Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis with Nussaibah Younis

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

This week's book guest is Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis.Sara and Cariad are joined by Dr Nussaibah Younis is an expert on the politics, foreign policy and economy of contemporary Iraq. For several years she advised the Iraqi government on proposed programmes to de-radicalise women affiliated with ISIS, she has a PHD in International Affairs and Fundamentally is her debut novel.In this episode they discuss Baghdad, high literature, the UN, stand-up, teenage girls, Take That and Rory Stewart.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis is available to buy here.You can find Nussaibah on Instagram @nussaibahyounisTickets for Sara's tour show I Am A Strange Gloop are available to buy from sarapascoe.co.ukSara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Cariad’s children's book The Christmas Wish-tastrophe is available to buy now.Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdo's Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is fundamentally by Naseba Eunice. What's it about? It's about Nadia, a 30-something academic who gets a job with the UN to de-radicalize ISIS brides. What qualifies it for the weirdos book club? Well, it's a really funny book about ISIS brides. In this episode we discuss Baghdad.

High literature. The UN. Stand up. Teenage girls. Take that, as always. And Rory Stewart. And joining us this week is Naseba Yunis. Dr Naseba Yunis is a globally recognized expert on contemporary Iraq.

For several years, she advised the Iraqi government on proposed programs to de-radicalize women affiliated with ISIS. She has a PhD in international affairs. She went to Oxford. She's extremely clever. This is her debut novel, and it's out now. She's smoking hot. Welcome to the Weirdo's Book Club. Oh, my God.

Thank you guys so much for having me. We're talking about your amazing debut novel. Yeah, that means first. I know, but also I like imagining the novel, like, coming into a hall in a pretty dress. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's the debut. She's so fine. She is fine.

Fundamentally, which is out now, available to buy it now. And we were just talking before about the process of having a debut novel. Yeah, it is weird describing in just a couple of sentences what the book is about when you've spent so long agonizing over every single sentence in the book. Would you like, Tammy? I don't have a go. I'd be so fascinated to hear how you would sum this up. You go first thing, so I haven't thought of that. No, okay.

I would say, well-meaning woman sucked into bureaucratic hell. Your turn now. So Nadia is a heartbroken academic who's been disowned by her mother. And coping with the grief of those things, she decides, instead of drinking her way through it like a normal person, she decides to accept a job with the UN in Baghdad. Yeah. She flees. And when she gets there, she's tasked with de-radicalising ISIS brides, which is the job she has

absolutely no capacity to do. If anyone has any ability to do it, Nadia certainly does not. She's written one article. She's written one article. From an academic perspective. Yeah. Which I love. Not very good.

Yeah. So Nadia's got this impossible job and she meets this cast of characters in the who range between the mad and the bad and the extremely horny. And she is about to give up when she finally visits the refugee camp. And she meets Sarah, who is a young girl who joined ISIS when she was just 15 years old. From London. She's from East London. And when Nadia meets Sarah, she realizes just how easily had a few things in her own teenage life gone differently.

she could have entered up in Zara's position and becomes completely devoted to saving Sarah regardless of whether or not Sarah wants to be saved. I think that's a very, very good description. You get the job. The first question I had for you is what existed of this book first? As in when you were thinking,

I think I've got a novel in me, I think I want to write a novel. Because you should say you have done this sort of work that Nadia does. So you are experienced in the field that you're sort of writing about. Yeah, so I have a background in academia and I worked in sort of think tanks in Washington, D.C. doing like policy advice. This is so glamorous.

I know. Isn't it glamorous? I feel like the book really explains that it's not. I know, but it really, I think that's what's great about satirising something. It sounds like if you were at a dinner party and the person to your left is like, oh, I work in finance. And then if I set and then the Sabre was there telling me that, I'd be like, I'm not talking to this man for the rest of the whole dinner party. I'm only talking to you. I feel like there's nobody who wouldn't be on your other side

who wouldn't rather talk to you from the man in finance. Yeah, that's true, I see. But I'll take it. But I'll take it. So, yeah, I was working originally sort of in D.C. doing more high-level policy stuff. And I just really wanted to spend more time on the ground, especially after the defeat of ISIS,

helping Iraq, you know, essentially recover from that civil war. And one of the things I was asked to do was to design a deradicalization program for ISIS brides. And I just hadn't thought about the radicalisation of young girls for a really long time. And it'd sort of forgotten my own religious upbringing and how close I'd come to quite extreme figures when I was a teenager. And so it just really brought back to me memories of me being 15 years old. And actually I was so devout and had such an unequivocal sense of what was right and what was wrong in the world. I really believed I had the answers. 15, the absolute surety of a 15-year-old, 16-year-old girl,

I wasn't devoutly religious, but in terms of like my vegetarianism or feminism, there were certain things. Your devout religion, take that. I'm trying not to mention the Trinity. And the third one, yes, obviously. I was kind of obsessed with a religious cleric who was like one of the most unattractive men physically that you could imagine. Is this the one you mentioned in the book? He attracted to his mind.

He was so clever. And he was, to be fair, really funny. Oh, yeah. And like, he was the roby. I was just going to say, I just thought of the Robbie. That's what you're saying. He was ugly. He was ugly.

That's quite harsh on Robbie. I don't think he was ugly. It sounds more like Jason or how much. I didn't say he was ugly. Oh, sorry. I just said it was funny. I could not take his name in vain. Forgive me, Robbie, for I have seen.

Yeah, I could just have totally imagine, you know, nobody tried to radicalise me particularly or to recruit me certainly to anything. But, you know, if someone had been like, you are so special that you could really change the course of human history and you could save people who were suffering in another part of the world who were being bombed in their homes. You know, I was watching the news every night and I was a bleeding heart empath. And if someone had said, you have a chance to help people, I just feel like I could have been so easily manipulated at that age. And it was just so funny from my vantage point now as a 30-something-year-old, he's like educated and now has a lot of life experience and professional experience working on essentially the other side as someone tasked with de-radicalising, you know, ISIS brides.

So I imagine meeting myself as a 15-year-old and trying to persuade her to change her mind. And that conversation, I imagine between the two, the 15-year-old and me as a 30-something, was just immediately hilarious because there were so much natural banter between the two of them because Sarah is precocious and she's funny and she's smart and she's witty but also just has the most epic one-liners

where you're like, oh, of course you think that because you're a child whereas Nadi was so patronising and thinks but you just haven't had a chance to grow up yet, but you will grow out of these beliefs and you will stop thinking this way. So you're creating the program and the idea of meeting yourself at 15 was the germ of the book. Yes. And you suddenly thought I could picture like this. So I just imagine that immediate sort of electricity

between those two central characters. And the next thing I did was while I was still working on the project, whenever I, when I was back in London on the weekends, I would take, I was taking a stand-up comedy course at the Bill Murray. I were you? And so, What I would do was on my trips, I'd have my notes up. And so all I was doing for the first, like, few months was just thinking of jokes. Because you know how you read so many books that say they're funny on the front cover and you don't laugh a single time? I was like, I want people to laugh out loud. Yeah.

Like funny funny. I mean, that is, and people love it. You love it so much when there's a really, really funny book because it's rare. It's so rare. There's lots of, like, rye amusing. I didn't want a right one. I didn't want a rise smile. I want it.

It's like involuntary laughter on the tube and you're embarrassed but you can't stop the soul. Or when you want to read it out to someone. Yeah. So I can't imagine how you'd even start designing a program to de-radicalise people. But can you sort of summarize what you can out?

So what I realized from doing research was that what's important is not changing people's beliefs. What's important is changing people's behavior. And so, and the best way to do that, is by giving people better options. And often that's about putting them back into communities and ideally back into their families and having supportive settings

that incentivise people to live a life that, you know, can be fulfilling and that's not dangerous. And you can do a lot to change people's behaviour without actually changing people's beliefs at all. And sometimes trying to change people's beliefs can really backfire because people hate being told what they're allowed to believe in. as well if you're trying to use evidence or this is a right to believe things and you do everyone has the right to say I I take that belief away from you and I and I try and explore

this bit in the book but like lots of us believe quite bonkers things and lots of religions if you would have really go into the detail are insane but but most believers don't cause anyone on any problems because you don't have to live in a way that's like following the lesser of every single insane law. Yes, exactly. And I think that's really good advice for life. Like most people need connection and support and better options. Like that could be applied to any situation where you just have to have something to live for and people who love you and want the best for you. That's actually all anybody needs. And also to flip that on its head, when people do not feel connected to their communities, their families, which for a lot of teenagers

is the point in your life where you're most at risk to go, yeah, you're not me, no one understands me, I'm completely isolated and lonely, where are my tribe, where are my people? Oh, let's go and find them nice. I need to. Exactly. And I liked how for both Nadia, who is feeling super disconnected,

and for Sarah, who's also like not feeling part of her family, is feeling separated from her parents who are from a different country, you know, who are immigrants. For both of them, their search for me, meaning and for purpose and for like a bigger role, takes them to the same country. You know, they both end up in Iraq in search for an identity, you know, and they actually both want to

sort of be heroes. And they've ended up on opposite sides, you know, a deradicalizer and an ISIS bride. But actually their motivations are so similar and they actually have so much in common. When you were in Washington, did you already know you wanted to be a writer, even though you were doing a job that was so different. So I did because I was offered a book deal for my PhD, which was before I went to Washington. That's why we're talking to at this, doesn't that team? No one came up to us at university. We were doing PhDs, to be fair.

No, that's true. If we had it run. What's your PhD? So my PhD was about foreign policymaking in weak states, and it was looking at Iraq after 2003. And when I was looking at the PhD and thinking about how to turn it into a book, I was realized that what I really wanted to write about was like all the funny, mad, weird stuff that had happened during my research. And did they want like a nonfiction book?

Yeah. And this was the most of quite a serious political analysis of like how foreign policy is made. And I was like, but I have so many anecdotes. What about the great anecdotes? I'd been so lucky to be able to like interview several presidents and prime ministers and I have so many funny stories. And so I thought, do you know what? this isn't the book. There is a book, but it's not going to be my PhD. It's going to be something

totally from scratch where the humour isn't inappropriate. The humour's like the point of it is the best thing about it. That's some great confidence that you were like, no, I got better guys. I've got a better book than this. I've known a lot about the country and its history and politics throughout my whole life. And so my passion for it was, yeah, started for it. I started for it. from a young age, but still, even being half-Iraqi, showing up in Iraq after my PhD, I was like, oh, I'm really just an idiot foreigner. I am actually fully a foreigner. I don't understand any of what's going on.

Immediately, like the second chapter, Nadia is coming into Iraq as essentially just a stupid Brit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's like... She doesn't really know the ins and outs of it. And she doesn't even know that the place has electricity. She's like, why are there lights? I thought it had been bombed.

Like, she's so, and I think it was really fun to play and to subvert those expectations that people have. If you only ever see news clips of, like, bombed out buildings. And then you go to a thriving Middle Eastern metropolis. I really loved what you did with the kind of British presence. Like, is it the embassy or the... It's the embassy. So she's trying to, she has to go to British Embassy. Obviously, they have a swimming pool.

That felt to me like it's coming from a very truthful place. It's a meeting in Beirut when she wants to go to a five-star hotel. So she goes, we'll talk about this in Beirut. Honestly, right. It was so cathartic to make fun of the corruption, to make fun of the incompetence and the bureaucracy. I have signed many NDAs, and so writing this as fiction was just completely liberating,

because I was able to sort of put in the front, you know, any resemblance purely for instance. Although I have been to Baghdad. Yes. Well, I have sort of a lot of time in five-star hotels in Beirut. No, for Haran reason. What about the tiki bar? I love the image of this sort of like, sort of ramshackle, but really fun. People who really do need to sort of let their head down.

Something that I really loved writing about this book was that the UN characters, they live together and they work together in a compound, because of security reasons. They're all forced together. And it creates this almost college campus or like precinct environment where the normal professional boundaries between people just collapse

and people are sleeping together and drinking together and partying together and then having to fight in meetings during the day. It felt like Edinburgh Festival. Do you know what I mean? Because I think like all the comedians are there for the same month, living in the same city. Yeah, it becomes like...

Right, and you all have different professional goals and conflicts and yet there's nobody else to have sex with so. It is going to be the person. It's just going to be the same person at night. And it was, yeah, and it was really fun also to explore the different motivations that lead people from this kind of global elite to choose voluntarily to go and move to Baghdad. You know, you have, because working for the UN is super competitive and you actually have to be like really educated. And a lot of these people come from very privileged backgrounds. And so, So the question was like, why are all these people here?

Is it well paid? Is that a rude question? No. I would say it's decently paid, but I don't think that does not account for it. Because for the education level that you would have to have for that job, you could be making way more money in a much safer environment. And so a lot of these people have quite complicated backstories and a lot of them are running from something. And so when you start peeling back the cat, you start realizing that these characters, have really interesting backstories like some of them have secret families that they've left behind,

some of them have traumas at home, or some of them are rebelling from their parents. There are others who just have huge family expectations to do something impressive. And often people are not there because they genuinely want to help people. And if you are there as like a bleeding heart, you know, someone who's really connected with someone on the ground

and you're desperate to make it work, dealing with colleagues who aren't there for the same reason as you can be like utterly infuriating. It's so interesting to peek behind a curtain of an institution you're not part of. And obviously if you do it, it's not that interesting. And that's what I felt like with this. Like when you were peeking behind the UN, you're like, I just thought you were all helping people.

Like, what is going on here? Tiki bar. You would have thought it was so dry. You would have, I would just would have... Well, you make assumptions, don't you? And that's what I loved about this book because it pulls that rug under you. Like, you make assumptions about ISIS. brides. Like you make, oh, she's so devout. She would have done that anyway, I guess, rather than

like, no, no, if she'd been given other support networks, she might not have done that. And the UN are all good people, they might, they know what they're doing. No, they don't. Assuming that people are geniuses, otherwise they would be in charge. They must be more intelligent than us. Yeah, and that's, I think, is what part of getting older is. You, when you're 15, you think, oh, oh, they all know what they're doing. And as you get older, every room you go into, oh, no, no one knows what. Yeah, that's what the huge drop off is, isn't it, is realizing that teachers don't know everything, your parents aren't right. And it's like, there's nothing solid.

Yeah, guess what? The UN don't know. The Prime Minister has lied to us. Yeah, and then it's free-fall. Yeah, I mean, I also, I feel like I've actually learned so much about how politics really works from shows like Yesminster and in the thick of it. And in the loop, which is such an amazing film about how the Iraq war. And sometimes through comedy, you actually learn more than from a politics textbook about

how these places actually run. of like, oh no one knows what they're doing. Well, yeah, and it's also more fun to engage in. But I feel like the UN is such a rarefied institution and I've never seen it satirized actually. And I wanted to sort of do for the UN what, like, W1A did for the BBC. And I feel like everyone I've ever met, the BBC's been like, it's so true. Yeah, they do.

I want to talk about it because you have such a good romance storyline as well. So Nadia is coming from this breakup with Rosie. I don't like Rosie. And then this love interest that happens, well, sort of love interest. There's some really funny bits. Sex interest. Well, like Tom, some of it, and I loved this for me, it was a real kid. Like, that he's like Lawrence of Arabia.

Like that was just like, I have met that man so many times. So he's sort of this big sexy guy. And he does show moments of kindness, but he also is patronising. Yeah, I feel like sex is just such a part of, you know, the UN. Working very closely with people abroad. But so for Nadia A lot of the theme of the book is around her sort of codependence

And using other people to numb the pain Of her sort of foundational rupture in the relationship with her mother You know so because Nadia's lost her faith She's lost her mother And she's always desperately trying to fill that hole with other people And she does that first with Rosie And is unable to see the toxicity of that relationship Because she's so desperate for that connection

But also it's a codependency, and you lose a massive person in your life. And obviously, she's lost both parents. One is alive, but not speaking to her and one of them is dead. That would be when you'd be at your absolute most vulnerable for someone who's taking too much and you have no boundaries. Yeah, absolutely. And I really, for Nadia's kind of emotional arc in the book, it's actually really about how she's coping with that loss. And first, it's through these relationships and then it becomes through this job at the UN and becoming. over-invested in another individual

Sarah who she doesn't actually know that well and it's all this displacement of emotional pain and yeah that's something I really wanted to explore and and for Sarah as well who's who's you know inserted this like radical ideology in the place of like a parent's love

but that's actually what she really lacks I really liked Tom I thought he was such a funny character Tom is this like very hot six foot five chiseled, George, Geordie, who is like head of security, and he's just so dumb and thinks that because he's seen

Lawrence of Arabia the movie and because he's blonde that he is in fact, Lawrence of Ravereman, just constantly quoting him. But, you know, Nadia's just so desperate to sort of fill that empty space in her bed that she goes there anyway

and actually what she ends up doing is sort of replicating what Rosie's done to her in taking advantage of someone else who actually does her feelings. Yeah, you end up feeling sorry for him which I loved that everybody, you know, every time you think you can trust something

you're like, oh, it's not that bad. I think every character in the book is sort of made fun of in quite a devastating way but then there's also moments of empathy where you understand how they've come to be there and how easily you could have been in their place. I think that I try and do that for all of them. I understand. I understand.

Is Sarah based on anybody particular or was it amalgamation of lots of women? Sarah was more than anything based on myself as a 15 year old. I was gobby and precocious. Did you call people brav? Honestly, just love women who call people brav. It's my favourite thing. The language, the way Sarah speaks is inspired by a group of teenage girls. I used to work with at East London Mosque.

So they used to have a homework club that I volunteered at. and those girls were just the funniest people I've ever met. Yeah. They were so sharp and their insults were like, I would be reeling like a week later. I can't believe she said that. And so I found that like the humour and the wit of those East London teenage girls to be so fun that I really wanted Sarah to speak like that.

But her kind of ideological devotion and her politicisation, It's very much based on my own experiences. And I actually had some old school teachers come along unannounced to one of my book events in Manchester. And they were like, yeah, we recognize you. We recognize you in Sarah's character. Was it therapeutic at all? This whole book was just pure catharsis.

Every frustration with my previous career, but also teasing through so many of the really complicated things. things about growing up as a British Muslim, as someone who's very political and wanting to do good in the world, and finding all the different avenues to that being thwarted. You're thwarted when you try and do it

through being religiously devoted. But then I was also thwarted when I did it the way what you're supposed to do by getting an education and learning as much as you can and learning the language and working with official institutions. And so, yeah, it did definitely feel like I was working through a lot of my first sort of 35 years of life. Well, I think what is really massively positive about not only a work of fiction that's a really good read because you've written it well, but also it's very funny, is there'll be people engaging with these issues without realizing they're engaging with these issues who never would have been engaged by very long academic books or, articles or even like documentaries.

Yeah, no, that's my, I mean, one of my favorite kind of quotes that I was given for the book was from Hugo Rifkin, who said, the book is so entertaining. It's only at the end that you realize you've learned something. That's great. That's definitely what I wanted to write a book that was primarily enjoyable. And just, you know, if you've had a long day at work and you just want to relax and the choices between TikTok and the novel, I like, I want the novel to be fun. And I think we deserve to read books that are fun and have a good story and a plot driven and make you laugh.

You know, I did study English at Oxford for my undergrad. And I was like, I do not want to write. I never believe in the Cine Party ever. Everyone else has gone. I'm like, and me in the Sabre are I going to still have a lot of time. I think there's probably, I did feel some expectation that I should write something very literary. Oh, yeah. You know what?

Very highbrow. And I thought, do you know what? I want to write something that's like plotty and funny and just fun. Like what I care about is that people enjoy reading it and can't help but finish it. But your topic is highbrow. Yeah. The topic that's why you don't need to be. You probably don't value what you know familiarly.

Yeah, yeah. Which is a level beyond studying it at a distance, isn't it? Every sentence you have to make a choice. Am I going to write a beautiful, complex, florid, sentence that sort of describes the sandy sweeping winds or am I going to make an outrageous sex joke and then move on to the next plot point? Can I read this one of my favorite lines? This is about Sheikh Jason who's from California. Jason's teachings may be long for the coherence of fundamentalist Islam. It made me love so much. Shake Jason was such a fun character to write because

he's like this sort of navana loving yoga crystal healing. He does everything wrong in his He converts to Islam and doesn't seem to know anything about the faith. Just the idea of Natalie looking at someone being like, you know, I miss fundamentalism. Like, at least you know where you are. It was so funny. At university, we did Philip Sidney's Defence of Poise. So just after Shakespeare's time, and he was saying that people learned much more when they're enjoying themselves. And we tend to undervalue things that are enjoyable.

I watch so much stand-up, and I think stand-ups are just amongst the smartest people that you can ever. She's happy. When you think about the complexity and often the like interesting, fascinating political insights that are coming across but in a show that is primarily

so enjoyable. There's a lot of kind of strings to hold in your hand at once. Because I've watched a lot of stand-ups a lot. The thing that I couldn't believe and astonished me at the beginning was watching someone for the 15th time

deliver something like it had just occurred to them. And I was like, I'm watching amazing actors. People who are so inside the craft of what they're doing. And it looks like thought. They're showing a thought in a way that's so compelling that audience are with them thinking. And it's also just like knowing that small changes in timing, small changes in word order can land a joke so much more powerfully.

But that's the thing that people get obsessed with is that, oh, you can tweak five minutes or 20 minutes for a decade. And people do. people do this is what I was going to ask you about because the thing I think is so important to have a distinction between

is because we have the phrase sex work now that we use and it's used sort of indiscriminately even about women who don't have a choice in

and I just thought that you dealt with so brilliantly and actually it's so rarely dealt with and it didn't feel hammered it didn't feel like

sorry the author needs to take a moment now to tell you the difference between women who is compelled and has no choice choice, yes. Tom, yeah, Tom takes Nadia out for like a sort of, to a sleazy hotel. I did, yeah, I have a lot of anger around how dismissive and myopic the like sex work is empowering discourse can be in a country like this when you're not thinking about the rest of the world and like thinking about the actual reality of women who are totally desperate and

vulnerable and have no other options and what sex work is in that context. With Oxfam, when there were people who were being paid. by Oxfam who were paying sex from people. And we do, women who have choices should not be discriminated against. And that is one narrative. But there are also women who don't have choices. I do feel also like within British foreign policy, there's so much intense hypocrisy that I really wanted to satirise.

Because the idea that we have these robust gender inclusion strategies whilst also being content to allow a girl who was groomed and radicalised at 15 years of age to rot in a refugee camp stripped of her citizenship and have her baby die when we could have saved that child and to think that we're superior to the rest of the world because we care about what pronouns people use. Like get a grip. Do you have a character?

I think it's Sherry, isn't it? Who then goes, I think no one's even asked my pronouns. It is she. it would just be nice to be asked and it's like those things are fine but sometimes when you're in a context where people's lives are at stake and there are bureaucrats who care

about checking forms and appearing worthy that stuff is infuriating but that's what's so good about this book the tension because that's what Nadia feels all the time like stop fucking the forms and then she goes to the extreme we're like oh Nadia some forms need checking

it's hard to do the right thing but it does help if you want to do the right thing. And that is not a given. And I do think as well, I love so much this, the thing that I always find, like, you have to remember with these countries, like, why is Britain? Why is it there? Why is there? And someone even, the French guy says so, and it's not British protector anymore. Like the French man giving the British one shit about colonialism. And it's like, to not, to remember the 200, 300, 300 years of why British people are even in this place telling them what to do, helping them, supporting them, de-radicalising them. But also what are you doing here and why are we speaking English as a second

language? Oh yeah. And also maybe just like hold all of the support you're supposedly given, giving to this country and maybe just take responsibility for your own citizens. Yes, yeah. Maybe you could do that. What I'm trying to do is because the reader comes into this world through Nadia's eyes, who is a total novice. And so you're in there and you're learning the system with her for the first time. And you're... I loved that. You get to think about what you would do in that situation. If you have this goal and this set of obstacles, how would you navigate it?

How would you navigate it? I'd love to know. Teenage girls. I love this. Because obviously, we are very teenage girls. We're still connected to our teenage selves. What would you do? Would you take the ISIS bride to the border turn to page 36?

Oh, I'm sorry. Go back to the beginning. Yeah, I don't know. That's why I think it was so interesting because... We'd do drama with them. Drama workshop. Sorry. Art therapy.

Who wants an improv work. We don't have to share our own stories. And if anyone sees anyone do something, we can say stop and then you can take over as the character. There is a drama workshop at one point in the artist price. That would be us. Why is no one turned up? It's yes and but not to everything.

I wanted to depict the brides in a nuanced way. And so Sarah is not just a victim. She has agency. She has a voice. She has a hell of a voice. You can't not hear her. But and also she is so young and she's naive and she's made mistakes and and has been driven to that by other things in her life. And so I didn't want to do a simplistic whitewash. Like this is a, this is an issue that's really complicated that I've really grappled with and I wanted a reader to have a chance, you know, to be respected enough to just be given. complicated set of facts to deal with and think about. If the character of Sarah was just this perfect angel of just a victim, it's not representative of how complex all people are. Yeah, humans, and why humans make the choices they do.

There are different ways in which you can make an argument for what the right thing to do is in this situation, and there are pros and cons for all of them. And also, you can really, really root for Sarah while thinking she would judge you and a lot of your life choices. You would not be called enough to hang out with her. That's kind of devastating. Has anyone you worked with or as in like anyone in Baghdad read it?

Do you know, I was so delighted to get a rave quote for the book from Rory Stewart. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because of course Rory works in Baghdad and he's such an idealist and was just really trying to do the right thing. And as changed has evolved like I think along very similar lines to me. in thinking about the extent to which we can be meaningfully helpful and actually how higher risks are of us making things worse. And so I think to get an endorsement from him felt like very validating.

Yeah, and I was worried that, you know, that the filth, that the filth in the book would have been off today. He liked it. He was probably touching his own blonde curls going, Tom's may be based on me. I'm glad that that wasn't an obstacle. But, you know, it was challenging to think about, obviously it's such a divisive issue

and has been such tabloid fodder. I wanted to write a really non-obvious book about this. So I was like, what's a really unexpected way into this topic? And I thought a lot about Percival Everett book called The Trees. And Percival Everett's such a phenomenal, literary writer who is not afraid of using incredibly coarse and vulgar humour as a way into really difficult, thorny social issues. So The Trees is a comedy about lynching, essentially, and it is incredible how he just cuts through all of the nonsense and also cuts through all of the

tired, old, repeated narratives that you've heard a million times about those topics before and just does it in a completely original way. And I think humour allowed me to do this in a way that was totally original. And I hope by writing something accessible that it gets as wide an audience as possible, because I do think a lot of people in this country have opinions about ISIS brides and very few of them have access to any of the emotional experience around being one, being around one, trying to help one. But also don't even seem to connect the teenagers they know,

with the teenagers who went to wait to get married. They don't look at the decisions that 15-year-olds they know make. In terms of finding a wider audience, can we talk about sort of adaptations and future life? Yes. Yeah, I was so lucky that there was just actually, I actually got my first option offer for fundamentally before publishers had even had a chance to read it. I think it's because you're really, really, really good. In the end, I went with a comedy production company called Bafola. There were nine other production companies in the running who were all drama.

When I was writing the book, my biggest challenge by far was getting the tone right because I never wanted the humour to undercut the emotion or the drama of some of the more serious elements of the book. And I thought, in the adaptation, getting the tone right so that I'm never undermined. the seriousness or the gravity of some of the issues I'm exploring is my number one concern. Are you writing the script yourself? Yeah, I've just written the pilot script. I'm just polishing it up. But it's been really fun to work with comedy producers who just like, who respect comedy and understand that it's smart and it's hard to do and it has such value.

But people don't. There's people who don't respect comedy. I think there is such a lack of respect for comedy and for how smart it is and how difficult it is and that's why I'm so happy that writers like Percival Everett are like, you know, being not nominated for the Booker Prize and are being taken really seriously by the literary establishment even though the writing is just

so funny. So funny. George Saunders in America really similarly like it's comedy but it's highest literature. Yeah and you can do both and if you if you're someone who obsessively watches stand-up loves it, loves jokes, it can deconstruct why something's working it's an art form to you but there's so many people

like you said who just it just passes them by and it's when you meet comedy producers who get it I can totally understand because your read like your resume on paper sounds very serious yeah you know the things you've done are serious and highbrow and worthy and important they don't know that you're watching clips of stand-up like over and over again I was in an episode of the thick of it I've done really well not to mention it until now you had mentioned it well done you want to say what episodes people can look at yeah it's episode five it's the only episode that all of the characters are in the same scene It's a radio show, isn't it?

Yeah, I play Richard Baker's assistant, and they're all doing the radio show. And Amanda Anucci passes your notes so that no one else knows what you're going to say. That's very exciting. I guess my career peaked a long time. Nisaba, thank you so much. Thank you. It's such a good book. I can't wait to watch it as well.

I hope it happens. Many more hurdles to be crossed. If anyone could do it. You'd make a great sherry. I'd do you know what? I'd really thought about my head. I literally such an actor. I was like, you'd be good as Sherry, don't me.

It's not. Don't mention it now. No, no, no. You have red hair in Alan Carl's show, don't you? I do have got red wig. Yeah, so she's got the wig already. She's got the wig. She's probably bought the wig.

It's very compelling. The scene where her hair gets bigger and bigger in the frizz. It's like a hedger. You wouldn't need a wig. I can do that myself. The Sabre, thank you so much. Thank you. It's brilliant.

It's so brilliant. It's going to be huge. I know it is. Much appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Weirdo's Book Club. Fundamentally by the Saber Eunice is out now.

Sarah is on tour this year. Come on, go see her! Tickets for her show, I am a strange group, are on sale now from sarah pasco.com. You can find out all about the upcoming books we're going to be discussing on our Instagram at Sarah and Carriads Weirdo's Book Club. You can find Nisaba on X or Twitter

at Nesaba, N-S-S-A-I-B-A-H. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.