Helen Fuller, a grandmother of 10 and former primary school teacher, was sitting on a Metro train opposite a white woman about her age and a brown man in his mid-20s when she found herself listening in to their conversation. "I'm blessed with good hearing," she says. She heard the story of how the young man and his family had arrived in Australia from Afghanistan. "He looked a very lovely boy," she says. "I could tell from his face."
When the young man – Abuzar Mazoori, a part-time student and youth worker – said that he had not seen anything of Australia but Melbourne, Helen had what she calls an inspiration. "Sometimes I have these impulses to trust people." Leaning forward, she apologised for listening but said she had a holiday house in Rye and perhaps the young man and his family might like to go down and have a week's holiday there over Christmas. Says Abuzar, "Automatically, there were negative thoughts in my mind – why this person offer me her house?"
![Moss and Helen Fuller with Abuzar Mazoori.](/web/20170304013101im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/k/8/9/1/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.guk7u4.png/1488082495096.jpg)
For her part, Helen received "a fair bit of negativity" when she told others what she had done. "I was told I was taking a risk. I said, 'People do it for money'." She was supported, however, by her husband, Moss, whom she met at teachers' college in Ballarat 51 years ago. Moss says, "She rules the roost. If she thought it was OK, I did too. I trust her judgment." Moss tells me he remembers Abuzar's name because it sounds the same as "a boozer", another word for pub in his youth, and for that matter, mine.
In another part of Melbourne, Abuzar was encountering similar problems. His brother laughed at him when he recounted the story. "My brother said, 'How is this possible? How she trust you? How you trust her?'." Their mother was confronted by the idea of occupying another woman's home, particularly when that woman was a stranger. "She said, 'I don't know what is in the house. What might happen?'."
![Rye front beach.](/web/20170304013101im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/l/b/n/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.guk7u4.png/1488082495096.jpg)
Helen invited Abuzar to see the holiday house. He arrived with a friend. She then gave him a key and said the house would be vacant from December 24 until January 1. At 10am on December 24, after his family had eaten breakfast, Abuzar placed the key on the table in front of them and said, "What are your decisions?"
He says they "negotiated" until four in the afternoon. The family and a young cousin, 10 in all, then drove to Rye. Abuzar says as soon as they reached the holiday house, opened the front door and saw what a comfortable and relaxed place it was, "My father and especially my mother totally changed."
Abuzar says they had a nice time. Helen said the place looked lovely when next they went there. She had warned the neighbour that a family of Afghans might be using their holiday house over Christmas. The neighbour later told her she saw the parents watering the back garden. Since then, Moss and Helen have been to Abuzar's home for a meal.
The story was brought to my attention by a friend. Helen says, "It was only a small thing, nothing to make a fuss about." But speaking about the fear and uncertainty in the Age of Trump when people spread alarm about terrorist attacks that haven't actually happened, she says, "It's only by doing small things that we can reverse that trend." Meanwhile, Abuzar says, "It doesn't matter who we are. Everyone suffering from disconnecting now."
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