Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: My life had been broken by grief, and then for
Speaker 2: a period it was redeemed by love. But people do
Speaker 2: not love each other in the same way, and sometimes
Speaker 2: there is terror in love. I wanted a family more
Speaker 2: than anything in the world. The man didn't. But instead
Speaker 2: of acknowledging that we wanted different things and that we
Speaker 2: might be better off in pursuit of separate lives, we
Speaker 2: stayed together. It is difficult to look back now and
Speaker 2: see that I tolerated this for as long as I did.
Speaker 2: Some men take strong women as a challenge and derive
Speaker 2: a pleasure in breaking them or trying to. And when
Speaker 2: you are a strong woman, you also might not think
Speaker 2: this can happen to you, that you might be in trouble,
Speaker 2: that someone you care for might be dangerous for you.
Speaker 1: That's Fatima Bhutto, Pakistani writer and columnist and author of
Speaker 1: several books, including the memoir Song of Blood and Sword
Speaker 1: and the recent The Hour of the Wolf. Fatima's is
Speaker 1: a story of growing up in a world filled with
Speaker 1: magic and also marked by profound fear of impending loss.
Speaker 1: When that loss becomes a reality, grief shapes her from
Speaker 1: the inside out, until finally the waves recede, her sight clears,
Speaker 1: and she finds herself feeling the kind of safety that
Speaker 1: had never been her birthright. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this
Speaker 1: is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
Speaker 1: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape of your
Speaker 1: childhood as early as you remember.
Speaker 2: The earliest I remember really is my father. My father
Speaker 2: was the entire universe of my childhood, and besides him
Speaker 2: was this enormous absence of home, because of course I
Speaker 2: wasn't born in my country. I was born when my
Speaker 2: father was in exile. And home this place that my
Speaker 2: father loved and adored, but that we couldn't return to
Speaker 2: because of danger, because of politics, because of a dictatorship.
Speaker 2: It always loomed very strongly, not even in the background.
Speaker 2: It was really quite foregrounded for us. And it was
Speaker 2: a place of so much promise and so much beauty,
Speaker 2: but also a threatening place. And I suppose somehow my
Speaker 2: father made this world seem open and wondrous and exciting.
Speaker 2: But he also didn't lie to me. He didn't hide
Speaker 2: what was threatening about it.
Speaker 1: That's something that really struck me, is that somehow embedded
Speaker 1: in the very atmosphere of your childhood was it almost
Speaker 1: seems like it presaged loss.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was always there as well, because I was
Speaker 2: born three years after my grandfather had been killed by
Speaker 2: a military dictatorship in Bakistan, and three years after I
Speaker 2: was born, my father's younger brother, who was only twenty
Speaker 2: seven at the time, was also killed, And there was
Speaker 2: always this sense that it was close by. That My
Speaker 2: father didn't say things like you know, when I die.
Speaker 2: He said things like when I'm killed, And even though
Speaker 2: it upset me as a child, when I would tell
Speaker 2: him that it upset me, he would say, well, you
Speaker 2: should know that that's a possibility.
Speaker 1: Fatima and her father have a nighttime ritual in the
Speaker 1: dark quiet of their Damascus flat. After he reads her
Speaker 1: a bedtime story, He'll say, if anything ever happened to you,
Speaker 1: I would die, and Fatima responds by saying, me too, Papa,
Speaker 1: I would die without you too. She writes in her memoir.
Speaker 1: We spoke that oath to each other as easily as
Speaker 1: some people say sweet dreams.
Speaker 2: I have two babies now, and the thought of saying
Speaker 2: that to them would just fill me with so much sadness,
Speaker 2: but it felt normal. My father would tell me a story,
Speaker 2: and he was a wonderful mimic, so he would do voices,
Speaker 2: and you know, it was comedic and exciting and fun
Speaker 2: to listen to him. And then he would sit there
Speaker 2: and wait for me to sleep. But his good night
Speaker 2: was always this quite sorry, full good night. And I
Speaker 2: didn't really understand that there was anything unusual about it
Speaker 2: because this idea of all the loss around us, it
Speaker 2: made it seem quite possible that something bad would happen.
Speaker 2: So it seemed a kind of normal thing to say.
Speaker 2: But it really was a beautiful childhood in so many ways.
Speaker 2: I mean, I knew there were bits that were not
Speaker 2: normal about it, you know, I knew as a young child.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was very chatty. I'm still very chatty,
Speaker 2: but I was. I loved talking, and as soon as
Speaker 2: I was old enough to answer the phone, that was
Speaker 2: like incredibly exciting to me because imagine the chance we
Speaker 2: just get to talk to someone out of the blue
Speaker 2: in your own home. And I remember being told not
Speaker 2: just by my father but by my grandmother, who I
Speaker 2: adored and who was really a substandard mother figure for me.
Speaker 2: I remember being told, you know, when you pick up
Speaker 2: the phone, you can't tell people everything. You know, if
Speaker 2: they ask for your far and he's not here, you
Speaker 2: can't say he's not here. You have to say, oh,
Speaker 2: he's busy with something, he'll call you back. And I
Speaker 2: understood that was strange. And you know, there were a
Speaker 2: lot of secrets, because survival depended on secrets. So you
Speaker 2: couldn't tell people where you were, you couldn't tell them
Speaker 2: where you weren't, and sometimes you had to leave your
Speaker 2: home because it was dangerous. And then of course you
Speaker 2: would return to your home as though nothing had happened,
Speaker 2: or I mean, all the grown ups would return as
Speaker 2: though nothing had happened. But I would be a little
Speaker 2: bit stunned and confused. And I'm sure so there were
Speaker 2: little clues that things were not normal. There were things
Speaker 2: that felt very extraordinary, but I just understood it as
Speaker 2: how it was. I didn't really see how we could
Speaker 2: change that.
Speaker 1: And your mother was not in the picture right. She
Speaker 1: and your father divorced when you were three.
Speaker 2: They divorced when I was three, and I didn't really
Speaker 2: have very much interaction with her when I was older,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure that affected me in multiple, multiple ways.
Speaker 2: But at the time, again, my father was really the
Speaker 2: sum of everything for me and I. As long as
Speaker 2: I had him nearby, I felt safe. While I was
Speaker 2: still in Damascus in Syria. You know, when my father
Speaker 2: was a bachelor, I had kind of a bachelor life too.
Speaker 2: We would go swimming on the weekends. You know, he
Speaker 2: would play squash and I would. I would read a
Speaker 2: book or swim at the pool. We'd go out and
Speaker 2: have meals. My father thought he was a very good cook,
Speaker 2: but I'm not really sure he was, so there was
Speaker 2: a lot of dinners out. You know. I didn't really
Speaker 2: have a bedtime per se. You know, I could stay
Speaker 2: up late, I could travel where my father went. I
Speaker 2: had to go because there was no one else to
Speaker 2: look after me. When the grown ups were talking, I
Speaker 2: was sitting there eating peanuts and you know, listening to
Speaker 2: them talk. And I thought my father's friends were my
Speaker 2: friends because I had to spend as much time with
Speaker 2: them as he did. So was it worth quite a
Speaker 2: bachelor life? But then he remarried and then they had
Speaker 2: a baby, my brother's Ulfagar, and that certainly felt a
Speaker 2: little bit more normal. You know, there was now a
Speaker 2: bit more of bedtimes. There was a baby, you had
Speaker 2: the routines that that babies have, and I went to
Speaker 2: school and that felt very normal. You know. I had
Speaker 2: friends that I loved, and I lived in a beautiful city,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the world's most ancient cities, and
Speaker 2: everything felt very normal until we had to return to
Speaker 2: Pakistan and my father stood for elections and he won,
Speaker 2: and that was it. This very romantic but tragic exile
Speaker 2: was suddenly over. And this possibility that we had always
Speaker 2: spoken about but never really thought would come true that
Speaker 2: we would return home, suddenly was upon us. And not
Speaker 2: only were we returning home, we were returning home in
Speaker 2: a month.
Speaker 1: And how old were you when that return happened.
Speaker 2: I was about eleven, eleven and a half something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're also leaving the friends that you've made behind.
Speaker 1: I mean, eleven, it's just nobody wants to be eleven again.
Speaker 2: No, I'm in the sixth grade. You know. It's like
Speaker 2: the beginning of a very exciting period at school. And
Speaker 2: we're in middle school. We have lockers now, you know,
Speaker 2: it's just really kind of cool new period. And I've
Speaker 2: got to leave and I've got to leave. And I
Speaker 2: didn't think I was an exile. You know, my father
Speaker 2: was an exile. It was not his country, it was
Speaker 2: not the language he grew up speaking, it was not
Speaker 2: his childhood home, but it was mine. So the end
Speaker 2: of his exile was in a way the beginning of
Speaker 2: my own. And he had spent sixteen years waiting, counting
Speaker 2: days and months and hours and missing everything about home.
Speaker 2: And that period for me really began when we left
Speaker 2: Damascus and I returned to this place that up until
Speaker 2: that point I had only visited, and I loved it,
Speaker 2: but I loved it because my father loved it.
Speaker 1: And what was that landscape like, you know, you're eleven
Speaker 1: years old, twelve years old, you're now in Karachi, your
Speaker 1: father is elected, and there's this whole other world. And
Speaker 1: also I would imagine the rhythm of just everyday life
Speaker 1: must have shifted tremendously.
Speaker 2: Oh, it was not just a different world. It was
Speaker 2: like a totally different life. Because Damascus at that point,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, in the nineteen eighties, even the
Speaker 2: early nineteen nineties, was nothing like the Syria people imagine today.
Speaker 2: It was a very sleepy town. It was a tiny place.
Speaker 2: It was incredibly safe. Karachi was a mad city. It
Speaker 2: was a city of millions upon millions upon millions of people.
Speaker 2: It's a crash of people. It's super chaotic. There's motorcycles, rickshaws, cars,
Speaker 2: there's no footpaths, there's no pavements, so you've got people, children,
Speaker 2: families whizzing in between traffic. And it was not just
Speaker 2: a megacity, but it was a very dangerous city. It
Speaker 2: was a city where there was a law and order problem,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, it's a nice way of saying
Speaker 2: you lived in a really violent place. And there were shootings.
Speaker 2: They were at that time. They want bombings. Those came later.
Speaker 2: But also it was not anonymous city for me, because
Speaker 2: whereas in Syria, I had just been, you know, a
Speaker 2: sixth grader, someone from a strange part of the world,
Speaker 2: someone from far away. In Bagistan, my family was very
Speaker 2: well known, and that meant that people were curious about me,
Speaker 2: and I'd not had that before. I'd not understood what
Speaker 2: it felt like.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. When Fatima is fourteen, her whole
Speaker 1: world is upended, her beloved father, her son, and moon
Speaker 1: is assassinated. This is not a haphazard or unorganized killing.
Speaker 1: His assassination is well planned, very deliberate.
Speaker 2: We'd started to notice in the days before armored vehicles
Speaker 2: were beginning to be placed around our house. So coming
Speaker 2: back from school one day, I saw one, and you know,
Speaker 2: an armored vehicles pretty hard to miss, especially when they're
Speaker 2: men with colashnikos, you know, tending out of it. And
Speaker 2: then the next day there were two, and then the
Speaker 2: next day there were three, and we were basically surrounded.
Speaker 2: And at that time, like I said, Karachi was a
Speaker 2: very dangerous place. And I went to the American School,
Speaker 2: and it happened once in a while that our school
Speaker 2: was shot at. You'd be going to class and you'd
Speaker 2: hear gunfire, and you know, you knew what to do.
Speaker 2: We knew what to do. We were taught what to do.
Speaker 2: So it was scary, but it didn't quite feel out
Speaker 2: of the ordinary. And my father, because he was a
Speaker 2: politician and he was very outspoken, he thought they might
Speaker 2: try to arrest him, and that's what he'd told us
Speaker 2: to plan for. But the day that he was killed,
Speaker 2: he was going to a public meeting outside of the city,
Speaker 2: and I wanted very much to go with him. And
Speaker 2: usually my father was quite keen to drag me along
Speaker 2: on him political outings because we could chat in the
Speaker 2: car and we always had fun when we were together.
Speaker 2: But that day he said I couldn't come. He said
Speaker 2: it was too dangerous and he would see me when
Speaker 2: he got back in the evening. And what we didn't
Speaker 2: know is that as it got darker, the Karate police
Speaker 2: were placed on our street. There were anywhere from seventy
Speaker 2: to one hundred policemen stationed, some in sniper positions in
Speaker 2: the trees, in these very old Banyan trees, you know,
Speaker 2: which are very large, imposing sort of trees that look
Speaker 2: a bit like weeping willows. You know, they've got very
Speaker 2: long leaves. The police were put even as high up
Speaker 2: as into those trees. And we live on a street
Speaker 2: where there are a lot of consulates and all the
Speaker 2: guards that these foreign consulates were told to leave their
Speaker 2: posts by the police, and the street lights were turned
Speaker 2: off and traffic was stopped from entering the road. So
Speaker 2: when my father's car approached the road to come home,
Speaker 2: the police stopped him and someone was charged with identifying
Speaker 2: that he was who he was, And when they identified him,
Speaker 2: then they gave an order to fire and my father
Speaker 2: and all the men with him were were shot, not once,
Speaker 2: many times, and they were all killed by point blank gunshots.
Speaker 2: And we were in the house at the time, so
Speaker 2: my brother was six years old and I was fourteen,
Speaker 2: and so we heard everything. And this was in the
Speaker 2: days before cell phone, so we had no way of
Speaker 2: reaching my father to know where he was. But when
Speaker 2: we tried to leave the house to find out what
Speaker 2: had happened, the police stopped us and said that there
Speaker 2: had been a robbery nearby. And again, because this was
Speaker 2: such a dangerous city, they could say something like that,
Speaker 2: and it was within the realm of possibility. It was
Speaker 2: strange that a robbery would produced so much gunfire because
Speaker 2: it was several minutes long. It felt like a lot
Speaker 2: of weapons were being fired. It wasn't, you know, a
Speaker 2: single shot all things like that. But that's what they said.
Speaker 2: But what they were doing is they were cleaning the streets,
Speaker 2: and they were moving all of the men, including my father,
Speaker 2: to different locations around the city, none of which were
Speaker 2: emergency hospitals. They were all just taken to different clinics
Speaker 2: around Karachi.
Speaker 1: And when were you told what had happened?
Speaker 2: Well, we were waiting and waiting and waiting, and my
Speaker 2: father hadn't come back yet, and it seemed strange that
Speaker 2: he would be so late. And my aunt. This is
Speaker 2: the less ordinary part of the story. My aunt at
Speaker 2: the time was the prime minister of the country. And
Speaker 2: after an hour or so of waiting, I said, I
Speaker 2: was getting nervous, and I said, I'm going to call
Speaker 2: my aunt and find out what's happening. And my aunts
Speaker 2: and my father were quite estranged, and though they had
Speaker 2: been very closest young people, he was a critic of
Speaker 2: her government, and it was a government that was marked
Speaker 2: by by a lot of exactly the kind of violence
Speaker 2: that both of them would be killed, by a lot
Speaker 2: of police excess and many other things. So I called
Speaker 2: the prime Minister's house and the secretary, the ADC of
Speaker 2: the Prime Minister's house, was very apologetic to me and
Speaker 2: very concerned. I had no idea why, obviously, and instead
Speaker 2: of putting me through to my aunt, he put me
Speaker 2: through to her husband, who was who was not really
Speaker 2: a favorite in the family, let's put it that way.
Speaker 2: He'd been accused of a lot of corruption. He was
Speaker 2: known in those days as mister ten percent because of
Speaker 2: all the graph that he took off of deals going
Speaker 2: through the government. He put me on the phone with
Speaker 2: my aunt's husband, and I was a bit confused as
Speaker 2: to why I was put on the phone with him,
Speaker 2: And when I asked to speak to my aunt, he said, no,
Speaker 2: you can't, she's hysterical. And I still didn't understand because
Speaker 2: I really didn't connect that shooting and all the noise
Speaker 2: to my father. I just I didn't want it to
Speaker 2: be my father, but also I had hoped, really against
Speaker 2: hope it wasn't. So I asked my aunt's husband why
Speaker 2: my aunt was hysterical and tried to impress upon him
Speaker 2: that it was very important I spoke to her, and
Speaker 2: that's when he said, don't you know your father's been shocked,
Speaker 2: and that's how I found.
Speaker 1: That, And where was your stepmother during that?
Speaker 2: She was there, And it was at that time when
Speaker 2: I heard those words. I just dropped the phone and
Speaker 2: everything went a bit black, and she picked up the phone,
Speaker 2: and I don't really know what happened. Then. The next
Speaker 2: thing I remember was just that she was screaming and
Speaker 2: getting the car ready to go somewhere, and again she
Speaker 2: tried to leave me behind and I refused, and I
Speaker 2: insisted on going, and that's when we went to a clinic.
Speaker 2: That was the kind of clinic you went, you know,
Speaker 2: when you had to see the dentist or you had
Speaker 2: to get a vaccine. It was not a place that
Speaker 2: had emergency doctors. It didn't have an er. And that's
Speaker 2: where my father had been taken, purposely so that he
Speaker 2: couldn't be helped, and that's where we went. I was
Speaker 2: totally heartbroken, and beyond that, I've been broken while my
Speaker 2: father is killing and I had no choice but to
Speaker 2: get on with it. I had to go to school,
Speaker 2: I had to do the things you have to do.
Speaker 2: And also I had to live in the same house.
Speaker 2: I mean, anytime I went to school, if I went
Speaker 2: to buy a pack of gum, I had to travel
Speaker 2: on the street that my father was killed on. Anytime
Speaker 2: I came home, any homecoming also meant passing that road.
Speaker 2: Being on that road. I had no sense of how
Speaker 2: wounded I was and how much work it had taken
Speaker 2: to keep me getting through those ordinary moments as stably
Speaker 2: as possible. I'm sure everyone worries about what happens to
Speaker 2: their parents, but in my life, it seemed not a possibility.
Speaker 2: It seemed a highly likely possibility. And I'd always had anxiety.
Speaker 2: I'd always had pain in my stomach as a child
Speaker 2: when I felt afraid, and as I got older that
Speaker 2: became more obvious, it became much stronger and much rare.
Speaker 2: And when I was older and I guess enough away
Speaker 2: from what had happened and finally felt, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: now building a sort of new life, was exactly the
Speaker 2: moment that I started to get incredibly devastating panic attacks,
Speaker 2: where they were so strong I didn't think I could
Speaker 2: breathe or I couldn't stand up. I was unable to communicate.
Speaker 2: And I mean, now, you know, we know all kinds
Speaker 2: of things about how the body keeps the score, and
Speaker 2: at that time there was no vocabulary for it. I
Speaker 2: didn't understand. I thought I had dealt with a lot
Speaker 2: of my trauma because I went to therapy. You know,
Speaker 2: everyone knew what had happened to me, so it was
Speaker 2: difficult not to talk about it. And I was lucky
Speaker 2: to have a lot of support from friends, from people
Speaker 2: at my school. I've seen a lot of sadness and
Speaker 2: a lot of danger, but I've also seen the incredible
Speaker 2: kindness of people of strangers, so I didn't understand what
Speaker 2: was happening, and it carried on for really a rather
Speaker 2: long time. I have to say. It was always somewhere
Speaker 2: there in the background, and it made me even as
Speaker 2: I dealt with it and I did more therapy, I
Speaker 2: did yoga, I took medicine. It always stayed with me.
Speaker 2: So I never felt far away from grief. I never
Speaker 2: felt very far away from my anxiety. I never felt
Speaker 2: far away from fear. And I did the best I could.
Speaker 2: I suppose. I went to college. I then went to England.
Speaker 2: I did a master's and though I wanted to be
Speaker 2: a writer, I enjoyed it very much. I did also
Speaker 2: choose to write about things that hurt me, that bothered me,
Speaker 2: that worried me, that made me fearful, And eventually I
Speaker 2: wrote about my father's life and his assassination in what
Speaker 2: was my first book, and so put myself to the
Speaker 2: experience of the trauma all over again, by finding people
Speaker 2: from my father's path, finding policemen that had been present
Speaker 2: on the scene that night, finding doctors. And I did
Speaker 2: that really because I didn't think I was going to
Speaker 2: get justice anywhere. I didn't think I was going to
Speaker 2: get it in the court. So I didn't think I
Speaker 2: was going to get it in my country, and so
Speaker 2: I had to find a different way of reckoning what
Speaker 2: had happened. And it seemed like a record of it,
Speaker 2: a reckoning of it, and a testimony, a document of
Speaker 2: what had happened, was going to be the closest I
Speaker 2: could get. So I spent six years working.
Speaker 1: On that book, and not surprisingly and unsurprisingly, and also,
Speaker 1: I mean, what were you going to do? Write a
Speaker 1: romance novel? I mean, yeah, our theams are just it's
Speaker 1: a fancy literary word for what obsesses us. And it
Speaker 1: would seem to me that it would have been absolutely
Speaker 1: impossible for you to do anything other than that. And yet,
Speaker 1: of course, with everything that we know about trauma now
Speaker 1: and the way that it does live, you know in
Speaker 1: our bones that it would retraumatize you. You know. I
Speaker 1: think in some way too, people have the misunderstanding that
Speaker 1: that there would be catharsis around something like delving so
Speaker 1: deeply into this story that was just this defining, terrible
Speaker 1: story tragedy of your young life, and it does something else,
Speaker 1: It embeds it. So you had written that during this
Speaker 1: period of time you're on tour and you lose your voice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I finished the book, it comes out, and I
Speaker 2: go on this tour with it. Of Course, I know
Speaker 2: nothing about how books work, and I just assumed you
Speaker 2: write the book and then someone else does you know
Speaker 2: the rest of it. But it doesn't work that way,
Speaker 2: and so you kind of have to go out and
Speaker 2: shepherd this thing around. And it was incredibly important to me,
Speaker 2: the story. So whenever I was asked, will you come
Speaker 2: here and talk about your book, I said yes, of course,
Speaker 2: and I went, and just as I'm doing now, I
Speaker 2: had to relive really the worst moment of my life
Speaker 2: over and over again, and not always with I mean
Speaker 2: not often, I should say, with sensitive interlocutors. You know,
Speaker 2: at that time, Pakistan was very much in the news.
Speaker 2: The war on Terror was still, you know, in its throws,
Speaker 2: and I was interviewed by journalists and war correspondents who
Speaker 2: treated me, you know, in a way like I was
Speaker 2: answerable for Pakistan in a lot of ways, and they
Speaker 2: would forget really that I'm I'm someone talking about her father,
Speaker 2: I'm someone talking about someone that they love. I'm not
Speaker 2: an official. I'm not a government official. I don't hold
Speaker 2: any office I'm not really answerable, and I had to
Speaker 2: be calm. You know, I couldn't cry on stage. I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't get angry, I couldn't get upset. I had
Speaker 2: to be calm, and I would do it. I don't
Speaker 2: know how, but I would do it night after night
Speaker 2: after night, sometimes several times a day. And then I
Speaker 2: would just crumple, you know. I would get off stage,
Speaker 2: and if I couldn't find my hotel key, I would
Speaker 2: just fall down crying. I would spend days where I
Speaker 2: couldn't sleep, where I couldn't eat, and then finally I
Speaker 2: lost my voice and I went to doctors. I went
Speaker 2: to see specialists, and there was nothing wrong. I had
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with my throat or my vocal cords or
Speaker 2: anything like that.
Speaker 1: It was just my body saying it had had enough.
Speaker 1: During this time, something else is crumpling, something unexpected. Fatima's
Speaker 1: relationship with her dog Lama.
Speaker 2: I got Lama at a time when, again, you know,
Speaker 2: there was a lot of uncertainty and danger in Pakistan,
Speaker 2: and and she was this wonderful, long haired daccent who
Speaker 2: was so gentle and so steadfast. I mean, that's the
Speaker 2: best way to describe her, and I adored Lama, and
Speaker 2: then this book came out. I hadn't even begun writing
Speaker 2: it at the time that I got Lama, but I then,
Speaker 2: you know, begin the process of writing the book. I
Speaker 2: then have to go out and tour with the book.
Speaker 2: At that time, I felt, none of this is going
Speaker 2: to work. If I'm if I'm sitting here in Pakistan,
Speaker 2: you know, I've got to get away from from everything,
Speaker 2: from this life or the grief, the you know, my
Speaker 2: old life I'm trying. I wanted to build something new,
Speaker 2: and at that time I was still touring with that
Speaker 2: book about my father, and so I started to distance
Speaker 2: myself from home, from you know, my life at home,
Speaker 2: my life as I knew it, and even my dog
Speaker 2: and even Lama, because it became harder and harder to
Speaker 2: say goodbye, hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye and carry on this
Speaker 2: nomadic existence that I'd thrown myself into when there was
Speaker 2: always this little creature who was waiting for me and
Speaker 2: who felt lonely without me. And in trying to make
Speaker 2: that distance, and in trying to cement that distance, I
Speaker 2: was careless. I was cruel. I just wanted to cut ties,
Speaker 2: you know, and be gone. And when I was traveling
Speaker 2: during one of these periods, Lama died. She had she'd
Speaker 2: been fine, she just got ill, and before I could
Speaker 2: get back, she was gone. And I felt horrible. I
Speaker 2: felt I had been so careless and so on, and
Speaker 2: to do that to an animal. You know, who's who's
Speaker 2: so loving and and all animals are, you know, they
Speaker 2: just love us. They love us at our most negligent,
Speaker 2: at our most distant, at our most selfish and thoughtless,
Speaker 2: because they can, because they do well.
Speaker 1: They love unconditionally, which is something that we long for
Speaker 1: as humans and is rare.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And to be honest, you know, we don't
Speaker 2: do it with each other very often. We're very stingy
Speaker 2: when it comes to doing that with each other. But Lama,
Speaker 2: I really I've felt horrible about.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 1: Before Lama's death, Fatima meets someone, a man who will,
Speaker 1: for better or worse, become a fixture in her life
Speaker 1: for the next decade.
Speaker 2: I had put myself in this situation where I was
Speaker 2: really retraumatizing myself on a daily basis, and I had
Speaker 2: already spent most of my life quite grief struck, but
Speaker 2: I did sort of believe what people said. I did
Speaker 2: think maybe there's some kind of catharsis in writing a
Speaker 2: book like the one I had written. I thought maybe
Speaker 2: there might be some justice. And actually it wasn't. And
Speaker 2: that was a really rude awakening for me. It was
Speaker 2: a really unpleasant surprise to find that, actually, no, I
Speaker 2: didn't feel better. I didn't feel, you know, healed in
Speaker 2: one way or another. I felt even more afraid. I
Speaker 2: felt even more undone, because so much time had passed
Speaker 2: and and I was still very much in pain. And
Speaker 2: at that time I met a man who was older
Speaker 2: than me, and he seemed at the time possessed of
Speaker 2: this unearthly intelligence and confidence. And when I met him,
Speaker 2: he told me that he could see I was wounded,
Speaker 2: that I was in pain. He said it was written
Speaker 2: all over my face, and I was telegraphing it and
Speaker 2: everything I did. And he said it was strange because
Speaker 2: he could see right away that I didn't have to
Speaker 2: be in pain, that I could press a switch almost
Speaker 2: by understanding things in a different way, and I could
Speaker 2: end all my sorrow, I could end all my suffering
Speaker 2: and grief. I could be done with it. I could
Speaker 2: be cured of all my sadness, and it was easy,
Speaker 2: and all I had to do was to believe him
Speaker 2: and to listen to what he said, and he would
Speaker 2: help me. He would help me erase it. And it
Speaker 2: was really too seductive a promise not to jump at.
Speaker 2: And I was entranced by this possibility. I was in trance,
Speaker 2: and he sort of did it. I mean, he had
Speaker 2: a totally unusual, confident, very primal way of being in
Speaker 2: the world, and he didn't think what had happened to
Speaker 2: me was all that unusual. He didn't think it meant
Speaker 2: I had to ruin my life. He thought it could
Speaker 2: be a matter of just changing my perspective. And he
Speaker 2: did help me. I have to say, he did help me.
Speaker 2: To give him credit where he does deserve it change
Speaker 2: my thinking. And that was one of the secrets he
Speaker 2: told me that, you know, we do our thinking. It's
Speaker 2: not done to us. It's not like a thought just
Speaker 2: magically appears in your mind. You put it there, and
Speaker 2: just the way you put it there and take it out.
Speaker 2: What I didn't realize at the time was that he
Speaker 2: was grooming me as well. In many ways. He was
Speaker 2: grooming me to forget a certain kind of treatment that
Speaker 2: he would dish out to me. And though he was
Speaker 2: very charismatic in this way, though I wouldn't call him charming,
Speaker 2: because he was confident, because he had this sureness about himself.
Speaker 2: I was quite entranced by him.
Speaker 1: Well, and some of it came true, right Like your
Speaker 1: voice returned, Yeah, I mean that was so striking to me.
Speaker 1: Is that literally your voice which had troubled you and
Speaker 1: had disappeared on you? And could there possibly be a
Speaker 1: more powerful metaphor? And then he is at least tangentially
Speaker 1: responsible for, you know, for your voice returning to you.
Speaker 1: And yet simultaneously he's also embarked on a process that's
Speaker 1: going to rob you a voice in another way.
Speaker 2: Oh completely, In fact, I've never actually thought of it
Speaker 2: that way, but that is what happened. He he does
Speaker 2: this kind of magic, you know, and he did this
Speaker 2: not just with my voice but with other things. I
Speaker 2: used to be incredibly, incredibly panicked about time. You know,
Speaker 2: if I had a flight, I had to be at
Speaker 2: the airport three hours before the flight. If I was
Speaker 2: going to meet you for a coffee and we agreed
Speaker 2: to meet at ten, I would be there at nine
Speaker 2: point thirty, just you know, ages before, because if I
Speaker 2: was even five minutes close to being on time, I
Speaker 2: would be just wrecked. And this man turned around and
Speaker 2: said to me, oh, you've got to stop doing that.
Speaker 2: And you know I'd heard that before, obviously, but he said, no, no,
Speaker 2: you've got to stop doing that. The reason you care
Speaker 2: so much about the time is because you couldn't save
Speaker 2: your father, because your father was dying while you were
Speaker 2: locked inside the house and you couldn't reach him in
Speaker 2: time to speak to him. And that's why you panic
Speaker 2: about the time. And he was right. I mean, he
Speaker 2: was right. I would I would drive myself into a
Speaker 2: into not you know, to be on time, and if
Speaker 2: I was late, I felt like my system was exploding.
Speaker 2: So he really did help me in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, he was building a new
Speaker 2: a new set of boundaries and anxieties. And as confident
Speaker 2: and sure as he was, he was also very controlling
Speaker 2: and he was very coercive. And because I thought at
Speaker 2: this point that he had helped me so much, and
Speaker 2: that his help required on a belief, on a lack
Speaker 2: of resistance from my part, I was too afraid to
Speaker 2: upset that I thought I needed him really to be
Speaker 2: all right. And he also because he knew very well
Speaker 2: what my wounds were, he knew how to activate them,
Speaker 2: and he knew what to say to remind me of them.
Speaker 2: And we began a relationship that went on for a
Speaker 2: very long time, and that was really quite toxic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it also seems like it was quite secret.
Speaker 1: He did not want to meet your friends. He did
Speaker 1: not want you to meet his friends. He wanted to
Speaker 1: keep things. He asks you at one point, do you
Speaker 1: want a normal relationship or do you want a special relationship.
Speaker 2: Yes, he was quite unusual as well, because at that
Speaker 2: time in my life, you know, I did feel very wounded.
Speaker 2: But though I was young, I felt like I had
Speaker 2: been through a lot for the age that I was,
Speaker 2: I was in my late twenties. And he sort of
Speaker 2: thought not really, or at least that's what he said,
Speaker 2: you know, And and he didn't seem to want to
Speaker 2: be a part of you know. He had his own rules.
Speaker 2: He was very independent. I was very independent. I traveled
Speaker 2: all the time. I remember counting once and realizing that
Speaker 2: within a six month period, I had not spent more
Speaker 2: than seven days in the same place. And he traveled
Speaker 2: and you know, he just I don't even remember how
Speaker 2: he explained it to me, to be honest, But it
Speaker 2: was a slow unraveling, you know. And in the beginning
Speaker 2: it was not the right time, and then later it
Speaker 2: was the wrong time, and then it was you know,
Speaker 2: people are jealous, and you know, we have to protect
Speaker 2: what's special, and then it was all manner of things.
Speaker 1: It was also, you come from a public family. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be a public Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was also you know, I had done this book.
Speaker 2: I was talking about people that were still very much
Speaker 2: empower in Pakistan. They remain empower. The people involved in
Speaker 2: my father's killing never went to jail for it. They
Speaker 2: were never punished for it or held accountable. They were
Speaker 2: promoted and promoted and promoted. And there was a certain
Speaker 2: amount of attention on me, and you know, in a
Speaker 2: way there still is. And he didn't really want any
Speaker 2: part of that. And because I was quite independent myself,
Speaker 2: and you know, I have my own life and I
Speaker 2: had friends in different places and things to do, in
Speaker 2: the beginning, it sort of suited me. I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: it's quite spontaneous. This is you know, unusual, and I thought,
Speaker 2: like many before, me. I thought he'll change, I'll change him,
Speaker 2: you know. And it's a rotten kind of thinking that
Speaker 2: a lot of us tend to fall into. And of
Speaker 2: course he didn't change. I was the one who was
Speaker 2: very changed by the whole experience, and not good way.
Speaker 2: He was incredibly manipulative. He gastled me constantly. He had
Speaker 2: in almost sinister patients that he employed, he weaponized to
Speaker 2: teach me lessons to keep me in place. And again
Speaker 2: I had fallen prey to this line of thinking that
Speaker 2: I think is so damaging. I didn't really understand what
Speaker 2: an abusive relationship was, but I was pretty sure that
Speaker 2: it was physical. I was pretty sure that it happened
Speaker 2: if you were weak, and I was absolutely sure that
Speaker 2: I was a strong, confident, independent woman and such a
Speaker 2: thing could not happen to me. And I didn't understand
Speaker 2: that abuse is not in violence, necessarily, but abuses in
Speaker 2: the total disrespect of your boundaries. It's in the breaking
Speaker 2: down of any place in which you might erect a
Speaker 2: space in which someone can't intrude on. And I also
Speaker 2: thought that if someone is going to become coercive and
Speaker 2: controlling with you, they do it loudly and dramatically, and
Speaker 2: I didn't understand that actually it's it's a quiet process,
Speaker 2: and it really is a menacing process because it begins
Speaker 2: very softly, very slowly. He had already made me feel
Speaker 2: that I needed him, I needed his understanding and his
Speaker 2: help and his insight in order to be okay. And
Speaker 2: when I did question him, there was a reaction. There
Speaker 2: was a consequence. So I had to start making choices
Speaker 2: like is this worth me saying something about or is
Speaker 2: he going to get mad? And then if he gets mad,
Speaker 2: it's going to be a process that lasts three days.
Speaker 2: Do I want to go through that?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, I won't say anything. Yea.
Speaker 1: And there was also this, I think something that this
Speaker 1: variety of narcissists does so brilliantly is create an exquisite
Speaker 1: sensitivity to their every flicker of a mood.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you know that. I mean. One of the
Speaker 2: things that really I had to understand and recognize, and
Speaker 2: I hope anyone listening to this will take from me,
Speaker 2: is that a lot of the reason I didn't fight
Speaker 2: back against him is because I thought he was special.
Speaker 2: I thought he had something special that I needed that
Speaker 2: to feel okay, to feel safe, to feel well. But
Speaker 2: actually this type of person, emotionally abusive person, is not
Speaker 2: They're not special. They're generic. They are so basic they
Speaker 2: follow exactly the same pattern wherever in the world you
Speaker 2: find them, however old they are, whether they're your partner
Speaker 2: or your boss, or your parent or your sibling, they
Speaker 2: are absolutely identical. And they isolate you, you know, whether
Speaker 2: that's by keeping something secret or making you share a secret.
Speaker 2: They isolate you. They punish you for reacting, They reward
Speaker 2: you in small enough ways you know that you need
Speaker 2: more of the reward, and on and on and on.
Speaker 2: I just I didn't realize it was being done to
Speaker 2: me the time, but it very much was. And the
Speaker 2: gas lighting is just especially pernicious because if someone lies
Speaker 2: to you, they've got to do a load of work
Speaker 2: to keep that lie up, you know, They've they've got
Speaker 2: to constantly have this file running in the background of
Speaker 2: their lie and keep you from from accessing it. They've
Speaker 2: got to keep you away from the truth. It's really
Speaker 2: quite onerous on you know, on them. But when someone
Speaker 2: is gaslighting you, the onus is on you because you're
Speaker 2: being told you're imagining things, you're being told you're crazy,
Speaker 2: you're being totally put off balance of equilibrium, and it's
Speaker 2: it's it's really damaging, it's really painful because you no
Speaker 2: longer have any sense of confidence about your own life
Speaker 2: and your own ideas in your your own place in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Fatima has many friends, close friends, and a best friend, Allegra,
Speaker 1: but her relationship with the Man is a secret. Four
Speaker 1: years into her relationship with the man, Fatima adopts a
Speaker 1: Jack Russell Terrier puppy she names Coco. She initially adopts Coco,
Speaker 1: intending her to be a gift for her younger brother,
Speaker 1: but two things changed that plan. First, Fatima falls madly
Speaker 1: in love with Coco, and second, conveniently, Coco also falls
Speaker 1: madly in love with Fatima and doesn't want anything to
Speaker 1: do with Fatima's brother, and so Coco becomes, in a way,
Speaker 1: the only witness to her secret relationship. As Fatima writes,
Speaker 1: she is the only one who knows the full truth
Speaker 1: about the situation. Because that's how Fatima thinks of this ensnarement,
Speaker 1: A situation.
Speaker 2: I mean quite intentionally. I think you know, the relationship
Speaker 2: was constructed the way it was by the man precisely
Speaker 2: so that I would be rendered helpless. I don't say
Speaker 2: anything to my friends because I understand secrets also as
Speaker 2: being necessary. You know, I remember those moments of being
Speaker 2: a child and being told you can't tell people on
Speaker 2: the phone where you are, you can't tell people where
Speaker 2: you're going. You've got to you've got to keep your
Speaker 2: own little bubble private and protect it. And I am
Speaker 2: in any way, so it certainly doesn't sound like it
Speaker 2: a private and guarded person. So for a while I
Speaker 2: understand his requests, But at the same time I have
Speaker 2: to admit that I'm quite sure I knew what my
Speaker 2: friends would have said to me, and I don't want
Speaker 2: to hear it because of course, And here's where you
Speaker 2: realize how how generic all these things are. They don't
Speaker 2: know him like I do, and they don't understand him
Speaker 2: like I do. So I don't. I want to at points,
Speaker 2: but I don't, And I do really think I believe
Speaker 2: number one all of excuses for himself, which he has
Speaker 2: pretty handy. But I also think he'll change. I also
Speaker 2: think I can change him. I can I can make
Speaker 2: this person who is often cruel and often cold and
Speaker 2: often mean. I just think, well, maybe he's been hurt
Speaker 2: in life too, and you know, I have to, I
Speaker 2: have to help him, so I don't. And it's really
Speaker 2: just my dog who sees what goes on and who
Speaker 2: at the same time as I'm in this relationship that's
Speaker 2: very manipulative and very unpleasant. My dog teaches me really
Speaker 2: about care about what tenderness means, and what it means
Speaker 2: to love. I mean, to be cruel as a choice.
Speaker 2: You have to go out of your way to be cruel.
Speaker 2: You know, to love is natural, It's an instinct. It's
Speaker 2: an instinct to be kind, you know. And she reminds
Speaker 2: me of that constantly at this point into my life,
Speaker 2: when I don't really have any reminders of it at
Speaker 2: all anywhere else. I think. Also part of the reason
Speaker 2: I didn't talk about this to friends is because I
Speaker 2: was ashamed. Is because I knew what was going on.
Speaker 2: Whether I had the right word for it or not,
Speaker 2: I understood that I was being treated badly, and I
Speaker 2: was ashamed because I didn't know how to justify why
Speaker 2: I was putting up with it. And the man was very,
Speaker 2: very protective of his own boundaries and his own privacy
Speaker 2: and space while absolutely disregarding everyone else's. And one of
Speaker 2: the things he would like to do, is he would
Speaker 2: want to you know, he would wait hours and hours
Speaker 2: and hours before agreeing to go out for dinner. You know,
Speaker 2: so the normal time to go out for dinner would
Speaker 2: be six or seven, and he would deally deadly for
Speaker 2: as long as possible, so you were just absolutely at
Speaker 2: the end of your tether by the time, you know,
Speaker 2: you reached. And one of the ways he would do this,
Speaker 2: which was also you know, it's a it's a small thing,
Speaker 2: but I think it betrays a certain calculation and disregard
Speaker 2: for other people, is he would he would meander into
Speaker 2: stores that he had absolutely no interest in and and
Speaker 2: spend hours in them while the person he's with was
Speaker 2: hungry or had to go to the bathroom, or you know,
Speaker 2: had an appointment to get to. And one day we
Speaker 2: were going to dinner and he wanted to stop in
Speaker 2: an electronic store which we happened to pass by, and
Speaker 2: we go inside and there's no one in there, and
Speaker 2: he finds a singulary like a salesman who is alone
Speaker 2: in the shop, and he starts to ask him question
Speaker 2: after question after question, you know, how is the machine made,
Speaker 2: what kind of decibel? Who was the inventor of the speaker.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's just going on and on and on,
Speaker 2: and that's point, you know. He mentions to the salesman
Speaker 2: that who's Egyptian, that I grew up in the Middle East,
Speaker 2: and you know, I understand some Arabic and and this
Speaker 2: salesman talks to me a little bit, and at some
Speaker 2: point he says to the man and I in English,
Speaker 2: she says, you know, if you and your wife who
Speaker 2: wants to recommend something. And the man looks almost offended
Speaker 2: at this, at this inference, and says, oh, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: she's her, No, she's not my wife. And the salesman
Speaker 2: was confused, you know, I think he wondered, why would
Speaker 2: it be like did he say something wrong? So he
Speaker 2: then says, oh, well, okay, your you know, your partner,
Speaker 2: your your girlfriend, And the man now doubles down and
Speaker 2: says her, no, no, I'm not I'm not with her.
Speaker 2: Would you like her? Ask her out? And then walks off.
Speaker 2: And it was the kind of thing he did, the
Speaker 2: kind of thing that would stund me stand the other
Speaker 2: person and then pretend it was nothing. If I was
Speaker 2: to get upset, he would say, oh, come on, I
Speaker 2: was joking, Oh, you're so sensitive, do you have to
Speaker 2: make a big deal out of everything? And it was
Speaker 2: this salesman who turns to me and in Arabic says,
Speaker 2: is he serious? And I was so shocked and so
Speaker 2: thrown off guard that I said to him, I said, no,
Speaker 2: he's not, He's just awful. And the salesman looks hurt.
Speaker 2: I mean, the salesman really kind of ends the conversation
Speaker 2: with the man and he says to me, I would
Speaker 2: never talk to you that way, you know, and he
Speaker 2: sort of walks off, shaking his head. And this happened
Speaker 2: often that cab drivers would tell me, someone on the
Speaker 2: bus would tell me, someone in the subway, someone walking by.
Speaker 1: In the street would say, what are you doing with
Speaker 1: this guy? And it was a pretty good question. Now
Speaker 1: it's twenty twenty, and we all know what happened in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Lockdown puts pressure on everything, especially what was
Speaker 1: under pressure. Fatima is thirty eight years old. She plans
Speaker 1: to ride out the pandemic with her best friend Allegra
Speaker 1: and with Coco. The man is elsewhere, elusive and secretive
Speaker 1: as always, but the age of thirty eight is a
Speaker 1: real inflection point for a woman who longs to have children,
Speaker 1: and Fatima longs to have children. The man has played
Speaker 1: with her endlessly in this regard, never saying no, never
Speaker 1: saying yes. She has frozen her eggs an insurance policy
Speaker 1: of sorts, and the man is not supportive. She's alone
Speaker 1: in this longing. And then, in a strange parallel in
Speaker 1: the animal universe, Coco is about to have some puppies
Speaker 1: of her own.
Speaker 2: I had always wanted a family because mine had been decimated,
Speaker 2: and I always felt that my father having me really
Speaker 2: changed his life. It turned it from something that could
Speaker 2: have been sorrow and tragic to something filled with tenderness
Speaker 2: and warmth and joy, and I very much wanted the same.
Speaker 2: And the man, of course didn't want to have children,
Speaker 2: but instead of just saying that, just kind of made
Speaker 2: excuses after excuses, and at the same time pressured me
Speaker 2: to have Cocoa have puppies because he wanted a puppy
Speaker 2: of cocos and insisted and insisted. And again I think
Speaker 2: it's it is something to do with boundaries, But it
Speaker 2: turns out that Cocoa does get pregnant, and just when
Speaker 2: we have it confirmed, lockdown happens. And I with my
Speaker 2: best friend go to Oxfordshire to stay with another friend
Speaker 2: of ours MC in the countryside. And I was angry.
Speaker 2: I was angry because I think a lot of women
Speaker 2: my age had been told, you know, to focus on careers,
Speaker 2: to have, you know, to pursue our careers, to be told.
Speaker 2: We were told we could, we could have the family
Speaker 2: and the life and all that later there was time
Speaker 2: for everything. And now here we were in our late thirties,
Speaker 2: basically cut off from the world. Where was all this
Speaker 2: time we were supposed to have. So we all had careers,
Speaker 2: and we'd all worked really hard at what we wanted
Speaker 2: to do in life at the exclusion of things like
Speaker 2: children and settling down, and now we're stuck inside for
Speaker 2: god knows how long. So I was annoyed. I was annoyed,
Speaker 2: and I had frozen my eggs again, gas lit really
Speaker 2: by the man who kept saying to me. When I
Speaker 2: would say that I wanted to have children, he would
Speaker 2: turn around and say things like, well, how do you
Speaker 2: know you can? Maybe you're infertile. Why don't you go check?
Speaker 2: And I would go and check, and the doctors would say, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're fine, you can have kids, and then he would say, okay, well,
Speaker 2: if you can have kids, just wait while are you
Speaker 2: bothering me? Or you know, if you're so anxious about children,
Speaker 2: why don't you go freeze your eggs? And then of
Speaker 2: course I would freeze my eggs and then he would say, well,
Speaker 2: you can freeze them again. So this was going on
Speaker 2: in the background, and Coco has this pregnancy. It doesn't
Speaker 2: look anything like a real pregnancy should. But I don't
Speaker 2: know anything about dogs and pregnancy or humans and pregnancy
Speaker 2: at that point, and it's lockdown so no one will
Speaker 2: see us. And I did what we all did, you know.
Speaker 2: I read the books. I spoke to friends who'd had litters,
Speaker 2: and I was as prepared as I could be. And
Speaker 2: the night that Coco goes into labor, something immediately goes
Speaker 2: very wrong. And she doesn't have a puppy. She basically
Speaker 2: has just pop that is deformed. I mean, it's just skeleton,
Speaker 2: it's it's not it's really dead before you know it's
Speaker 2: even born. And we go back and falls from the
Speaker 2: ved to the house to the vet to the house,
Speaker 2: and I have to do a lot of it myself
Speaker 2: again because of COVID. But Cocoa comes out and it
Speaker 2: was so hard to see her in that sort of
Speaker 2: a situation. But I was assured by everyone bets friends,
Speaker 2: you know, acquaintances, that dogs don't feel the way we do,
Speaker 2: that they don't they don't remember things the way we do.
Speaker 2: But all I could see was that there's a dog
Speaker 2: who was grieving, who who had everything in her body
Speaker 2: telling her she was a mother, but she had no baby,
Speaker 2: and I had to care for Coco over that period
Speaker 2: after this happened, and I was incredibly moved by her reaction.
Speaker 2: She would didn't leave me. She slept with me. She
Speaker 2: wouldn't need anything unless I ate it first. She wouldn't
Speaker 2: let anyone come into the room where we were. She
Speaker 2: started to sleep on my hand. She started to sleep
Speaker 2: on my hand, and if someone came into the room,
Speaker 2: she would protect my hand. She would sort of pull
Speaker 2: it away and sit on it, and she started to
Speaker 2: lick it to clean it. And I realized she was
Speaker 2: hormonally a father and she didn't have a pup, so
Speaker 2: she was turning my hand into her pup. You know, dogs,
Speaker 2: dogs as puppies, they can't they can't do anything for
Speaker 2: the first two weeks. They can't see, they can't hear,
Speaker 2: they can't really walk for you know, they sort of squirm,
Speaker 2: and they can't even expel waste. Their mother has to
Speaker 2: expel the way simulate the waste production for them. And
Speaker 2: that's what Coker was doing when she was licking my hand,
Speaker 2: and the vet on the phone said to me, you've
Speaker 2: got to take your hand away because she'll never recover.
Speaker 2: She's just going to keep thinking she has a baby.
Speaker 2: And he said to me, whatever you do, don't get
Speaker 2: her to Obviously, I got her a toy because I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't bet jigging over my hand and then
Speaker 2: leaving her with nothing. So I got this long snake
Speaker 2: that she carried around. It was like seventeen times bigger
Speaker 2: than her and she carried it around and would carry
Speaker 2: it upstairs and downstairs, you know, until she felt okay,
Speaker 2: and then you know, she put the snake down one
Speaker 2: day and just never picked it up again. But it
Speaker 2: was a really extraordinary experience because animals are not that
Speaker 2: different from us. I don't think, I really don't think,
Speaker 2: and they feel exactly what we do because they're capable
Speaker 2: of such enormous tenderness and love. Why wouldn't they feel
Speaker 2: pain in the same way that we do.
Speaker 1: And so you end up really with this just this
Speaker 1: crash course in I mean so many things, in maternal grief,
Speaker 1: in unconditional love, in caring for being the center of
Speaker 1: Cocoa's universe while this is happening. And then it's the
Speaker 1: summer and Coco's recovered, and you take her and you
Speaker 1: go to visit the man's first time you're seeing him
Speaker 1: since the pandemic started, and you decide you're going to
Speaker 1: meet in Florence, and this really does feel like what
Speaker 1: happens there is the beginning of the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's really the first time that I see
Speaker 2: his cruelty that I've experienced so often turn towards someone else,
Speaker 2: and it's hideous to see. It's hideous, you know, in
Speaker 2: the same way that I don't think controlling relationships begin
Speaker 2: with a loud, dramatic lap. I'm not sure they end
Speaker 2: with a loud dramatic lap. But seeing him be cruel too,
Speaker 2: my dog, it really took the mask off for me.
Speaker 2: I wish I could say I left immediately, though, I
Speaker 2: mean it was my instinct to. I always wanted to,
Speaker 2: but I wasn't able.
Speaker 1: To things are never that neat and tidy.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, no, no, never, but it is. It is
Speaker 2: an eye opener for me because I lose respect for him.
Speaker 1: His behavior in this moment is indeed anything but respectable.
Speaker 1: It's deplorable. He baits the dog, makes pincers with his fingers,
Speaker 1: snapping at her, toying with her very nature, and because
Speaker 1: she is a dog, she snaps back at him. At
Speaker 1: one point, he hits cocoa. Characteristically, he doesn't own up
Speaker 1: to this bad behavior. He never did and never does
Speaker 1: and never will.
Speaker 2: Someone used to imposing their way on others is not
Speaker 2: going to be accountable. Or let's put it this way,
Speaker 2: what the man told me was true. You can make
Speaker 2: your mind forget anything. And in fact, he was exactly
Speaker 2: the person who taught me how to do that, and
Speaker 2: he made sure that I used that really often with him.
Speaker 2: One thing that I remember, I always used to have
Speaker 2: a fifty pound note in my wallet because I traveled
Speaker 2: so much, because I was, you know, catching planes and
Speaker 2: trains and ending up in cities that I didn't know
Speaker 2: or where I didn't speak the language. And I always
Speaker 2: had this fifty pound note just in case, you know,
Speaker 2: I lose my wallet, or I lose my credit card
Speaker 2: or my ATM card doesn't work. At least I've got
Speaker 2: enough money to get myself wherever, to the airport, to
Speaker 2: the train station, to the hotel. And it's also because
Speaker 2: I am an anxious person, and you know, I've dealt
Speaker 2: with anxiety all my life, and the man, at every
Speaker 2: chance he could get, would take that note for me.
Speaker 2: Why you know, I want to have an ice cream,
Speaker 2: Well you buy it. Well, I don't have cash, I
Speaker 2: don't want to put it on a card. Why not, Well,
Speaker 2: it's just an ice cream. Come on, what's the big deal?
Speaker 2: What's the big deal? And actually it was a big
Speaker 2: deal because that was a small talisman for me. It
Speaker 2: made me feel safe, It made me feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: in an emergency, I'm okay. And it was a matter
Speaker 2: of principle for him to take it away from me,
Speaker 2: to make me uncomfortable. And I think that kind of
Speaker 2: person essentially takes from animals exactly what they give so freely,
Speaker 2: which is love, you know, attention, care, compassion. But do
Speaker 2: they walk them, no, you know, do they go to
Speaker 2: the ved with them at three in the morning when
Speaker 2: they're throwing up? Now and all they started to become
Speaker 2: incredibly clear to me. I stopped doing that thing he
Speaker 2: convinced me to do and me, which was to believe him.
Speaker 2: I just no longer believed him after that. And when
Speaker 2: you don't believe someone, there's quite little you will tolerate
Speaker 2: from them. And it started to make me see all
Speaker 2: the other behavior unmasked and he fell apart.
Speaker 1: That's such a full circle what you're describing, because in
Speaker 1: the beginning it was all about believing him. There were
Speaker 1: very powerfully good things about believing him that were helpful
Speaker 1: to you. But in the end, sort of when the
Speaker 1: scales fell from your eyes, it completely unmasks someone like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. And I think I really do think
Speaker 2: that part of the reason women find themselves, I mean
Speaker 2: not just women everyone, but certainly a lot of women
Speaker 2: find themselves in these kind of situations is because the
Speaker 2: discourse we're given really is damaging to us. You know,
Speaker 2: it's that strong women don't end up in these situations.
Speaker 2: But it's also don't make a scene, you know, be polite,
Speaker 2: don't make a deal out of something, And it's really
Speaker 2: it's the opposite. Someone makes you feel uncomfortable, you should
Speaker 2: absolutely make a rioting theme. And you know, if you're wrong,
Speaker 2: you can apologize later, but you should make the biggest
Speaker 2: scene possible if you don't feel good, or you feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: or you feel someone is invading your boundaries or your space,
Speaker 2: and that's the thing we should tell each other. And I,
Speaker 2: you know, at the end of the day, I never
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about this kind of thing, but I did,
Speaker 2: and I wrote about it because I wish I had
Speaker 2: come across something like this when I was in this relationship,
Speaker 2: because it would have snapped me out of the delusions
Speaker 2: I had so willingly accepted and created. If I had
Speaker 2: read a book about this abusive sort of nature, it
Speaker 2: would have forced me to ask uncomfortable questions of myself
Speaker 2: because it would not have been with the judgment of
Speaker 2: a friend or a stranger or a It would have
Speaker 2: been a safe space in which to quietly investigate something.
Speaker 1: And I just, yeah, I didn't come across anything like that.
Speaker 1: Fatima finally cuts all ties with the Man. Praise the Lord,
Speaker 1: and Coco eventually has a litter of five healthy puppies.
Speaker 1: Fatima can't keep them all as much as she'd like to.
Speaker 1: She keeps two and has a pack of her own
Speaker 1: now Fatima, Coco, and Coco's pups, Carlo and Tokyo. She's
Speaker 1: forty one and she's reached a point of thinking, maybe
Speaker 1: this is okay, Maybe I won't bring children into the world,
Speaker 1: maybe this is my story. But then one night she's
Speaker 1: out to dinner with Allegra and she meets an American
Speaker 1: man and the rest, as they say, is history.
Speaker 2: I end the relationship. Cocoa has another litter of puppies
Speaker 2: that goes everything goes absolutely wonderfully. I didn't want her
Speaker 2: to have puppies because I was so horrified by the
Speaker 2: bad pregnancy that I just thought, I want to avoid
Speaker 2: this at all costs. And you know, Murphy's law was
Speaker 2: that the day I visited the vet to talk about
Speaker 2: having her Spade, she met a very handsome Jack Russell
Speaker 2: in the park and they have these puppies, and I
Speaker 2: acted as though I'd had the puppies. You know, I
Speaker 2: was so excited by it, and I looked after them.
Speaker 2: I'm basically a VET. At this point, I end the relationship,
Speaker 2: and I have been so lucky. I mean, I've really
Speaker 2: truly been so lucky in my life with the friends
Speaker 2: that I have I've had so much love and support
Speaker 2: that it's hard not to believe in God because I
Speaker 2: always had it when I needed it. And so at
Speaker 2: some point I thought, well, maybe I'll just have another dog.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't I wanted to keep one of
Speaker 2: Cocoa's puppies, but of course the man said he wanted one,
Speaker 2: which I now think he did only not to take
Speaker 2: the dog, just so i'd be saddled with three Jack Russells.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you know Jack Russell's, you know, one
Speaker 2: Jack russell is the equivalent of like three normal dogs,
Speaker 2: you know, so it's like having yeah, it's like having
Speaker 2: a four hundred dogs, to have three Jack Russells. They
Speaker 2: are absolutely without any kind of chill or calm. They're
Speaker 2: just go twenty four hours a day. So I have
Speaker 2: these three barking, yapping, jumping Jack Russells. And I really
Speaker 2: did think. I thought, okay, well I'll just adopt another dog,
Speaker 2: and then another dog, and then I'll just look after dogs.
Speaker 2: And I was with my best friend Alegra having dinner,
Speaker 2: and I was precisely showing her the next dog that
Speaker 2: I was planning on saving from some very sad story.
Speaker 2: When the man who I would marry, walked into the
Speaker 2: restaurant and sat behind us. I really didn't want to
Speaker 2: go out that night, and the legras sort have dragged me.
Speaker 2: And I'm so glad that she did. And I make
Speaker 2: Graham thank her all the time because we wouldn't have
Speaker 2: met if it weren't for her. And we met. He
Speaker 2: was traveling, he went back to the States, and you know,
Speaker 2: I really didn't want to be in another long distance
Speaker 2: you live far away, you don't live in the same
Speaker 2: place kind of relationship. And I did he and we
Speaker 2: got married and quite soon after actually, and we have
Speaker 2: two little boys, and we have the three dogs, and
Speaker 2: Graham lives in the perpetual fear that we will have
Speaker 2: a fourth dog. And I think he's right to live
Speaker 2: in that fear. And it is a house filled with
Speaker 2: noise and chaos and a lot a lot of joy.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly's Acre is
Speaker 1: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
Speaker 1: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 1: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 1: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 1: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 1: find me on Instagram at Danny Rider, and if you'd
Speaker 1: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 1: check out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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