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The Birmingham Literature Festival Podcast - Welcome to the very first Birmingham Literature Festival podcast, bringing writers and readers together to discuss some of 2020’s best books. Each Thursday we’ll be releasing new episodes of the podcast, including wonderful discussions about writing, poetry, big ideas and social issues. Join us each week for exciting and inspiring conversations with new, and familiar, writers from the Midlands and beyond.
Casey Bailey 0:07
Hello wonderful people. Welcome to the Birmingham Literature Festival presents podcast. I am Casey Bailey, former Birmingham poet laureate, and I was delighted to be one of the guest curator for the 2022 Birmingham Literature Festival. For the next few weeks, we're going to bring you some highlights from last year's festival for you to enjoy whenever you'd like. You can subscribe to this podcast feed and get the new episodes as soon as they're available. This week's episode is our specially curated, Writing From A Warzone event. The Birmingham Literature Festival team brought together novelist Priscilla Morris, whose family fled Sarajevo during the 1992 siege with poet Parwana Fayyaz, who is an Afghan refugee. The event also included an interview with Ukrainian novelist Lybko Deresh, who is still in Ukraine, they were speaking to Dr. Amanda Beattie from the center of migration and forced displacement at Aston University.
Amanda Beattie 1:19
Hi, everybody, good afternoon. Welcome. I'm Amanda, I've been given this amazing opportunity to chair the event. And really, if this goes properly, you won't hear me talk much at all. Jonathan, you've given us a very kind introduction. And it's actually stolen some of what I thought I had to say. So I'm going to be very brief. I think what we're going to do, we'll do a brief introduction to give some people an idea of where the work has come from, then we'll go to the video, we'll hear what Lybko had to say. And then we'll come back and we'll have some time for some reading from the works that have been produced. And then we'll have some time for some questions towards the end. So thank you very much for coming. And without further ado, I think first I'll introduce Parwana. Nice to meet you ,thank you for coming. Now, I did ask you to prepare a little bit of a biography. So I didn't put words in your mouth. But it is my pleasure to introduce you, a scholar of medieval Persian poetry, also a translator. Now you were born in Kabul and raised in Pakistan, and have a significant number of accolades that precede this particular book that you're going to be talking about today. It say you transferred to Stanford University in 2012, earned a BA in 2015. With a major in comparative literature, and a minor in creative writing and an MA in religious studies, only then to go on to Cambridge, pursue a PhD in Persian studies at Trinity College, and you to then become a research fellow at the Carmen blacker Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge in 2020. Now, talking today about your debut collection, 40 Names, which was published in 2021. And it was named a New Statesman Book the Year and a White Review Book of the Year as well, and it has been recently translated into Italian. Thank you so much for joining us today. And then moving on to Priscilla, lovely to meet you and have you here today. Again, the bio and the information that you'd like me to write, born of Yugoslav English parentage, born in Cambridge, grew up in London and spent childhood summers in Yugoslavia, as it was then known, currently dividing time between rural Ireland and Catalonia, Spain. Working in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge with an MA with distinction and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Teaching, I've actually taught creative writing at the University of East Anglia, Kingston University and city where you currently teach now at University College, Dublin and the Irish writers centre. Talking today about black butterflies, which was nominated out sorry, not nominated, was the indie fiction book of the month in May of 2022. And it was inspired by maternal family history. So very much looking forward to hearing you both talk about these books in a minute or two. Before we get there, though, I would like to introduce a video by the third member of our panel, albeit virtually, Lybko Deresh, who is a Ukrainian writer, creative writing teacher, and the UNDP, Ukraine tolerance envoy. He's written 11 books, and he'll be talking to us today about his most recent book, Where The Wind Blows published in 2021. And in this book, deals with the tensions between canceled artists and the society within pre COVID war torn Ukraine, and I think I'll leave it there and we'll turn it to the video and then we'll come back to have a conversation between all of us.
Lybko Deresh 4:40
My last book, Where The Wind Blows is the more or less realistic story about writer or artist who becomes canceled by Ukrainian society or active Ukrainian society, due to the polarization in the society that occurred after 2014, after the beginning of war in Donbass. And so it was my discussion with the tendencies in Ukrainian society where two positions were possible, either you are very, very patriotic, either you become a betrayer. And I tried to show some middle middle position. And this was also a period of my life. When I cooperated with UNDP, Ukraine, I became a tolerance envoy, and in this position, I was a member of of project respect to A so the aim of this of that mission was building a civil dialogue within different social groups in Ukraine to to make Ukrainian society more integral. And with this position, probably, and with this novel, I came to the February 24th of this year. So some writers, the ones that were very good in understanding the narratives that are now on the top the narratives that should come from Ukraine from Ukrainian side and that are now coming from the Russian side, fake narrative, some imperialistic narratives that, that Russia was still translating into the world media, some Ukrainian writers, like top writers like Oksana Zabuzhko, Andrey Kurkov, many club members of Ukraine, they communicated, they reflected these, these narratives, and they stopped and prevent they like, deconstruct it deconstructed these narratives, and they were very good in these discussions. I will not go into details just explain you one very specific, specific feeling. Afterwards, I wrote an essay, where I use the word epiphany. Epiphany which James Joyce uses this word to explain, like the momentary appearance and the momentary experience of, of some divinity, of the of the Divine, and that was really what I what I felt what I experienced, imagine the situation, you you have some occupied villages, nearby cave, and they are suffering from hunger, they need to have some food. And you call the government and government says, we are doing what what is in our powers, but we cannot go there it is, it is very risky, it is very dangerous. So the government cannot go there. We call some politician, some politician, some smaller parties. And they say yes, we help people. But the situation is very hard, even for us, we cannot go there. So you find out that the locals, they organize even it is very risky. They organize this right of cars of their own volunteers, on their own risk. They, they go there, they fight, they look for the humanitarian aid all over Ukraine, and they try to bring this food to their people to people from their village, from their neighborhood villages, to support people. You don't blame anyone, you just understand that it's on your own responsibility to help. You may say as, as all people say, yes, it's too hard, or it's too dangerous, or it's impossible. But you may not say this, and you may try to do something to help these people. And you'll begin to do really impossible things. And you don't know anyone but you became you become friends and you you help each other and this, you feel this, like a big organism of people. And this is what I called epiphany. Because you can you can trust each other only when you when you feel this personnel, when you feel that you can trust. This is like the direct direct knowledge of, direct feeling of other people's heart. And it was very strong experience.
Amanda Beattie 9:15
For the communities that are here in Birmingham, and for our audience, for the panel. They're going to take this information and if it's it's going to be effective. It's affected me listening to your stories. What do or can people, where we are here in the West Midlands in the United Kingdom, what support can we be offering? You tell it could because the information you've given us today is not what we've heard before. And there seems to be if there's any possibility for support, then I would love to be able to use this opportunity to get that message out there. So maybe you could spend some time talking to us about that. Is that okay?
Lybko Deresh 9:57
Yes, yes. So as I as it understood, as I learned from my experience of being a volunteer, you can be the best in your own place. So, you're the kind of your help highly depends on what you can do. If you are, for example, if you are a scholar, you can be very useful in deconstructing Russian narratives, and in supporting Ukrainian culture. So I would be very grateful for the scholars of Great Britain to pay attention of this Russian imperialistic narratives that describe Ukrainian culture as a subculture as a local culture and try to overcome try to find this colonialistic intonations in, in Slavic studies in Eastern European Studies and try to discover the real situation how what is Ukraine, indeed, in real. And if you are people who are not connected, maybe with university versity surrounding, and you're just meeting you, or you're helping Ukraine, or you help Ukrainian refugees that were a lot in UK, please be kind and generous and forgetful for Ukrainians. We are not perfect. And we may do some mistakes. And please excuse us our mistakes, and we will try to become better.
Amanda Beattie 11:30
Yeah, that was recorded about I guess about a month ago. And things on the ground have obviously changed. Since that happened. I think the way maybe to bring it back to here and today. And what we're going to be talking about is going back to that first idea that Lybko discussed about epiphany and because it really reminded me of community. And that might be a really interesting way of getting into what you both have curated in your own novels and only as a jumping off point and taking it where you feel your works need to go as the people who have created and birth this into existence. So Parwana, did you want to go first?
Parwana Fayyaz 12:08
Yes. First of all, I'm so happy to be here, among you all and talking about this very important topic that we're still struggling to really understand what's happening. History is repeating itself. And as the author beautifully said, there is a moment of epiphany. And for writers, that's a moment of realizing that we can't do anything but to be present and to do rediscovery within our own self and what that means. And it's also telling the story of the communities, those who collectively cannot speak and, and for me, as an Afghan myself, I felt like I lost my country two times. I experienced the war two times, the first time, the Taliban rule, then the second time, it just feels like the history repeating itself. And I'm in the midst of it and for me, the only thing that can make me be proud of that community. And for me that epiphany works as waking up and knowing that my voice and the stories that I'm going to tell is going to make things happen. It's going to make audience like yourself aware of the situation that that despite what's happening, despite how the war is affecting every individual, the story, it goes on and people are going to come out of that horrible time. They're going to remember it. And it's as we were talking, there is no anger, there's not going to be reactions to that extreme. There's going to be a moment that they have processed everything. And they come to talk collectively. And that's where the power of the stories, the story of the power of Epiphany really come through. So that's how I see it really, until what do you think, Priscilla?
Priscilla Morris 13:53
Thank you, Parwana? Yes, I think that as you were saying the epiphany is very interesting way of looking at it. And he was talking about communities coming together to help each other. In Sarajevo, this was it was 30 years ago, this year that the siege started, went on for four years. And many of my mother's relatives were trapped inside the city. And what happened was a coming together of community and of people helping each other in many ways. And in Black Butterflies, you can really see that the protagonist of it is an artist. And she's stranded in Sarajevo without her husband who has just gone to England and her neighbors and her all come together and start helping each other in a way that was very interesting. He was saying you might not know these people, but you start trusting them and everyone is helping and this sort of If this narrative of resistance starts building up, and that's kind of one of it helps fight the sort of dehumanization of war. And it can be quite something quite beautiful amongst all the devastation of war.
Parwana Fayyaz 15:20
And it's also just to add on that, it's also that, you know, the the effects of displacement, right, once they leave the war country, and they, they're in a different space. And I'm talking about the experience of Afghans who are, who had to leave the country last August, and they find themselves all of a sudden, this strange place in a different culture. And, and they try to avoid each other, they try because they, they, they have experienced very similar things, and they think they're gonna be very vulnerable next to each other. But as time passes, right, they come to understand that no, they, they have nothing to hide. And and I don't know what it is, is that that that compassion, that kindness that brings them together. And I got to see that when I was visiting my family who were evacuated, and they went to Albania, and this group of Afghans about 600, people, all of a sudden finding themselves in Albania, in the midst of East and West right?, it's very interesting place. And first time when I visited a month after they moved out in October, last October, there was this sense of isolating, and then the second time I visit them in January, they will come together. And interestingly, and there were enemies in the midst that they were aware of each other's existence. The second meeting, they come together, and they're celebrating it, and they are trying to feed each other. And that that sense of connection and new connection that's born, that's epiphany for me, that's the power of the, you know, the communities coming together to help each other regardless of the differences they have hold. You know, it's it's, I don't know what it is. But it's, I think, just the experience of the war, it just like we have seen the worse and we can make magic happen through kindness and compassion. And that's where stories happen as well. I think our role become very significant.
Amanda Beattie 17:21
That is where stories happen, actually. And I think that's an excellent way of segwaying, maybe into offering you both the opportunity to read a little bit from your text. I don't know, who would like to go first? Parwana would you like to get going?
Parwana Fayyaz 17:36
So just to give you a little bit of an introduction about the book, the book came out last July 2021. At the end of 31st of July right before Kabul fell a month after that, obviously. So this book was really a celebration of this momentary triumph. Sense of epiphany that I had felt personally. And all of a sudden a month after that Kabul fell, the country went to war and history repeat itself, that everything in this book feels nostalgic already for me. So I became very connected to the stories everything is very fresh. If I get emotional, it's because I'm still wounded, really. Sewing needles. When the war started, my father took my mother on a journey, a journey unwanted by either of them away from home and fall from their city into exile next to our little feet and hence, my mother carried her box of sewing needles, and her butterfly sewing machine made in the USSR. Moving between rented rooms, fabric became a land familiar to her. Opening her box and resting her sewing machine on the floor, she made dresses of different colors and textures. Kabul gave her velvet in all colors. She chose some, she chose the colors of liver and ocean, burgundy and royal blue. Pakistan gave her satin and yellow and orange. She prefers something onion-colored. India gave her cotton and thick and thin. She selected something in between. One year she learned to spin coarse wool. And with the money she earn she bought silk. She waited, I waited, until the hard skin on the tips of her fingers soften before she touched the silk. She then made dresses for her three daughters, Parwana, Shabnam, and Gohar. And colors pistachio red rose and sea green. Every stage of a needle gave life to elegant styles of youth and an Afghan mother's pride even in exile.
Priscilla Morris 20:11
So I think I'll just read the opening pages of my novel. So it doesn't really need too much introduction just to play. This is 1992 in Sarajevo in Bosnia, in the former Yugoslavia. And it's just before the war starts. So where it's kind of the first signs of war for Zora, who is the protagonist, she's an artist. It sometimes seems to Zora, that with all the teaching and curating and meetings and paperwork and caring and cooking, and cleaning and errands. She is floundering at the midpoint of her life. There's no time leftover for the core path, perhaps at 55. She's beyond the midpoint now. But she's always imagined that these years, her child grown and gone herself not yet old, will be her most spacious and productive. She'd pictured herself spending long, blissful days in her studio, but instead, everything else always encroaches. Let's suppose we're them at the tram and the rattle of the dusty windowpanes the worry, she presses her forehead, the glass drinking in her city at this strange hour. The wind carries twisting flyers down the street and the mountains waver in the predawn light, the outlines of things, buildings, frozen cars, sleeping, drunk or porous. The threshold between night and day feels uncertain, as if she could just as easily slip back into the night as go forward into the day. Her husband, the sole other passenger, keeps his eyes closed and grips the handrail, his head troops, long spine carving, she could hardly start standing from bed. It's the weekend and she had hoped to spend her day in the studio. But the test 5am phone call, I just stopped that there's been a break in, her mother's neighbor informed her criminals hooligans, God knows what dancing and drinking all night we've been in shouting, the police don't want to know. A cool needle of alarm slid into his belly. But she reminded herself her mother's neighborhood always overreacted and thought the worst of everyone. The criminals are probably no more than a couple of stoned teenagers having fun in an empty flat. Still, she and Franja moved quickly, groping for clothes, fingers fumbling with buttons. Through the tram Windows Zora see that old sofas bristling with barbed wire have been dragged out, split certain streets in two. She feels a pulse of shock. She's read about this, but has never been up early enough to see it before. She knows because everyone does. The men with black stockings pulled low over their heads do this every night to carve up the city into enclaves. These variety of nationalists could be anyone, a neighbor, a lover, a friend, is futile in any case, every morning that abused inhabitants of the street where the Muslim Croat or Serb simply push the barriers aside, get on with their days.
Amanda Beattie 23:32
Now I know when we were, we were just discussing this, what should we read? And how do we bring the stories to life? And I've just had an idea. So I'm going to feel free to say no, if you'd like, but hopefully you say yes. Because Parwana you made the point, life goes on, as this conflict unfold, or unfolded, and that also came through in the interview that we were conducting, and everyday happens and you have these relationships, but also how you maintain that normal changes. And I know this comes through in your poem when your mother made the dolls. And it's also it's so there's caring relationships there as well. But then there's also caring relationships, and duties of care towards those we don't know. And I know this has come through in the conversation that we've had about another passage in your book. And so I thought maybe the way to bring that in comments on how the story explains how the everyday continues to unfold, and then maybe return to the work that you've produced for us today. Would that be? Would you be happy to do that?
Parwana Fayyaz 24:35
Yeah, sure.
Amanda Beattie 24:36
Brilliant. Thank you. Parwana would you like to go first?
Unknown Speaker 24:38
Yes, well, interestingly, it's you know during the war, I think the most creative person in the family could the mother figure are the women in the family, because she's basically in the private spaces where kids are growing up where food is being prepared. It's quite an interesting juxtaposition, but I've observed in so many different cultures, different periods, different countries going to war, the stories are carried within the householder always for men who have taken charge of the, you know, bringing the culture back. And for me, my mother had been a very big influence on the way I think of myself and connection to the country, the stories and how life should go as smoothly as it could. And she was also this force of life where nothing becomes something, a piece of fabric becomes a dress, forgotten yawns around becomes a beautiful back. And this was my mother's store, you know, outside the four walls of the room war was happening, the shooting, you could hear them, but my mother would be sitting there she will be saying, How about I'm making a dress, this is what we're gonna do, you're going to help me and my mom. My father is in the background, he is always outside he he's so aware of the situation. And for me, and obviously my dad would come back and he will teach me in the evenings right. But my mother she was the the stage-wide performance where life happened and for me is just the the way that believes that you should keep doing things in order to not only help yourself but those around you and and in order for for them to distract us obviously part of our culture is more ablaze you know, a lot of literature's reading and citation. And she would my mother has never been educated she is she she remained illiterate. And she would tell us stories stories about an auntie that we never got to learn about her, or my grandparents and, and that became part of normal life. This is how I grew up, right? I always get this juxtaposition. I like some of the stories here can be a little too heartbreaking for a little kid. Like, when I was growing up, all the stories were repeated. And someone told me like, we grew up with the story of Cinderella, perfect story. But you grew up with this story, how do you reconcile? And I'm like, I learn about Cinderella when I was in my in university, I loved it as much as any story that I grew up learning about. Because when your mother says it, it's in the most, you know, it's a safe place that you know, she's telling you because she knows how to make you aware of it. So I think for me, that was her, her art, the physical art that she made, but also the stories she told me that in order to keep us safe in a way from the danger that was outside. And in any interesting, I was just talking that with the principal, but how my mother picked up on sewing and making dresses when we went to Pakistan as refugees. And when we returned to Afghanistan in 2005, she stopped and because life was very busy meeting up cousins, uncles and hosting them, and then last October when she left the country she's picked up again and she's making dresses, again, she's sewing and it's coming back to her. And it's just this connection again. And her art is more powerful man, obviously, because she knows what she wants to so she knows what color she wants to use. And that's just for me to see it. And I was a kid and now as an adult. It's it's more powerful that way, but also emotionally. It's just, I don't know, exhausting, but at the same time, I know that that's for her. That's a normal way of living now. So yeah, that's how I see it.
Priscilla Morris 28:40
Fascinating. And it's really interesting to hear you talking about the importance of art, both storytelling and sewing, and because it's something that really resonates with me and my own family's experience, and also with very much themes of Black Butterflies. Zora's neighbor is Mythas who was a Muslim who has a bookstore and he writes stories and one of the stories is sort of narrated towards the end of black butterflies in a very sort of key moment of war. The other neighbors are gathered around, it's minus 20. They don't have any heating. There's no electricity, very little food. And yet he tells the story, and they were listening by candlelight, and it is this form of resistance and getting through the war. Interesting like my grandmother who my father rescued from the siege, a year in my grandparents lived through a year of siege and then my father went out to rescue them. When she got to England, you know, you can imagine complete Obviously, your family as well as being displaced and to never be able to go back to your country. For them at a very old age, she turned to embroidery and to making and jigsaws, that whole flat was covered in jigsaws. And I think it's this sort of process of is a way, a creative response to war to the pain and confusion and complete turning around of your world can be too creativity. And very often, an academic understanding is not going to do it. And so I think Zora in this in my book, that's how she processes the war. She makes art out of the debris of war. So she, you know, the shrapnel that she finds on the ground, and feathers from pigeons and stuff, it all goes into her the artworks that she makes. And it is surprising the amount of creativity that can flourish in wartime conditions.
Amanda Beattie 31:05
Yeah, almost not even as a coping mechanism as a refuge to keep that normalcy and to move forward. Because everyday is still happening. I mean, that does come up, I was struck reading both of your works, that we have this link between the two of art and create what we now I guess, call creative industries. But really, it's creativity as a mode of expression. And I know you said your mother was illiterate, but she had this beautiful, different way of telling story that defied you know, pen and paper and what we've come to expect, I'm mindful, we all have that, you know, we're all coming from an academic environment. And now we're talking in non academic ways. But these seem to be very important, and the fact that both of them characters in both your novel and your poetry, were women, and artists, and how important do you think that was in the telling of your stories?
Parwana Fayyaz 31:57
I think that, you know, the same way, that Zora becomes an artist by putting these pieces together, I think, as a writer, I see myself making sense of fragments, everything, you know, everything that's it kind of clustered around, I'm the one who can give it a shape. Right. As a poet, I was just thinking, when you're talking, I wrote the title of this one poem that I'm going to write because because that could only make sense, because we've been talking about this little things around and an artist is able to see the bigger vision and put them together to may give them a frame, right? It's about that. I don't know, for me, that's a moment of reconciliation. within myself. A poem ends and I'm like, okay, I can now reflect and I make sense of it. And it's, it's something that, you know, comes to you and you you're struggling to understand you, you you're restless. And that's, that's when for me at least story has to make sense, only by writing it. And that's that sense of it almost puts a sense of obligation, you have been in the midst of it. You know, you've seen you've witnessed it. Now. Can you make sense of it? Can you convey it? And I mean, that's how a book comes into an existence. And yeah, that's how I see it.
Unknown Speaker 33:31
Absolutely. Just just to respond to that, because I think I it's interesting, because the very visible theme today is about creative responses to war. And I think creativity very much. It can come from many places, but it can be a response to pain and confusion. And for me, when I was 19, the war started. And I just didn't understand just like watching on TV at the moment, all the horrific scenes unfolding Ukraine, that was happening with Sarajevo, talking about history repeating itself 30 years ago, and I could not understand that. And this, for me has been my artistic response to it. So it's taken quite a long time to process and come out. But in response to your question about the the female protagonist. This is inspired by family history. And actually, it's quite interesting because it was my great uncle who was an artist who lived through many of the events that Zora lives through here and his studio was shelled and he lost his life's work. And he eventually escaped, prior on coming to England, where after a period of not painting at all, and being in complete, complete shock as he would be, he then started painting again. And he painted for another 20 years. He lived in Bristol till his death when he was 95 a few years ago, and to me he was a very inspirational figure. So that's what inspired the writing of Black Butterflies. But I made him into a woman. Why? Because when I interviewed I spent time in Sarajevo, interviewing people about their experiences to siege. And for whatever reason, it was women's tales that came alive for me and interested me maybe. I don't know why maybe a woman's speaking to a woman, but I was seeing the war through a woman's eyes. And so that was where my interest lies. And so Zora inspired by my great uncle has, it's very important to me that she is a woman. And that this is, I think it's also interesting. Quite often in literature, we see war through a man's eyes. So it's quite interesting to see it through a woman's eyes as well.
Amanda Beattie 35:56
That almost takes us full circle to the point that you made as we open the panel about being in the home and the telling stories and those types of things as well. We've actually, we're just going through time, so quickly now. And I do have to offer some opportunities to the audience to ask some questions. But I thought maybe as a way of tying this section to a close, I'd offer you the opportunity if Parwana wanted to read another poem, and Priscilla if you want to finish off with another reading, and then we will obviously take some questions.
Unknown Speaker 36:30
I'm gonna read a poem called Her Name is Flowere Sap, which is the story of the Young African woman that appeared on the National Geographic Channel with the beautiful green eyes. And she she inspired this poem, obviously, but also, we were refugees in Pakistan, when the image became very popular. And we were, as an as Afghans, ourselves, they were equally intrigued by the story and by the image. And obviously, as kids we started making stories up and I tried to capture it in this poem, and obviously give her the name instead of calling her an African woman because really, the book is about naming the unnamed, naming the no one's. Her name is Flower Sap. Somewhere in the no man's land, there are high mountains and there is a woman. The mountains are seemingly unreachable the woman in her anonymity is untraceable. The mountains are called Tora Bora. The woman is known as Sharbet Gula, Flower Sap. And her faded Ruby red chador, she appeared a younger with a frown, with her green eyes. Not knowing where to look when the world looked back at her. As young kids refugees of war time in Pakistan, we were equally intrigued with her photograph. Her eyes have the magic of good and bad. The light of her eyes can destroy fighter jets. So when Afghan children's conversation and the aftermath of 911. But could she take down the Taliban jets? We wondered, as the Jets crossed the skies in one song. But flower sap could never answer us, for she had disappeared, like her childhood. As the boulders became doamper lands. Afghans like soft worms crawled toward their homeland. And the in between mountains, flowers have reappeared without any answers. Now she was a grown up woman, a mother of four girls, a widow. There were some questions in her eyes, the one I have seen in my parents eyes. Where do we go next? Now that the country is free, she still did not have the answers. And where was the power of her eyes. I then saw her smiling as an immigrant. I smile too. For her name save the day. She was taken to a hospital for her eyes. The president of the country met her and sent her on a pilgrimage. Her name educated her daughters it gave her house and a reason to return to her homeland. What else is there in the names and naming if not for reparation?
Priscilla Morris 39:45
My Black Butterflies is divided into five sections and the first four are following seasons. So before I read to you from the beginning of spring on our jump forward to the beginning of summer where wars Fully started. And this is a scene where it's already confronts this. When she first sees it, she thinks there's a pile of old racks a heap of clothes in the middle of the road. Dust and smoke from the explosion still thick in the air and broken glass crackles underfoot. She looks up again as she gets closer. A dead dog is first splattered with dirt by passing vehicles, the air thins and grows cloudy again. It isn't until she's on the curb about to cross that she sees that it isn't a dog at all. Right a woman in a filthy white coat. Zora's hand flies to her mouth and temples pound. The woman lies lifeless on the tarmac. Her back curved protectively around a pool of dark blood. A sickening scent comes off her zero wonders how long she's been lying that why no one has carried her away. Black hair falls over her face. And it's impossible to tell if she's by her age or her own. Zora looks around for help. But the few people that there are on the street don't seem to notice. They pass by grey figures with hunched shoulders bent heads. On the point of moving forward to pull the body to the pavement. She checks us out and remains paralyzed on the curb. She could be hit by the same sniper. This might be some sort of trap. heart beating fast saw returns away. Pressing herself close to the shop fronts, she crosses the road further down away from the expose junction ways of shock breaking inside her. There's been a dug up she attempts to tell the people she passes. Perhaps they'll know what to do, how to set things in motion to contact the woman's relatives. But everyone walks with their eyes down teaching a near empty clock that day, the image of the woman in the white coat, body bent into a C shape assaults her again and again. The more she tries not to think about her, the more she's there bending down to get jars out of the cupboard or reaching for a book on the shelf. zora sees her and gasps as if she's been punched.
Amanda Beattie 42:25
Those are just amazing. I believe we have somebody roaming with a microphone. If you would like to ask your question to please just raise your hand. And perhaps even introduce yourself because you now know us. So it might be nice to have a name to respond to.
Audience member 42:42
I thank you very much. Indeed. That was a fantastic discussion. I can't thank you enough. Just two brief questions, right? Did you both ever find or encounter people who absolutely did not want to remember what they had experience? Or talk about what they experienced? And the second question is did you ever observe, come into contact with and learn anything from very young children who had experienced war and trauma?
Unknown Speaker 43:14
Can I? Thank you. It's a great question. Thank you. Yes, absolutely. To prove to both my great uncle who is the artist that inspired this book and his wife, I talked to them at length on several occasions, about their experiences of the war. But they found it actually very difficult to talk about the actual siege itself. So they could talk quite clearly about the events leading up to it. So for example, the story that I start off the novel with about these intruders that break into the fat, a lot of detail there. And then about they're coming to England, but they did find it very hard to actually talk about the war. And they weren't they were interviewed a few times, because as I said he became this. You know, he became part of an artists club in Bristol. And, you know, it's quite an amazing story. And over the years, they just clammed up more and more, they found it really hard to talk about it. And in answer to the second Yes, there was there's a girl called Anna, who was eight, when the war started, who lived beneath my grandparents who said when I went to Syria, do research and talk to people she was then 26 And she actually talked to me a lot about her experience of being an eight year old girl during the first four years of the siege, and there is a figure in this book, a character called Una who very closely takes lot of her stories and it was very interesting hearing that experience. She's read the book, she now lives in Germany. And it's, you know, she it was quite interesting hearing her reaction to it. Because for her that was normality. Of course, these were her formative years and grow up during that time. And, yeah, she really appreciated reading it being made into fiction.
Parwana Fayyaz 45:27
And I think I'll just pick on that same sort of her conversation about war, more than anything, I think it's trauma, that the trauma of war or the anything in between really, that then I just observed that kids remember it vividly, then the olders, although members, especially in the case of Afghanistan, obviously, my parents have seen so many different aspects of war, the Soviet invasion, the Civil War, the Taliban regime, and in between the Taliban Regime, the first one and the second one. Everyone went through trauma, Kabul was always the platform of explosions and suicide, people got injured, I nearly lost my youngest brother in a suicide. He was in bed for six months, and that trauma, my youngest siblings remember it vividly, then my parents who were avoiding to talk about it still. And that happened whilst about a year and a half. And my parents avoided to talk about it because the memory is still there. But my youngest siblings, I learned a lot of things by them talking. And they, they remember it in a way that it's they can express so strongly like my youngest sister, was eleven. And in that time, she was nine and a half or so. And she she would just cry her eyes out. And I could remember that she was remembered every detail that my parents, either they don't want to talk about it, or they don't remember it, or something's happening there. Right. But I don't I don't understand. It's it's an obviously the, you know, the taking over of Kabul itself has impacted children more than adults, because children born after 911. They they associate their existence in juxtaposition to some sort of freedom that the parents were openly sharing with them, right? You can go to schools, nothing is going to happen, the country was going somewhere. And all of a sudden, that just stops and all of a sudden the city has fallen to the Taliban again, they're everywhere. And they're scary. They're, they just, you know, they just don't look like any other human, but long beards and crunching costs on their shoulder and they're walking around. And the kids are because they're such, they're just memory machine that remembers everything. And my siblings were the youngest siblings who stayed in Kabul for two months, I remember every single thing, and they're just ready to talk about it, and why my parents, I still can't get them to talk how they felt. And, you know, it's just, I just have to wait for that art to appear. Is it just like my mother I don't I don't think she has, she has a process that yet. But her way of, you know, creating something is going to teach me something. So I'm trying to be kind toward how, you know, older members in the family who have gone through trauma are going to express it. Why for kids, it's so important for them to express. And I'm going to do a lot more research on the African communities who left after after last August, or settled in Sacramento, California, where majority of Africans ended up going. And there'll be a very interesting study. And that's going to be my second book of poetry that I'm trying to capture that, that that trauma of, I don't know even how to call it and still trying to make sense of that myself. But it's quite a it's, it's tough. It's the most difficult thing, I think, for anyone
Amanda Beattie 49:13
We have a question right here.
Audience member 49:18
Hi, my name is Maria. And I've actually just visited Sarajevo, right after Easter. And coming from Poland that made me really reflect on how societies and nations as time pass deal with the traumatic experience of you know, occupation and, and being in a war zone. And whether anything whether, you know, it's a linear process of how you heal or how you deal with what happened. And what you've talked a lot about is the similarities in the common experience of humans, in warzone and humans in exile. My question is more about what makes your work Especially like specific to the experience of locality. So what makes it more about the Bosnian siege or the Afghani experience rather than just a book about war?
Priscilla Morris 50:16
Yeah. Thanks. That's, that's a great question. And I hope you enjoyed Sarajevo It's a beautiful city. And part of the reason I guess, I really love Sarajevo and I think the love for the city comes through here. And it part of me writing this was hoping to correct some of the image of it just being constantly war torn and stuff. What makes it specific, I would say is two things. One is that there's a real focus on place in this novel. So you saw her as a landscape painter. She loves the the mountains that surround s, but she loves the very particular geography of Sarajevo, which is very unique, really in the way it's a sort of East Meets West, you've got lots of mosques, you've got cathedrals, you've got churches, that it before the war, Bosnia was renowned for being this very multicultural, secular place where people got on, and one in three marriages and sorry, over before the war were mixed between mixed nationalities. I think that's probably entirely changed now, because it's very different city, unfortunately. And so I do address also the question of nationality in this series, the Bosnian Serb, which is a little bit unusual, and maybe confusing, because it's the Bosnian Serb nationalists, who are shelling the city. But she's anti nationalist. And there were a sizable number of Bosnian Serbs who were trapped in the city who were anti nationalist, and who were also suffering through the siege. And so I very much want there are quite a few books on stereo vo novels on Zarya, which don't name the nationalities, that the chalice of sarajevo, for example, and other ones, which I completely understand why, partly because they're going for the universal experience and not wanting to confuse it's very confusing situation politically. But I didn't want to do that. And I wanted to call a service out and a Muslim and Muslim, because that's what I was interested in, in the sack of the city as well. But it's not primarily a political novel at all. It's that I do go into that, I do go into the peace marches that happen just before the siege started, the anti nationalist voice that was kind of completely quashed. And so there is plenty of specificity in that.
Unknown Speaker 52:58
And also, most importantly, that that sensibility that you have, toward the thing, right? That's the creation of everything that places there specificly local, but you can feel it so well, that you connect it to the universal sense. So you bring the story to the audience that anyone can relate. War is war. But if it's a story written about Osmania, on Afghanistan and Ukraine, that story pulls attention to the much you know, the the source of, you know, what's something that's more connected that source of your creation, really, and that understanding. So that kindness, that compassion, and emotion that's just contained in one place, it can give that universality? And that's where I think stories make sense. Because, you know, that that emotion that surrounds it, that's just so pure. That's the That's what I think of it, right? I mean, it's, you know, we're talking about this infection, the My pain is being comparable to yesterday, and that there was a question of, you know, how do you find yourself as an African living in a city like that, but also, you know, belonging to this, you know, global war? Because I've studied in America, and now in the UK, and how do you feel this connection, and I'm like, every time I pick those stories, that little object in those stories that I felt connected to, and I can, you know, by being the translator translating those stories, I make that accessible to to the readers of the world. And then that's how writers I think, function to connect that particularity to the universality. That's where the power comes from. Thank you.
Amanda Beattie 54:47
Are there any more questions? Yeah. Fourth,
Unknown Speaker 54:50
thank you very much. Thank you very much for your stories. My question is two pronged throughout the 90s. Yugoslavia was in the news every day. Now its never in the news. Have all the ethnic tensions resolved, or is there some kind of uneasy peace? Afghanistan has suffered the tragedy of 40 years of involvement from the imperialist powers Russia and America and the constant turmoil of this Taliban and then retreat? And then regathering? Do you worry that Afghanistan will fall into the national headlines No. And it'll fall off the back pages, and there'll be less it on devices and to suffer in silence without the world taking much notice?
Parwana Fayyaz 55:26
I just know that. As a citizen of the world, I'm aware of what the war the power of the war can do collectively. Afghanistan is a country that they have rich history and very complicated history, to be honest, people of different colors and different religious backgrounds, they live in that little space. And I don't think we have cracked it yet. We don't I don't think anyone understood whoever came in control the place and tried to then got no idea what we're dealing with. And even the Taliban who thinks that they have control the country, they have no idea what they're doing, because it's a country that changes within and it's really hard for me to have any answer to that. But I just, I just know that it's a country with complexity. And it can only become a place where, you know, there can be a little hope, by the country building on its own right, understanding that it's diverse, but then we have the term internal conflict for longer time. And that's why things are happening, what's happening, really, I don't know. I still don't know. I'm just very sad, because people are amazing. The stories are great, the history, the literature, and the whole landscape. It's the most magical place have ever been, you know, Kabul city in the middle of the night, if you if you're walking in the in the yard, you look up stars are brighter than any stars I've seen, to be honest, you know, it's, I did astrology in my, during my undergrad. So I know why stars are brighter in their land. Because it's a country that was never, it's the mountains are high. It's I don't know, it's a country that we, you know, Afghanistan itself mints, the land of rowers, and the ones who rolls and screams, which is so you know, for us, that's something very aggressive. But in back in history, that meant something, you know, country of other fighters, but also those who defend, you know, to kind of defend themselves. But I can't make sense of Afghanistan, and I don't know anything, what's going to happen, how things
Audience member 57:47
Do you think Afghanistan will emerge?
Parwana Fayyaz 57:57
Yeah, and that can only happen, because, you know, within country, you get control, you've been monitored. But the Afghans abroad now that we know there's a lot of Afghans living abroad, and they become, and they live in exile. That's when you're going to see Afghanistan outside Afghanistan. And that's what matters the longer term, because I don't think we ever had that history of Afghans migrating big groups. In the West, we had people going to their own Afghan, Pakistan and other neighboring countries, but they never got the chance to travel globally. And the resistance, the culture can be born outside Afghanistan. And I can't wait to see that happening, because it's gonna happen no matter what.
Amanda Beattie 58:44
Thank you very much. I can't believe I have to say this. But we are running out of time. Would you like to come in with any last words in the interest of balance?
Priscilla Morris 58:53
Can I just say that quick, really quick response to your question about Bosnia is that it's a very uneasy peace at the moment. And the tensions are all still there. It's been partitioned down the middle, the Dayton agreement, and Yugoslav Republic and the Federation. And, you know, I'm constantly reading in the media that there's room as another war may startups, I don't think it's, it's still simmering away. Unfortunately, I don't think anything's really been resolved. It's just like a lid has been put on all the tensions.
Amanda Beattie 59:26
It's a great question and conversation, I think, to draw to a close because I think it just shows how important events like these are as a way of challenging the narrative that we get in the media, but also creating avenues for alternative conversations, and for telling stories that might not otherwise be told. And so going back to the interview that we had with Lybko, and hearing the stories that you've had, and the impetus on people to read, and to learn and to listen to what other people are saying I think is really important. So I guess I'll close by way of thank you for this event, because you're He needs to be here chatting and for coming today on a Sunday afternoon. Thank you so much everybody
Shantel Edwards 1:00:11
thank you for listening to this episode of The Birmingham lit fest presents podcast. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at the hamlet first. All information about the festival and upcoming events can be found on our website www dot Birmingham literature festival.org. The Birmingham lip fest presents podcast is produced by 11C and Birmingham Podcast Studios for writing West Midlands.