in the western suburbs herself. Her political opinions are limited to a vague anti-immigrant racism and unthinking support for all measures deemed necessary to crack down on the terrorists.
Davies also happens to be the most popular pole dancer in a sordid Kings Cross strip joint. Everyone simply calls her The Doll. For years she has been saving up a deposit to reach the conventional Sydneysider's dream of an overpriced mortgage and a more normal life. She has the less conventional nightly ritual of covering her naked body with $100 bills at home after work to appreciate the feel of the money on her skin.
But a casual fling with a computer programmer of "Middle Eastern appearance" called Tariq al-Hakim ends up causing everything in The Doll's strange world to come crashing down.
The next morning al-Hakim's flat is surrounded and raided by machine-gun wielding counter-terrorist cops and The Doll is wanted by police.
In a matter of hours The Doll becomes the media-dubbed "Unknown Terrorist", falsely accused of collaborating in a secret terror cell with the similarly falsely accused al-Hakim. The implausibility of the accusations and the lack of evidence only goes to demonstrate how tricky and devious the terrorists are at covering their tracks.
Soon al-Hakim turns up dead and stuffed in a car boot. The Doll is on the run from the police, the Feds and a cashed up ASIO. Journalists bandy her name around together with Osama bin Laden, the Twin Tower attacks and the Bali Bombings. Rabid pensioners call talk-back radio to attack her and point out that even if she isn't one of those Muslims she is, after all, still a little bit dark.
The media frenzy reaches a fever pitch as former workmates are encouraged to share their newly discovered but long-held suspicions, while politicians compete to denounce her evil designs. Speculation is rife about whether The Doll intends to blow up the Olympic Park stadium or the Sydney Opera House or if she has some other frightening and chilling plan.
In the light of her experiences as the victim of such a grand setup, The Doll begins to reverse her own ideas about the kind of country Australia has become. An Australia where the population is encouraged to live in mind-numbing fear, where people are fed lies and misinformation and where hard-won civil liberties are being eroded starts to form in The Doll's mind. She also accepts that only days before she, too, would have been easily fooled by a terrorist scare campaign manufactured by government authorities and media interests.
The Doll's plight is the ultimate logical consequence of the propaganda surrounding the "war on terror". The need for continuing terrorist threats becomes so acute that terrorists need to be invented lest the propaganda lose impact.
The Unknown Terrorist includes some other memorable characters that portray those in positions of unchecked power in a deservedly sinister light. Richard Cody is a sleazy senior journalist for Channel 6's flagship current affairs program and the person most responsible for inventing "The Unknown Terrorist" scare. Driven by cynicism, arrogance and love of the TV spotlight, he is proud when a message is passed on that the federal government is grateful to Cody for "helping not only the government but the nation and freedom itself".
Even creepier is the high-ranking ASIO spook Siv Harmsen who revels in his newly granted powers and plies journalists like Cody with false intelligence designed to keep the "Unknown Terrorist" story running hot. In his more honest moments he can rationalise his job because "people are fools … unless they're terrified, they won't agree with what we have to do and why we have to do it".
The Compulsive Reader's reviewer Magdalena Ball has criticised The Unknown Terrorist for its overt political comment and as an example of "why polemics and fictions don't work well together". Ball implies that the political comment in the novel lacks artistry and subtlety. But in an era of blatant government racism and relentless media hypocrisy to demand Australian novelists only reflect on this with a non-committal subtlety is at best unconsciously ironic and at worst down right mischievous.
In any case such a criticism in misplaced with this novel. "Look how they treat their women" is a typical refrain from those who maintain the superiority of so-called Australian values against any other. But The Doll's humiliating job as a naked pole dancer implicitly reinforces the reality that acceptable treatment of women in Australia includes the purchase of woman's bodies by men.
Similarly the myth of superior Australian values under threat from immigration and terrorism is challenged throughout The Unknown Terrorist with the suggestive depiction of a Sydney struggling to hide widespread social disintegration beneath a thin veneer of wealth. Flanagan's Sydney is hyper-commericalised, filthy, hypocritical and violent. Desperate ice addicts, impoverished Aborigines, and muscled thugs populate the street corners. Flanagan seems to be saying that this is the hidden substance of the kind of Australian culture we are told to defend.
But despite its political message, The Unknown Terrorist is not a political tract or polemic but a clever work of fiction. Before the novel is criticised for "exaggerating" the facts, it must first be asked whether such exaggerations are deliberate devices. After all, Pablo Picasso defined art as a lie that helps reveal the truth.
The most unrealistic aspect of The Unknown Terrorist is the clear lack of opposition to the resurgence of racism and constant fearmongering about terrorism in Australia. Practically every character basically trusts the government, every TV screen is switched on to the tabloid news and every car radio is blaring out the latest bigoted pronouncements of millionaire shock jocks. No group at all is organising against or even criticising The Doll's obvious "trial by media" ordeal.
Reality in Australia today is quite different. Support for the release of David Hicks has grown to the point where the Howard government is feeling the pressure. A grassroots refugee-rights movement has succeeded in blunting the Coalition government's racist attacks on these vulnerable people, although the persecution continues. Meanwhile the majority of Australians have never supported the murderous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Howard agenda has not gone unchallenged.
But neither is Flanagan's angry parody of modern Australia too far-fetched to believe. Rather, aspects of the Australia depicted in The Unknown Terrorist are disturbingly familiar. It is a vision of an Australia where people have stopped protesting, stopped organising and stopped mobilising against the Howard government's drive to war and restrictions on our rights. It is left up to the novel's readers to make sure a different kind of Australia is built.