The New Yorker Radio Hour - Dunya Mikhail on the Lives Stolen by ISIS

Episode Date: May 15, 2018

Before she was placed on the list of Saddam Hussein’s enemies, the poet Dunya Mikhail worked as a journalist for the Baghdad Observer. In her new book, “The Beekeeper,” Mikhail tells the stories of dozens of Yazidi women who survived kidnapping and sexual slavery by the Islamic State, and the man—a beekeeper—who helped arrange their escapes. Plus, the novelist Michael Cunningham finds all of humanity on display in Washington Square Park, and the humorist Jack Handey asks the questions that have been baffling humorists since the beginning of time: What’s funny, and why? New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is a road trade to balance. The Observatory is straight of the block for West Boulevard and makes that right. They didn't break that, but they have pretty good access to those people. They're going to subconsciously mocked that lineage. So that's happening. It seems like an incredible story here on the new front. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Before she was placed on the enemy's list of Saddam Hussein, which is a very dangerous place to have been, the poet Dunya Mikhail worked as a journalist for the Baghdad observer. As the threats against her and many other journalists grew, Mikhail eventually decided to leave Iraq and came to the United States in 1996. She now teaches Arabic at Oakland University in Michigan. Mikhail writes in Arabic, English, and Aramaic, and she's written about one. war in its aftermath in a number of poetry collections. Yesterday I lost a country. I was in a hurry and didn't notice when it fell from me like a broken branch from a forgetful tree.

Please, if anyone passes by and stumbles across it, perhaps in a suitcase... Her new book, The Beekeeper, is a return to journalism. It tells of dozens of Yazidi women who survived kidnapping and sexual slavery by the Islamic state, which she calls by the Arabic term dash, and the man, a beekeeper, who helped arrange their escapes. Dunia Mikhail spoke with the New Yorker's executive editor and the host of our podcast, The Political Scene, Dorothy Wickenden. The stories in the book come to you primarily through one man, a beekeeper named Abdullah, who has dedicated himself to helping Yazidi women escape from captivity.

Tell me about him, what kind of man undertakes this kind of work? And how do did you get to know him? Yes, actually, I knew him by chance. I was trying to talk to some of these women to understand what's going on. I mean, I was just couldn't comprehend that this could happen in this time and, you know, our time. And you're in Michigan at this point. Yes. So I was calling friends to, you know, just wondering what on earth is going on. Is that true? This is not coming from fairy tales or something? but they were confirming this is what's happening, everybody telling me what's happening to people they know, and I called even relatives.

Anyways, but I tried to talk to some of these women who made it back. They escaped. And by chance, one of the calls, Abdullah answered the phone. And sometimes, you know, people in Sinjar, they don't know Arabic, so they answer in Kurdish language, so I couldn't understand. But Abdullah spoke in Arabic. So he said the person I was asking to talk to, her name was Nadia, was his cousin. But then she spoke in Kurdish.

So he translated between us. When he translated between us and she was saying that Abdullah rescued her, I said, who's Abdullah? And she said, this is the man who's translating. Talking more and more with him, I learned that he was a beekeeper, that he left his bees and farm and everything there in Sinjar. And it all started on personal level. First, he was trying to find his own sister. and his niece. And then even though he didn't find his niece, he was not feeling bad that he was just rescuing, you know, strangers. He was so positive. I liked how he, his behavior was. He told me

every time I save someone, I save my sister. And I weep. He says every, he tries to be there when they're reunited with his family. And he said each time, 70 times, he says he's gone through this. Yes, but 70 times then. Now is over 350 times. Hello. Hello, myrhaba. How do you? I'maughalah, how much? I'll like you, Rabeh, Fadth.

Okay, could you tell us a little bit about what that conversation was about? So he sometimes would send me a picture without explanation. Yes. So I would get back to... Many of which are in the book. Yes. So I asked, so he said, this is Perween. He said, do you remember Nadia?

I said, yeah. He said, okay, so when Nadia came, she told him. She told everyone that she saw that in the same place, a house, there was a woman who couldn't talk or hear. And then everybody heard that, so her brother said this must be my sister, Perween. So how does a typical rescue mission work? How does Abdullah? I remember at one point he describes his rescue operations as similar to his work as a beekeeper. And he talked about his hive.

So how did he go about that? Yes, that was so metaphorical for me when he mentioned it, how you need to be organized, you need to be careful, you need to do the plans step by step. Usually it starts with a call from the person, usually the woman, she calls her somebody in her village, a relative. And they're calling from the house where they are being held captive? No. So each story is different. So, for example, some of them would find the nearest if they see an internet cafe where they ask to use the phone

and sometimes, of course, they don't have money so they would ask if that's possible to do that. So now some of them, just in the street, a man is coming or a woman is coming and they say, can we use the phone? In those places, you don't know who is the friend, who's the enemy.

It's so risky to do anything to ask a person. something is very risky yet I mean they did it so then that person would call Abdullah or maybe there are others like Abdullah he would tell them please don't tell them how are you and all that just take their where are they that's what we need to know just don't so and then he uses his you know his knowledge of the area that he knows and he uses the Google map and they call smugglers and then he called the smugglers and they make a plan the smugglers who used to smuggle cigarettes before.

Now they switched to instead of cigarettes and the same places that where they were storing the cigarettes, they bring women and have them stay there for a day or two. So there was an office that was opened after this Da'Ish invasion. There's an office of kidnapped affairs. This was opened in response to, for example, people like Abdullah who are doing it on personal level. So they wanted to kind of try to help. Sometimes they need to finance the smugglers and all their expenses and everything. Now this office, they don't compensate right away.

They wait until the person comes, the woman less sick and her children. after they arrive and give their testimony and their statement, then they're going to compensate whoever they borrowed the money from. But then Abdullah was saying, we can't wait. This is like urgent work. So they're still doing it their own way without waiting. And then later, he said, okay, compensation comes waiter. We're not going to wait for this.

And how does Abdullah make his living now? So as a beekeeper, he was selling honey between Iraq and Syria. and that how he was able to know those people in Syria that helped him in the first place, the merchants. And because this trade in our area is actually done different way than here, it's all done by loans. Maybe here it's more formal level like credit. They don't have those types of banks and credit. They don't deal with that. It's all personal level.

They trust this person. They would give the material later. Even between the two countries. Yes, even between the two countries, because of his reputation and the trust, he built through the years with selling honey. That's how this helped him in this work, the trust, that even with the rescuing of women, it's okay, you don't have money this moment. You're going to give us tomorrow. The subtitle of your book, The Beekeeper, is rescuing the stolen women of Iraq. And ISIS, or Daesh, as you call the jihadi group, has perpetrated so many atrocities in recent years that I wanted to ask you to explain its attacks on Yazidis in Sinjar.

Why were they singled out for especially savage treatment in what became a genocide? Yes. Well, first, when they attacked the area, all the non-Muslims, they call them non-believers. they labeled houses with the letter N for Nazara or none, we can say none believers. And first it was them. But then the Christians, or who they call them Nazara, were allowed to leave, even though empty-handed,

because they call them people of the book, because they have the Bible. The Yazidis, they don't have a religious book. So to them, they are infidels. So they thought that they could do whatever they want. They wanted with them. So actually, they killed men. They even buried some older women alive.

They took women, younger women, as female slaves or sex slaves. And their children also, they kind of, they even, They had them for service, and older boys they had them in training camps. So to them, this spoils of war. So the Iran-Iraq War began in the fall of 1980, and it triggered really most of the regional conflicts that we've all witnessed since then. You left in 1995. What did it feel like to watch the Iraq War in its aftermath, starting in 2003 from the United States?

You know, sometimes it's, I mean, when this, it looks like the war is, as I mentioned, it's growing with us. It grew with us, it survived with us. I mean, even after I left from afar, I still, as if, is still there. And it's, I don't know, I feel like when I make these contacts with my friends back home, The war is so familiar that it is kind of ignored. I mean, it's so familiar. It's expected. It's part of life.

It became part of life. Like a friend said, oh, like a bullet hit her shoulder. And she didn't care. He said, oh, but it was by accident. It happened, like every, as if she was saying, oh, today, by the way, Like, by the way, I watched this or I read this or this bullet. I was just passing and came. I don't know from where.

So it's like as if it's part of everyday life and people ignore it and laugh. I don't know. Over the last year, Daesh has been effectively driven out of Iraq, but thousands of Yazidi women and children are still unaccounted for. Some are in captivity. Some are dead. I think it's been two years since you visited Abdullah. So he assured you that the publication of the book wouldn't cause harm to him. But is that true? And also, how has he managed to avoid detection? How did he manage to avoid detection all of those years by Daesh?

Yeah, I mean, I was concerned about that. And he actually, he said no. Not only no, he said, I wish this be, you know, be translated to other languages. I want as many people. as possible to know what happened to us. Actually, he said his dream that this becomes a movie. Well, and Abdullah is right, even though he didn't put it this way. This book is a story of heroism on so many parts, his obviously among them. I've got a book of your poems here. The War Works Hard. And you wrote those poems, as I understand, between 1985 and 2004.

And I want to end by having you read. I think it's the first poem in this book. It's called bag of bones. Yes, a bag of bones. What good luck. She has found his bones. The skull is also in the back. The bag in her hand, like all other backs, in all other trembling hands.

His bones like thousands of bones in the mass graveyard. His skull, not like any other skull. Two eyes or holes. with which he saw too much, two ears with which he listened to music that told his own story, a nose that never knew clean air, a mouth open like a chasm. Was not like that when he kissed her, there, quietly, not in this place, noisy with skulls and bones and dust, dug up with questions. What does it mean to die all this death? in a place where the darkness plays all this silence.

What does it mean to meet your loved ones now with all of these hallow places? To give back to your mother on the occasion of death a handful of bones she had given to you on the occasion of birth, to depart without death or birth certificates, because the dictator does not give receipts when he takes your life? The dictator has a skull too, a huge one, not like any other skull. It's solved by itself a math problem that multiplied the one death by millions to equal homeland. The dictator is the director of a great tragedy. He has an audience too, an audience that claps until the bones begin to rattle,

the bones in the bags, the full bag finally in her hand. unlike her disappointed neighbor, who has not yet found her own. The poet Dunea Mikhail speaking with the New Yorker's Dorothy Wiccend. Mikhail's new book is The Beekeeper. Just ahead of walk around town with novelist Michael Cunningham, and Jack Handy explains the mysteries of humor. It's the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

30 years ago this summer, Michael Cunningham published his first piece of fiction in The New Yorker. Since then, he's published six novels, including The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film with Julianne Moore and Merrill Street. He lives in Manhattan, and on a day with any kind of decent weather, you might find him taking in the hustle and bustle of Washington Square Park. We're standing at the edge of the plaza, and there are hundreds of people here. You would think there was something going on. There is something going on, but the park is going on.

And there's a performer over there, which I can tell by the fact that there's a huge crowd gathered around, but I can't tell who it is or what they're doing. All right. A man just jumped over three adult men and stick a perfect ten-point landing afterwards. You know, hey, hey, for five bucks on a Saturday afternoon, it's not a good. bad. I literally walk through the park at least once a day, sometimes two or three times a day, and as a writer, I live a life, a work life of solitude. I sit in my studio and feel like a figment of my own imagination most of the day, and I will hit a wall. Just lose it, just sort of lose of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and who are these people I'm trying to write about and why would I care about them. And that's an especially good time to go to Washington Square Park and be reminded that novels matter, books matter enormously,

but there is a world that books, even the greatest of them, are merely a part of it. So, get over it. Buster. You're people are sunbathing. People have brought out blankets. Those boys are surely Mormons on a mission. There's a man in a Merlin hat. I think he does Tarot.

NYU is wrapped all around here. There's plenty of kids from NYU. There was someone swimming in the fountain, but I think he may have, he may have, oh no, I think there is someone swimming in the fountain. That's a regular occupation. Not by me, I don't swim in the fountain, but, but, but people do. There is a man actually throwing a baseball to his son. It's this sort of blade runner Norman Rockwell scene.

It's a little insane and also just deeply American in that, in that old-fashioned way. We're passing a little jazz combo. We're moving over to the western side of the park, which is a little less, well, just a little less populated. I'm very sorry to report that we've missed the annual Doxswint Parade, which was held today, as it is once a year in Washington's Square Park. And it is exactly what it sounds like. It's people walking their doxswans through Washington Square Park. Excuse me, were you at the Doxswain Parade? No, they don't do a parade.

They just gather. It's gathering and we sing a song. There's no other dog like a Doxswain walking so close to the ground. You're stubborn and sly as a fox and the happiest pet to be found. Doxy, minor doxy, the best canine under the sun. Pull you wiener or sausage or hot dog. We know that you're number one. Thank you.

Thank you for stuff. That is so, so good. I've always felt that, okay, say an extraterrestrial appears before you and says, we're weeding out the galaxy, and I don't have much time. Can you make a case for life on Earth? do worse than take that extraterrestrial to Washington Square Park and just say all this life, all this rampancy, all this humanity, there are people singing opera, there's a dog run, there's there there's everything you need to know about what it's like to be human is

present within this small area. Spirit, okay? Planet Earth is really worth keeping around. The novelist and short story writer Michael Cunningham in Washington Square Park in New York City. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. I'm going to leave you now in the good hands of Jack Handy. Handy has been writing for Saturday Night Live

and The New Yorker for many years, and he created deep thoughts with Jack Handy so long ago that he titled his most recent book please stop the deep thoughts. So here he is, Jack Handy, speaking about the mysteries of humor. The mysteries of humor. Why is a man slipping on a banana peel funny, but not as funny as a man choking on a banana peel?

Why is it boring when your friend Don tells you about his wife leaving him, but you laugh when you find out that she left him for another man named Don? When you see someone sinking in quicksand, is it funnier if you know the person? Are some things never funny, like a man accidentally chopping off his finger with a hatchet, and wrapping up the finger and taking it to the hospital, then discovering that it isn't his finger

but one of the Vienna sausages he was having for lunch, and then eating the sausage? Can something be true and funny at the same time? Like, your head looks like a melon. What is funnier? A dad trying to get his kids kite up in the air, but getting it caught in a tree? Or a dad trying to get the kite down with a rake and accidentally tearing it to pieces. Will there ever come a time when we won't need laughter?

When we'll be sitting on soft pillows, wearing our shimmering metallic robes, drinking our soothing space tea. And perhaps one of us will reach for a piece of cheese housed in an ancient device known as a mousetrap. and the mousetrap will snap on the person's finger and he'll let out a yowl of pain and the rest of us won't spit the tea out of our mouths but will just stare blankly. Will that time ever come?

Let us hope so. That was Jack Handy with The Mysteries of Humor. His new book is called Please Stop the Deep Thoughts. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill garbis of tune yards with additional music by Lexus Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon, Corby, Jill Duboff,

Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix, Mithelie Rao, and Stephen Valentino. With help from Susan Morrison, Emma Allen, Corey Shreppel, Michelle Moses, Emily Mann, and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.