We had been aboard the Tampa for a whole week. With no possessions, we had been wearing the same clothes all this time. On top of the foul stench and the unbearable heat, we were bored to death, sitting cross-legged on the deck for much of the day with absolutely nothing to do, under the constant gaze of the soldiers.

After our breakfast of biscuits and juice, the major who had led the Australian SAS unit that boarded the ship came down for his usual update. Expecting the same old story, few of us were ready when he delivered some actual news.

In a few days you will all be transferred to another ship. It is better, with beds and toilets. New Zealand has agreed to take some of you.

An immediate barrage of questions broke out after these sentences were translated.

Who is New Zealand? one man asked.

Where is he? Let me speak to him! said another.

What about everyone else? Where will the other ship take us?

Why will Australia not accept us?

The major patiently explained that New Zealand was a separate island nation close to Australia.

People were not convinced. No one had heard of New Zealand. Perhaps they were being tricked into getting off on some godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere. By now the level of trust was very low and the interrogation of the major continued. He had come down to give us answers, but none of them had given any comfort.

At the next days update, the major announced that HMAS Manoora would be arriving tomorrow and taking us all onboard. We were also told for the first time that our case was going to court in Australia.

What the major did not tell us was that the lawyers acting for us had petitioned the court to request that we remain on the Tampa until the case was heard.

Had we known there was even the slimmest chance of getting to Australia if we stayed aboard the Tampa, we would have refused to board the Manoora. As intolerable as conditions were on the Tampa, we had suffered for 11 days what was a few more? But we knew nothing about the court petition. The major also failed to mention that the Manoora would be headed to Nauru to offload those not going on to New Zealand. He simply told us the Manoora would be a much more comfortable ship for us while our case was being litigated.

We should have been thrilled at the thought of finally getting off the Tampa, but we were not. This was the devil we knew. Questions swirled throughout the square; no one trusted the Australian government by this point. We suspected their every move. What if they were taking us to prison? What if they were sending us back?

We had been a remarkably united group to this point, but divisions started to show now. We had been told New Zealand would only accept families and children. While that provided some relief and certainty for my family and others like us, it was excruciating for everyone else all those who, in leaving their families behind, had arguably sacrificed more than us.

The Manoora was a very different beast to the Tampa. On the Tampa we burned and blistered under the hot sun. Now we missed the light, as we were kept in the enclosed hangar the whole time. The gentle ocean breeze was replaced by the deafening noise of the engine. The smell of sewage was replaced by diesel fumes. We had no way of telling if it was day or night.

The crew brought a large bin full of donated clothes destined for the Solomon Islands. We were also given a toothbrush and a towel each. I will never forget my first shower. We had two minutes before the water was cut off, but in that time I scrubbed myself clean of the filth that had caked my skin. When I finally wore socks over my blistered feet, it felt like I was walking on clouds.

Food was rationed more tightly than on the Tampa, with meals usually no more than one piece of fruit or a slice of bread.

The major was onboard and he and the crew, dressed in their smart navy uniforms, conducted the daily briefs. The next day the major welcomed aboard officials from the intergovernmental International Organisation for Migration and Immigration New Zealand, as well as some Farsi-speaking translators.

These officials had been sent to determine who among us would go to New Zealand and who would stay on Nauru. They set up a table on one side of the hangar and asked us to sit as family units. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, we sat in different parts of the hangar, our lanyards around our necks.

The officials were patient as they took down all our names and connected the dots in our stories. Through a translator, Dad retold our story while the officials took notes and filled out an endless stack of forms. This process continued for much of the day.

People cried as they talked about being widowed, orphaned or separated from their families. For a group of solo teenagers this questioning proved especially harrowing as they had to describe how their fathers had been killed or disappeared at the hands of the Taliban.

Being of military age, many of these boys had left their families when the Taliban overran Bamiyan and Mazar-i-Sharif. Some had spent years in refugee camps in Pakistan before finally deciding on the Australia route. Others had been homeless or in detention centres across Indonesia for almost a year before the Palapa.

These Tampa boys had not been in touch with their families for years. They provided names of family members in the slim hope that they might still be alive.

While we adjusted to our new existence, the world outside changed forever. It was 11 September 2001 9/11. Everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing that day. Unlike many, we did not see the horrifying images of New Yorks Twin Towers coming down, nor did we understand its true impact on the world. The news was delivered to us in one of the usual morning briefings. We wondered mostly what it would mean for Afghanistan and our asylum claims.

Were we still the asylum seekers we had been yesterday, or were we now a threat to national security? Would the rest of the world equate us with the very people we were fleeing from?

As a child, I had even less sense of the gravity of the situation. It is only in hindsight that I wonder how the asylum seeker situation would have played out had 9/11 not happened.

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Who is New Zealand?: the moment Tampa refugees were told some had a new home - The Guardian