How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S4, Ep7 How to Fail: Nesrine Malik

Episode Date: May 15, 2019

This week on the podcast, I'm delighted to welcome the brilliant Nesrine Malik, a British-Sudanese writer and newspaper columnist who has recently been longlisted for the prestigious Orwell Prize and whose forthcoming book, We Need New Stories, is a riveting assault on our tired old ideologies. (She's also really funny, by the way.)Nesrine joins me to talk about the not-so-terrible-yet-somehow-devastating shame of not getting the A-grade she was predicted in her GCSE English (a failure so personal, she has never told anyone about it), why she's never grown out of 'mommy and daddy issues' and why she finds it difficult to put down roots anywhere. Along the way, we talk about the shock of sudden death, going to school against the backdrop of a military coup and when it's obvious someone has cooked Ottolenghi.I adore this woman and I know that after 45 minutes in her intelligent, inquiring company, you will too. We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik is available to pre-order hereHow To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, recorded by Chris Sharp and sponsored by 4th Estate BooksThe Sunday Times Top 5 bestselling book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day, is out now and is available here.  Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayNesrine Malik @nesrinemalikChris Sharp @chrissharpaudio4th Estate Books @4thEstateBooks    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger. Because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and

journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. My guest this week is Nesreen Malik, a British-Sudanese writer and newspaper columnist and a woman I met in that quintessentially modern way in a group WhatsApp chat. Born in Sudan, Malik grew up in Kenya, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. These days, she lives in the slightly more mundane environs of northwest London. A forensic thinker with a ferociously sharp intellect, Malik is so impressively overqualified that she has been to no fewer than three universities. The American University in Cairo and the University of Khartoum as an undergraduate and the University of London as a postgrad. Before becoming a full-time writer, Malik spent 10 years in the finance industry

working in emerging markets and private equity. In 2017, she was named Society and Diversity private equity. In 2017, she was named Society and Diversity Commentator of the Year at the Comment Awards for her work in The Guardian, and this year sees the publication of her first book, We Need New Stories, which comes out in July. Described as a radical and thought-provoking polemic which examines the foundational myths at the centre of current culture wars. The book examines everything from political correctness to sexual liberation. But if all that sounds a bit serious, rest assured that she has excellent opinions on statement earrings and the dynamic between Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper too. Nurse Reen!

You do, you do. I can't even remember. What an introduction. There you go. Thank you. You've given me great advice on statement earrings. Oh yes. Yes, that's the problem when you're in a WhatsApp group. You kind of can't keep track of what you say. But yeah, I do remember that advice. I mentioned in the introduction that you are described as a radical and thought-provoking writer. Do you feel like a radical and thought-provoking writer do you feel like a radical and thought-provoking person no and I think if anyone answered yes to that question they would have other problems no it's really strange when people I mean I think I think a bit of that is kind of

marketing spin that people try and kind of add to book descriptions and columns and stuff. But I, and this is one of the things I found really strange when I moved to the UK, things that I just thought were just nominally unconventional were seen as really radical. And then I realized just how conservative, both socially and politically, this country was. And so even though I wouldn't describe myself as radical at all, I can see from a sort of British mainstream status quo perspective, one can be seen as maybe like two on the left, or even though I worked in finance for 10 years,

it's not really a background for someone who's like a radical lefty. But also I think if you just try and question very basic things and don't approach either politics or social issues from the prism of very mainstream establishment in the UK, it's kind of still weird. And how old were you when you came to the UK? I was in my early 20s, I think like 22, 23. I'd never even visited the Western world at all, So it was a real head fuck. Can I swear?

Absolutely. Oh, amazing. I encourage it. from kind of quite conservative family, but had had a Western education. So I kind of knew about the stuff theoretically, but I had never actually lived here. And I didn't come and visit and then go back. Like I just moved straight away. So it was really strange. Given that you grew up in quite a conservative environment, but when you came here, you were questioning the conservatism that you found. Where did that act of questioning come from was that something that you were born with no I think well I don't know I think I try and kind of flesh this out in the intro to the book

sometimes I thought it was a failing of mine I couldn't just take things as they were. So back home, I kind of chafed against my family and I chafed against kind of social mores. And sometimes I thought that that was a failing of mine because I just couldn't, I didn't get religion and I didn't get the sort of attraction of being a demure lady in our middle-class Arab family. Other times I flattered myself and I was like, I'm just irrepressible and rebellious and, you know, this is just my personality. So I don't know. Sometimes I thought it was a failing. Other times I thought it was just how I was wired. But I think when I came here,

the questioning was definitely a function of idealizing the West. And so when I came here, I had a very specific idea of what I was running away to. And I think when you have high expectations or unrealistic expectations, you become much more jaundiced, much more quickly. And where did the idealization come from? Was that sort of movies and books? It was mostly books, actually. I kind of, it was funny when I think about it in hindsight, I moved in my head, I moved to a sort of conglomerate of Victorian and early 20th century

literature London. You know what I mean? Because it was my education and my mother is an English teacher and so I moved to basically like the Britain of the Bronte sisters and Dickens and Hardy and a little bit of Graham Green and it was just this sort of very literary landscape that was very anachronistic actually nothing really modern and it's funny because when because when my mother finally came to visit me a whole decade after I moved, she'd never been to the UK either, even though she taught English literature her whole life. When I took her around London, it was like travelling with a time traveller because she would be like, oh, that's Liston Grove,

that's a famously working-class area for my fair lady. Liston Grove is not a working-class area, It's really posh. But because she's also, she was also stuck in this sort of, you know, literary world. So yeah, the ideation of it came from literature and a little bit of contemporary pop culture, whatever filtered through to the Middle East two, three years late. So it was a sort of really strange mix of classical literature and like top of the pops how horrifying when you came here then and realized it was all made in chelsea and it was i mean it was a trip when i first got here it was above my expectations in some ways and that london was just so beautiful like I still can't get over it all these years later.

There was just so much going on, and it was sort of the mid-naughties, and it was that, I remember that kind of political era where it was sort of the end of Tony Blair. The country was sort of fatted with the complacency of being under new labour for so long, and everyone was just kind of chill and happy. And I moved in the summer, and I started a university course. So there was that.

I remember that. But there was also lots of really immediate disappointment, like misogyny that I crashed into straight away. A lot of weird racism that it took me a whole lot of time to get my head around. And was it overt or was it more insidious no it was it wasn't insidious isn't the word British is what I would use but because culturally I hadn't been brought up in it I couldn't understand it so it's quite disorienting and the third thing was just the sort of it's really difficult to explain but just the sort of

repressedness of the British I found really hard. You know, I found it really hard not to know what people were thinking and what they meant and how you were judged immediately for very basic quirks of personality, which really triggered me because I was like, this is what I got away from. You know what I mean? The sort of, you know, proprietary appearances all the time. So yeah, I'm still sort of caught in that dichotomy. You know know I mean the sort of you know proprietary appearances all the time so yeah so I'm still sort of caught in that dichotomy you know I mean like really loving the country

and I have a British passport and I've been here for you know more than 10 years and feel really integrated but at the same time also quite angry that it doesn't need to be this way you know what I mean yeah and it's so interesting because anger is so often the direct opposite of repression. Yeah. A lot of what people are repressing is that anger that you are bold enough to be able to own, I guess. I'm also quite careful not to see it as a good quality. Because I think it's also one should be encouraged to try and make peace with how things are. Because after a certain age age it's just not cool

anymore you know what I mean to be like oh my god I'm so angry and radical so it's a balance between sort of questioning things and try not to get sort of dragged into the complacency of just a peaceful life so it's a balance between that and just calling things out when you see them you know and I think the reason I can't stop doing it is because it's really bad for my mental health when I don't, you know? I feel really unhappy and I feel really sad because again, I think it goes back to how I grew up, which is you just never say when something is wrong, you know? You never point out, never say when something is wrong. You know, you never point out, it's really bad manners.

And especially as women, we were taught to like compete in terms of how well we could take shit. Like my mother would idealize other women in the family and be like, oh, her husband treats her so badly and he would never tell. And that was the amazing thing, you know, that she had this kind of unflappability. And so I became so paranoid about that. Have I made this up or was your father a diplomat? He was. Okay. Because there's something about being a diplomat's child, I think, because diplomacy, so much of it is about face. Yeah. I mean, he was a kind of strange sort of diplomat because he was a military diplomat, which meant that he was less of a sort of gentrified diplomatic reception kind of guy who was more a sort of arms deal kind of diplomat. A very polite arms dealer.

A very slick arms dealer. But the pressure came from my father's family, which is a very specific type of Sudanese family, which are kind of just obsessed with form. And what made things worse was that he married out of his family, which at the time was just unheard of, and married my mother, who was, according to them, lowborn. So she became completely paranoid about form because she wanted to prove it to them. So she just drummed it into us, her children. And so the legacy of that has been to, if I ever feel like I am just being dragged away by kind of form and protocol I really chafe against it so Britain was not the best place to

move that's so fascinating and I am going to get onto your failures but I'm just finding this so interesting because that is what your book is about as well we need new stories it's about questioning the old stories and and wondering why they haven't been replaced yet, isn't it? Yes, it is. And again, it comes back to your original question, which is, I did not think this was particularly radical when I thought about it. Actually, my agent just asked me when we were thinking about the book, she just said, so what upsets you? What is on your mind these days? I just said to her, I just find it really fascinating that there are so many things that people don't question that I think are basically toxic and are behind a lot of the problems that we face politically these days, especially since Brexit here. And I could see a

really obvious link between them and what the subtitle of the book is, which is our age of discontent, which is very pompous. And so when when we fleshed it out what I realized was that this was not anything anyone else had if not had thought but had kind of put to paper and it's just basic things things like you know people thinking that in the UK we've made great strides in gender equality and I just thought that was a joke or people saying that freedom of speech was this amazing value that we need to be very covetous of when shysters and right-wingers and racists were using it to promote hate. in four mosques. And the background to that is just this sort of fetishization of freedom of speech, which is something that people fell for because it had this sort of nice liberal ring to it, but was hiding so much ugliness. Or things like political correctness, you know, people saying political correctness is a bad thing. And I remember that was one of the first things I

picked up on years and years ago, people saying, oh, it's political correctness got mad. It's been happening for such a long time. I remember thinking, what's wrong with political correctness? Like, where do you want your racism? Do you want it repressed and in the sewer? Do you want it outside? You know, it just, I couldn't understand how these things were not being questioned in an earnest way, not in a kind of cultural way. And what I'm trying to do with the book is get away from the kind of binary, awful, cultural way of talking about these things,

which is say, you know, you're either a PC warrior or a social justice warrior. You know, you're either an alt-right racist or a far-left momentum, blah. Like, I just feel we also have got trapped in these binaries so it's a long-winded answer but there are things I think are obviously problematic that we do not push back against for a variety of reasons and the end result is completely mainstream xenophobia, a regressive gender equality environment, and sort of an unsafe world, basically, an increasingly unsafe world for minorities and the disenfranchised. You can see why Nesreen is such an amazing person to be in a WhatsApp group with,

because every time I'm like, what should I think about this? And you always have the most blisteringly brilliant take. And I cannot wait for the book I really can't and you should all rush out and pre-order it because it's out in July is that right it's out in September now September okay um but this brings me on to your first failure it's astonishing that you ever even wrote that book that you were able to write that book because one of your failures is getting a B in GCSE English. This is the first time I've ever confessed this to anyone. This is a really obnoxious failure. I'm quite aware of that. It's a sort of failure.

It's kind of an interview question failure where people say, you know, what's your weakness? And you say, oh, I'm just too dedicated. Yeah, I'm a perfectionist. I fail to delegate. Exactly. I work too hard. I'm a perfectionist, so I fail to delegate. Exactly, I work too hard. I'm too loyal. Yeah, it's a really obnoxious failure because, I mean, who cares if you ought to be in English, but you don't, you have to understand,

like, English was my thing, you know, it was my thing. And I was certain from such a young age that I was going to be a writer. And I loved everything about it. I loved reading. I loved writing. I would go to bed. It's going to sound really obnoxious. I would go to bed with a dictionary and just kind of leaf through it and learn new words. It was less about English, I think. I kind of liked all languages, but I had a really, really good English teacher who just made me fall in love with the subject. He was wonderful. It was more than just an academic passion. It became a way for me to make sense of the world because we traveled loads when I was a kid. My parents were chaotic. We moved every three, four years sometimes. And

nobody really talked to us, me and my sister. No one really was like, okay, so we're going here. And this is what's happening, which is just kind of classic old school parenting. I think in hindsight, I had a slightly adult brain. And English just helped me organize the world because the words nailed ideas, right? So I would find a word and I would think, oh, okay, I understand this concept now because I found a word for it. So I became obsessed with the language and I just got A's effortlessly, like didn't say, didn't, anyway. And obviously it's all leading up to your GCSEs and the GCSE English A was just in the bag like I didn't even need to think about it but then unfortunately this is such a sad story for me it is for me as well because I completely relate I would have been devastated

if I got a B in English just to make make you feel even worse. But because of what you're saying... Because I didn't get to be unlike you. I mean, I'm an A star, but who's counting? No, but because I think, as you're saying, it was an act of self-definition for me being good at English, because I also always knew that I wanted to be a writer. Yeah. And so it became much more than just a test or an exam. It was me. Yeah.

It was like I was being graded on myself. Absolutely. That's how I felt. So the year, the crucial year of GCSEs, two things happened. Things got very hard at home for some reason, like we just had kind of a slightly restive domestic situation. And my teacher left and she's called Miss Philippa and she was incredible. And she had red hair and lots of freckles. Honestly, by the time Miss Philippa left, this is like therapy, you don't understand. I've never said this to anyone. By the time Miss Philippa left, I think I took my GCSEs very young for a variety of reasons. But I was probably at college level English. I like university level English by the time Miss Philippa left

because she just took such an interest in me. Like I would go to the library and find that she had borrowed books in my name. So she wouldn't let me borrow books to read for entertainment. She like wanted to make sure that I read all the classics. So by the time I was 14, I'd read like Brideshead Revisited, like all of Virginia Woolf. And did you take your GCSEs when you were 14? Yeah. Wow. Okay. For political reasons, because there was a military coup and the government had

Arabized the university system and was going to kill GCSEs. So I only had one year to take them, otherwise there would be no more GCSEs. Oh my God. Yeah, it was really stressful. So Miss Philippa left at this really very crucial year and got replaced by a terrible teacher god rest his soul and he just didn't want to be there he's kind of a parable about how teaching can be so vital he didn't want to be there he didn't he you know he was in Sudan it was kind of a one-horse town it was sort of dusty sub-saharan country and he just wasn't interested and was annoyed by me because I was really precocious and just wanted to like practice and that put him off. So I kind of languished a

little bit. Then when the exam came, we had no preparation for it and I bombed. And one thing that was supposed to make me feel better is that everybody bombed is the whole class performance in the subject was so below the graph that it was obviously a problem with the teacher but for me I remember just walking around in a daze afterwards after getting the result and I just I knew it I knew I'd blown it as well but after the result I remember just walking around being like okay so who am I you know what am I going to do now what work am I going to do like how can I have this on and I lied I lied about it like people just assumed I got an A and I didn't want to tell them that I didn't because it was just like it was what I did did you lie to your parents about it? No I mean they saw the report

I mean to be fair to them because they were so certain of my skill they were like don't worry about it this teacher obviously messed you up there's no way you'd be getting a B but I lied to my friends because I was so embarrassed it's like so many years later and it's the first time I've said it it knocked me it really knocked me for six like it took a long time for me to kind and I remember I can tell you I can tell you the the questions in that exam it's just really seared in my brain but the moral of the story is that so much hinges I mean even if you have I had such a long run up to this exam, you know, years and years. Your whole life.

Yeah. And it just took one year of a lousy teacher to screw up. And also exams are never just exams at that age because you are working out who you are. And so it carries an enormous amount of weight if it's something that you love. Absolutely. And also for all of us actually in that class, again, for political reasons, our grades were our ticket out. You know, we either made it to a good university outside of the country or we didn't. So the pressure on us was insane because I remember I was applying

to American University in Cairo because the University of Khartoum had been Arabized. So it was a whole other nightmare. And I remember thinking, like, if I, you know, if I don't get these grades, I'm stuck here doing medicine or something, which is not something I wanted to do. So we were all really stressed out kids, because, you know, our grades were a ticket out of this sort of post-military coup dictatorship country. Were you scared of the political situation? Well, I wasn't scared.

I just knew that it was going to get worse. And it did. It was the end of generation, basically. Like the generation that stayed, duration that stayed of mine and the duration behind me in Sudan is a lost generation or are a lost generation because the government destroyed

universities they monopolize the education system and they kill the civil service so we all knew that there was no way we would be anything apart from you know for the women maybe stay-at-home wives to good men and maybe be doctors the only thing you could really be is a doctor or try and get out and I actually I got out I did get the grades to get up but then I came back to the University of Khartoum because the school that I wanted to go to was in English so I could do that but it was hard my university years were like a mess did you do English A level no we didn't have A levels so did you do english at university no i did politics i'm just trying to find some like justice for you no did you ever do another english exam there was no justice for me there was no justice for me there was no second act

there were no reparations i remember even the headmaster of the school took me to his office and was like what the fuck is that all about and I was like I don't know I'm so sorry so no there I guess the only thing that makes it a little bit better is that I did end up being a writer yeah after a long loop but it really it really knocked my confidence for a long time do you think that long loop now looking back on it was semi-deliberate because you were so badly scolded by the beat no no I wish I could say that the long loop was because I could not afford to be a writer very simply the long loop was because there was no way I could survive and support my family in the UK by doing like a year's internship somewhere in journalism and doing entry level I just don't know how to be I just I don't know anyone who has done it

without family support and independent wealth and so what I did was created a synthetic trust fund for myself and I worked for 10 years and moonlighted. Is that the verb? My English is so bad because I've got a B. I don't know if it's moonlit or moonlighted, but I feel like moonlighted sounds more... Yeah, moonlit sounds like gaslit. Yeah, so I moonlighted as a writer for 10 years

and kind of created a ramp up by working and creating enough money to be able to support myself when I started writing. Did you say that you were also supporting your family? Yes which is just not unusual at all it's just like what people from where I come from do. My father died quite suddenly when I was quite young and just left us in the lurch a little bit. We were four girls, so it's a very kind of not patriarchal society in the sense that it's like Saudi Arabia, but if you're going to manage the legacy of someone who died intestate in Sudan, it's helpful if you're a dude.

So we had a wobbly period after he died, and I had two sisters still in school. And so, yeah, I spent the first few years of working here basically splitting my income with my family which was fine. How old were you when your dad died? I was 19 and my littlest sister was like six five six so yeah and it was all very sudden so we weren't prepared financially for it. We weren't prepared financially for it. Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? This is a time of great foreboding. These words supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago,

these words, supposedly uttered by a king over 800 years ago, set in motion a chain of gruesome events and sparked cult-like devotion across the world. I'm Matt Lewis. Join us as we unwrap the enigma and get to the heart of what really happened to Thomas Beckett by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Peyton, it's happening. We're finally being recognized for being very online. It's about damn time. I mean, it's hard work being this opinionated.

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we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip and celebrity news like it's not a question of if drake got his body done but when you are so messy for that but we will be giving you the b-sides don't you worry the deep cuts the niche the obscure like that one photo of nicole kidman after she finalized her divorce from tom cruise mother a mother to many follow let Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Maybe that brings us on to the second failure that

you've identified and we can explore that a bit more because that sounds an incredibly difficult period of your life. Your second failure is still having mommy and daddy issues at your age. So lame. Because, and then you carried on, you said, because I had resolved that I would have figured all of that out by now. And it fucks me off that I haven't. Yeah, it really annoys me. I'm just like, it's so, it's just not cool, man. You know, you just think by a certain age.

How old are you now? So I'm 38. And now you think by a certain age, you just shouldn't have parent issues. You know what I mean? And I was so hyper aware of them from such a young age. I was like, okay, this is a to-do. I'm not going to get fucked up about this. You know what I'm saying? Like I knew it wasn't like I such a young age I was like okay this is a to-do I'm not gonna get fucked up about this

you know you know what I'm saying like I knew it wasn't like I reached a certain age and then realized I had issues I knew from a really young age that I had issues and that actually you know all of my siblings do because of the very specific nature of our family. And I remember kind of clocking it and being like, okay, you need to make sure this is something that you resolve so it's not there getting in your way and stopping you from growing as a person. And I haven't been able to. It just keeps catching up with me

in a way that I found really depressing at one point because the way my brain works I think in arcs all the time right like nothing is random so I think in that I think maybe it's like a childhood like reading novels too many novels but I always think in terms of narrative arcs and my narrative arc was that I would go through strife and I would overcome it and I would drag the rest of my family with me and we would all like you know sit in the sun dappled yard somewhere and it didn't work out that way and when I realized that wasn't going to happen I just collapsed I was like oh this is actually maybe just going to be a work in progress for the rest of my life. And my brain couldn't process that lack of arc that sometimes you don't resolve issues.

And sometimes they do just fuck you up and you can't really do anything about it. How do you think those issues have fucked you up? Oh, God. I mean, how long have you got? I was so engrossed in my parents' story and their relationship and their own really actually interesting backgrounds as kind of post-colonial African generation of people who kind of were the first people to get an education, the first people to travel, the first people to try and have relationships that weren't arranged. And they just weren't ready. It was just too much for them. And so I was so engrossed in that growing up that

it's made it really hard for me to lean into kind of normal conventional social relationships. I just don't understand that. It's not how I grew up. I don't get it. And I want to, because there's always kind of a barrier between me and the world because it was me and my parents and then everyone else, you know what I mean? So I think it's made me slightly, just permanently alienated, if that makes sense, like separate. It sounds to me, it does make sense. Tell me if it's making sense in the right way to me, because it sounds to me as if you were growing up in such a dramatic environment, and it wasn't self-created drama as it is in so many British families.

It was like big stuff that was happening, that it was almost like living normally in and of itself was an act of political will as well as personal. It was also, we're of the post-colonial generation, we're going of political will, as well as personal. It was also, we're of the post-colonial generation, we're going to make this effort to do things differently. So maybe it's just the sort of grinding mundanity of a normal social interaction, which seems odd to you. That's a really good way of putting it, because, wow, I think I just had a breakthrough. This is what Oprah would call a teachable moment or like an aha moment yes that's a very good way of putting it in that there was always drama

and your brain becomes shaped I guess to seek familiarity in patterns and if that was the pattern you grew up with that's what you're familiar with and I think maybe that's linked to my chafing against mundanity like even little things like I kind of embarrass myself sometimes like I remember one time going to a dinner party like a really boring South London dinner party one time people I didn't really know one of those like oh how did you get here just like oh you know we took the overground oh my god it's so good the overground isn't it it's so civilized and then you know people having hors d'oeuvres and then you know bringing the kids around saying good night to the kids and I remember thinking I want to die I was so distressed by this really quite pleasant

situation and then Lasse the woman who invites us said oh oh, I've made whatever, like zahtar chicken. It's otelengi. And I said, of course it is. And I remember my partner looking at me and being like, are you mad? Why are you being such a bitch? And that dinner party really saved my mind because I was like, wow, I am not actually qualified to be out in society. Do you feel as well that in those moments that you're there as the drama? So it's almost like the people having the Zathal chicken can have it from a nice recipe book.

It's like a sort of safe space and you're the person who's there as the kind of exotic bauble. safe space and you're the person who's there as the kind of exotic bauble? I think I get very upset and agitated when people aren't talking about real stuff. It means that if we're having a mundane conversation about the weather or the Zata chicken or how did you get here? I just want to ask something like, are you happy? You have come to the right podcast, can I just say. This is just music to my ears. And sometimes I feel that is really immature and a bit emo. But other times I also think like, what are we doing here? You know, like we're here, we're together, we're human beings.

We've chosen to congregate and share. we're together we're human beings we've chosen to congregate and share so what is the point if we just have phatic communication about stuff we might as well not do it at all and I understand not every interaction can be this kind of proustian philosophical exercise in humanity but like make a fucking effort you know I mean you're a truth teller. Even when you told me what your failures were, you said that you had thought very hard about them so that you didn't choose flattering failures. Like it's that level of honesty that I so admire. But I think also that forensicness is also kind of slightly self-aggrandizing. You know, I mean, like one of my friends said to me the other day, I really related to this.

There was an author she doesn't like. And she read something of theirs that she did like. And she was really agitated by it. And I said, oh, you know, maybe she just, you know, this new author's just found their stride. And she said, no, I was wrong. I hate being wrong. So now I'm going to really lean into this author. And I thought, I really relate to that. The worst thing is to be wrong. And sometimes the forensicness that one applies to things like choosing failures that are not flattering is really kind of self-aggrandizement

of being like, I am too good to be wrong and I'm too good to flatter myself. Don't feel you have to answer this, but can I ask you, you say that your father's death was sudden. Why was it sudden? It was just a really aggressive cancer. I'm so sorry. That we caught really late. And I think even if we'd caught earlier, it wouldn't have helped.

It was an incurable brain cancer that his mother had died of and his brother. So I think it's in the family. And from diagnosis to him passing it was five months and he was really young he was 55 56 and he was a huge figure really determined who we were and me and him in particular had a very difficult relationship it was quite a shock. No wonder you're impatient when people don't make the most of their lives and talk about. Well, you know, one thing I thought about, particularly for this podcast, is I spent a lot of my formative years in complete hermetic boredom and silence. A, because of where we lived at the

time, there was just nothing to do. And B, because, this is going back to the sort of family parental issues, because my father used entertainment as a way to punish us because it was the only thing that we had. So I spent so much time just bored out of my wits. And I remember becoming so desperate for entertainment that I would read the ingredients on toothpaste packets and like head and shoulders bottles and stuff because we had nothing. And at one point he made me,

when he realized that reading was kind of an escape, he made me take all the books back to the library because he realized I'd found like a little window in my head. And so many nights I would just lie in bed, especially in summer, over summer holidays, I would just lie in bed looking at the ceiling. And it was just silence, like no radio, no TV, I couldn't read anything. And that went on for so long in my formative years that part of my social incontinence, I think, is that. It's like, do you understand how much time I've wasted? You know what I mean?

Do you understand how much time one can waste just going through the motions? Do you understand that you can read and you can talk and you can connect and you can connect and you can do stuff of course that's not fair because people have to live life at their own pace and when they're normal and not kind of gnarled they can just chill so everything comes back to that sort of trying to find that balance it's so fascinating there is one more failure that we need to discuss and we've got about five minutes but and it's a massive this is like a

massive concept so I'm really sorry that we have to squeeze it in but your third and final failure is never being able to put down roots anywhere properly yes I thought that was a pretty cool thing because I had been brainwashed by obnoxious people I'd gone to school with who would be like I'm a third culture child and TKCs, they're called. Have you heard of that? No. If somebody identifies as a TKC, they're a wanker, I'm telling you. Third culture being? Third culture children.

People who, like, don't belong to one or two cultures. People who kind of are either mixed race but live somewhere else. Okay. It was this kind of shorthand that appeared in the 90s, along with Afropolitan, in the 90s, and I noticed along with Afropolitan, which was just a way for African and Arab kids to like, make themselves feel special, when all they were basically was rich, as opposed to, you know, uniquely multicultural. You know, those people who are always like, yeah, you know, they, you know, they go into forensic detail about how many different nationalities they're from,

and where they lived, and how many languages they speak. And so I was brainwashed into that when I was growing up. So I was that person for a while being like, oh, yeah, you know, I'm from Sudan, but I grew up here and I live there and I speak these languages. I kind of feel at home in my different places. But I suppose my real, I was just so boring. And then I realized that that was actually not cool at all because you need to feel in a place. You need to feel at home.

And that really shocked me when I got that feeling because I just thought that was a thing that I didn't have that had liberated me. I thought, oh, all my friends are buying houses and settling down and getting to Habitat. And, oh, imagine, you know, imagine like caring about all that stuff. And then I got to a point where I was like, I have no paintings in my flat. And I always seem to have this sort of transient furniture.

And I can never look at something and be like, oh, that would be nice to have there. I can't really project domestic scenes in particular, like domestic scenes. I just can't project them in my head because I'm like, I don't know where I'm going to be. I don't know if I'm going to be in this flat. I've moved so much in London. I moved so much in between countries before moving to London. And then since then, like my life has taken on a different shape as well, where I spend lots of time in now in Cairo as well. Because you're married. Yes. You did manage to establish those roots. Barely. Just talk about chafing. Wow. Yeah, now I just think it's kind of

sad. And I don't know how to do it. And do you think part of it is because you're so aware, having grown up in the way that you did, that stuff can change in a flash and that you need to be ready to go and to like get out? Yeah, I think that's one of them. We never lived in one place for long enough for me to feel, or I didn't. My family and I lived in Sudan for quite a long time, but I didn't ever live in a single place for long enough. And even then I knew like this was all we have to pack up and leave at some point, just make it easier. And the second reason I think also is that I'm just afraid, I guess. I'm afraid to call it and say, this is it. And then be stuck,

I guess. And then be like, oh God, why now I have to unwind this whole enterprise. God, why now I have to unwind this whole enterprise. But having said that, it's one of the biggest pains, actually, it's painful, one of the biggest pains of my life. It's a very specific image to walk down the street in any city, whether it's Cairo or London, and just see like the light shining out of a home and see really banal domesticity, like someone, you know, hosing down their yard or scooping out some pasta for dinner. And I just look at these scenes and it just tugs at me. And I have this, again, narrative arcs. I have this arc in my head where instead of thinking, okay, you know, you could kind of work towards that. I just think maybe that's one of my curses.

Maybe that's one of the things I'll never be able to achieve. And I kind of torture myself by like walking in really lovely kind of domestic, you know, sort of residential parts of cities and looking at other people's homes and feeling really excluded from that. And that I feel is a proper failure in that like I have not figured out how to do it it's quite bleak isn't it I feel like we've ended up as bleak no bleak but it's also beautiful because I understand where you're coming from in the I had that thing of walking past people's windows and feeling like I was opening the window of an advent calendar and you could just see in a little snippet of someone's life and I have never got that either

I have never had the conventional home with a family and the Christmas tree in the bay window but I do find it easy to create homes in spaces so although I've never had that the end of that particular narrative arc the way that I've lived has been different but richer because of it and and that's okay yeah I just think you need to buy some pictures and and I think you and your husband need to live in the same city because he's living half the time in Cairo isn't he yeah yeah but that's also I feel a situation that came out of I think both of us being quite peripatetic you know which is not a good combination I can see because it's so scared it is scary for someone like you to be vulnerable and to attach yourself to another human being of your own free volition and maybe that's it's like a staging post in in your marriage it's like

this is the way that we can do this right now yeah I mean it works but he is also someone who is just effortless at building a life I mean I look at him and it's like see you know you know those nature documentaries I hope he doesn't hear this those nature documentaries where you just they fast forward a robin yes and you're just like how did you do that from like twigs and flotsam he is like that and so he just he just creates like beauty and nests wherever he goes and I look at him doing it and I'm like you're just a different creature to me and so maybe that will make me better that maybe it will also make me worse because I will feel like I don't have to do it because he's doing it.

I think this is going to be a wonderful thing. And I think you're only just starting to live this period of your life. It's true, yeah. And I would like you to come back onto How to Fail in 10 to 15 years time. And be like, I live in a bed sit. I live in a nest, an actual nest.

Oh, Nesri Malik, you are a constant inspiration to me. You're amazing. And your failures were so eloquent and beautiful and insightful. And I cannot thank you enough for coming on the podcast. Oh, it's been a pleasure. I would like to say to the listeners, I haven't gone out for a month because I've been editing my book. And I've not slept last night because there's

terrible news stories. So this is the most incontinent interview I've ever given. Well, it didn't sound like it. And also, that's great for me. So thanks. Thank you. It was wonderful. Thanks for having me.