Speaker 1: I get a team. Welcome to another installment of the
Speaker 1: You Project. Craig, Anthony Harper, Melissa, Marie Cameron, and Kylie.
Speaker 1: We're not sure what her middle name is, but we'll
Speaker 1: find out. Kylie Moore Gilbert. Welcome to another show. Everyone high, Melissa, Hello,
Speaker 1: how are you? Oh bloody good? If the sun's out,
Speaker 1: the birds singing, the bees are buzzing. I just took
Speaker 1: one of the motorbikes out of the garards for a
Speaker 1: little bit of stretching of the metaphoric legs, and I
Speaker 1: lifted some heavy shit at the gym. And it's still
Speaker 1: only one five and I'm about to have a scintillating conversation.
Speaker 1: So for me, win our chicken dinner. It's been a
Speaker 1: good day, fantastic.
Speaker 2: And have you been enjoying your I think it's the
Speaker 2: National Day of Morning or something. That's what they're calling
Speaker 2: it today.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's like, that's a loaded question.
Speaker 1: That's a lot. I feel like I'm not meant to
Speaker 1: enjoy a National Day of Morning, rush, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let's ask Kylie. She's smarter than us. She will know
Speaker 1: the appropriate answer for that.
Speaker 3: Hi, Kylie, Hey, thanks for having me on Craig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, welcome to the You project. What do you do?
Speaker 1: And on our national day of mourning, allegedly our national
Speaker 1: day of mourning other than talking to a buffet end Hampton,
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 3: Other than wearing black and shedding tears and lighting candle.
Speaker 3: So I'm kind of chilling at home, going to go
Speaker 3: on a run this afternoon and maybe spend some time
Speaker 3: in my garden.
Speaker 1: Are you Are you an avid gardener or a casual gardener.
Speaker 3: I'm a casual gardener. Yes, only when the weather's good.
Speaker 3: Do I bother going out there.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit with you. I have the lowest
Speaker 1: maintenance garden in the world. I had it built. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you don't get built created, I don't know, planted
Speaker 1: about ten years ago. It's primarily bamboo trees that create
Speaker 1: a screen around my house. And they are about twenty
Speaker 1: meters not twenty meters, twenty feet or six meters higher
Speaker 1: than the top of my house. So I have this beautiful,
Speaker 1: wow green screen. And I live in suburbia, so when
Speaker 1: I look out all the windows in my house, I
Speaker 1: can't see any suburbia, any road, any traffic. I just
Speaker 1: see trees. So I feel like I'm in the middle
Speaker 1: of something not urbanskay bamboo jungle. Are you a an
Speaker 1: avid runner or a casual runner?
Speaker 3: I am an avid runner who's sort of casual at
Speaker 3: the moment, trying to get back into avid if that makes.
Speaker 1: Sense there, No, there's a scale. Have you done any
Speaker 1: not that it matters. Have you done any runs? Like
Speaker 1: have you ever done a half or a full marathon
Speaker 1: or anything like that?
Speaker 3: I've done one half before, Yeah, how'd you go? I've
Speaker 3: never done a full? Oh not bad, but actually it
Speaker 3: was in the UK and it was snowing at the time,
Speaker 3: so that really set me back and kind of put
Speaker 3: me off doing another one. But I might someday.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I reckon doing half a marathon in the
Speaker 1: snow is analogous to a full marathon not in the snow.
Speaker 1: So I'll give you an honorary marathon a title. You're welcome.
Speaker 3: Thank you. I don't know if I can claim that.
Speaker 4: Yes, it was tough.
Speaker 1: Tell people what you do at the moment before we
Speaker 1: go round and round with your story and back and forth.
Speaker 1: But like, what's your job as we sit here at
Speaker 1: the twenty second of September twenty twenty two, what's your job, Kylie,
Speaker 1: what do you do?
Speaker 3: I don't have a job at the moment, per se am.
Speaker 3: I wrote a book called The Uncaged Sky, and that
Speaker 3: came out about five or six months ago. Now, so
Speaker 3: my quote unquote job for the past half year has
Speaker 3: been promoting the book and I've been doing very speaking
Speaker 3: engagements as well, so that's taking up the amount of
Speaker 3: my time as well as doing what's of advocacy stuff
Speaker 3: as well, human rights and you know, hostage diplomacy, advocacy
Speaker 3: behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: That's a job. Well, it's not a job, but it's work. Well,
Speaker 1: if we're being technical, I've had a job for thirty
Speaker 1: two years, so we're both unemployed. How's the book. Has
Speaker 1: the book gone?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going pretty well. I've had a very positive reception.
Speaker 3: A lot of people have given me great feedback on it.
Speaker 3: So no, that's all that matters to me really. I
Speaker 3: just want to get the message out about what's happening
Speaker 3: in Iran and the phenomenon of arbitrary detention that you know,
Speaker 3: I got caught up in, and if that's happening, then
Speaker 3: I'm happy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing. All right, Well let's start there. I was
Speaker 1: going to get there eventually, but let's start there. So
Speaker 1: your book was called The Uncaged Sky, My eight hundred
Speaker 1: and four Days in an Iranian Prison, which has been
Speaker 1: shortlisted for the twenty twenty two Nonfiction Age Book of
Speaker 1: the Year. Congratulations, So you must have done a good job.
Speaker 1: Is it your first book?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: My first book? Actually? Yeah, I was writing a book
Speaker 3: when I was arrested, can you believe? And that book
Speaker 3: has now been canned because it's out of date, which
Speaker 3: is very frustrating, one of the unintended consequences of getting
Speaker 3: thrown in prison in a foreign country. But that book
Speaker 3: was sort of an academic work based on my PhD.
Speaker 3: So this is the first non academic piece of writing
Speaker 3: I've ever really published.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, wow, Yeah, I've done it the other way around.
Speaker 1: I've published only non academic things, and now, two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen years of age, I'm writing academic papers, which
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. Can you help? Do you like writing academic stuff?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: I used to like it.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty good at it, but now I find it
Speaker 3: quite try and boring. Can you believe?
Speaker 1: So? Shit, why don't you just discovered this? Well?
Speaker 4: Look, I always.
Speaker 3: Thought my research topics were very interesting. And you know,
Speaker 3: my research was in political science, mainly focusing on the
Speaker 3: Middle East, so a lot of stuff's happening in that space,
Speaker 3: and I found the research really interesting. But the actual
Speaker 3: writing and the style of writing that you need to
Speaker 3: adopt in academia, it's, yeah, it's pretty boring. It's pretty
Speaker 3: unreadable to the average person as well. I much prefer,
Speaker 3: you know, like my book, something that's a bit more
Speaker 3: accessible and easy to read and more fun to write
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: Was it liberating being although I'm sure recounting everything wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly enjoyable at times, but it was liberating and also
Speaker 1: therapeutic writing it or was it something else?
Speaker 3: Oh, it was definitely therapeutic. It was cathartic. I just
Speaker 3: it poured out of me. You know, I actually wrote
Speaker 3: twice the amount that's in the book, and I essentially
Speaker 3: had to cut it in half, which was a very
Speaker 3: torturous process because you know, you're very attached to every
Speaker 3: anecdote into every part of the story. But yeah, it
Speaker 3: just helped me process everything. It helped me make sense
Speaker 3: of what happened to me, and I guess put it
Speaker 3: into order in my mind because it was all jumbled
Speaker 3: mess before that, so I found it to be a
Speaker 3: really therapeutic exercise. Actually, I really enjoyed the writing process.
Speaker 1: So let me guess it started out at about one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty thousand, and you wound it down to
Speaker 1: bad id.
Speaker 3: It was about two hundred and twenty thousand. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: and now it's one hundred and forty so it's even
Speaker 3: that's a book.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, it's at.
Speaker 3: The max of They told me you can't even add
Speaker 3: one more page because we don't have enough paper for
Speaker 3: the printers. We've already bought the paper and we've got
Speaker 3: we've scheduled the max number of pages and you've just
Speaker 3: about to exceed it.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it was a real wow.
Speaker 1: That is a really big book. One hundred and forty
Speaker 1: thousand words. I'm guessing that is around four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pages or something.
Speaker 3: I don't even know how many pages. It's probably probably
Speaker 3: four hundred odd pages. Maybe that's a lot.
Speaker 1: And how long did that take you to write?
Speaker 3: Ten months? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Wow? All right, so let's talk about let me just
Speaker 1: I'm stealing this straight from Mia Friedman. Thank you, Maya
Speaker 1: from No Filter. Let's give her a plug as well.
Speaker 1: Thanks mea thanks Mia. Shout out to Maya. On the
Speaker 1: twelfth of September twenty eighteen, Australian academic Kylie Moore Gilbert
Speaker 1: was rested in Tehran's International Airport in Range. She spent
Speaker 1: eight hundred and four days incarcerated in Tehran's Evan And
Speaker 1: how do I say that? Is a karchak carchack karchak
Speaker 1: prison for espionage, a crime she never committed. She was
Speaker 1: in an Australian stuck in a foreign prison with no
Speaker 1: way of getting home. Kylie's story about her imprisonment and
Speaker 1: what happened after she was finally released is unbelievable, except
Speaker 1: it really happened. Do you get bored of telling this story?
Speaker 1: I don't want you to feel like you're in groundhog Day?
Speaker 1: But do you get bored recounting this?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: No, I don't get bored. No, I mean it is.
Speaker 3: You know, I've done a few interviews for the book,
Speaker 3: and sometimes they're a bit groundhog Day. But also if
Speaker 3: it's a good interviewer, you know, you guys all think
Speaker 3: of new stuff to ask at, new angles and comments
Speaker 3: on it, so you know, it is my life, so
Speaker 3: to talk about it if it actually happened to you,
Speaker 3: then it is if it's just some you know, specialty,
Speaker 3: your expertise you've got.
Speaker 1: So that's right, and it's not like you've got to
Speaker 1: It's not like you've got to try and recall data
Speaker 1: from something you read, like you're literally recounting your experience.
Speaker 1: All right, Start wherever you want, and I'll try not
Speaker 1: to interject too much. So how did this end up
Speaker 1: that you were arrested at an international airport and spent
Speaker 1: is what is that sober? Two years in Jaiga?
Speaker 3: Two years and three months. Yeah, I went to Iran
Speaker 3: for a two and a half week trip. That was,
Speaker 3: I guess a business trip proof by my university, and
Speaker 3: i'd attended a one week conference there and I was
Speaker 3: actually invited to come by an Iranian university to that conference,
Speaker 3: and it was specifically for foreigners. I wasn't a scholar
Speaker 3: of Iran. I was studying the Arab states off the
Speaker 3: Persian Gulf, you know, particularly Bahrain actually at the time,
Speaker 3: and it was sort of relevant to my research, especially
Speaker 3: the religious aspect. I needed to learn more about that,
Speaker 3: so I thought it would be a good opportunity. And
Speaker 3: because of my research project, I met a few people
Speaker 3: in Iran who I interviewed for that the research project
Speaker 3: was about Bahrain again, not about Iran. And I had
Speaker 3: a great time and I did a little bit of
Speaker 3: tourism too and met some interesting people and to the
Speaker 3: airport to fly back home and was approached by a
Speaker 3: group of men and told they have a warrant for
Speaker 3: my arrest and that I'm not going to be making
Speaker 3: the flight and instead I need to come and be
Speaker 3: interrogated by them.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it was It was quite a shock.
Speaker 3: And I hadn't done anything wrong, so you just you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: initially you tell yourself, well, I'm innocent, so they'll figure
Speaker 3: that out and they'll let me go. They'll realize it's
Speaker 3: a bit a mistake or a misunderstanding. But I came
Speaker 3: to understand pretty quickly that that didn't matter. You know,
Speaker 3: they didn't care if I was innocent or guilty. I
Speaker 3: had some sort of value as a foreigner. It's a
Speaker 3: foreign citizen that they saw that they could trade me
Speaker 3: for something, some diplomatic leverage. I'm a UK citizen as well,
Speaker 3: so either from the UK or Australia, and you know,
Speaker 3: I just became a kind of a hostage in a way.
Speaker 1: Is that looking back, is that do you believe that
Speaker 1: that's the reason that they just identified you as potentially
Speaker 1: a valuable pawn in a political game.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's the initial reason why they picked
Speaker 3: me up. What happened was a chap that I had
Speaker 3: met in the city of Kom which was where the
Speaker 3: conference was being held. He was a Bahraini guy living
Speaker 3: in Iran, and I interviewed him about Bahrain. He had
Speaker 3: some sort of connection to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,
Speaker 3: which is the militant group that arrested me. They are
Speaker 3: kind of a state within a state in Iran. They're
Speaker 3: not the government, but they're kind of associated with the government,
Speaker 3: and so he had either been working for them as
Speaker 3: an informer or might have even been arrested by them,
Speaker 3: but he had some link to them, and it was
Speaker 3: him that dabbed me in and flagged me as somebody
Speaker 3: of interest of somebody suspicious with this IGC Revolutionary Guard Corps,
Speaker 3: and that is why they initially picked me up. But
Speaker 3: then obviously they once they picked me up, they weren't
Speaker 3: going to let me go. And if they knew that
Speaker 3: I'd done nothing wrong, why because.
Speaker 4: They had value that.
Speaker 3: They have a history of arresting foreigners and using them
Speaker 3: as a bargaining chip in a transaction with the country
Speaker 3: of origin, whether that be US, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia wherever.
Speaker 3: They've done it many times before, going back to the
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine hostage crisis where they took all of
Speaker 3: the US embassy staff hostage for more than four hundred days.
Speaker 3: So they know what pays dividends for them. If they
Speaker 3: catch some sort of genuine spy, great, but if they
Speaker 3: catch an innocent person, well that's also great because they
Speaker 3: can just trade you for something. So that's how they operate.
Speaker 3: And I think they knew that I wasn't. I was
Speaker 3: ultimately charged with spying. I think they knew I wasn't
Speaker 3: actually a spy, and that was ludicrous a. I think
Speaker 3: that was just the sort of you know, narrative that
Speaker 3: they were.
Speaker 1: Sin justify it.
Speaker 4: Someway, Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: What were you at the airport by yourself, Kylie? Or
Speaker 1: were you with someone?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: I was by myself.
Speaker 1: Oh god, so you couldn't even tell it, like there
Speaker 1: was no one even there that could ring someone and
Speaker 1: go this is what's going.
Speaker 3: On nobody, and I was actually, when I was being arrested,
Speaker 3: I was looking around frantically trying to catch somebody's eye,
Speaker 3: you know, an Iranian foreign tourist, anyone, and nobody would
Speaker 3: look at me. Everyone sort of gave us a white
Speaker 3: berth and I wanted to scream and shout, but you know,
Speaker 3: I had nobody there, And yeah, it was It was
Speaker 3: quite terrifying.
Speaker 4: Were you thirty three?
Speaker 1: That's crazy, that's and I mean, I know this is
Speaker 1: dumb because I think I know the answer, But in
Speaker 1: that moment where you're bewildered, you're overwhelmed, it's ridiculous, It
Speaker 1: makes no sense, and you're trying to even understand why.
Speaker 1: What was going through your head? What was happening emotionally?
Speaker 1: Were you angry? Were you terrified? Were you confused? What
Speaker 1: was the dominant kind of on a know state?
Speaker 3: I think I was mainly confused. I wasn't terrified of
Speaker 3: them yet because I didn't know who they were. I
Speaker 3: obviously had heard of the Revolutionary Guards, but these guys
Speaker 3: weren't wearing a uniform. There was no badge, no license, nothing.
Speaker 3: I had no idea who they were. I assumed there
Speaker 3: was some sort of border police or something at the beginning,
Speaker 3: and that the whole thing would be cleared up. It
Speaker 3: was a misunderstanding, and you know, they'd let me go
Speaker 3: and catch my flight. So I was initially just confused
Speaker 3: because I didn't speak the language Farsi. Everything was happening
Speaker 3: in Farsi around me, and I had no idea. I
Speaker 3: couldn't even understand what they were saying, and only one
Speaker 3: of them spoke basic English. So even this page they
Speaker 3: were brandishing the arrest warrant they were showing me, the
Speaker 3: whole thing was in Farsi. I couldn't read it, and
Speaker 3: I had no idea what it was. It just looked
Speaker 3: like a random print out from a computer. So I
Speaker 3: was super confused and just I think in shock, and
Speaker 3: I didn't let myself believe that I was actually being arrested.
Speaker 3: I thought, okay, that they mean they're going to ask
Speaker 3: me a few questions and then the or let me
Speaker 3: catch my flight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And when do you think or at what stage
Speaker 1: did they realize do you think that you weren't some
Speaker 1: like you said, they weren't going to let you go
Speaker 1: no matter what because you were valuable to them. But
Speaker 1: when do you think they realized that you weren't some
Speaker 1: kind of I don't know, bloody criminal trying to perpetrate
Speaker 1: some injustice or some crime. I should say, Oh, I think.
Speaker 3: They knew from the first day or two, you know,
Speaker 3: it was clear that there was no evidence of any spying.
Speaker 3: I mean they there was no evidence of me trying
Speaker 3: to hide anything I was doing either. I had all
Speaker 3: my research material, everything, my laptop, my phone. I just
Speaker 3: sort of presented it to the want a platter at
Speaker 3: the airport when they arrested me. You know what kind
Speaker 3: of spy would do that? They'd go and hide there,
Speaker 3: you know, listen, definitely fails by school exactly Like I
Speaker 3: actually said to them, Look, I'm not stupid. Do you
Speaker 3: think I'd be that dumb if I was a spy,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't try and like, I don't know, I upload
Speaker 3: this stuff to the cloud and just the evidence or
Speaker 3: send it to some agent somewhere. You know, I've just
Speaker 3: given it all to you straight up.
Speaker 1: So how did they How did they treat you? Where
Speaker 1: did they take you? Did they take you to a
Speaker 1: room at the airport or transfer you out of the airport?
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was at a room at the airport for
Speaker 3: about six hours or so, being interrogated there, and then
Speaker 3: they put me in a blacked out car with a
Speaker 3: couple of female guards in between me, and drove me
Speaker 3: to a safe house in North Tehran. I was interrogated
Speaker 3: overnight there and didn't really sleep until about ten am
Speaker 3: when they stopped the next day. And then they put
Speaker 3: me in a hotel, initially a hotel that I was
Speaker 3: sort of imprisoned inside of and wasn't allowed to leave
Speaker 3: the room I was in, and it was under their control,
Speaker 3: you know, they had video cameras and things there. So
Speaker 3: I was in that hotel for about a week and
Speaker 3: they would the interrogators would come each day and interrogate
Speaker 3: me all day in the hotel room. And then after
Speaker 3: that week they made the decision to throw me in prison,
Speaker 3: and I went to Evan Prison in North Tehran, which
Speaker 3: is an infamous prison in Iran for political prisoners. And
Speaker 3: I was thrown into the two A unit there, which
Speaker 3: is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards and it's
Speaker 3: a sort of a max security detention compound inside Evan Prison.
Speaker 1: And so was there a whole lot of internationals at
Speaker 1: that prison, No, very few.
Speaker 3: From time to time, foreigners were arrested and then released.
Speaker 3: There's a few foreigners, in particular dual nationals so Iranians
Speaker 3: who have foreign passports in Evan Prison, and some of
Speaker 3: them have been there for a number of years. There's
Speaker 3: a handful of Americans. There are a couple of Brits,
Speaker 3: some Germans, some Austrians, et cetera. But I never had
Speaker 3: anything to do with them because they had been sentenced
Speaker 3: years before me, and most of them were men. Actually,
Speaker 3: they were all in the public part of the prison,
Speaker 3: in the men's ward. A few foreigners came through the
Speaker 3: women's unit when I was there. There was a Bahrainy
Speaker 3: woman who was actually recruited as a spy and was
Speaker 3: one of the most evil people I'd ever met actually
Speaker 3: in my whole experience. There was also a couple of Australians.
Speaker 3: So I don't know if you remember those two backpackers
Speaker 3: that were arrested for flying a drone in Iran in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, so they were in the same unit as me,
Speaker 3: and I had a couple of encounters with Jolly, the
Speaker 3: Aussie female who was in the cell down the hall
Speaker 3: from me when I was there.
Speaker 4: So there were.
Speaker 3: Occasionally foreigners, but I was really the only foreign woman
Speaker 3: that was there for any long stretch of time.
Speaker 1: So you've been picked up at the airport, Obviously somebody
Speaker 1: back home is waiting at Sydney Airport or wherever. Where
Speaker 1: were you.
Speaker 3: Flying to Melbourne? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, so your family or friends who was waiting at
Speaker 1: the other end? And what happened at the other end.
Speaker 3: My ex husband was waiting at the other end. I
Speaker 3: was actually allowed to message him and my parents on
Speaker 3: my own WhatsApp in Iran by my guards, and they
Speaker 3: told me to come up with this sort of bogus excuse.
Speaker 3: So they said, message your family and tell them that
Speaker 3: you've spontaneously decided to stay in Iran for a few
Speaker 3: more weeks and you're doing more research and you've got
Speaker 3: some research opportunities, and that's why you're not coming home.
Speaker 3: But they would have known that was BS because I'd
Speaker 3: actually messaged them when I was at the airport before
Speaker 3: checking in, saying, Hey, I'm at the airport, I'm about
Speaker 3: to come home. So they would have smelled a rat
Speaker 3: like right at the beginning, I think, right right?
Speaker 1: And so were any panic buttons pressed back here? Was
Speaker 1: anything activated? Was anyone alerted. Was the government notified or.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe they notified defat in the first day
Speaker 3: or two that I'd gone missing.
Speaker 1: Essentially, Wow, so and so so, tell us about before
Speaker 1: you got put in jail, Tell us about so what
Speaker 1: did in the hotels? All day? Every day you're being interrogated,
Speaker 1: What I mean, how much stuff can they ask an
Speaker 1: innocent person who's not committing any crimes. They essentially asking
Speaker 1: you the same things one hundred different ways.
Speaker 4: Often they were yes.
Speaker 3: Basically they got into my emails, my mobile phone, my laptop,
Speaker 3: and you know, I was forced to give them the
Speaker 3: passwords for those, and they went trolled through all of
Speaker 3: my thousands of emails and thousands of contacts and bits
Speaker 3: and bobs over the years, and would pull out every
Speaker 3: minute thing. You know. Often I have no recollection of
Speaker 3: what they were talking about because it had been something
Speaker 3: that happened four years earlier. Or I remember even a
Speaker 3: couple of people who were c seed on an email
Speaker 3: that I received years earlier were suddenly brought up as
Speaker 3: being people I knew were acquaintances of mine of interest,
Speaker 3: and they'd interrogate me about these people, and I had
Speaker 3: no idea even who they were because it was just
Speaker 3: a CC on an email, you know, so they went
Speaker 3: sort of with a fine who is going through everything?
Speaker 4: Photographs I'd had of people? Also, what was I.
Speaker 3: Doing in Iran? Where was I going? Who was I
Speaker 3: talking to when I was in Iran?
Speaker 1: Too?
Speaker 3: They were very interested in the university sector in Australia
Speaker 3: in all my contacts in various universities. They were interested
Speaker 3: in UK universities too, and if I knew this person
Speaker 3: or that person, this academic, that academic.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it often seemed.
Speaker 3: Kind of pointless in arbitrary, but also yes, they would
Speaker 3: ask the same questions again and again in different ways
Speaker 3: and on different days to see if my answers changed
Speaker 3: as well to kind of trip me up there as well.
Speaker 1: Did you go you know I'm smarter than you? Did
Speaker 1: you do you know? I know what you're doing?
Speaker 4: Like I knew they were.
Speaker 1: Did you get pissed, Carl? When did the anger come
Speaker 1: or didn't it? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was very angry at many many occasions. You know.
Speaker 3: I first got properly angry and upset when I was
Speaker 3: thrown in prison because I didn't even know I was
Speaker 3: going to be thrown in prison They're constantly lying to
Speaker 3: you know, they were constantly telling me just to answer
Speaker 3: all our questions, and we're going to put you on
Speaker 3: a plane back to Australia on the weekend, you know.
Speaker 3: So they were lying to me right up until the end.
Speaker 3: And when I figured out that I was being admitted
Speaker 3: into prison, I mean I had a meltdown. I was
Speaker 3: not just angry, but upset, scared, anxious, and I was
Speaker 3: thrown in solitary confinement, which was really traumatic and you know, confronting.
Speaker 3: And also I had no idea what was happening, because
Speaker 3: again I didn't speak the language, so nobody explained to me.
Speaker 4: Even where I was.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know I was in Evan prison. I
Speaker 3: didn't know that the solitary confinement cell was be where
Speaker 3: I would have to live for the next month. I
Speaker 3: didn't know why I was there. I knew nothing, and
Speaker 3: I couldn't even communicate with my jailers because the prison
Speaker 3: guards didn't speak English. So it was just I was
Speaker 3: a all of rage and anxiety, and yeah, it was horrific.
Speaker 1: How did you survive that? How do you be in
Speaker 1: another country in a box, locked away? I can't talk
Speaker 1: to people you love they can't talk to you being
Speaker 1: like literally, you know, incarcerated for something you didn't do.
Speaker 1: It's not like you did a bad thing and now
Speaker 1: you're suffering, and oh fuck, I did a bad thing.
Speaker 1: I feel I realized, you know, this is like you
Speaker 1: didn't do anything and you're being punished. How did you manage,
Speaker 1: like tell us about the emotional and the psychological management
Speaker 1: that had to happen.
Speaker 3: I didn't at all cope at the beginning. I was obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, completely frantic and traumatized by solitary confinement.
Speaker 4: I think it took me about.
Speaker 3: Two weeks to properly get a lid on my emotional
Speaker 3: response and my terror to being in solitary because it's
Speaker 3: psychological torture and they're deliberately putting you in there to
Speaker 3: break psychologically, and you do break, and at the beginning,
Speaker 3: your brain doesn't know how to deal with it, because
Speaker 3: you've gone from being overstimulated now and you know, today's lifestyle,
Speaker 3: to having zero stimulation whatsoever, zero mental stimulation, and your
Speaker 3: brain just snaps. I mean you literally bounce off the walls.
Speaker 3: I would actually hear other people in solitary throwing themselves
Speaker 3: against the walls. Throwing themselves against the doors and screaming
Speaker 3: because they just couldn't take the hours and hours and
Speaker 3: hours of isolation with no stimulus whatsoever. You know, you
Speaker 3: become your own torturer, really, and I went through that phase,
Speaker 3: but luckily it ended for me, and I say it
Speaker 3: ends for probably eighty percent of the people because I
Speaker 3: spoke to many many other prisoners who've been in solitary too,
Speaker 3: and in this extreme solitary situation, and you know, the
Speaker 3: human brain finds a way to adapt and survive for
Speaker 3: most people, but I would say about twenty percent or
Speaker 3: ten percent never do and are just flipping out out permanently.
Speaker 3: And in that case, often they end up being hospitalized.
Speaker 3: And I've heard it as well, but luckily it didn't
Speaker 3: happen to me. My brain sort of slowed itself down.
Speaker 3: I found ways of just occupying my mind for hours
Speaker 3: and hours, and it would sort of be best to
Speaker 3: sleep for as long as possible and inhabit like my
Speaker 3: memories as much as possible, lie on the ground with
Speaker 3: a blanket over my head and just close my eyes
Speaker 3: and think through childhood memories and just as best as
Speaker 3: possible not notice the passage of time. And stop caring
Speaker 3: about time, and stop caring about yesterday and tomorrow and
Speaker 3: just focus on the prison routine in the here and now.
Speaker 3: That's what sort of got me through in the end.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that's incredible? Do you think that
Speaker 1: because you're an academic and and part of that is
Speaker 1: curiosity and learning and being open minded, and like, did
Speaker 1: you get to a point where you started to think, like,
Speaker 1: was there a metacognitive breakthrough where you're aware of how
Speaker 1: you're thinking and what's happening in your mind? Did you
Speaker 1: find any space between the chaos and you? And did
Speaker 1: that help?
Speaker 3: There were many times when I did, but not really
Speaker 3: when I was in that extreme solitary confinement situation, I
Speaker 3: was only there for one month. In that it was
Speaker 3: a tiny box two and a half by two and
Speaker 3: a half meters, no window, no natural light, lights on
Speaker 3: twenty four seven, no furniture, no pillow, no sheets, no anything.
Speaker 3: I couldn't even bring in food into the room. I
Speaker 3: couldn't bring my own toothbrush, nothing, and I was only
Speaker 3: allowed to shower once every three days.
Speaker 4: It was extreme deprobation.
Speaker 3: And you know, you'd be in there for twenty three
Speaker 3: hours a day on your own and that I didn't
Speaker 3: find any cognitive peace per se. It was more about
Speaker 3: toll rating what was happening to me and stopping it
Speaker 3: from breaking me down. Entirely, I think it was you
Speaker 3: were just in extreme survival mode. I don't think any
Speaker 3: human would ever become fully comfortable or be able to
Speaker 3: fully detach from their fear and negative emotions in such
Speaker 3: a place. You know, maybe the Dalai Lama or somebody,
Speaker 3: but certainly not me. But when I was look I
Speaker 3: spent twelve months in solitary all up, but not in
Speaker 3: an extreme solitary like that cell.
Speaker 4: When I was alone.
Speaker 3: In other cells, you know, which had toilets attached, terrible
Speaker 3: filthy squad of toilets, but still you could take yourself
Speaker 3: to the toilet when you wanted. And a small television
Speaker 3: which would There were only four channels, and they were
Speaker 3: all Iranian soap operas. Again I didn't understand the language,
Speaker 3: but at least kind of watching that would often pass
Speaker 3: the time, even though I had no idea what was
Speaker 3: going on, and that after a while, after a few months,
Speaker 3: I got some books, I got some writing materials, and
Speaker 3: they eased up on me a bit. And that's when
Speaker 3: I started to use my academic curiosity and intellect to
Speaker 3: examine critically what was happening to me and how I
Speaker 3: was responding to it, and try and find ways and
Speaker 3: methods of surviving in a more healthy fashion. But in
Speaker 3: that first one month that I spent in that extreme
Speaker 3: solitary box, no way. I was just just trying to survive.
Speaker 3: That was my only instinct.
Speaker 1: Really, And the one hour a day that you weren't
Speaker 1: in that box, where were you and what was happening?
Speaker 3: So they took us for half an hour in the
Speaker 3: morning and half an hour in the evening to an
Speaker 3: area called Tabajori, which was like a balcony about ten
Speaker 3: meters in length with fully screened off by corrugated iron,
Speaker 3: attached to the women's unit, and we were just I
Speaker 3: would be allowed to pace backwards and forwards for half
Speaker 3: an hour in the outside fresh air there. Yeah, And.
Speaker 1: How many other people were in this space when you
Speaker 1: were there?
Speaker 3: Oh? Nobody, because when you're in solitary you can't see anybody,
Speaker 3: that's the point. So you're alone there as well.
Speaker 1: And could you see the sky?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: The sky was really the only free space I could see.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's one reason why I called the
Speaker 3: book the un Caged Sky, because actually I was in
Speaker 3: a few different units with a few different harbory spaces,
Speaker 3: and some of them actually had caged the sky, like
Speaker 3: they had literally built metal bars above your head, so
Speaker 3: that three hundred and sixty degrees of the space had
Speaker 3: been caged in. And that was the worst because you
Speaker 3: could look you had to look up through bars if
Speaker 3: you wanted to watch the birds or the clouds or
Speaker 3: look at the sun. But this particular one at the
Speaker 3: beginning didn't have a cage, and you know, I would
Speaker 3: just spend all my time looking up, following the various
Speaker 3: birds in the trees, and you know, just looking at
Speaker 3: the trees in the far off distance, and they would
Speaker 3: lose their leaves in the autumn and rig grow them
Speaker 3: in the spring, and so I'd be watching for buds
Speaker 3: for you know, all that tree's got more leaves today,
Speaker 3: and you know, observing the natural world, you know, was
Speaker 3: how I liked to spend those half hour breaks outside.
Speaker 1: And after the initial months, where did you go from there?
Speaker 3: I went into a slightly biggest cell about three and
Speaker 3: a half meters by one and a half and yet
Speaker 3: it had that TV and that squatter toilet by yourself
Speaker 3: help by myself.
Speaker 1: Yes, and what were how how long were you in
Speaker 1: there every day? And was there were you allowed in
Speaker 1: gen pop or anything or.
Speaker 3: Oh, exactly the same, So twenty three hours a day
Speaker 3: in the cell, half an hour in the morning, half
Speaker 3: an hour in the evening outside.
Speaker 4: But I should note I was taken.
Speaker 3: For interrogation still, So after the first few days of
Speaker 3: kind of breaking me alone in that extreme solitary, they
Speaker 3: started to take me for a few hours a day
Speaker 3: for interrogation. And even when I moved to that slightly
Speaker 3: larger cell with the squatter toilet attached, I was still
Speaker 3: at times being taken for interrogation, but much less frequently,
Speaker 3: maybe once a week or so. And I used to
Speaker 3: like want to be interrogated even though they were really
Speaker 3: horrible to me, because it was somebody to talk to
Speaker 3: and I wasn't alone, yes, and.
Speaker 1: You could interact and connect in a weird way. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's probably less painful than just sitting in a.
Speaker 3: Box, definitely, Yeah, And they know it. They know that
Speaker 3: you want to keep it going as long as possible
Speaker 3: because you fear being left alone in that box afterwards,
Speaker 3: And they sort of take advantage of that psychology as well. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they know exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Wow, such evil people in the world. And so at
Speaker 1: what stage in your eight hundred and how it was,
Speaker 1: I don't know, in four days, at what stage did
Speaker 1: you interact with other inmates where you could eat with
Speaker 1: others and talk with others or did that not happen
Speaker 1: or that it happened.
Speaker 4: Oh, it happened.
Speaker 3: So my first interactions were illicit communications, you know, that
Speaker 3: were banned, you know, not allowed. But when I was
Speaker 3: in that extreme solitary cell after about two weeks, a
Speaker 3: couple of other prisoners across the hall from me had
Speaker 3: heard me. They knew I was there, they knew I
Speaker 3: was a foreigner. I didn't speak Facy, they'd spoke English
Speaker 3: because they were very educated, and they'd heard me constantly
Speaker 3: struggling trying to communicate in English with these prison guards,
Speaker 3: heard me crying, heard me upset, and they reached out
Speaker 3: to me, and they left some dried fruits and nuts
Speaker 3: in a bag inside a pot plant that was in
Speaker 3: the outdoor exercise area, and a small note for me
Speaker 3: that they'd written on a square of toilet paper, basically
Speaker 3: saying you're not alone, you know. Wow. Yeah, And they'd
Speaker 3: written they'd scratched this stay strong, You're not alone. They
Speaker 3: scratched this into the wall with a rock of the
Speaker 3: outdoor exercise area too, and you know, it's it's very dangerous.
Speaker 3: The guards are aware that they do these things, and
Speaker 3: they punish them and they block up the wall again.
Speaker 3: And it was very lucky that I found this gift
Speaker 3: and this note that they'd left for me, and I
Speaker 3: was able to put it in my underwear and take
Speaker 3: it back to my cell and read it and eat
Speaker 3: the fruits and nuts, and so we established a kind
Speaker 3: of a note passing network. And I managed to steal
Speaker 3: a pen at one point, and when I was in
Speaker 3: the second cell with the bathroom, I hid my stolen
Speaker 3: pen in the plumbing of the toilet, which because they
Speaker 3: would search your cell every day, but they never went.
Speaker 4: Into the plumbing because the toilet was pretty filthy.
Speaker 3: I knew the guards wouldn't want to go near it.
Speaker 3: So I managed to do that and correspond in English
Speaker 3: with the neighboring cell. And later on we discovered we
Speaker 3: could speak through in a conditioning vent in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night when the guards had retired to their
Speaker 3: guard's room, and I managed to sort of snatch ten
Speaker 3: minutes every three days on a particular guard shift with
Speaker 3: my neighbors English again, and these are the people who
Speaker 3: gave me, you know, all the information I had about
Speaker 3: where I was, who had arrested me, what would happen
Speaker 3: to me, that I would be put on trial, that
Speaker 3: I would probably be found guilty and then swapped with Australia,
Speaker 3: you know, in a prisoner swap or something, that this
Speaker 3: was a pattern of behavior that Iran regularly engaged in.
Speaker 3: And also how I should handle the interrogations, what I
Speaker 3: should or shouldn't do. You know, they gave me so
Speaker 3: much useful information, and you know, as a foreigner with
Speaker 3: no context or knowledge of Iran, really, you know, it
Speaker 3: saved my life in a way, because you know, I
Speaker 3: might have made a false confession, I might have done anything,
Speaker 3: and these guys really kept me on the right track
Speaker 3: and also crucially made me understand I'm not alone and
Speaker 3: I'm not going through this alone, and there are others too,
Speaker 3: and that they care about me and care about what
Speaker 3: happens to me, and that I have friends. So that
Speaker 3: meant the world to me.
Speaker 1: Wow, all that goodness and all that evil in one place.
Speaker 1: Did you get to meet them face to face, Kylie?
Speaker 3: Yes, I met well the first two who reached out
Speaker 3: to me, one of them, Horda, She was bailed a
Speaker 3: few months later, so I never met her face to face.
Speaker 3: But Nil Alfar, who was the second inmate in that cell,
Speaker 3: she became my roommate about ten months later, along with
Speaker 3: her colleague Cepidere. And these two women became my sisters.
Speaker 3: You know. I shared a cell with them for ten
Speaker 3: or eleven months, and everything we did together, we knew
Speaker 3: each other intimately, and they taught me so much, and
Speaker 3: they became as close to me, if not closer than
Speaker 3: an actual birth sister. So these women were just remarkable.
Speaker 3: I had a number of other cell mates before them.
Speaker 3: Some were evil, horrible people, and others were lovely and friendly.
Speaker 3: And it really is, you know, the solidarity that develops
Speaker 3: between fellow prisoners who are all but being put through
Speaker 3: hell and going through a horrific experience. It just is
Speaker 3: It means everything to you. It's the difference between becoming
Speaker 3: a bus case and finding a way to survive. And
Speaker 3: I really credit that human connection and that support and
Speaker 3: that sisterhood with getting me through really, isn't it?
Speaker 1: Isn't it like when you break everything down and all
Speaker 1: the bullshit in society and all the stuff we obsess
Speaker 1: about and focus on, and all the things we want
Speaker 1: and all the stuff that we think that we need,
Speaker 1: and all the problems that we think that we have.
Speaker 1: But when you get to the lowest, lowest, lowest common
Speaker 1: denominator of a human in a box with no contact,
Speaker 1: with no support, with no kindness, with no love, with
Speaker 1: no connection with at times I would think no hope
Speaker 1: or seeming like no hope, just a bit of love?
Speaker 1: What an incredible like somebody could offer you ten kilos
Speaker 1: of gold or a hug, you know, or just like
Speaker 1: fuck your gold, just talk to me, just listen to me,
Speaker 1: just be kind to me. Did that must have been
Speaker 1: like the greatest gift?
Speaker 3: Honestly it was. I mean, the first time someone actually
Speaker 3: hugged me probably was several months. I hadn't been touched
Speaker 3: by another human being for several months, and just that
Speaker 3: basic expression of care of compassion meant the world to me.
Speaker 3: It was an incredible hug. And yeah, I mean, we
Speaker 3: are group animals, human beings. We need others and this
Speaker 3: is why solitary confinement is torture because we're not meant
Speaker 3: to be alone for prolonged periods of time. You know, socially,
Speaker 3: we need others around us in order to survive. And
Speaker 3: it's that's why it's so damaging solitary confinement. And we
Speaker 3: need other people to care about us, and we need
Speaker 3: that interaction and that support and that friendship. I think
Speaker 3: it's vital.
Speaker 1: Tell me about We'll give me a snap shot of
Speaker 1: the ten months that you spent in that room with
Speaker 1: your sisters.
Speaker 3: Actually, we had a lot of fun. We got up
Speaker 3: to a lot of mischief. We did a lot of naughty,
Speaker 3: bad things.
Speaker 1: Thanks God, what naughty things did you do?
Speaker 4: Oh? So well.
Speaker 3: We went on several hunger strikes together making demands, and
Speaker 3: we organized a joint hunger strack with the men's unit
Speaker 3: because my friend Sipitera, her husband was in the men's
Speaker 3: unit Uman he was his name, and we were able
Speaker 3: to pass a note to him during a family meeting
Speaker 3: that she had with him and got some recruited some
Speaker 3: of the men who were downstairs to join us, and
Speaker 3: we really freaked out the prison authorities by having about
Speaker 3: nine or ten person hunger strike all starting on the
Speaker 3: one day when none of us was supposed to be
Speaker 3: in contact with one another. So we did stuff like that,
Speaker 3: But we also managed to disrupt other prisoners interrogations by
Speaker 3: yelling and screaming outside their windows when they were happening.
Speaker 3: We sipeter broke into one of the extreme solitary cells
Speaker 3: and managed to go in when one of these prisoners
Speaker 3: was in there and give her a hug and sit
Speaker 3: on the floor with her for a couple of minutes
Speaker 3: before being extracted again. We would pass food and things
Speaker 3: to other prisoners. We would bribe some prison guards, sometimes
Speaker 3: with food of our own, to help to get them
Speaker 3: to turn a blind eye to us giving food items
Speaker 3: to other prisoners, this kind of thing. You know, we
Speaker 3: did a lot of resistance, and we occupied certain areas
Speaker 3: and refused to move, sat down on the ground, refused
Speaker 3: to leave until we got dragged away. And you know,
Speaker 3: we started resisting essentially and supported one another in these
Speaker 3: schemes and these ideas as well.
Speaker 1: Amazing, amazing, And so how did how did you get out? Like?
Speaker 1: What transpired? What was the situation around that? Oh?
Speaker 3: Gosh, So I was ultimately on trial and convicted and
Speaker 3: given a ten year prison sentence for espionage.
Speaker 1: I so fucking stupid anyway, I know, I.
Speaker 3: Know it would have been funny if it wasn't so upsetting,
Speaker 3: but yeah, So I spent then about seven months in
Speaker 3: solitary following that conviction, and then I was transferred to
Speaker 3: a public prison where I was living amongst you know,
Speaker 3: everyday criminals and other women, which was actually great. I
Speaker 3: much preferred being there. And at that time the Australian
Speaker 3: government had undertaken negotiations with directly with the Revolutionary Guard,
Speaker 3: course so not with the Uranian government, but with the
Speaker 3: group that had arrested me, And after a few false
Speaker 3: starts and things falling through, they managed to get a
Speaker 3: prisoner swap deal in place involving three convicted terrorists in
Speaker 3: Thailand who were also Revolutionary Guard members, and they were
Speaker 3: exchanged for me by the Australian government.
Speaker 1: When did you first have a conversation with an official
Speaker 1: from Australia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had an embassy visit at about the four
Speaker 3: month mark. The ambassador came into the prison and I
Speaker 3: had a sort of a twenty minute visit with him,
Speaker 3: but I wasn't allowed to discuss anything, certainly not my case.
Speaker 3: So it was sort of a health check or a
Speaker 3: proof of life or something. And I remember he was
Speaker 3: telling me some news from Australia, this kind of thing,
Speaker 3: telling me my family loved me and they cared about me,
Speaker 3: and etc. But we weren't really allowed to discuss any
Speaker 3: of the particulars of what was happening to me or
Speaker 3: my case.
Speaker 4: But I got.
Speaker 3: Banned from consular visits after a few months because of
Speaker 3: my resistance, so also got banned from family phone calls
Speaker 3: as a punishment. So I was cut off from the
Speaker 3: Australian authorities for long stretches of time and didn't have
Speaker 3: any news or any information whatsoever.
Speaker 1: So what was what was the date of your liberation?
Speaker 1: November twenty What date was it?
Speaker 3: Twenty fifth of November?
Speaker 1: Tell us about that day.
Speaker 3: I had been visited by the Ambassador Lindel Sachs forty
Speaker 3: eight hours earlier in the prison, and she had told
Speaker 3: me we're going to get you out in two days.
Speaker 3: But I didn't allow myself to believe it because it
Speaker 3: had been like this a few times before. I'd been
Speaker 3: told something's happening, I'm going to get out and it
Speaker 3: never did, never happen, So I didn't want to give
Speaker 3: myself false hope, but I knew that that was the day,
Speaker 3: and I'd been taken out of the prison a day
Speaker 3: earlier as well, to the headquarters of the REV Guards
Speaker 3: in downtown Tehran. I'd met the envoy that Australia had
Speaker 3: sent to negotiate my release. He was present there in
Speaker 3: those headquarters, so I understood that something very serious was
Speaker 3: afoot and it was likely or possible I could be released.
Speaker 3: But on the day I was supposed to leave at
Speaker 3: nine am, and I was still there at midday and
Speaker 3: myself so clearly something was going wrong, and I thought,
Speaker 3: oh God, here we go. It's going to fall through again.
Speaker 3: But eventually, eventually I was taken out of my cell.
Speaker 3: I was handcuffed, blindfolded, putting a car, and first forced
Speaker 3: to film a propaganda interview. By that point, I had
Speaker 3: taught myself Farsi, so I had to speak in Farsi
Speaker 3: to the camera in front of the prison gates, which
Speaker 3: was all ridiculous, and you know, I kind of did
Speaker 3: my best to sabotage the interview, but they sort of
Speaker 3: forced me to do that before they would let me go.
Speaker 3: And then they dropped me at the Ambassador's residence in Tehran,
Speaker 3: and from there me, the ambassador, and the envoy got
Speaker 3: into a car and we drove to the airport and
Speaker 3: I was put on I guess like a private plane
Speaker 3: in the rev Guards wing of Mehrabad Airport a few
Speaker 3: hours later and flown from the country.
Speaker 1: Where did you fly to?
Speaker 3: We actually landed in Doha in Qatar, first stayed overnight
Speaker 3: there in the airport, and then the next day continued
Speaker 3: on to Australia.
Speaker 1: What was that like getting on that plane flying out
Speaker 1: first time? When you're like clear, you're off the runway,
Speaker 1: you're three minutes in the air.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I was still on tenterhooks because I just until
Speaker 3: I left Hernian airspace, I just could not fully allow
Speaker 3: myself to believe that I was free.
Speaker 4: And the Red Guards had actually said.
Speaker 3: To me a couple of times, Oh, we can let
Speaker 3: you get on a plane, but we can force it
Speaker 3: to turn around in the air and force you to
Speaker 3: land still, and if we want to bring you back,
Speaker 3: we will. And you know, I had all those thoughts
Speaker 3: in my head and was still kind of highly strong
Speaker 3: and stressed until I'd received word that we'd crossed out
Speaker 3: of Iranian airspace and then I could properly breathe again
Speaker 3: and understand, Yeah, it's really happened.
Speaker 4: You're free.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah when you got back to Australia, and maybe you
Speaker 1: still don't feel normal, but I mean, it wasn't that
Speaker 1: long ago. Like it's not like it was twelve years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean it's not even two years yet. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: got back. It's less than like, what is it now,
Speaker 1: it's about twenty two months or something like that. How
Speaker 1: long before you kind of felt safe ish, normal ish
Speaker 1: and I don't know, less anxious or is it still
Speaker 1: a work?
Speaker 3: It's definitely still a journey. I'm on. I don't think
Speaker 3: I've got to the end of it yet. I was
Speaker 3: doing really well until the Melbourne lockdowns in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: because that just sort of felt like a curtailment of
Speaker 3: my freedom again. You know, I wanted to just be
Speaker 3: free to do what I wanted, and you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of my family live in New South Wales. I
Speaker 3: wanted to be able to see my family cross the border,
Speaker 3: you know, drive to see friends more than five kilometers away,
Speaker 3: and just be out and about enjoying my freedom. And
Speaker 3: that kind of knocked me around a bit those lockdowns,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I mean I think it took me some
Speaker 3: months to feel properly safe. I was very hyper vigilant
Speaker 3: and aware of security cameras in particular, but also anyone
Speaker 3: walking past or looking suspicious or might be hanging around
Speaker 3: a bit too much or you know. I was very
Speaker 3: uber vigilant and looking out for threats I guess, and
Speaker 3: not fully settled or feeling safe. And in a way,
Speaker 3: I still have that tendency a little bit, but it's
Speaker 3: definitely faded over time.
Speaker 1: Do you have PTSD? Do you think?
Speaker 3: No? I don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great, And so what do you do to what
Speaker 1: do you do for your mental health? I mean we
Speaker 1: all have mental health challenges pretty much everyone, but anxiety
Speaker 1: or overthinking or depression or that rumination do you how
Speaker 1: do you manage that day to day?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I have some of that.
Speaker 3: For me, the most effective way of managing that is
Speaker 3: just to be running in nature. I live in a
Speaker 3: very beautiful part of Victoria in the Dandenong Ranges and
Speaker 3: I have a beautiful nature reserved near my house and
Speaker 3: every day, especially during lockdown, I would run. I would
Speaker 3: see kangaroos every day, I would see lots of beautiful
Speaker 3: parrots and birds, and I would just be alone in
Speaker 3: the green amidst the trees, running and I found that
Speaker 3: really really soothing for my mental health, and it just
Speaker 3: allowed me to think, allowed me time to as I
Speaker 3: was running, to process things and just think, and alone
Speaker 3: time me time to just go through thoughts that I
Speaker 3: had in my head and make sense of them. So honestly,
Speaker 3: I think that being out in nature and having that, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that time in nature to run and exercise each day
Speaker 3: was what got me through, to be honest.
Speaker 1: Think about this. Think about you in a box, in
Speaker 1: a concrete box with no windows, with no stimulation, with
Speaker 1: no pillow, no blanket or no sheets, no toilet, in
Speaker 1: the worst environment, under the worst conditions, and then in
Speaker 1: the days running with the kangaroos. I mean, it's the
Speaker 1: opposite end of the scale, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I'd been craving that, I think, you know, I'd
Speaker 3: been craving trees.
Speaker 4: I've been craving.
Speaker 3: Green because when you're in prison, especially in a big
Speaker 3: urban city. You know, there's so much smog in Tehran
Speaker 3: that often you wouldn't even see blue sky because there'd
Speaker 3: be so much epollution.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I wanted to be in a forest
Speaker 5: or at a beach, or I wanted to be outside
Speaker 5: somewhere and not just be caged in concrete and.
Speaker 3: Iron bars and you know, rais of wire and this
Speaker 3: kind of thing all the time. So being able to
Speaker 3: just drink in that green and have that nature around
Speaker 3: me just, yeah, it meant the world to me, really
Speaker 3: helped with my recovery.
Speaker 1: Is there was there a spiritual kind of component to
Speaker 1: your existence, Kyli?
Speaker 3: Yes, I do think in a way you draw close
Speaker 3: to God when you go through such an experience. I
Speaker 3: mean I saw both. Most prisoners think about religion obviously
Speaker 3: when they're going through some sort of horrific ordeal. The
Speaker 3: ones who came in religious often either they would cling
Speaker 3: to the religion and pray five times a day and
Speaker 3: you know, like we're talking about Muslims here, so you
Speaker 3: know they have set prayers five times a day and
Speaker 3: do all the extra prayers and extra you know, fasting
Speaker 3: on Ramadan and everything, or they would become completely disillusioned
Speaker 3: with it and say, God, where are you?
Speaker 4: How did you let this.
Speaker 3: Happen to me? And you know, let it slide. So
Speaker 3: as a sort of a secular person. I definitely started
Speaker 3: praying more when I was in there than I ever
Speaker 3: would have outside.
Speaker 1: How are you if you crystal bullet or we step
Speaker 1: into an alternate reality and we go, let's say that
Speaker 1: never happened. How do you think you're a different person?
Speaker 1: And too, you know, the Kylie that would have been
Speaker 1: on that alternate path of your life minus this eight
Speaker 1: one hundred and four days of you know, misery.
Speaker 3: It's hard to say. I don't think that the fundamentals
Speaker 3: of who I am as a person have changed that dramatically.
Speaker 3: I think I've learned more about myself and who I
Speaker 3: am as a result of this trial. It's a trial
Speaker 3: that I had to go through in my life, and
Speaker 3: there have been blessings that have come out of that too.
Speaker 3: You know, I've learnt so much about myself and about
Speaker 3: human nature and about others and about the people around
Speaker 3: me as well. I mean, who has your back and
Speaker 3: who doesn't. When you go through such a traumatic experience,
Speaker 3: it tells you a lot. So I actually, you know,
Speaker 3: try and look on the bright side and see it
Speaker 3: as a positive thing. And I don't know if I've
Speaker 3: dramatically changed as a person. I think I'm more confident
Speaker 3: and less tolerant of people's bs, less some caring about
Speaker 3: what people think of me, more strident in expressing my opinions.
Speaker 3: But as a human being, I think I'm essentially the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you have to do? You have to work
Speaker 1: at not being bitter, twisted, angry, residentful, mad, violent at
Speaker 1: the people who did all this bullshit to you?
Speaker 3: Oh? Definitely, And I'd say I probably am all of
Speaker 3: those things that you just said. It's more about trying
Speaker 3: to find a way, a positive direction to push it
Speaker 3: in rather than just lashing out at everyone around me
Speaker 3: and flailing about, screaming at the unfairness of it all.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to channel because I do have a lot
Speaker 3: of rage inside me. I'm very angry about what happened
Speaker 3: to me and certain individuals, organizations, and actors that were
Speaker 3: involved in it. And I'm trying to channel that anger
Speaker 3: and rage in a positive direction by trying to support
Speaker 3: the family members of others were unjustly held abroad, by
Speaker 3: trying to support the Uranian human rights movement. I'm in
Speaker 3: touch with a lot of the families and even some
Speaker 3: of my former prisoners themselves who have been let out.
Speaker 3: Trying to support them and raising my voice and drawing
Speaker 3: attention to what Iran is doing and the phenomenon of
Speaker 3: arbitrary detention or hostage diplomacy as well. All these things
Speaker 3: are positive ways I can try and channel that anger,
Speaker 3: but I certainly do struggle sometimes with the resentment and
Speaker 3: the just heare the rage at it all?
Speaker 4: For sure?
Speaker 1: How dare you be human? And so? How dare you?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: Is this your mission for now? Your mission is to
Speaker 1: bring light to this stuff and to speak to groups
Speaker 1: and to spread that message and I guess shine a
Speaker 1: light on all of this bad stuff that's happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, i'd say so.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I have a specific mission, but
Speaker 3: I certainly feel like this is something that I should
Speaker 3: be doing. A lot of people have reached out to me,
Speaker 3: especially on the back of the book. We have several
Speaker 3: high profile Australians who are hostages abroad in foreign prisons
Speaker 3: in places like Chinami and mah Iraq, And there are
Speaker 3: also a lot of foreigners who are in Iran, and
Speaker 3: a lot of them have reached out to me, to
Speaker 3: their families, you know, in the UK and the US,
Speaker 3: in Germany and Austria and France, Belgium. You know, there's
Speaker 3: a lot and there's a strange community of us too,
Speaker 3: a strange community of return to hostages and very active
Speaker 3: campaigning families of current hostages, and we all know each
Speaker 3: other and swap ideas and talk, and that's really nice
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess having that albeit not a not
Speaker 1: something anyone wants to have in common, but you have
Speaker 1: that in common, and so there's a I guess there's
Speaker 1: a connection that you can have with people who have
Speaker 1: got family members in that situation or who have been
Speaker 1: in that situation themselves that you can't have with others.
Speaker 3: Exactly. No one else understands. You can't. No one else
Speaker 3: can properly get what we went through in that place
Speaker 3: unless they've been through it. To no amount of me
Speaker 3: trying to explain or describe will ever really convey that
Speaker 3: to someone. But the others who were there with me,
Speaker 3: or people who've been through this prison system before me,
Speaker 3: they get it, they understand, and so it's actually really
Speaker 3: valuable to be able to talk with them as well
Speaker 3: in terms of healing and processing things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the best therapy for you. I would think,
Speaker 1: what about your sisters that you spent your cheeky rubble
Speaker 1: trouble making sisters that you spent ten months with. Do
Speaker 1: you ever talk to them?
Speaker 3: I have spoken to them, yes, but they are still
Speaker 3: in prison, so wow. A couple of the times they've
Speaker 3: been out because they got COVID or for some medical reason.
Speaker 3: But unfortunately, more than five years after they arrest Sipia
Speaker 3: and Nilufar and Sipiter's husband to mine and they're in
Speaker 3: a group of eight, they're all still in prison, and
Speaker 3: they're innocent, and you know, they're just some of the
Speaker 3: many thousands of innocent people that are Ryan's imprisoned because
Speaker 3: of political reasons or because of unfounded espionage allegations or whatever.
Speaker 3: So it's heartbreaking to me, really, and I think of
Speaker 3: them often.
Speaker 1: It is heartbreaking. So the name of your book is
Speaker 1: The Uncaged Sky, My eight hundred and four Days in
Speaker 1: an around in prison in all good bookstores and crap
Speaker 1: ones and online. Is there an audio version, Kylie?
Speaker 3: There is?
Speaker 4: Yes, I read it myself.
Speaker 1: In fact, yeah, I like it when authors do their
Speaker 1: own books because I kind of feel like I get
Speaker 1: to know the author. Thank you so much for having
Speaker 1: to chat with us. I could go on for another hour,
Speaker 1: because there are so many other things I would like
Speaker 1: to quiz you on in terms of the psychology and
Speaker 1: sociology of getting through this and self managing and navigating
Speaker 1: and moving forwards, but I don't want to take up
Speaker 1: too much your time. How do people find you or
Speaker 1: connect with you, or follow you or pay you an
Speaker 1: obscene amounts? Come and talk to their group.
Speaker 3: You can contact me on Twitter or Instagram. It's Twitter
Speaker 3: is at k Moore Gilbert. Instagram is Kylie Moore Gilbert.
Speaker 3: I have a publicly available email address on my Twitter account,
Speaker 3: Kylie MG atprotonmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Awesome, well we will. We will promote your book ya
Speaker 1: our when we put out all this to the world
Speaker 1: once again. Gain everyone the Young Cage sky My eight
Speaker 1: hundred and four days in an Iranian prison. I'm going
Speaker 1: to buy the book on What's that thing I have?
Speaker 1: Melissa Audible, Thank you Audible. I'm going to buy it
Speaker 1: on Audible when I get off here, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to start listening today. So we appreciate you, Kylie, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Stay there. We'll say goodbye, affair, but
Speaker 1: thanks for being on the new project. Where really glad you?
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me on Craig. It's been
Speaker 3: a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thanks Melissa, thank you both.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, what a story. I'm so sorry you
Speaker 2: had to go through that, but thank you so much
Speaker 2: for sharing it. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks everyone, Love you,