WEBVTT - We Heard Everything 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.640 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:04.800 --> 0:00:07.600 My life had been broken by grief, and then for 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:11.320 a period it was redeemed by love. But people do 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:14.560 not love each other in the same way, and sometimes 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:18.720 there is terror in love. I wanted a family more 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:23.520 than anything in the world. The man didn't. But instead 0:00:23.520 --> 0:00:26.400 of acknowledging that we wanted different things and that we 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:29.360 might be better off in pursuit of separate lives, we 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:33.080 stayed together. It is difficult to look back now and 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:35.400 see that I tolerated this for as long as I did. 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:40.080 Some men take strong women as a challenge and derive 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:44.240 a pleasure in breaking them or trying to. And when 0:00:44.240 --> 0:00:47.280 you are a strong woman, you also might not think 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.280 this can happen to you, that you might be in trouble, 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:54.120 that someone you care for might be dangerous for you. 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:02.680 That's Fatima Bhutto, Pakistani writer and columnist and author of 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:06.720 several books, including the memoir Song of Blood and Sword 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.800 and the recent The Hour of the Wolf. Fatima's is 0:01:10.880 --> 0:01:13.399 a story of growing up in a world filled with 0:01:13.520 --> 0:01:17.679 magic and also marked by profound fear of impending loss. 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:22.200 When that loss becomes a reality, grief shapes her from 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:27.000 the inside out, until finally the waves recede, her sight clears, 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:30.760 and she finds herself feeling the kind of safety that 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:46.000 had never been her birthright. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:49.080 is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:51.880 the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we 0:01:52.000 --> 0:02:00.800 keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape of your 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:03.040 childhood as early as you remember. 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:08.799 The earliest I remember really is my father. My father 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:15.000 was the entire universe of my childhood, and besides him 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:19.120 was this enormous absence of home, because of course I 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:21.440 wasn't born in my country. I was born when my 0:02:21.480 --> 0:02:26.520 father was in exile. And home this place that my 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:30.400 father loved and adored, but that we couldn't return to 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:36.519 because of danger, because of politics, because of a dictatorship. 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:41.280 It always loomed very strongly, not even in the background. 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:45.000 It was really quite foregrounded for us. And it was 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:48.320 a place of so much promise and so much beauty, 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:52.400 but also a threatening place. And I suppose somehow my 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:59.760 father made this world seem open and wondrous and exciting. 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:03.400 But he also didn't lie to me. He didn't hide 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:05.120 what was threatening about it. 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:09.800 That's something that really struck me, is that somehow embedded 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:14.880 in the very atmosphere of your childhood was it almost 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:17.680 seems like it presaged loss. 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:20.960 Yes, it was always there as well, because I was 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:27.000 born three years after my grandfather had been killed by 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:32.000 a military dictatorship in Bakistan, and three years after I 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:34.800 was born, my father's younger brother, who was only twenty 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:38.080 seven at the time, was also killed, And there was 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:43.920 always this sense that it was close by. That My 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:48.040 father didn't say things like you know, when I die. 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:52.360 He said things like when I'm killed, And even though 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.440 it upset me as a child, when I would tell 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:58.120 him that it upset me, he would say, well, you 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:00.800 should know that that's a possibility. 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:07.040 Fatima and her father have a nighttime ritual in the 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:10.640 dark quiet of their Damascus flat. After he reads her 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:15.040 a bedtime story, He'll say, if anything ever happened to you, 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:20.040 I would die, and Fatima responds by saying, me too, Papa, 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:24.200 I would die without you too. She writes in her memoir. 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:27.200 We spoke that oath to each other as easily as 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:29.120 some people say sweet dreams. 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:34.680 I have two babies now, and the thought of saying 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:39.120 that to them would just fill me with so much sadness, 0:04:39.560 --> 0:04:44.040 but it felt normal. My father would tell me a story, 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:47.359 and he was a wonderful mimic, so he would do voices, 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:52.679 and you know, it was comedic and exciting and fun 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.120 to listen to him. And then he would sit there 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:57.839 and wait for me to sleep. But his good night 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:03.400 was always this quite sorry, full good night. And I 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:06.120 didn't really understand that there was anything unusual about it 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.800 because this idea of all the loss around us, it 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:14.120 made it seem quite possible that something bad would happen. 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:16.719 So it seemed a kind of normal thing to say. 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:20.920 But it really was a beautiful childhood in so many ways. 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:23.279 I mean, I knew there were bits that were not 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:29.400 normal about it, you know, I knew as a young child. 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:31.640 I mean, I was very chatty. I'm still very chatty, 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:34.240 but I was. I loved talking, and as soon as 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:36.039 I was old enough to answer the phone, that was 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.000 like incredibly exciting to me because imagine the chance we 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:41.559 just get to talk to someone out of the blue 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:45.520 in your own home. And I remember being told not 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:48.200 just by my father but by my grandmother, who I 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:51.800 adored and who was really a substandard mother figure for me. 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:55.520 I remember being told, you know, when you pick up 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:59.160 the phone, you can't tell people everything. You know, if 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:00.920 they ask for your far and he's not here, you 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:04.320 can't say he's not here. You have to say, oh, 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:07.200 he's busy with something, he'll call you back. And I 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.919 understood that was strange. And you know, there were a 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:14.320 lot of secrets, because survival depended on secrets. So you 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:17.200 couldn't tell people where you were, you couldn't tell them 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:21.800 where you weren't, and sometimes you had to leave your 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:24.440 home because it was dangerous. And then of course you 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:27.120 would return to your home as though nothing had happened, 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:29.280 or I mean, all the grown ups would return as 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:31.320 though nothing had happened. But I would be a little 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:36.320 bit stunned and confused. And I'm sure so there were 0:06:36.440 --> 0:06:41.720 little clues that things were not normal. There were things 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:47.840 that felt very extraordinary, but I just understood it as 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:51.599 how it was. I didn't really see how we could 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:52.120 change that. 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.440 And your mother was not in the picture right. She 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:58.279 and your father divorced when you were three. 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:03.920 They divorced when I was three, and I didn't really 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:08.800 have very much interaction with her when I was older, 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:14.560 and I'm sure that affected me in multiple, multiple ways. 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:17.600 But at the time, again, my father was really the 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:20.640 sum of everything for me and I. As long as 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:24.200 I had him nearby, I felt safe. While I was 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.360 still in Damascus in Syria. You know, when my father 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:29.920 was a bachelor, I had kind of a bachelor life too. 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:32.720 We would go swimming on the weekends. You know, he 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.640 would play squash and I would. I would read a 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:39.960 book or swim at the pool. We'd go out and 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:43.280 have meals. My father thought he was a very good cook, 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:46.160 but I'm not really sure he was, so there was 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:50.120 a lot of dinners out. You know. I didn't really 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:54.040 have a bedtime per se. You know, I could stay 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:56.880 up late, I could travel where my father went. I 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:58.840 had to go because there was no one else to 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:02.240 look after me. When the grown ups were talking, I 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.760 was sitting there eating peanuts and you know, listening to 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:10.040 them talk. And I thought my father's friends were my 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:11.880 friends because I had to spend as much time with 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:16.280 them as he did. So was it worth quite a 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:20.880 bachelor life? But then he remarried and then they had 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:25.520 a baby, my brother's Ulfagar, and that certainly felt a 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.080 little bit more normal. You know, there was now a 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:30.960 bit more of bedtimes. There was a baby, you had 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:34.760 the routines that that babies have, and I went to 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:38.839 school and that felt very normal. You know. I had 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:43.439 friends that I loved, and I lived in a beautiful city, 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:47.160 you know, one of the world's most ancient cities, and 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:51.120 everything felt very normal until we had to return to 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:55.320 Pakistan and my father stood for elections and he won, 0:08:56.320 --> 0:09:01.600 and that was it. This very romantic but tragic exile 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:06.720 was suddenly over. And this possibility that we had always 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:09.360 spoken about but never really thought would come true that 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:13.640 we would return home, suddenly was upon us. And not 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:15.880 only were we returning home, we were returning home in 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:16.319 a month. 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:20.840 And how old were you when that return happened. 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:24.080 I was about eleven, eleven and a half something like that. 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:28.360 Yeah, so you're also leaving the friends that you've made behind. 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:31.720 I mean, eleven, it's just nobody wants to be eleven again. 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:36.800 No, I'm in the sixth grade. You know. It's like 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:40.439 the beginning of a very exciting period at school. And 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:44.800 we're in middle school. We have lockers now, you know, 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.080 it's just really kind of cool new period. And I've 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:51.360 got to leave and I've got to leave. And I 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:54.040 didn't think I was an exile. You know, my father 0:09:54.160 --> 0:09:56.880 was an exile. It was not his country, it was 0:09:56.920 --> 0:09:58.960 not the language he grew up speaking, it was not 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:02.959 his childhood home, but it was mine. So the end 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:05.120 of his exile was in a way the beginning of 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:09.520 my own. And he had spent sixteen years waiting, counting 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.559 days and months and hours and missing everything about home. 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:16.400 And that period for me really began when we left 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.760 Damascus and I returned to this place that up until 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:22.120 that point I had only visited, and I loved it, 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:23.920 but I loved it because my father loved it. 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:27.840 And what was that landscape like, you know, you're eleven 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:31.640 years old, twelve years old, you're now in Karachi, your 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:37.360 father is elected, and there's this whole other world. And 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:40.839 also I would imagine the rhythm of just everyday life 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:42.199 must have shifted tremendously. 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:46.360 Oh, it was not just a different world. It was 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:51.120 like a totally different life. Because Damascus at that point, 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:53.800 I mean, you know, in the nineteen eighties, even the 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:57.880 early nineteen nineties, was nothing like the Syria people imagine today. 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:02.080 It was a very sleepy town. It was a tiny place. 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:07.680 It was incredibly safe. Karachi was a mad city. It 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.560 was a city of millions upon millions upon millions of people. 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:18.600 It's a crash of people. It's super chaotic. There's motorcycles, rickshaws, cars, 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:23.360 there's no footpaths, there's no pavements, so you've got people, children, 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:28.160 families whizzing in between traffic. And it was not just 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:32.080 a megacity, but it was a very dangerous city. It 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:34.560 was a city where there was a law and order problem, 0:11:34.760 --> 0:11:36.520 which is, you know, it's a nice way of saying 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:43.280 you lived in a really violent place. And there were shootings. 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:46.760 They were at that time. They want bombings. Those came later. 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:49.840 But also it was not anonymous city for me, because 0:11:50.240 --> 0:11:53.520 whereas in Syria, I had just been, you know, a 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:56.800 sixth grader, someone from a strange part of the world, 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:02.040 someone from far away. In Bagistan, my family was very 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:06.559 well known, and that meant that people were curious about me, 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:10.520 and I'd not had that before. I'd not understood what 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:11.080 it felt like. 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:31.560 We'll be right back. When Fatima is fourteen, her whole 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:35.800 world is upended, her beloved father, her son, and moon 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:40.720 is assassinated. This is not a haphazard or unorganized killing. 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:44.800 His assassination is well planned, very deliberate. 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:51.600 We'd started to notice in the days before armored vehicles 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.480 were beginning to be placed around our house. So coming 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:58.280 back from school one day, I saw one, and you know, 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:00.839 an armored vehicles pretty hard to miss, especially when they're 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:05.280 men with colashnikos, you know, tending out of it. And 0:13:05.280 --> 0:13:07.080 then the next day there were two, and then the 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:10.520 next day there were three, and we were basically surrounded. 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:14.599 And at that time, like I said, Karachi was a 0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:17.800 very dangerous place. And I went to the American School, 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:21.000 and it happened once in a while that our school 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:23.800 was shot at. You'd be going to class and you'd 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:26.160 hear gunfire, and you know, you knew what to do. 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:27.920 We knew what to do. We were taught what to do. 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:33.800 So it was scary, but it didn't quite feel out 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:37.760 of the ordinary. And my father, because he was a 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:41.040 politician and he was very outspoken, he thought they might 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:43.400 try to arrest him, and that's what he'd told us 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.400 to plan for. But the day that he was killed, 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:51.720 he was going to a public meeting outside of the city, 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:56.640 and I wanted very much to go with him. And 0:13:57.000 --> 0:13:59.720 usually my father was quite keen to drag me along 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:02.360 on him political outings because we could chat in the 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:06.720 car and we always had fun when we were together. 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:09.560 But that day he said I couldn't come. He said 0:14:09.600 --> 0:14:11.600 it was too dangerous and he would see me when 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:14.920 he got back in the evening. And what we didn't 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:19.760 know is that as it got darker, the Karate police 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:23.880 were placed on our street. There were anywhere from seventy 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:28.160 to one hundred policemen stationed, some in sniper positions in 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:32.480 the trees, in these very old Banyan trees, you know, 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:36.920 which are very large, imposing sort of trees that look 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:38.880 a bit like weeping willows. You know, they've got very 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:43.480 long leaves. The police were put even as high up 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:46.560 as into those trees. And we live on a street 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:50.480 where there are a lot of consulates and all the 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:54.160 guards that these foreign consulates were told to leave their 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:57.320 posts by the police, and the street lights were turned 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:01.760 off and traffic was stopped from entering the road. So 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:04.800 when my father's car approached the road to come home, 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:10.359 the police stopped him and someone was charged with identifying 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:14.840 that he was who he was, And when they identified him, 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:17.280 then they gave an order to fire and my father 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:20.960 and all the men with him were were shot, not once, 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:26.200 many times, and they were all killed by point blank gunshots. 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:29.240 And we were in the house at the time, so 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:32.360 my brother was six years old and I was fourteen, 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:35.760 and so we heard everything. And this was in the 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:38.280 days before cell phone, so we had no way of 0:15:38.280 --> 0:15:43.360 reaching my father to know where he was. But when 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:45.480 we tried to leave the house to find out what 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:48.840 had happened, the police stopped us and said that there 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.760 had been a robbery nearby. And again, because this was 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:55.400 such a dangerous city, they could say something like that, 0:15:55.680 --> 0:15:58.840 and it was within the realm of possibility. It was 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:02.720 strange that a robbery would produced so much gunfire because 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:05.080 it was several minutes long. It felt like a lot 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:07.560 of weapons were being fired. It wasn't, you know, a 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:11.000 single shot all things like that. But that's what they said. 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:14.400 But what they were doing is they were cleaning the streets, 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:17.720 and they were moving all of the men, including my father, 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:21.600 to different locations around the city, none of which were 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:25.640 emergency hospitals. They were all just taken to different clinics 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:28.040 around Karachi. 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:32.480 And when were you told what had happened? 0:16:33.360 --> 0:16:37.440 Well, we were waiting and waiting and waiting, and my 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:39.960 father hadn't come back yet, and it seemed strange that 0:16:39.960 --> 0:16:44.560 he would be so late. And my aunt. This is 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:48.680 the less ordinary part of the story. My aunt at 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:52.600 the time was the prime minister of the country. And 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:55.920 after an hour or so of waiting, I said, I 0:16:56.880 --> 0:16:59.360 was getting nervous, and I said, I'm going to call 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:03.160 my aunt and find out what's happening. And my aunts 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:05.679 and my father were quite estranged, and though they had 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:09.119 been very closest young people, he was a critic of 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:12.760 her government, and it was a government that was marked 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:15.840 by by a lot of exactly the kind of violence 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:19.280 that both of them would be killed, by a lot 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:23.760 of police excess and many other things. So I called 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:28.600 the prime Minister's house and the secretary, the ADC of 0:17:28.640 --> 0:17:31.879 the Prime Minister's house, was very apologetic to me and 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:37.119 very concerned. I had no idea why, obviously, and instead 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:39.800 of putting me through to my aunt, he put me 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:44.280 through to her husband, who was who was not really 0:17:44.280 --> 0:17:46.359 a favorite in the family, let's put it that way. 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:50.000 He'd been accused of a lot of corruption. He was 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:53.040 known in those days as mister ten percent because of 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:56.840 all the graph that he took off of deals going 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:59.159 through the government. He put me on the phone with 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:03.199 my aunt's husband, and I was a bit confused as 0:18:03.240 --> 0:18:05.680 to why I was put on the phone with him, 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:08.919 And when I asked to speak to my aunt, he said, no, 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:15.400 you can't, she's hysterical. And I still didn't understand because 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:18.399 I really didn't connect that shooting and all the noise 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:22.040 to my father. I just I didn't want it to 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:24.960 be my father, but also I had hoped, really against 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:31.160 hope it wasn't. So I asked my aunt's husband why 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.560 my aunt was hysterical and tried to impress upon him 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:37.280 that it was very important I spoke to her, and 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:41.360 that's when he said, don't you know your father's been shocked, 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:43.800 and that's how I found. 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:48.840 That, And where was your stepmother during that? 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:54.200 She was there, And it was at that time when 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:56.960 I heard those words. I just dropped the phone and 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:01.240 everything went a bit black, and she picked up the phone, 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:04.080 and I don't really know what happened. Then. The next 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:08.880 thing I remember was just that she was screaming and 0:19:10.440 --> 0:19:15.320 getting the car ready to go somewhere, and again she 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:18.439 tried to leave me behind and I refused, and I 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:22.680 insisted on going, and that's when we went to a clinic. 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:25.000 That was the kind of clinic you went, you know, 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:27.000 when you had to see the dentist or you had 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:30.359 to get a vaccine. It was not a place that 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:34.560 had emergency doctors. It didn't have an er. And that's 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:37.320 where my father had been taken, purposely so that he 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:43.040 couldn't be helped, and that's where we went. I was 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:47.840 totally heartbroken, and beyond that, I've been broken while my 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:54.040 father is killing and I had no choice but to 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:56.919 get on with it. I had to go to school, 0:19:57.160 --> 0:19:59.800 I had to do the things you have to do. 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:03.439 And also I had to live in the same house. 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:06.680 I mean, anytime I went to school, if I went 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:09.199 to buy a pack of gum, I had to travel 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:12.600 on the street that my father was killed on. Anytime 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:17.720 I came home, any homecoming also meant passing that road. 0:20:17.800 --> 0:20:22.000 Being on that road. I had no sense of how 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:27.760 wounded I was and how much work it had taken 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:35.280 to keep me getting through those ordinary moments as stably 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:38.919 as possible. I'm sure everyone worries about what happens to 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:43.960 their parents, but in my life, it seemed not a possibility. 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:48.760 It seemed a highly likely possibility. And I'd always had anxiety. 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:52.880 I'd always had pain in my stomach as a child 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:57.879 when I felt afraid, and as I got older that 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:04.040 became more obvious, it became much stronger and much rare. 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:10.520 And when I was older and I guess enough away 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:15.480 from what had happened and finally felt, you know, I'm 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:18.800 now building a sort of new life, was exactly the 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:24.080 moment that I started to get incredibly devastating panic attacks, 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:26.240 where they were so strong I didn't think I could 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:30.240 breathe or I couldn't stand up. I was unable to communicate. 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:32.800 And I mean, now, you know, we know all kinds 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.159 of things about how the body keeps the score, and 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:38.760 at that time there was no vocabulary for it. I 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:42.000 didn't understand. I thought I had dealt with a lot 0:21:42.040 --> 0:21:45.560 of my trauma because I went to therapy. You know, 0:21:45.960 --> 0:21:47.800 everyone knew what had happened to me, so it was 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:51.600 difficult not to talk about it. And I was lucky 0:21:51.640 --> 0:21:55.119 to have a lot of support from friends, from people 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:59.840 at my school. I've seen a lot of sadness and 0:22:00.600 --> 0:22:03.920 a lot of danger, but I've also seen the incredible 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:08.520 kindness of people of strangers, so I didn't understand what 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:11.720 was happening, and it carried on for really a rather 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.639 long time. I have to say. It was always somewhere 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:17.640 there in the background, and it made me even as 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:21.280 I dealt with it and I did more therapy, I 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:24.439 did yoga, I took medicine. It always stayed with me. 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:28.359 So I never felt far away from grief. I never 0:22:28.400 --> 0:22:32.240 felt very far away from my anxiety. I never felt 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:36.280 far away from fear. And I did the best I could. 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:40.040 I suppose. I went to college. I then went to England. 0:22:40.080 --> 0:22:43.520 I did a master's and though I wanted to be 0:22:43.560 --> 0:22:47.560 a writer, I enjoyed it very much. I did also 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:51.600 choose to write about things that hurt me, that bothered me, 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.720 that worried me, that made me fearful, And eventually I 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:59.399 wrote about my father's life and his assassination in what 0:22:59.560 --> 0:23:03.240 was my first book, and so put myself to the 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.719 experience of the trauma all over again, by finding people 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:11.240 from my father's path, finding policemen that had been present 0:23:11.440 --> 0:23:16.400 on the scene that night, finding doctors. And I did 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:19.480 that really because I didn't think I was going to 0:23:19.520 --> 0:23:21.879 get justice anywhere. I didn't think I was going to 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:23.439 get it in the court. So I didn't think I 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:27.159 was going to get it in my country, and so 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:29.040 I had to find a different way of reckoning what 0:23:29.080 --> 0:23:33.120 had happened. And it seemed like a record of it, 0:23:33.640 --> 0:23:37.840 a reckoning of it, and a testimony, a document of 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:40.000 what had happened, was going to be the closest I 0:23:40.000 --> 0:23:43.080 could get. So I spent six years working. 0:23:42.840 --> 0:23:48.719 On that book, and not surprisingly and unsurprisingly, and also, 0:23:49.080 --> 0:23:50.480 I mean, what were you going to do? Write a 0:23:50.560 --> 0:23:55.359 romance novel? I mean, yeah, our theams are just it's 0:23:55.400 --> 0:23:59.360 a fancy literary word for what obsesses us. And it 0:23:59.400 --> 0:24:01.600 would seem to me that it would have been absolutely 0:24:01.600 --> 0:24:06.040 impossible for you to do anything other than that. And yet, 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:10.560 of course, with everything that we know about trauma now 0:24:11.080 --> 0:24:16.120 and the way that it does live, you know in 0:24:16.119 --> 0:24:20.159 our bones that it would retraumatize you. You know. I 0:24:20.200 --> 0:24:24.840 think in some way too, people have the misunderstanding that 0:24:24.840 --> 0:24:29.760 that there would be catharsis around something like delving so 0:24:29.960 --> 0:24:35.720 deeply into this story that was just this defining, terrible 0:24:35.760 --> 0:24:40.600 story tragedy of your young life, and it does something else, 0:24:40.640 --> 0:24:46.359 It embeds it. So you had written that during this 0:24:46.400 --> 0:24:53.199 period of time you're on tour and you lose your voice. 0:24:53.480 --> 0:24:56.600 Yeah, I finished the book, it comes out, and I 0:24:56.640 --> 0:24:59.879 go on this tour with it. Of Course, I know 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:02.399 nothing about how books work, and I just assumed you 0:25:02.400 --> 0:25:04.159 write the book and then someone else does you know 0:25:04.200 --> 0:25:06.800 the rest of it. But it doesn't work that way, 0:25:06.920 --> 0:25:09.959 and so you kind of have to go out and 0:25:10.000 --> 0:25:14.240 shepherd this thing around. And it was incredibly important to me, 0:25:14.320 --> 0:25:16.840 the story. So whenever I was asked, will you come 0:25:16.840 --> 0:25:20.160 here and talk about your book, I said yes, of course, 0:25:20.200 --> 0:25:23.479 and I went, and just as I'm doing now, I 0:25:23.560 --> 0:25:26.720 had to relive really the worst moment of my life 0:25:26.800 --> 0:25:30.800 over and over again, and not always with I mean 0:25:30.840 --> 0:25:35.879 not often, I should say, with sensitive interlocutors. You know, 0:25:35.960 --> 0:25:38.520