Host: Jay Allison
[overture music]
Jay: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show.
And this time, we have stories about the unexpected. In most stories, the non-boring ones anyway, there is some element of surprise. But these stories are propelled by reversals and reveals that startled not only us, but the tellers themselves.
Our first story comes from Natalie Arroyo, who we met at a StorySLAM in New York City where we partner with Public Radio Station WNYC. Here's Natalie, live at The Moth.
[applause]
Natalie: [00:00:50] Hello. First time doing this up here, so, yay. [audience chuckle] Okay. So, I'm short. I know I'm short. I've accepted the fact that I'm short, it's okay. I'm never going to reach that top shelf at the store without assistance, and that's okay. It wouldn't be so bad, except I'm also young looking. I look like I'm about 15 years old. I'm not, but I do. I've been given children's menus at restaurants, carded at movie theaters, CVS, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [audience laughter] And one time, I asked this lady for directions and she said, [in a feeble voice] “Yes.” [audience laughter] Yeah. So, something I just have to live with.
A couple of months ago, I'm transferring trains. It's late, it's a Friday, I'm exhausted, I want to go home. Normally, I stick my phone in the inside pocket of my bag, but I'm in a rush, so I stick it in the outside pocket and I run to catch the train. So, the train pulls in, I'm waiting. It's slow, so we're waiting. I start to be very aware that this guy is standing really close to me, just a little too close, but I try not to think anything of it. And then, I feel my bag get lighter, because I overstuff my bag so it makes lot of sense. I feel my bag get lighter. And I look down, and I see my phone's missing and my whole pocket's empty. I look over, and this guy at 05:15, this guy is an adult, somebody's dad.
He's really tall [chuckles, and he's staring straight ahead. He's got a newspaper tucked under his arm and completely ignoring me. I know instinctively that he just stole my phone and had it tucked it into his newspaper, because I watch Burn Notice, I know how things work. [audience laughter] So, I look at him, and again he's ignoring me and I'm thinking, he knows he's going to get away with this. He's totally going to get away with this, because he sees the same thing everybody else sees. He sees a 15-year-old girl, no threat. What am I going to do? Even if I notice that my phone is gone, how am I going to stop this guy?
I just got so angry that I said, "Hey, you just took my phone." He turned at me and looked, "What?" Both of us were surprised. [audience laughter] And I said, "Yeah, you just took my phone. That's my phone. Give me back my phone." I'm pointing at the newspaper. And he starts to back away, so I grab the newspaper, and we start to-- [chuckles] We start to struggle, me and this big tall man. We start to struggle and people are coming on and off the train, because it's New York, so no one cares. [audience laughter]
So, we're wrestling. And it’s me screaming, "That's my phone, give me back my phone.” And he's screaming, "It's just a newspaper." But he doesn't know that I'm a preschool teacher and I get a lot of experience taking things out of people's hands. [audience laughter] So, I win. I get the newspaper, and he shouts, "It's just a newspaper," and walks off down the platform. Then I open the newspaper and there's my phone.
[cheers and applause]
Can you imagine if I was wrong, it would be a totally different story. [audience laughter] So, I throw out the newspaper, because it can't litter. I looked down the platform at this guy. And by now, the train is empty and people are on the train, doors are still open, it's waiting to depart. I see him, he's down the platform and he's looking at me, wondering what I'm going to do. Every other day, I would just bow my head and step into the train, because I don't like confrontation and I don't like making waves. I would just be embarrassed that I had to deal with this interaction, that I had to fight this guy. And that's because I'm a quiet person, I'm tiny, and I'm nice. But that day was not this day, so I chased him. [audience laughter]
And as he sees me running at him down the platform, [audience laughter] he panics and jumps onto the train. I catch up to him, the door is closed. I pull out my phone, and with my camera to take a picture and we're face to face on the other side of the glass. I go to take a picture and it freezes, because my phone is crap. [audience laughter] But it's my crappy phone, and I choose to fight for it.
So, the train pulls away. He doesn't know that, as far as he's concerned, he got his ass kicked by a 15-year-old girl. [audience laughter] I've told this story to a lot of people since then, and they all said the same thing, which is, "That was amazing. Don't ever do that again." [audience laughter] And not that I would ever want to wrestle a complete stranger on a subway platform again. I now know that if I need to stand up for myself, I can. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:05:50] That was Natalie Arroyo. This was the first, and so far the only story Natalie has told at The Moth. She teaches two-year-olds in Brooklyn Heights. Natalie told us about the thief. “What surprised me most was how his face changed from slightly smug and thinking he was in the clear, to pure panic as I started running after him. In my head, I was thinking, ‘This is working.’” A year after Natalie told this story, she saw an article in the newspaper about a man being arrested for stealing an elderly woman's phone. It was the same guy.
Our next tale of the unexpected comes from another SLAM, this one in Chicago, where we're supported by Public Radio Station WBEZ. Here's Sonny Garg, live at The Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Sonny: [00:06:53] So, it's 1983. I live in Maumee, Ohio, it's a suburb of Toledo. I'm 16 years old and I'm entering senior year of high school. I've got two things on my mind. The first is girls. Unfortunately, when I entered high school, I was 4'8", weighed about 80 pounds. [audience chuckle] And by the time I got to senior year, I still made Urkel from Family Matters, look like a Playgirl centerfold. So, that was off the table. The second thing I was worried about, being a good Indian boy, was colleges. And on that front, my dad had me covered.
My dad had grown up very poor in India, eight siblings in a small three-room apartment. They would pull down their bedding every night and they would roll it out, sleep on it. And in the morning, roll it back up and send it back up. So, regardless of how many Merchant Ivory movies you've seen, growing up being colonized is not as charming and witty [audience chuckle] as a Hugh Grant movie. But he had a dream. His dream was to come to America, and to study and to go to Harvard. And so, he did. He came here in 1961 with that proverbial one suitcase, a couple bucks in his pocket and he ended up getting a PhD. He did not go to Harvard, however.
So, like any good parent, he quickly determined that the best thing he could do for his children was to take his dream and make that his children's nightmare. [audience laughter] And so, he raised all my older sisters, three older sisters, and myself with the intention of all of us going to Harvard.
My eldest sister came home her senior year. She'd come to America when she was eight years old, hardly knew any English. My dad threw her in school and said, “Good luck.” She came home 10 years later and she said to my dad, "Dad, I finished second in my class." My dad looked at her and said, "Who finished first?" [audience aww] She went to Oberlin. [audience laughter] My next sister came home and she said, "Dad, I'm editor of the yearbook, I'm captain of the cheerleaders and I'm valedictorian." And my dad said, "The standards have gone to hell." She went to Northwestern. [audience chuckle] My next sister came home and said, "Dad, I got into MIT." And my dad said, "Yeah, it's not Harvard." So, he's left with me, the last kid. And to hedge his bets, he enrolls me in an all-boys Jesuit prep school.
You can imagine going as the Hindu kid. I might as well have shown up with the Ganesh lunchbox or something. [audience laughter] And so, if my dad's entire life was rebelling against the world's low expectations of him, I made it mine to rebel against his high expectations of me. And so, rather than focus on college, I had the brilliant idea, as I entered senior year, to write an underground newspaper with some friends. So, we got all together and we wrote these. It was like four pages, maybe a graph front and back. It was called The Other Side. It was all about everything wrong with the school, everything possibly wrong with the school, with a little review of all the parties and how there wasn't enough free alcohol, even though we're all like 16.
But probably, then we had a little coupon you could clip out and it was-- If you drove to school and it said, "Thanks for parking so blanking close, next time leave a can opener so I can get out." But probably the one area, the one column, that got us eventually in the most trouble was called Isn't it ironic that our health teacher smokes? Isn't it ironic that our communication teacher communicates by throwing chairs? [audience chuckle] The one that got us in the most trouble eventually was, Isn't it ironic that we have a celibate priest teaching us about sexual relationships? [audience laughter] So, needless to say, we broke into school at night, we put them in the lockers, then we came in the next morning, we're waiting to see what happens. They basically tried to kick us all out of school. They desperately wanted us all out.
Fortunately, the parents were able to keep us in school, but they stripped us of all our leadership positions, took away National Honor Society, all that stuff that seems to matter at that age. And then, I submit all my applications to college and I get this note from one of the people who's recommending me or supposed to be recommending me. And he said, "I found it really hard to recommend you to college." I thought to myself, then why did you do that? [chuckles] [audience laughter]
So, the day shows up, you're starting to get all the letters open. No surprise, I did not get into Harvard. However, as I opened up all the other letters, I realized I got into no colleges. Zero. None. So, not only did I not get into Harvard, I got into no colleges. I thought my dad was going to go ballistic. Instead, he supported me, and he stayed with me, and he continued and he helped me find a way to get into a college.
Fast forward ten years after I was rejected, I'm standing outside of a building with all my classmates in a master's program in public policy. I'm leading them into Harvard Yard for a degree at Harvard. I'm looking over at my dad. He rarely smiles, but it's really warm and nice when he does. And then, at the end of the night, after we had some dinner and we had some celebratory moments, he came up to me, and he came up and he put his hands behind his back like he's want to do. I was waiting for this beautiful moment, and he looked at me and he said, "Now, you must write a book." [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:12:43] That was Sonny Garg. Sonny lives in Chicago where he and his wife are adjusting to being empty nesters. Sonny works at an AI software firm. He and his wife hope their two girls have attended colleges they dreamed of themselves.
More stories of the unexpected coming up, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[whimsical music]
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And is presented by PRX.
The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show. Our next story in this hour was told by Gregory Mathieu. Gregory told us at a StorySLAM in Boston, where we partnered with PRX and WBUR. You may hear occasional music bleeding in from the room next door, but pay it no mind. Here's Gregory.
[cheers and applause]
Gregory: [00:14:14] Okay. So, when my older brother reached fourth grade, my parents signed him up for football. And they told me when I reached fourth grade, I would get to do football also. Gay, fourth grade Gregory did not want to do football [audience laughter] when he reached fourth grade. So, I dreaded reaching fourth grade. But to my surprise, when I reached fourth grade, they let me pick whatever activity I wanted to do, so I chose tap dancing. [audience laughter]
And so, I loved tap dancing. I did it every day while I watched the amazing TV show, Zoom. [audience laughter] For those of you that know Zoom, I would either do it while watching Zoe Be Amazing, or just go to the basement afterwards and tap to my heart's content. They made me actually tap dance in the boiler room, because I tap danced so much that they got annoyed. So, every day of my life consisted of school, Zoom, tap dance, sleep, repeat. And so, September to December, after I reached fourth grade, that's all I did.
So, Christmas time rolls around. My parents hand me a card, and I look at it and think, well, this doesn't look like a great present. [audience laughter] But I open it. The cover has glitter, and it says, "You are a star." And then, I open it and it's a really sweet note from them saying, "This January, you will be auditioning for Zoom." [audience laughter] I am ecstatic, because the Zoom audition has two parts. It has a Q&A and a talent portion. So, obviously, my talent was going to be tap dance.
So, I talk to my teacher. She decides that she will teach me how to do a solo performance after each class that we have. So, that first class that ended, I stay after and she grabs a boombox and grabs a CD, puts the CD in and she says, "I'm going to show you the routine that you're going to learn for Zoom." I don't know if those of you know the song Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire, [audience laughter] but that was the song to which my routine was going to be. [audience laughter] I heard it and I was in love. [audience laughter] So, again, every day I go down into the boiler room and I-- I can actually still remember the routine, which is what's surprising, because I want to do it right now, but I won't. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
So, finally, the day arrives. My parents drive me up. It was up here in Boston. I'm from Connecticut. So, we drive a couple hours. We get there, it's in this big warehouse building and all the floors are concrete. So, as I'm walking, I can hear the echo of my tap, and it sounds amazing. I'm in my favorite recital outfit, which is sequined pants and a sequined tank top, [audience laughter] which, again, on a gay fourth grader, doesn't look that good. But I felt amazing. I had all the confidence in the world.
The judge, or like the, yeah, the jury calls my name. They take me to the audition room, I grab my boombox, I'm walking, I'm so ready, my leg heels are clicking against the concrete floor. And then, I walk into the audition room and disaster happens. I did not expect this, it was carpeted. [audience aww] And so, nothing is worse for a tap dance than trying to tap on carpet, because it's just like swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. And no jazz hands can overcome this. [audience laughter] The silence that comes with Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire playing and me trying to-- [audience laughter]
So, needless to say, I was not offered a part in Zoom. [audience aww] So, I was really quite devastated. I didn't practice tap for a while. I don't know if some of you thought this was going to end with the award being me [audience laughter] getting on Zoom, but it did not. So, a few weeks later, I stopped tapping. My parents both noticed that I was no longer filling the house with the obnoxious sound of nonstop tapping. So, they pile my brother, sister and I into a car. We go to my aunt's house. And outside their house, there are cars lined up. I thought this was very peculiar, because I thought we were just going there to hang out.
I go in, there's at least 20 to 30 of my family and friends in there. And in a pile, I see my boombox, my Jerry Lee Lewis CD, my sequin outfit and my tap shoes. And so, I knew they wanted me to give them a performance of good old Great Balls of Fire. So, I put on my favorite outfit, put on my shoes, I put the CD in the player, and I push play and I give the best recital ever. The floor was not carpeted. I see all of my family and friends looking at me with the biggest smiles. And at that point, I knew that my Great Balls of Fire were finally ablaze. [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
[great balls of fire by Jerry Lee Lewis]
Jay: [00:18:54] Gregory Mathieu is a hiker and amateur piano player. He works as a designer and architect in Boston. Gregory told us, “Sadly, I did not pursue a career in tap or television. But I did get a chance to live my Zoom fantasy and dress up as Zoe from seasons one and two of the show for Halloween.” To see a photo of Gregory in his tap shoes and sequined pants, visit themoth.org.
[great balls of fire by Jerry Lee Lewis]
Our next tale with a twist comes from Mariya Dostzadah Goodbrake. We met Mariya through our Global Community Program, which teaches Moth storytelling techniques to advocates around the world and encourages them to use their personal stories to drive change on a global scale. Mariya went on to tell this story at The Moth Mainstage in Kansas City, where we were presented by Public Radio Station KCUR. Here's Mariya, live from the Folly Theater.
[applause]
Mariya: [00:20:08] So, it's 2013, and I am getting married. My wedding is coming up, and I am nervous.
Now, let me backtrack just a little bit. I'm originally from Afghanistan, raised in a devout Muslim home. My family fled Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. We fled to Iran, and then I was moved to India and then we finally got to Canada as refugees. Growing up in Canada, I remember my father. He was just very, very adamant, holding on to our cultural identity. He definitely did not want his family, especially his daughters, to lose our Muslim identity.
Me, on the other hand, [chuckles] thought the Western culture was fascinating. I mean, to think that a young Muslim refugee girl could dream differently, dream big and be whatever I wanted to be. And so, I went on this path of new discoveries, and that included travels later on in my life.
At 25 years old, I went to Mexico. I remember when I got there, and I was thinking, this place is just beautiful, it's peaceful. So, I end up staying there and meeting some people, and they're like, "Hey, do you want to help out at a surgical center?" I was like, "Yeah, sure." [audience chuckle] So, I end up, in a short period of time becoming an administrative assistant for this Christian medical organization.
Three, four years go by, and I'm spending a lot of time with these Christians, deepening my understanding and just learning about Christianity. I mean, in the midst of all of that, trying to understand, what is my identity here? But honestly, when I think back on it, in all of that I just remember, I'd never felt something like that before. Mind you, my family back home had no clue that this was going on. [chuckles] I made sure that I kept these two worlds very, very separate.
So, in 2013, I get this invitation from a church to take a mission’s course. I find myself moving to the most fascinating and foreign place that I've ever been, Kansas City, Missouri. [audience laughter]
[cheer and applause]
Thrown deep into the heart of America into this mega cross-Christian community-- I actually start attending church. It's at this church that I meet this guy, and his name is John. I remember the first time that I saw John and I thought, dang, this guy is hot. [audience laughter] I mean, tall, blonde hair, blue eyes. I had no plans to stay in Kansas City. But after motorcycle rides and long walks and talks, I actually started thinking, I can actually see myself staying with this guy. This guy could be it. And so, we fell in love. And of course, when he asked to get married, I said, "Yeah."
Shit. [audience laughter] How was I going to tell my family? How was I going to even introduce John to my Muslim family? And most importantly, would my father even come to the wedding? Here is this strong Bedouin Muslim man, and he's supposed to walk his daughter down the aisle in this Christian ceremony towards a pastor and pass his daughter on to Christians, a religion, a people, that he didn't think valued the things that he valued like community, family, hospitality, honor.
See, I come from a shame and honor culture. I had to have my father there at the wedding, I had to. Because him being at the wedding was not just his presence there. He was actually a greater symbol of the acceptance of not just him, but my family and the entire Afghan community. By him being there, it was actually going to send a bigger message. And so, he had to be there. So, I had to tell this shocking news to my Afghan family back home.
And so, I tell them this. And five months of negotiations come rolling in, I mean, back and forth and back and forth, for my father even to come to this wedding. Mind you, never actually directly with my father, always through my sisters. I remember crazy stuff like, “Okay, Mariya, have your wedding. Wear the dress, walk down the aisle. But why do you have to have the pastor at the end of the aisle?” [audience laughter]
So, anyways, negotiations go back and forth, and finally it's over. And the Afghan clan are coming to Kansas City to meet my fiancé, John, in the Christian community, the night before the wedding, [audience laughter] at my pastor’s house. [audience laughter] I remember thinking like, what the hell am I thinking here? And poor John, during this time, he's a rock star, he's awesome. He's supportive. He's amazing. I think he knew what he was getting himself into.
May 1st, this evening of May 1st, 2014. It's 8 o'clock, I mean, they're already 45 minutes late. Afghans are notorious for being late. So, if they showed up right now, technically, they’d be early. [audience laughter] And I'm pacing back and forth. I'm frustrated, I'm anxious, I'm dirty sweating. And the house is just full of the smell of Afghan kebabs. How the hell did I find an Afghan restaurant in Kansas City? I don't know. I look over to the living room and I can see my friends from Toronto, and John sitting there on the couch, politely and patiently. I look over at my pastor and he's just looking back at me, and he’s just at ease.
9 o’clock, a knock on the door and the army marches in, [audience chuckle] in order of hierarchy. First, my father, the leader of the clan, right? Second, my mom and my sister, shoulder to shoulder. My sister often thought she’s the head of the family. And then, my siblings, in order of age, like obedient little soldiers. Until the very end of this brigade, were my two very Muslim brothers-in-law, as if guarding this march, right? As they're walking by me, I could feel, I could just feel the tension and I could just feel these walls that are up.
As we transition into the living room, my father zooms his focus on the main chair in the living room, my pastor's recliner. And then, he goes and sits on this recliner, as if to declare his dominance. [audience chuckle] It's as if it's a throne in a castle, right? And so, we have this little chit-chat politely, back and forth, and it's time to officially introduce the honored guests in the land of Kansas City.
And so, my pastor humbly stands before my family in this small living room, and he opens up his arms and he looks at stoic face after stoic face after stoic face until he narrows his focus right at my father. He opens up his arms and he says, "We come from two different cultures, we come from two different religions, but we have a similar story. We were both men of war. I did peace negotiations in El Salvador during the height of the civil war and you were in Afghanistan in war. We both saw countries that were ravaged by war and violence. And in the midst of all of that, we had young daughters, and then we took them to a place of hope and new opportunity."
And as he's saying this and this story is unfolding, I'm looking around this room and I could just see these walls that they walked in with, just crashing one by one by one until all I see is these rubbles on the floor. You see, in essence, what my pastor had done, in a very simple but very powerful way, was that he had taken my dad's story and then his story, and he had created this third common world. It was in this third common world where these men shared common human denominators, shared experiences, like peace was found in this common world.
And so, the night rolls on. Mind you, I'm super, super still anxious and very nervous, because I'm thinking, like, a small little conversation is going to turn into a heated debate about religion or politics, so I am on super patrol mode. And so, the night starts rolling on and it comes to an end. And the army positions itself to leave in the same hierarchy in which they came in. First, my father, then my mother and the family, they go on. As they're leaving and I'm watching them like, “What did my father think about this?” As they're leaving, I run over and I say to my father, I'm like, "So, what do you think?" He has this perplexed look on his face, and he says, my language, "But I'm confused, these Christians act just like Muslims." [audience chuckle]
As he leaves, I'm sitting there and it hits me that that after 23 years of living in the West, that was the first time that my father or my family had ever had a meal, forget Christians, with Western people. And it hits me in that moment that I don't have to negotiate between these two worlds that I had created, and then have to navigate between these two identities. For the first time, I felt free to think that the mission for peace and reconciliation began over cold kebabs. [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:31:09] Mariya Dostzadah Goodbrake is the founder and director of Global FC, a nonprofit organization based in Kansas City that supports refugee youth. Mariya tells us that since the events of the story, relationships between her father and pastor, and between her father and husband, have deepened. The unexpected bridges of understanding and trust have strengthened. To see photos from Mariya’s wedding to John, visit themoth.org.
In a moment, a classic Moth story about an unlikely cure for depression, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[whimsical music]
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And is presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison. Our final story in this hour about the unexpected is a Moth favorite from Andrew Solomon. He told this story at a Moth night called Guts at the Players Club, way back in 2008. Here's Andrew Solomon, live in New York City.
[applause]
Andrew: [00:32:53] So, I'm not depressed now, [audience laughter] but I was depressed for a long time, and I wrote about being depressed. I lived for a long time with blinding depression, and had long stretches when everything seemed hopeless and pointless, when returning calls from friends seemed like more than I could do, when getting up and going out into the world seemed painful, when I was completely crippled with anxiety. When I finally got better and started writing about the process of recovery, I became very interested in all of the different kinds of treatment that there were for depression.
And having started as a medical conservative, thinking that there were only a couple of things that worked, medication and certain talking therapies, and that that was really it, I very gradually began to change my mind. Because I realized that if you have brain cancer and you decide that standing on your head and gargling for half an hour every day makes you feel better, it may make you feel better, but the likelihood is that you still have brain cancer and you're still going to die from it. But if you have depression and you say that standing on your head and gargling for half an hour makes you feel better, then you are actually cured, [audience laughter] because depression is an illness of how you feel. And if you feel really great after you do that, then you're not depressed anymore.
So, I began to think all kinds of things could work. I researched everything, ranging from experimental brain surgeries to hypnotic regimens of various kinds. I had people writing to me, because I had been publishing on this subject. There was one woman who wrote to me, and she said that she had tried, actually, electroshock treatments and a variety of other approaches to depression, medication and therapy. She had finally found the thing that worked for her, and she wanted me to tell the world about it and that was making little things from yarn, [audience laughter] some of which she sent me, [audience laughter] and none of which I'm wearing right now.
But in any event, I had that rich engagement. I also became interested, as I was doing this work, in the idea that depression existed not only in the civilized West, as people tended to perceive it to exist, but actually across cultures and had existed across time. So, when one of my dearest friends, my friend David Hecht, who was living for a little while in Senegal, said to me, "Do you know about the tribal rituals that are used for the treatment of depression here?" I said, "No. I don't know about them, but I would like to know about them." And he said, "Well, if you come for a visit, we could try to do some research on this topic."
And so, I set off for Senegal, and I met David and I was introduced to David's then-girlfriend, now ex-wife, Helene. [audience laughter] It turned out that Helene had a cousin whose mother was a friend of someone who went to school with the daughter of a person who actually practiced the undop, and that I could therefore go and interview this woman who had practiced the undop. And so, we went off to a small town about two hours outside of Dakar, and I was introduced to this extraordinary old, large woman wrapped in miles and miles of African fabric printed with figures of eyes.
She was Madame Diouf. We did an interview for about an hour, and she told me all about the undop. At the end of it, feeling rather daring, I said, "Listen," I said, "I hope, I don't know whether this is something you would even consider," I said, "but would it be possible for me to attend an undop?" And she said, "Well, I've certainly never had a foreigner." The local word was toubab, "I've never had a foreigner attend one of these before." She said, "But actually," she said, "I mean, you've come through these friends and these connections," she said, "Yes, the next time I perform an undop, you may be present."
And I said, "That's fantastic." I said, "When are you next going to be doing an undop?" And she said, "Oh, it'll be sometime in the next six months." And I said, "Six months is quite a long time for me to stay here in this town [audience laughter] waiting for you to do one." I said, "Is there anyone who might, maybe we could expedite one for somebody, [audience laughter] move it forward. I'll pitch in." She said, "No, it really doesn't work that way." She said, "I'm sorry, but that's how it is." I said, "Well, I guess I won't be able to see an undop then, but even so, this conversation has been so interesting and so helpful to me, and I'm a little sad leaving here about not actually getting to see one, but I thank you."
She said, "Well, I'm glad that you could come, I'm glad it was helpful.” And she said “But there is one other thing.” She said, “I hope you don't mind my saying this." And I said, "No. What? What is it?" She said, "You don't look that great yourself.” [audience laughter] She said, “You are suffering from depression?" I said, "Well, yes.” I said, “It was very acute, it's a little better now, but I still do actually suffer from depression." She said, "Well, I've certainly never done this for a toubab before, but I could actually do an undop for you." [audience laughter] I said, "Oh.” I said, “What an interesting idea? I said, “Well, yes. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, let's do that.” I said, “ I'll have an undop."
And she said, "Oh, well, that's great," she said. She gave us some fairly basic instructions and then we left. My translator, the aforementioned then-girlfriend, now ex-wife of my friend, turned to me and she said, "Are you completely crazy? Do you have any idea what you're getting yourself into?" And I said, "Well, you know, all these things, very interesting." She said, "You're crazy.” She said, “You're totally crazy, but I'll help you if you want." So, we had left.
And the first thing we had was a shopping list. You could get them to buy the stuff, but we'd have to pay a surcharge. I said, "No, we'd buy the stuff." So, we had to go out. We had to buy seven yards of African fabric. We had to get a calabash, which was a large bowl fashioned from a gourd. We had to get three kilos of millet. We had to get sugar. We had to get cola beans and then we had to get two live cockerels, two roosters, and a ram. [audience laughter]
And so, Helene and I went to the market with David and with these other people, and we got most of the things. And I said, "Well, but what about the ram?" And Helene said, "We can't buy the ram today. What are we going to do with it overnight?" [audience laughter] So, I saw the sense of that. [audience laughter] So, the next day, we got into a taxi to go back out two hours to where we were going. And I said, "What about the ram?" And Helene said, "Oh, we'll see a ram along the way." [audience laughter]
So, we're going along and going along, and there was a Senegalese shepherd by the side of the road with his flock. We stopped the cab, we got out and we bought the ram for $7. [audience laughter] And then, we had a little bit of a struggle getting the live ram into the trunk of the taxicab. [audience laughter] But the cab driver seemed not at all worried, even by the fact that the ram kept relieving himself in the trunk of the taxicab. And so, then we got to Rufisque and we got there. I said, "Well, here I am. I'm ready for my close-up."
The thing about the undop, is that it varies enormously depending on a whole variety of signals and symbols that come from above. So, we had to go through this whole shamanistic process. I still didn't know really very much of what was going to happen. So, first, I had to change out of my jeans and my T-shirt and put on a loincloth. And then, I sat down and then I had my chest and my arms rubbed with millet, which is a grain. And then, someone said, "Oh, we really should have music for this." And I said, "Oh, great." I thought, you know, drumming, I thought some atmospheric thing. She came out with her very prized possession, which was a battery-operated tape player for which she had one tape, which was Chariots of Fire. [audience laughter]
So, we started listening to Chariots of Fire. And in the meanwhile, I was given various shamanistic objects. I had to hold them with my hands and drop them, I had to hold them with my feet and drop them. They would say, "Oh, this augurs well, this augurs badly." There were five assistants to Madame Diouf who had all gathered around. We spent the morning like this, and it was all really just fine. And then, they said it was maybe we'd started at about 08:00, maybe about 11:00 or 11:30, they said, "Well, now it's actually time for the central part of the ritual." And I said, "Oh, okay."
This sound of the drumming I'd been hoping for, the drumming began. And so, there was all of this drumming, and it was very exciting. We went to the central square of the village, where there was a small makeshift wedding bed that I had to get into with the ram. [audience laughter] I had been told it would be very, very bad luck if the ram escaped, and that I had to hold onto him. The reason we had to be in this wedding bed, was that all my depression and all my problems were caused by the fact that I had spirits. In Senegal, you have spirits that are all over you the way here you have microbes. Some are good for you, some are bad for you, some are neutral.
Anyway, my bad spirits were extremely jealous of my real-life sexual partners, some of whom are here tonight. [audience laughter] We had to mollify the anger of the spirit. So, I had to get into this wedding bed with the ram, and I had to hold the ram very tightly because he was not having a good life, this ram. And he, of course, immediately relieved himself on my leg. [audience aww] And the entire village had taken the day off from their work in the fields and were dancing around us in concentric circles. And as they danced, throwing blankets and sheets of cloth over us. And so, we were gradually being buried, and it was unbelievably hot, and it was completely stifling, and there was the sound of these stamping feet as everyone danced around us, and then these drums, which were getting louder and louder, and more ecstatic and more ecstatic.
I was just about at the point at which I thought I was going to faint or pass out. At that key moment, suddenly, all of the cloths were pulled off, I was yanked to my feet, the loincloth that was all I was wearing was pulled from me, the poor old ram's throat was slit, as were the throats of the two cockerels and I was covered in the blood of the freshly slaughtered ram and the cockerels. And so, there I was, naked, totally covered in blood. And they said, "Okay, that's the end of this part of it." [audience laughter] And I said, "Well, okay." And they said, "But you--" They said, "We're actually-- the next piece comes now." And I said, "Okay."
We went over back to the area where we'd done the morning preparations. And one of them said, "But look, it's lunchtime. Why don't we just take a break for a minute? Would you like a Coke?" [audience laughter] I don't drink Coke that much, but at that moment, it seemed like a really, really, really good idea. And I said, "Yes." And so, I sat there naked and completely covered in animal blood, with flies kind of gathering as they will when you're naked and covered in animal blood, and I drank this Coke. And then, when I had finished the Coke, they said, "Okay. Now, we have the sort of final parts of the ritual."
They said, "So, first, you have to put your hands by your sides and hold your stand very straight and very erect." And I said, "Oh, okay." And then, they tied me up with the intestines of the ram. And in the meanwhile, it was hanging from a nearby tree and there was someone doing some butchering of it. They took various little bits of it out, and then I had to shuffle over, all tied up in intestines, which most of you probably haven't done, but it's hard. [audience laughter]
I had to shuffle over, and I had to take these little pieces of the ram, and I had to dig holes and I had to put the pieces of the ram in the holes. I had to say something. And what I had to say was actually, to me, incredibly, strangely touching in the middle of this weird experience. I had to say, "Spirits, leave me alone to complete the business of my life and know that I will never forget you." And I thought, what a kind thing to say to the evil spirits you're exorcising [audience chuckle] that I'll never forget you. And I haven't.
So, anyway, there were various other little bits and pieces that followed. I was given a piece of paper in which all of the millet from the morning had been gathered. I was told that the next morning I should sleep with it under my pillow and in the morning get up and give it to a beggar who had good hearing and no deformities. And that when I gave it to him, that would be the end of my troubles. And then, the women all filled their mouths with water and began spitting water all over me, which it turns out is the, you know, it's the surround shower effect and rinsing the blood away from me.
It gradually came off. And when I was clean, they gave me back my jeans and everyone danced and they barbecued the ram. We had this dinner, and I felt so up. [audience laughter] I felt so up. It had been quite an astonishing experience, even though I didn't believe in the animist principles behind it. All of these people had been gathered together cheering for me, and it was very exhilarating. I had a very odd experience five years later when I was working on my current book, and I was in Rwanda doing something else altogether. I got into a conversation with someone there, and I described the experience I'd had in Senegal. And he said, "Oh, you know, we have something that's a little like that.” He said, “That's West Africa. This is East Africa. It's quite different, but there are some similarities in some rituals here."
He said, "You know, we had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide, and we had to ask some of them to leave." And I said, "What was the problem?" And he said, "Okay. They came, and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun like what you're describing, which is, after all, where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again when you're depressed and you're low and you need to have your blood flowing."
He said, "There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off, so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. He said, “There was no acknowledgment of depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out of you again." He said, "Instead, they would take people one at a time and into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them." [audience laughter] [audience applause]
He said, "We had to get them to leave the country.” [audience laughter] Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Jay: [00:48:45] Andrew Solomon is the National Book Award winning author of Far from the Tree, Far and Away, in which a version of this story appears, and The Noonday Demon, about depression. Andrew let us know that psychiatrists working with West African immigrants in the US have been trying to put the worldview of the undop together with more mainstream psychotherapies, with some impressive results. To see photos from the undop, you can visit our website, themoth.org.
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth.
[overture music]
The stories in this show were directed by Catherine Burns and Larry Rosen. The rest of The Moth's directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Emily Couch.
Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Michael Hedges, Mark Orton, Jerry Lee Lewis, Anaïs Mitchell and Ali Farka Touré with Ry Cooder. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.