Host: Catherine Burns
[The Moth Radio Hour theme]
Catherine: [00:00:01] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Catherine Burns from The Moth and I'm your host this time. The Moth features true stories told in front of a live crowd. We have three stories for you this hour. Tom Bodett grows his hair long and becomes a hippie college dropout to get back at his conservative father, 13-year-old Dori Bonner is abandoned in a Thai airport by the man her parents hired to smuggle her out of Afghanistan. And an indoor cat sort of guy finds himself waist deep in filthy water in a cockroach, bat and snake infested cave in Indonesia. So, The Moth began in New York City, [crowd murmuring] but we now produce shows all over the country. Each Moth show features a unique one time only combination of storytellers.
Our presence around the country has given us access to amazing local voices as well as a chance to bring favorite Moth regulars to new places. Our first story is from Dan Kennedy, who is a frequent Moth storyteller and the longtime host of our podcast. The story was told at the Wilbur Theatre at a Moth event presented by WGBH. Here's Dan Kennedy live at the Moth.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:01:26] So, it's like an average Tuesday and I'm downstairs from my apartment at this cafe in downtown New York and I'm getting a coffee and I overhear this person say that she's trying to be in the moment more. [audience chuckle] And I turn around and look at the person and she's just sort of this normal, average middle-class woman and she's talking to a friend and she's like, “Yeah, I'm just trying to be in the moment more now,” and I-- the first thing I think is here's what irritates me about this saying. [audience laughter]
I think, the thing I can't stand about this saying is it seems to imply that unless you are living your life in this bizarre state of heightened awareness at all times, you're not living your life as this awesome adventure that it could be. If you're not in the moment, your life is slipping by in all these unremarkable days. You know as a freelance writer person who is worrying about their SEP retirement account, which is apparently basically a 401k that only I put the money into, nobody else, [audience laughter] which I now have a program where I like match each dollar that I put in with another dollar. [audience laughter]
Still haven't caught on to that, and obsessing over things like did I get my laundry done in time before we go on the road? And how many Twitter followers do I have and are we making any progress on the mortgage or is it all just interest? And suddenly, I think, “Oh my God, I'm never in the moment and my entire life is slipping by.” So, I get home with my coffee and an editor from this men's magazine phones me up and says they've got this great idea. What if they send, let's face it essentially the shut in downtown loner.org podcast sort, [audience laughter] to a really crazy place and that person writes about it and hilarity ensues.
They say, “Wouldn't it be awesome? We're going to fly you halfway around the world, so that you can hook up with these herpetologists that are looking for a world record python. [audience laughter] And you'll hike down through this canyon filled with cobras [audience laughter] and then you'll go into a cave filled with giant pythons and you'll trail these guys and you'll write about it and it'll be hilarious. And I say that I don't think this will be hilarious. [audience laughter] I'm not really crazy about snakes, to put it mildly. And I don't think I probably belong in a jungle. But then she says, “Well, we'll fly you like first class, all the way, and we'll put you up in like really big suites at nice hotels for all your layovers.” And I'm thinking to myself, I think the moment has just called me up. [audience laughter] And I think I should do this. And so, I mean, all I got to do is go through a canyon and into a cave. I'll do it. [audience laughter]
And I say, “Yeah, yeah no, I would like to do that because I'm trying to be more in the moment these days. So, definitely yes.” So, it only takes about 48 hours all told for all the fancy stuff like the plane tickets and the hotel suites to be over with. And now I have met up with the herpetologists and we are traveling in a couple of little vans down a very narrow potholed road where the drivers occasionally just swerve violently into the ditch to avoid oncoming traffic using the same road. And we pull up to this string of concrete-like bunkers, I guess is the best way to describe them, where we'll be staying.
And each room/bunker has a single light bulb hanging from a cord in the center of it that lights up at random times whenever the generator kicks in. [audience laughter] And each room has a hole in the ground that's the toilet. And each room has a window which is a hole in the wall and my room, as a bonus has a starving ox tied to it, [audience laughter] which is evidently an upgrade. [audience laughter] So, I'm sitting on my cot in my room, staring at the view, which is this starving ox drinking out of a stagnant irrigation ditch, trying to get pumped up to be in the moment. [audience laughter]
And next day comes, we hike down through the canyon, see a couple of cobras right off the bat. We also catch a snake called a white lipped pit viper. The white lipped pit viper is put into a reptile sack, and that sack is put with our gear that we're carrying along with us. And so, I clarify, I go, “So that snake is not poisonous, right? That's not venomous.” And they go, “Oh, no, no, no, no. Poisonous, definitely poisonous. Watch that bag.” [audience laughter] And I was like, “Okay, but sort just to clarify, it wouldn't kill me if it's not like a fatal snake, right?” And they go, well, “Technically it's not, but you're like a long hike, two van rides, and a 12-hour flight from a modern hospital, so consider that snake fatal.” [audience laughter] And I was like, “Okay, keep an eye on that, road case, whenever we're reaching for something.”
We start into the cave. The first thing I notice is a lot of bat guano. It is about 4 feet deep. The bat guano has merged with the water table to make a bat guano swamp. [audience laughter] We start trudging through it. It's about up to my waist, and I'm thinking, I don't think I like caves. [audience laughter] The next thing I realize is there are bats in the cave. That is where the 4 feet of guano came from. About 1,000 bats break away from the ceiling and come rushing past us. And these are not cute bats. These bats have bodies about the size of those little dogs that models in New York City carry around in their handbag. [audience laughter] And they've got big wings. And sometimes when they're all rushing to get out, their radar sort of goes out of whack, they fly into your chest. Occasionally, they will go straight for your face by accident and realize, “Oh, my God, what is that thing? I don't want to hit it.”
Throw on the brakes, put it in reverse, and these big rubbery wings go smacking all around your head. [audience laughter] And you need to stand perfectly still in that moment and not freak out. So, luckily, when I freak out, I stand perfectly still. [audience laughter] That works out fine. The next thing I notice is the walls of the cave down at the sort of guano line, if you will, undulate and that's because they're mostly solid cockroaches. [audience laughter] Now, here's the thing about the cockroaches that's kind of neat. They smell the carbon dioxide in your breath because the oxygen is really low the further in you get in the cave. They follow that trail, thinking it's leading to a food source. And they follow it quickly so they go in your mouth. [audience laughter]
And I'm thinking to myself, I'm not crazy about cockroaches either. This really isn't the best assignment for me. So, I'm hacking a cockroach up off the back of my throat and spitting it into the liquid bat guano that I'm hiking through, when suddenly the lead herpetologist turns around and yells, “Snake, snake, snake, snake.” And I'm thinking, I really, just really want to be home I think maybe at this point. [audience laughter] And everyone freaks out. There is people rushing past me. Like the Sherpas get up on the side of the cave wall, they're like, “Oh God.” They're trying to get their legs out of the swamps so they can't get bitten or anything. Suddenly now these guys are looking, I've been told, for a snake that's basically 21 or 22 feet long. [audience aww] It's a giant reticulated python. So, I'm not happy to hear. Snake right off the bat.
Turns around, the lead herpetologist has a small snake, about an 11-foot python, which if you ask me, is a big snake. He's got, it's trying to get coils on him, it's trying to bite him. He's trying to get control of the snake. He turns around, he gets a little bit of control of it and goes, “Kennedy, you got to hold this. These things are amazing.” [audience laughter] And I say, “No, I really, it's not the way we do it. Like we take notes. Writers basically.” [audience laughter]. Writers don't need to do the actual thing all the time. And he comes towards me with it and I hold out my hands and I go, “Oh my God.” And the snake's trying to get coils around me and I'm holding its head and he's showing me how to not hurt it.
And suddenly there's a photographer right here and they start shooting pictures for this story. And basically, every single picture, I just look like a terrified nine-year-old boy who's going to cry any minute. [audience laughter] And the snake is struggling, I'm struggling. And then suddenly the snake just calms down, takes this huge deep breath and just exhales. And I'm like, “Oh, my God, that was amazing.” This thing is just like a living creature on earth just like all of us just trying to get through a random Tuesday. [audience laughter] I totally identify with this snake.
And right at that moment, I just am in this Zen moment, and I happen to be looking right down the barrel of the lens, “click” and they get this photograph of me that looks like I was born to be a guy, to go into a cave and hold a giant snake. [audience laughter and applause] It's great. The irony is, when I was nine years old, I would read National Geographic and watch mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. And I thought, I'm probably going to grow up to be a pretty adventurous man, but [audience laughter] this had not come to pass.
We get back to camp and somebody has another great idea. They go, “What if we take the white lipped pit viper and put it on your bed for a photo? Like a hilarious photo, right?” And I'm feeling, I have to say, sort of confident about myself at this point after looking at the cool photo of me about 40 times. And also, I want to redeem myself for the 20 photos before it where I look like I'm going to cry and scream. So I go, “Yeah, it's totally cool. Let's do that. That'll be fun.”
And I go. I get in my bed, they put the snake, the white lipped pit viper on the mosquito netting above my bed. This is really funny. I'm giving them my iPhone, going, here, put some on my phone. This will be cool. I want to show friends. So, it's all great. They're like, “Act like you're sleeping. Okay.” Yes. This is hilarious. Then somebody goes, let's unzip the side of the mosquito netting. So, it looks like the snake has a shot at getting in. I don't know what happened next because I blacked out. Not from being bitten, thank God, but just because it was real terror for me, I think. They unzip the side. This snake slithers over, arches its head down, and looks in like, “Hey, who's that?” [audience laughter]
And I'm told the next day at the breakfast table that I said one profane word about 70 times in six seconds. [audience laughter] Everyone's laughing, and they've never heard anybody say it that fast. [audience laughter] I also apparently followed it up with the phrase not cool. Not cool, not cool. [audience laughter] Everybody's laughing about this around the table. I'm laughing about it, too. And then suddenly I think, “Man, it's not cool.” Like, I could die down here goofing around, doing the stuff I'm doing. This is definitely a place where people who don't know what they're doing shouldn't be hanging out.
So, after that, the trip winds down. I get back to New York City, and the first thing I notice is anytime I'm in a restaurant or in my apartment and the lights are kind of low, I instantly think I see snakes out of the corner of my eye. And I'm like, “Oh, that's fun. How long is that going to last? Is that with me forever now? [audience laughter] I was in the moment, and I'm left with paralyzing fear and hallucinations. [audience laughter] Cool. I also have these nightmares where I think there's a snake in the bed with me even after I wake up and I'm like, thrashing around going, “Ooh, gee. Oh, that, snake.” And then I have to realize, “Okay, I'm safe. I'm in here.”
So that was a beautiful time. Yes. So, aside from hallucinating snakes and having these nightmares, the piece isn't really turning out super funny. I'm writing it. It just basically is coming off like a guy who shouldn't be in jungles, was in a jungle, and now he's got some really messed up posttraumatic stress disorder or something. [audience laughter] And the opening paragraph was like another violent sunset bleeds against a bruised sky. I'm trapped in the bunker. I don't know how long I've got light, so I've got to type quickly. [audience laughter]
The editor is like, “I got your humor piece. It's not really funny.” So, the magazine actually didn't end up running it, which is really fortunate for all of us. It was very traumatic piece, I think. [laughs] And I'm thinking, “Huh, that's interesting.” So, I'm sitting in my apartment one night and I get this email. No subject line. It's from the lead herpetologist, but there's an attachment. I click on it. The guys went back down there, they caught that big snake that they had heard about. It's not a world record, but it's pretty darn close for a wild reticulated python caught out of captivity. It's like 22 feet long. It takes 14 of them to hold it in this photograph. And I'm looking at the photograph, and I'm looking around the apartment like the lights are adjusted perfectly. I'm watching a movie. I'm checking my SEP account on my laptop at the same time, pretty screwed. Seeing how many Twitter followers I have, all the really important things.
And it occurs to me I like this. This is what I like. I like sitting on a nice couch [audience chuckle] with good lighting adjusted properly, watching a good movie and then checking stuff on a nice laptop. I'm happy with that. And then I thought to myself, I'm really glad I'm not in that photograph, and I'm really glad I didn't go back down there. And then it occurred to me, “Oh, right.” I literally was like, “Maybe that's all that woman in the cafe meant by being in the moment.” [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:16:30] That was Dan Kennedy. He's the author of the novel American Spirit and the memoirs Loser Goes First and Rock On. [The Vine by Little Bang playing] To see pictures of Dan and the snake, go to themoth.org. While there, you can share any of the stories you've heard in this hour with your friends and family. You can also listen and share moth stories through our app, which is now available on iOS and android. We're also on Facebook and Twitter @themoth. In a moment, Tom Bodett power is cut off when no one remembers to pay the bill. So, he decides to climb to the top of the pole and flip the electrical switch back on himself. Bad idea.
Jay: [00:17:34] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.
Catherine: [00:17:41] This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. Our next story is from the writer Tom Bodett. He lives in Vermont, and so when we headed up that way to do a show, we hoped he'd join us. He worked on his story with director Maggie Cino, and she and Tom recently sat down to talk about creating stories out of everyday human struggles.
Maggie: [00:18:02] Do you have a reputation as a storyteller? And how is doing this kind of storytelling like or unlike other kinds of storytelling that you've done?
Tom: [00:18:12] Well, I think that this kind of storytelling is actually where I've been circling all my career. And part of it is, I'm my own favorite subject, as most writers and storytellers are. And in realizing that I'm also a really ordinary human heart and that the things that I go through, the things I think about, the things I feel deeply, the things that I feel repelled by are pretty common. I'm not an exceptional human being in almost any way, but I've always struggled with that and what I've come to now and with great help from you in telling this story is that, that's actually pretty interesting to people to just go into the bare common everyday human experience and talk about it. And if I have a gift, I don't know what it is, other than maybe the willingness to go there.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:19:24] Here's Tom Burdett live at The Moth.
Tom: [00:19:31] I buried my dad last year in Michigan. He was dead. [audience chuckle] And I don't worry much about dad being dead, I died once and it's not that bad, it's pretty great, actually. And I'm pretty sure it's the best thing that's happened, that did happen to my father in a long, long time. It always creeps me out when people say bad things about their parents. We're raised not to do that, but it's our parents who raise us that way. [audience chuckle] So, there you go. So, my father was a bitter rightwing nut before it was popular. [audience laughter] He was John Bircher. He was a Goldwater Republican. He actually said that if we'd nuked Hanoi in ‘65, that we'd have saved a lot of American lives. And even a 10-year-old knows that's stupid and wrong.
My dad was wrong about a lot of things, but he was righteous. And I have to say, he came by his righteousness honestly. He grew up during the Great Depression in Chicago without a father. He went from high school right into the Navy, fought in a big war, went to college on the GI Bill, got an engineering degree, met my mom, had six children, got a job that he kept his entire career. And then it was just like one day he looked around at this paint by the numbers life he had, and he said, “Well, this sucks.” And he fell back into his Lazy Boy chair and kicked up the footrest in the front room. And that's kind of the last we saw of him.
I remember how hard it was to come home through the front door because you'd have to walk through the living room between my dad and the television. And I hated that. I was afraid he would see me and say something, but I was mostly afraid he wouldn't see me. And he never saw me. Don't you see me? But I figured out pretty quickly that the best way to get my dad's attention was to piss him off. Now, my dad had gotten very sick on ketchup when he was in the Navy, and he hated having it around. So, I started putting ketchup on everything as ketchup dad.
And one night he was going on and on about all these. It's the hippies bringing this great country to its knees. So, I started growing my hair out and I went downtown and I stole Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book and I started reading The Rolling Stone. That worked pretty well. [audience chuckle] And then in high school, they give you these aptitude tests and all my tests said that I was good at math and science, I had great spatial relationships, and that I should be an engineer just like my dad. So, I went off to college and declared my major English. But what I didn't know is that to be an English major, you had to read James Joyce and Ezra Pound and William Shakespeare and these other insufferable writers. [audience laughter] And I thought, well, the only thing that would piss my dad off worse than being a hippie English major is if I was like a hippie college dropout.
“The mountains are calling and I must go,” said John Muir in my Western writers’ class, which I immediately dropped out of. [audience laughter] I stuck my thumb in the air, my finger in his face, and headed out west, heading to Alaska. Alaska had been in the news a lot in those days. They're building this big pipeline up there. It's the Wild West. As far away from Michigan as you could get, as far away from my dad and that sad, lazy boy life of his as you could get. Now, I'd also read enough of Ken Kesey and Jack Kerouac and Jack London and Hunter S. Thompson to know that copious amounts of alcohol and other mood-altering substances were required for any righteous adventure. And I found all of that in abundance when I got as far as Oregon.
And I fell in with these people. We were planting trees up in the Cascade Mountains and there was a bunch of us hippies all living together and we're drinking every night, we're pounding trees into the ground every morning, and we're paid on Friday and broke on Monday. And this was going great. [audience chuckle] And there was this cabin that some of us squatted at on the weekends. And this one Friday night I hitchhiked out to this cabin and found that the power had been turned out and we needed it. It was our hot water. It was our record player. And I said, “Well, how did they turn it off?” And they said, “well, they reached up and they threw that switch at the top of the pole.” What they didn't tell me is they'd done it with a 30-foot wooden stick.
So, I shinnied up to the top of this pole and put my arm up there and pow, dead. I fell backwards, into the arms of a thousand happy strangers. It was body surfing on a million souls and it was wonderful. It was so real. It was like you ever had a dream that's so real that when you wake up, you're a little disoriented, like you're not sure what was the dream, what was life. And it was like that I felt like I had woken up from the dream. And it was so wonderful and I could have stayed there forever. And I wished I had when I woke up, because I was in the hospital room, and my right arm was blown almost off. I was burned all over my chest and arm and neck.
And I'd fallen 30 feet off this pole and landed on my back, which the doctors said is what restarted my heart. And I was in more pain than I thought was possible, even though they had me completely pumped full of morphine. And I laid there in my morphine haze, and my mom and dad were there, and it was really good to see them. And I listened to them talking to each other about me and how I'd get better and get stronger and get me back to Michigan, where they could talk to the university, probably get me back in school in the fall.
And another thing they had to do in the hospital once a day is these nurses would come in and they'd give me a fresh shot of morphine, and I would roll up the tops of my sheets and put them in my teeth and let go of my mother's hand so I wouldn't crush it. And my arm was open from the wrist past the elbow so that these nurses could do this thing called debriding, where they would stick their fingers down into my arm, like up to their second knuckle, and just pull this stuff out of there. And as I'm laying there, screaming into my sheets, I look across the room and my dad is sitting in a chair in the corner and he's smoking a pipe. You could smoke in hospitals then, [audience laughter] and it's impossible to smoke a pipe without looking smug. [audience laughter]
And I laid there and I thought, “You son of a bitch. You think you're right about this? You think you won this round?” Well, I tell you, I am not going back to Michigan. I almost died here. I am not going back with you. But they did go back. They had five other kids to raise. And as soon as they left, I got on the phone and called the county welfare agency and got put on public assistance, which would have really pissed my dad off. And several weeks later, when I was well enough to be released from the hospital, I was covered with new skin grafts. And they gave me a bag of codeine pills for the pain and the morphine withdrawals and said, whatever you do just don't get infected. So, I head out into my new welfare life.
They'd set me up in this apartment, which was this fleabag apartment with tick infested mattresses, and I basically just threw my junk in there and immediately looked up this young nurse that I had met while I was in the hospital, and she invited me to join her and some friends for a party they were having out of the lake. And I have no idea what went on, but the next thing I know, I'm waking up in my tick infested bed, bleeding, hungover, alone. And I get up and I look in the mirror and I busted my skin graft on my shoulder open, and there were two ticks in it. [audience laughter] So, I take a couple codeine and clean up a little. And I'm looking at myself and I just God, this sucks. What have you done? I said, you got to fix this. I took a couple more codeine. I said, “First you got to numb this. And this codeine ain't going to do it. There's got to be something stronger downtown.”
So, I head out the door and head down the stairs, and there's a mailbox, my mailbox at the bottom of the stairs, there's a letter sticking out of it. And I pull it out and I immediately recognize my father's handwriting printing, actually. He was an engineer. He had this precise block lettering. And I thought, “Oh, God, I know what this is. I know what this is.” It's like, “No son of mine is going to be living on welfare or you get your ass home, your mother's worried sick about you.” I didn't want to open it, but I did, and unfolded this single sheet of graph paper, of course. [audience laughter]
And it said, “Dear Tom, since I watched you in the hospital, as wounded as any soldier in battle. And I watched how you handled it with such strength and such courage. And I just wanted to tell you how proud I am of you and that I love you and I hope you take care of yourself.” One of the earliest and clearest memories of my dad, I was four or five probably, and we were out at a lake swimming, and I was standing near my dad and my feet slipped off his clay bank under the water, and I went under and I was flailing and as I was drowning, and then my dad just reached out and grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back up and he looked me right in the face and he said, “You got to be careful.” And he let me go and I was all right after that.
I was never able to tell my dad how much that letter meant to me. We never did learn how to talk to each other. And the last time I saw my dad was back home. He'd lost most of his memory by the end of his life. And I visited him in this assisted living home and he was laying there in his Lazy Boy with the footrest up, and the only things he had left of his memory were his war stories. And he would just go on and on about that and that's how I left him and his Lazy Boy telling these circular stories from his glory days, which had ended in his life about the same time that my life had ended the first time.
But unlike my dad, I got a second chance at life. And I did get stronger and I did get better and I took care of myself and I made it all the way out to Alaska that next year. And I was on that boat going up through the Inside Passage. And about two days into this trip, you go through this place north of Juneau called the Lynn Canal. And there's these mountains on each side of the pass that comes straight down into the water. And it's like the proverbial gates of the north. You look through there and all you see is mountain range after mountain range, after mountain range. And there's this wind that comes down out of there with this deep throated howl. And you can smell ice on it in July. And it smells like danger.
It smells like-- you don't know if this place was going to make, you know if this place was going to kill you. I had no idea that every adventure I'd ever imagined and every reward that I could never have imagined lived through there. My whole wonderful life was through there. I was terrified and I clutched that railing on the bow of that ferry and I went on through that passage. Did you see me, dad? Brave as any soldier. That's what you said. Maybe not. But brave enough, was brave enough. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
[Behind the Veil by Little Bang playing]
Catherine: [00:33:25] That was Tom Bodett. He's the author of seven books and a panelist on the radio quiz show, Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! He lives with his family in southern Vermont in the middle of a hayfield next to big woods. Here's more of Tom's conversation with Maggie Cino, who directed his story.
Maggie: [00:33:42] Yeah, in the story, you say that you were raised not to say bad things about your parents. So, what made you decide to talk about some of the tougher aspects of your relationship with your dad? And did the story make you think about your relationship with him differently.
Tom: [00:33:56] Well, it did. And when I was originally pitching this story to you, as you recall, it wasn't about my dad at all. It was about my accident and almost being killed and how that gave me this great sense of bravado and adventure and how I went off to Alaska and fearless. And in the telling of that first story, when I mentioned this letter that I had gotten from my father, I don't know that I'd ever told anybody about that letter before. It was not something that I ever spoke to people about. And what you noticed, as you said later, was that my voice caught when I mentioned it.
My dad had not been dead very long, just a matter of months, and was only just starting to get over the fact that I had old business with dad and I never wanted to talk about my dad with other people because I didn't like him very much. But once he was gone, I started to lighten up about it. And I think mentioning this letter to him and then realizing how much that letter changed my life, it's just like, “Oh, my dad was not a complete loss.” I mean, he did this one really important thing for me and maybe that's enough.
[Probability Cloud by Bill Frisell playing]
Catherine: [00:35:23] To hear more of Maggie's conversation with Tom and to see pictures of Tom in his hippie phase as well as one of him standing next to the telephone pole that got him into so much trouble, go to themoth.org.
In a moment, a father risks everything to get his children out of war-torn Afghanistan.
Jay: [00:36:03] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Catherine: [00:36:15] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns from The Moth. Our last story is from Dori Samadzai Bonner who we met when she called our pitch line. The pitch line allows anyone with a story to tell to leave a two-minute version for us. Dozens of people who called have had their stories picked. [cheers and applause] Dori ended up telling her story in several cities including Portland, Oregon, Aspen, Colorado and Saranac Lake, New York. Here's Dori Bonner live at The Moth.
Dori: [00:36:47] I was born in Kabul, Afghanistan and lived there until I was 10 years old under the Russian occupation. I lived there with my family. My dad was a high-ranking officer in the military. My mom was a typist and my brother was two years older than me. By the time we left, I had witnessed eight years of war. It started when I was two years old. Bomb explosions, missile attacks and my dad imprisoned and tortured by the communists. For me personally, life was absolute hell. Not just because I was being raised in war, but because of my gender. I was automatically denied many things because of it. I was not allowed to participate in any sports. I could not go outside. I could not play with any boys or have any male friends.
If I went anywhere or had to go anywhere, it would be in the company of a male guardian. At an early age, I had household chores, the equivalent of what you would expect of a homemaker here. So, after school, when my brother came home and then he went outside and played with his little friends, I stayed home cooked and cleaned. So, you see in society, in Afghanistan, as a young girl, I always knew my place. But it was until the day that I spoke up about being violated and made to apologize to that person for having accused an authoritative figure of such a heinous crime is when I realized I just had absolutely no rights. Not as a human, not as a child, but of course, not as a girl.
After that day, I just stopped dodging the whistling sound that the missiles make right before they reach their target. One day, the coolest thing happens to me. I get this postcard from my aunt in America. And the postcard is of these two little kids, this little-- one blonde boy and a blonde girl at the beach making sandcastles. I'm so obsessed with this postcard because looking at it, this whole image, everything about it is completely far from my own reality. First of all, the little girl had blonde hair. I had never seen anything like it. [audience chuckle] She was wearing what looked to me like a cut off top in underwear. I had never seen a bathing suit before either. She's outside playing with a little boy. I thought she was absolutely crazy, but I absolutely loved everything she stood for.
I would come home from school and stare at this postcard so intensely that it eventually became my ultimate dream to one day be just like her and to one day be under the same sky as her. One day I came home from school and noticed four backpacks in the corner of our living room and didn't really think much of it. That night I was awakened by my mom pushing my hands through these bangles. And you see, my life is so unpredictable that I don't know what's happening. I mean, for all I knew, they could have been marrying me off to somebody. I just didn't know. That night, my parents told us to grab a backpack and we were leaving our house. Everything inside of our house was completely intact.
You see, my dad had been planning our escape secretly. He had gone to the bank and he was afraid that if he withdrew all of their savings that the bank teller was going to report him to the government. So, he only withdrew a certain amount and told the teller that he needed to buy jewelry for his daughter and his wife. He was planning on liquidating that later on where we went. Similarly, so they had to leave the entire house intact because they were afraid the neighbors were going to tell on him. That night we put a lock on the door. And what I remember even more distinctly about this evening is seeing the dirty dishes in the sink, which they purposely left there. But I was just so glad I didn't have to wash it that night. [audience laughter]
On the plane, my dad explained that the American Embassy in India was giving Afghan refugees visa entries and that all we had to do is show up there. A couple hours later we land in India, grab a rickshaw and go straight to the embassy. And we are ecstatic. We are just so happy beyond our wireless dream that we are coming to America, except on the outside of the embassy, there's a big note, “We are no longer doing that outright,” instead they're going by the visa lottery system, twice a year, 50 people each time. We were very, very poor. We could not afford anything.
My brother and I, in fact, would sleep in until late in the afternoon just to help skip a meal in the morning or when around 4 o' clock, my brother and I decided to take a nap because the ice cream man would come around her our little street and my parents couldn't afford to buy us ice cream. So, we decided to take a nap so that they wouldn't feel so bad. The one thing that we were always waiting for and that's why we didn't mind being poor, is that the day that we could go and put our name down to come to America, we woke up in the middle of the night. We ate and we prayed and then we started our one hour walk to the embassy because we couldn't afford to grab a cab and buses didn't run at that time and we had to make sure that we were going to fit in that 50 people that they were going to give lotteries to.
So, we would go in, put our name, come back, and then you waited. We wait outside for the mailman and around 11 o' clock he came around our street and we were waiting for him and of course we're not going to just stand there. So, my brother and I started running toward him and after a few years he was still nodding his head, no. Money was running out and my parents were really desperate, so one night my mom woke me up, introduced me and my brother into this man we had never met before. It's this large Indian man with the long beard and the whole towel thing. We had never seen him before. And they said that he was going to take us to America. And it was only until my mom starts sewing this envelope inside of my dress and when she starts giving me instructions like, “Here's a little bit of money. This is contact information,” that I realized they're not going with us. There wasn't enough money. So, my dad sold the last bit of those bangles that they had purchased and hired this smuggler to bring me and my brother here.
We get in the cab with the smuggler, and I remember this day like it was yesterday because it was the very first time, I ever saw my dad call. See, he's a military guy. He's tough and he's strong, and people saluted to him all my life and that's what I remember of him. But now he's standing on this side of the cab as me and my brother get into it with the smuggler inside of the cab, tears are rolling down my dad's face as he's trying to force on a smile and waving at us while holding my mom back as she started screaming after us. Our cab leaves, and I remember feeling so guilty because I may never see my parents again.
But the mere thought of coming here to America made me feel like my heart was going to burst out of my chest. The smuggler told us that we had one stop in Thailand, and after that we were going to come here. And as soon as we arrived at Thailand airport, he asked me to give him the envelope. And he said, “My mom said to do that.” I trusted him because my parents trusted him. So, I yanked the envelope and handed it to him. And he said, “You just wait and then I'll be back.” Hours passed, and he never came back. So now we're in Thailand. We don't speak any English, we don't speak Thai, and we're stranded at the airport. I am 13 years old. My brother is 15 years old. And up until now, we had never been anywhere without our parents.
So my brother comes up with this plan, and he says, “You wait one end of the airport, and I'm going to wait on this other end of this room. Because if one of us got caught, then it would be worth it at least one of us would get there.” Except by each moment passing, I'm kind of scooting closer and closer to him, or I would wave at him from far away or just making sure that I keep some contact with him. But it was only until I started crying that he just got up and grabbed my hand and we walked out of there. As soon as we exit the airport, we cannot read anything because everything is written in Thai. And not that we spoke any English, but it was a little bit more familiar. We see these letters, K-F-C. [audience laughter]
So we think, okay, that's fine. Americans are over there. We're going to go and ask for help. [audience laughter] We start walking towards KFC, but it was closed. So, we just sat out there like two homeless children, which we obviously were, and waited until somebody came in. And this very, very nice man let use the phone to call our parents. And my parents contacted that group of smugglers and they sent somebody else to help us hours later. By the way, the entire time we were in Thailand, I ate so much KFC, obviously, I would never, ever touch fried chicken again. [audience laughter]
So we're waiting in Thailand, and this new smuggler, we're living in this one hotel room with him, and we don't know him at all. And now we're just completely losing hope, my brother and I. We don't know what's going to happen to us. Honestly, we wondered if he would sell us. We didn't know what he would do. So, one time I asked him what we were waiting for, what was taking so long? Were we going to get to America eventually or not? I wanted to know. And he said, “I'm waiting for a holiday in America called Christmas.” During this time, people are really happy and they're kind and they're probably drinking a lot. [audience laughter] And it is then that they're probably going to overlook the deficiencies on your passport.
In December of 1999, my brother and I finally arrived at JFK. As soon as, I exit the plane, I see from the corner of my eye this red, white and blue colors, this huge American flag that I've never seen before. And in fact, I had never seen a cloth American flag before. So, I run toward it, and I'm standing there, and these vivid images of the burning American flag at the opening ceremony of my school is just rushing my mind. And I'm completely overwhelmed. And the only thing that comes to my mind is just to hug it. My brother comes from the corner with the two police officers, and he's nudging at me and he's like, “Say it, say it.” We didn't speak any English, but the only words that they had us memorized was “I need asylum.”
And we had been memorizing this on the plane over and over again, but I forgot it as soon as I was supposed to say it as soon as I got out. So, they take us into this room and on the left side there's a tinted window and I see a little blonde girl. And I'm looking at her and I associate this with the little girl from my postcard was here, an arm's length away from me, and we were under the same sky. When I finally became a US Citizen and when my family finally became a US Citizen, I did not only pledge allegiance to my new homeland, I also promised myself that until my dying days, I will thank Americans for giving me a place that I can finally call a sanctuary and a home. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Catherine: [00:48:55] That was Dori Samadzai Bonner. [I’m Going Home by Regina Carter playing] Eventually, Dori’s parents also made it to America, where they're thriving. Dori is a writer and she lives with her husband, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. To see pictures of Dori and her family, go to themoth.org.
We met Dori when she called our pitch line. And you can pitch us your own story by calling 877-799-MOTH. Again, that's 877-799-MOTH or you can pitch us your story at themoth.org. That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll listen next time.
[The Moth Radio Hour theme]
Jay: [00:49:43] Your host this hour was The Moth's artistic director, Catherine Burns. The stories were directed by Maggie Cino. The rest of The Moth directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Jenifer Hixson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Jenna Weiss-Berman and Whitney Jones.
Moth stories are true is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argot Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Little Bang, Bill Frisell and Regina Carter. The Moth is produced for radio by me Jay Allison at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with help from Viki Merrick. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world.
The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange prx.org. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org