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Joseph Zreika* fled Lebanon with visions of Australia as "the best country" with "good people and justice for everyone".
But after the asylum seeker was allegedly framed by an Australian guard at Nauru for a violent assault he did not commit, these days he is sadder and wiser.
Mr Zreika, aged in his 20s, was jailed for more than one month over the incident. Speaking from a Melbourne detention centre, he recounted the anger and exhaustion that drove him to try to hang himself in a hot, stuffy tent at the Nauru detention camp.
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection has launched an investigation after Fairfax Media on Thursday revealed allegations that a Wilson Security guard falsely claimed Mr Zreika violently hit him. The guard allegedly perjured himself in court before confessing to the lie in a secret recording made by a colleague.
Mr Zreika left Lebanon for safety reasons he has declined to make public. He flew to Indonesia and said he arrived at Christmas Island by boat in May 2013.
He was transferred to Nauru, the controversial detention camp run by Transfield Services, which is plagued by evidence of child abuse, sexual assault and poor living conditions for detainees.
Mr Zreika's younger brother fled to Australia later and the pair were placed in different sections of the Nauru camp.
On the day of the alleged attack in August last year, Mr Zreika asked a Wilson guard for permission to eat lunch with his brother when the guard "started shouting at me and swearing at me. He fell down by himself, and said I hurt him."
Mr Zreika was charged with assault. In jail, he was denied halal food and lived off bread and milk.
"I was very tired and upset because I was in jail for nothing, I didn't do anything," he said.
The matter went to court, but a judgement was delayed for months.
"I felt angry, I felt my situation is very bad. I was thinking I want to feel rest from this situation, to die, to stop hurting my family."
Becoming unbearably distraught one day, the young man tried to hang himself in his tent – his life saved only by a fellow asylum seeker who came to check on him.
The court later found Mr Zreika not guilty after two female workers who witnessed the incident disputed the guard's account.
He left Nauru in April this year and is now at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation centre awaiting the outcome of his refugee claim.
The Wilson guard has been suspended on full pay while his employer reviews the incident. In the recording, the guard allegedly said he fabricated the assault so Mr Zreika, whom he disliked, would be convicted of a crime and never settled in Australia.
Mr Zreika questioned why he was still in detention when other detainees, many of them his friends, had been released.
"I would like [to stay in Australia] because it's safe more than my country and one day I can save my family also," he said.
"All I want is to get out from here, and to see my brother next to me."
*Not his real name
