Speaker 1: Bushkin, This is solvable. I'm Jacob Weisberg. I remember trying
Speaker 1: to compare everything I was experiencing too American movies I
Speaker 1: had seen, like, Okay, where's Bruce Wellis? I can't find him?
Speaker 1: Where all these people you know who fall? South Dakota
Speaker 1: is very different from Syria. Ahmed Botter became a refugee
Speaker 1: as a young kid. Like him, around the world, seven
Speaker 1: point one million school aged children are refugees. Although Bater
Speaker 1: witnessed serious destruction and devastation, he doesn't define himself by
Speaker 1: his displacement alone. Well. First, I think you have to
Speaker 1: realize that you have a story to tell, and then
Speaker 1: you have to realize how you can tell that story.
Speaker 1: His Boter entered high school, he started to explore his
Speaker 1: identity more and more. I started to kind of grapple
Speaker 1: with what it meant to be an Iraqi American Muslim refugee.
Speaker 1: It was just a beginning. Yes, he realized he was
Speaker 1: a refugee, and yes he was displaced, but he was
Speaker 1: also a poet and later a college graduate. He began
Speaker 1: to carve od a space where all the parts of
Speaker 1: his identity could coexist. As a young person, publishing is
Speaker 1: this thing that's so exclusive and this thing that's only
Speaker 1: the few of us get access to, and I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: Well designed the website and then started by just me
Speaker 1: begging my classmates to submit. Botter's website expanded and then
Speaker 1: it evolved into a platform called Narratio Today. Narratio published
Speaker 1: his work from eighteen different countries and both partnerships with
Speaker 1: the UN and the MET that created spaces for displaced
Speaker 1: young people to feel that they can transcend the tragedy
Speaker 1: that may have initially caused their displacement. A generation of
Speaker 1: people transcending the stereotypes put upon them. Botter has compiled
Speaker 1: their stories and poems into a new book. It's called
Speaker 1: While the Earth Sleeps. We Travel in moving from Baghdad
Speaker 1: to Syria, to South Dakota and later Houston, Texas, Botter
Speaker 1: realized his story was weady, but that didn't mean it
Speaker 1: had to weigh him down. We're faced with a negativity loop.
Speaker 1: When we hear the word refugee, we immediately think of pain,
Speaker 1: We immediately think of tragedy. But by creating spaces where
Speaker 1: refugees themselves can go from passive victims to individuals who
Speaker 1: have full control of their stories. This is solvable. My
Speaker 1: co host Ann Apple Bomb spoke with Botter about his platform,
Speaker 1: the radio, and how he's helping young people around the
Speaker 1: world see their own potential and put it into words.
Speaker 1: So this palm as in the middle of the book,
Speaker 1: and it's called Our Earth and Yours. I wrote this
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, Our Earth and Yours. Some
Speaker 1: boats ask the sea's permission before sailing. Others have no
Speaker 1: choice but to introduce themselves hurriedly, forcefully, holding bodies that
Speaker 1: tell stories in dark rooms, over rusty space heaters and
Speaker 1: pristine rugs. They say that a country lives inside a body,
Speaker 1: but it will always die outside of it. What is
Speaker 1: a border but a stubborn scar, a past pain that
Speaker 1: no longer persists, but a reminder that you will never
Speaker 1: return to your previous form. Permanence is an illusion we
Speaker 1: are forbidden to taste. My name is Amat Bedder. I'm
Speaker 1: an Iraqi American writer, social entrepreneur and former refugee, and
Speaker 1: on July twenty fifth, two thousand and six, our home
Speaker 1: in Baghdad was bombed. I wasn't home, I was away
Speaker 1: with my grandparents, and I came home the next day
Speaker 1: and found out what happened. Luckily everyone survived. It was
Speaker 1: a dead missile. And then, you know, a week later
Speaker 1: we moved to Syria, which was taken in refugees at
Speaker 1: the time. This was before the war, to be clear. Yes,
Speaker 1: this was between two thousand and six and two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. We were going back and forth between Syria
Speaker 1: and Iraq just to visit family. My parents were on
Speaker 1: paid leave, you know, they were civil engineers and baghadad
Speaker 1: for over twenty years. And then during one of those trips,
Speaker 1: we heard about this UN program that would we settle refugees,
Speaker 1: and my dad thought, we really don't have, you know,
Speaker 1: anything to lose, and he applied and we were very
Speaker 1: lucky to be among you know, just the one percent
Speaker 1: of all refugees that are resettled. And we landed in
Speaker 1: the US on May nineteen, two thousand and eight. So
Speaker 1: after two years in Syria, we left Iraq in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six and flew out from Damascus and to
Speaker 1: Budapest and then Budapeshi New York City, and then New
Speaker 1: York City to Chicago, and then Chicago finally to fall
Speaker 1: South Dakota. That must have been very jarring that transition
Speaker 1: from Iraq to Syria to sell to Koa. You know,
Speaker 1: it was exciting. Yeah, two thousand and eight, so it
Speaker 1: was just nine going on ten. And that age is
Speaker 1: so exciting because you're just a sponge. You just want
Speaker 1: to take everything in. And I remember trying to compare
Speaker 1: everything I was experiencing to American movies I had seen,
Speaker 1: you know, I had seen all these action movies with
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis and all of these kind of films that
Speaker 1: framed how I understood America to be. And all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you know, we spent the night in New
Speaker 1: York City before flying out to Chicago, and I was
Speaker 1: just like, Okay, where's Bruce Willis. I can't find him
Speaker 1: where all these people? But it was exciting. It was exciting.
Speaker 1: Obviously it was a completely new place, you know, to
Speaker 1: fall South Dakota is very different from from Syria, and
Speaker 1: we were living there. But I was eager to kind
Speaker 1: of just dive in and meet people and get a
Speaker 1: chance to connect. My English wasn't really great at the time.
Speaker 1: I had taken some classes in Syria, so I had
Speaker 1: to adapt quickly. But you never felt any sense of displacement. Initially,
Speaker 1: I don't think I understood what displacement meant or my
Speaker 1: own relationship to it. But I thought, well, this is
Speaker 1: just a new place we're moving to. But I think
Speaker 1: as I got older, as I started high school, I
Speaker 1: started to kind of grapple with what it meant to,
Speaker 1: you know, be an Iraqi American Muslim refugee. I was like,
Speaker 1: we call this immigration, we call this, you know, moving
Speaker 1: from one place in another, We call this displacement. Did
Speaker 1: you feel at that time or do you think about
Speaker 1: this now that the either that a kind of a
Speaker 1: stereotype was being thrust upon you. You know, you are
Speaker 1: a Muslim refugee at a time when people are worried
Speaker 1: about Muslim refugees. Did you have to grapple with that?
Speaker 1: Did you disagree with being typecast that way? I think
Speaker 1: I didn't realize what I was up against in terms
Speaker 1: of those identities until I actually started to realize how
Speaker 1: I can claim them and how I can express them
Speaker 1: and maneuver and negotiate each of them and their intersections
Speaker 1: and their tensions. So, for you, telling stories was initially
Speaker 1: a way to solve this personal problem, this personal question
Speaker 1: of how you fit in exactly. It was a way
Speaker 1: of asking, Okay, well what is my personal story? And
Speaker 1: then how can I share it? And who will listen?
Speaker 1: And once I figured out that folks were interested in
Speaker 1: hearing it, then I quickly learned how I could begin
Speaker 1: to tell it. And then that's how the journey began.
Speaker 1: How did you get from that personal realization from the
Speaker 1: understanding that stories would help you to the founding of Naratio,
Speaker 1: which is designed to help other people sell their stories.
Speaker 1: The summer after my freshman year, I was invited to
Speaker 1: a conference in DC Journalism conference and for the conference,
Speaker 1: they said you have to make a website or a
Speaker 1: blog for your work. And this was the first time
Speaker 1: that I realized that me trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: it meant to be an Iraqi American list some refugee
Speaker 1: was actually of interest to other people who were either
Speaker 1: going through the same thing or we're just interested in
Speaker 1: what that exploration meant. And so from there I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: well I want to explore this and I'm going to
Speaker 1: do that through my writing and through my poetry and
Speaker 1: through this kind of initial website and then that website
Speaker 1: that they had us create for that conference. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I had classed me into asking me about it,
Speaker 1: reading the work and saying, okay, well, I didn't know
Speaker 1: that this is what it meant to be an Iraqi
Speaker 1: American Muslim refugee, or I didn't know about you know,
Speaker 1: that specific aspect of those identities, And all of a
Speaker 1: sudden I thought, okay, well, this was good and this
Speaker 1: was empowering, but why not make it something that's available
Speaker 1: to other young people. And then in my junior year
Speaker 1: of high school, I decided, okay, well, let me start
Speaker 1: a website where I can invite other young people to
Speaker 1: publish their work, whether that's poems, whether that's stories, whether
Speaker 1: that's artwork or films, and I have a space that
Speaker 1: cultivates this force, this creative force of young people, and
Speaker 1: to make it publishing accessible to them. And then it
Speaker 1: grew to do to workshops and so the very first
Speaker 1: art a workshop I did here in Houston with a
Speaker 1: local resettlement agency, I met with an amazing group of
Speaker 1: recently arrived refuge youth and we talked about stories. We
Speaker 1: talked about our own stories the ways that we can
Speaker 1: share them. But ultimately that workshop was the first time
Speaker 1: I was able to go beyond my own story and
Speaker 1: think about the spaces that my own story can create
Speaker 1: for other stories to exist beside it and beyond it.
Speaker 1: Narratio kind of that came out of this realization that
Speaker 1: we need to make publishing accessible. And then now what's
Speaker 1: grown to include, you know, not only just the online publishing,
Speaker 1: but also a fellowship program that we have in partnership
Speaker 1: with the MET, you know, different partnerships with the un
Speaker 1: different collaborations, and now we published work from eighteen countries
Speaker 1: and you know the work. The work has grown and
Speaker 1: what is the problem that this site is designed to solve?
Speaker 1: How would you describe it? Is it the problem of
Speaker 1: people feeling displaced or there or there are other kinds
Speaker 1: of issues you're trying to get to. What it's really
Speaker 1: trying to do is allow for a space that allows
Speaker 1: displace young people to share the fullest extent of their
Speaker 1: experiences on their own terms. What oftentimes tends to happen
Speaker 1: when we think of stories of displacements or the stories
Speaker 1: of those that happened to be displaced, we think of war,
Speaker 1: we think of violence, we think of persecution, and that's
Speaker 1: definitely part of the story, but that's all we hear about.
Speaker 1: With Narratio, we wanted to create a platform and a
Speaker 1: series of initiatives that created spaces for displace young people
Speaker 1: to feel that they can transcend the tragedy that may
Speaker 1: have initially caused their displacement. And so for the fellowship specifically,
Speaker 1: the first year was focused on poetry, and so I
Speaker 1: spent some time in Syracuse. I met with the fellows
Speaker 1: for the month organize a series of workshops and partnership
Speaker 1: with the university there and the Ancient New East Gallery
Speaker 1: at the MAP And the co director for the program
Speaker 1: was a professor at Syracuse, professor by Snort Quists an amazing,
Speaker 1: amazing human And what we did was each fellow selected
Speaker 1: an object from the Ancient East Gallery and reimagine their
Speaker 1: labels as a poem, but taking to account their own
Speaker 1: personal stories, their own personal identities, and then they get
Speaker 1: to perform those poems at the Royal Assyrian Court in
Speaker 1: those galleries by the end of the summer, and that
Speaker 1: program has continued. They've been able to perform their work
Speaker 1: at the un They've had a photography exhibit in a
Speaker 1: performance at Christie's, in addition to local performances and exhibits
Speaker 1: in Syracuse. And so we're really trying to create a
Speaker 1: collective of cultural producers that then can take control of
Speaker 1: their own stories and redefine the kind of the singular
Speaker 1: narrative that you know is dominant around displacement, which tends
Speaker 1: to focus on tragedy. Explain to me why the dominant
Speaker 1: tragedy narrative is a problem. How does it trouble people,
Speaker 1: how does it affect them? The dominant narrative that's limited
Speaker 1: by the tragedy really ends up creating this story of
Speaker 1: victimhood as a story that's limited by victimhood, and we
Speaker 1: have to be able to move beyond that. But we
Speaker 1: have to be able to move beyond it by asking
Speaker 1: those very individuals how they want to be able to
Speaker 1: share their stories. We can't just have an agenda and
Speaker 1: then say, oh, this is where your story fits in,
Speaker 1: or your story of tragedy fits in. We have to
Speaker 1: meet folks where they're at, ask them about the fullest
Speaker 1: extent of their experiences, and then ask them how they
Speaker 1: want to be able to represent themselves. What's the risk
Speaker 1: for young people who don't have this kind of opportunity. Well, first,
Speaker 1: I think you have to realize that you have a
Speaker 1: story to tell, and then you have to realize how
Speaker 1: you can tell that story. What you're risking if that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. Is again that narrative of tragedy being becoming
Speaker 1: the dominant one. And also there's so much personal development
Speaker 1: that happens once you realize that you have something to
Speaker 1: share with the world and that you are in control
Speaker 1: of what you want to share with the world. And
Speaker 1: also want to be clear that not everyone should be
Speaker 1: forced to tell their own story. That's another aspect of this.
Speaker 1: This is an invitation rather than a mandate, right, This
Speaker 1: is something that we try to kind of offer and
Speaker 1: then if it's something that's of interest, then you know,
Speaker 1: we work with those young people. But if again, this
Speaker 1: work and this mission is really aimed at providing these
Speaker 1: spaces and then opening up opportunities for those spaces and
Speaker 1: those individuals to grow on their own. And again, ownership
Speaker 1: and agency is at the heart of this work. Your
Speaker 1: new book, While the Earth Sleeps, We Travel is a
Speaker 1: collection of poetry and prose, is by you, some by
Speaker 1: fellow young refugees. Tell me about how you choose the
Speaker 1: pieces for the book and how you organized it. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: beginning in twenty eighteen, I started traveling to Greece and
Speaker 1: Trinad and Tobago and across the US, but mainly in Syracuse,
Speaker 1: really doing the storytelling workshops and interviews with displace young
Speaker 1: people in camps, outside of camps, and really asking this
Speaker 1: fundamental question of how do you see yourself and how
Speaker 1: do you think the world sees you? And what's that
Speaker 1: relationship between those two questions and how would you define
Speaker 1: it through your own respective medium? Do you want to
Speaker 1: write a poem, do you want to share a photograph?
Speaker 1: Do you want to share a painting? Now, in terms
Speaker 1: of the process of how it came to be, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a year of the collection process and then
Speaker 1: about a year just trying to figure out the structure
Speaker 1: of it. You know, how do you fit a drawing
Speaker 1: by a six year old girl with you know, an
Speaker 1: interview and a series of photographs or paintings by a
Speaker 1: twenty three year old man, you know, from all different
Speaker 1: parts of the world. You know, there's a series of
Speaker 1: my own poems that are structured throughout as a mediating
Speaker 1: force between you know, all of the pieces represented, and
Speaker 1: so it's a really multimodal collection that's been the labor
Speaker 1: of love for the last couple of years, and I'm very,
Speaker 1: very excited to share with the world. Do you think
Speaker 1: that the effect both of your book and your work,
Speaker 1: and of of course, of narratio is likely to have
Speaker 1: an impact on the narrative itself. Want to change the
Speaker 1: way society speaks more broadly about refugees or is the
Speaker 1: point really to help the refugees themselves. I think we
Speaker 1: can do both. I think one amplifies the other. You know,
Speaker 1: the mission is to create this global collective of displaced
Speaker 1: young people that are trained to tell their own stories
Speaker 1: on their own terms, as stakeholders in their communities, as leaders,
Speaker 1: as cultural producers, and we hope that by doing that
Speaker 1: work then we can change the narrative. What do you
Speaker 1: think readers will gain both from the book and from
Speaker 1: the material that's produced onto radio. I hope that readers
Speaker 1: realize that kind of this distance we assume when we
Speaker 1: hear that word refugee, the distance between our experiences and
Speaker 1: theirs is actually much less than we think it is.
Speaker 1: There are issues that folks who happen to be displaced
Speaker 1: to have experienced that anyone can relate to, regardless if
Speaker 1: they've experienced displacement or not whether it's my own parents
Speaker 1: struggling to find jobs even though they had master's degrees
Speaker 1: in civil engineering, or you know, me and my younger
Speaker 1: sister trying to figure out, you know, just being high
Speaker 1: school students and where we fit in and and our
Speaker 1: own identities and negotiating those identities. These are all struggles
Speaker 1: that are universal and we can all relate to in
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form. Critically, the book is not
Speaker 1: about displacement. It's just about the expression, the creative expression
Speaker 1: of young people who happen to be displaced. It's a
Speaker 1: key distinction that I hope is clear and that I hope,
Speaker 1: you know, folks would appreciate. What are three things that
Speaker 1: listeners could do themselves to support the livelihoods of displace people,
Speaker 1: to support the integration of refugees, maybe in their own communities.
Speaker 1: So first, I think, you know, think about the stories
Speaker 1: that you've heard about refugees, either you know, in the
Speaker 1: news or in your own community. Think about the experiences
Speaker 1: you've had with folks that you've met, and really critically
Speaker 1: examine how that presentation is happening. And then from there,
Speaker 1: reimagine what comes to mind when you hear that word refugee.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't have to be this thing that's
Speaker 1: always so far away. It could be a neighbor, it
Speaker 1: could be someone that your kid goes to school with,
Speaker 1: a coworker. And then lastly, I think just learning to
Speaker 1: lead with your own personal experience. If you meet someone
Speaker 1: that happens to be displaced, or if you're happened to
Speaker 1: be highlighting the experiences of someone that happens to be
Speaker 1: displaced for an event that you're holding, allowed that individual
Speaker 1: the space and the opportunity to speak beyond the tragedy
Speaker 1: that may have been part of their story. Those three
Speaker 1: things are really key as we think about displacement, the
Speaker 1: narratives around displacement, and we lead this mission to create
Speaker 1: a three dimensional approach to how we think about displacement,
Speaker 1: how we think about migration, and how we think about refugees.
Speaker 1: Ahmed Botter is the founder of New Radio. You can
Speaker 1: find more information about his new book, While the Earth Sleeps,
Speaker 1: We Travel At Earth Sleeps, We Travel dot Com. Remember
Speaker 1: to check out our show notes to learn more. Solvable
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our show is
Speaker 1: produced by Camille Baptista, Senior Producer, Jocelyn Frank. Catherine Girardo
Speaker 1: is our managing producer, and our executive producer is Mia Loebell.
Speaker 1: Special thanks go to Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, Carly Migliori
Speaker 1: and Kadija Holland. I'm Jacob Weisberg.