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The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: London Calling — with Crossfire, and a Vampire
00:53:56
Author Neil Gaiman explains why he’s afraid to sing in public, a tourist gets a scare in London’s Highgate Cemetery, a Nigerian man tells a bold truth on live television and Christina Lamb talks about her double life as a mother and a war correspondent...
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- [00:00]
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- [02:09]
Sarah Austin Janess
Brought to you by Stamps.com getting your mailing and shipping done can seem like a trade off. The post office takes too much time and a postage meter is too expensive. There's a better way. Stamps.com with stamps.com get official US postage for any letter or package using your own computer and printer. Save up to 80% compared to a postage meter and avoid trips to the post office. And right now listeners of the Moth podcast get a special offer including free postage. Go to stamps.com, click on the microphone and type in Moth. The Moth is coming to the State Theater in Ithaca New York on Saturday, February 20th. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit themoth.org From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. Welcome, I'm Sarah Austin. Janess. The Moth is all about true stories told without notes in front of strangers in venues all around the world. There are four stories in this episode. A celebration of all things British. Some levity, some gravity, and lots of pleasant accents. To kick things off, a story from celebrated writer Neil Gaiman. Neil hosted our very first Moth event in London, and this was the story he used to introduce the evening. You can hear the church echo in Union Chapel, which opened in the year 1877. A crowd of over 900 in Creek Wooden pews and surrounded by candlelight erupted when Neil stepped on stage. Here's Neil Gaiman live at the mall.
- [03:59]
Neil Gaiman
I was 16 when I decided never again to sing in public. I'd been in a punk band of the kind that you're in when you're 16 and it's 1977. And we played a gig. We played a number of gigs relatively successfully. And then we went to a youth club and we got canned off stage. And our manager, who was also 17, said, get back on that stage. The show must go on. And I thought, he's right. By sheer force of awesomeness, the show will go on. And we went on stage, started up the next song, and this time the beer cans were full. In the ambulance on the way to get my cheek, my chin stitched up, I remember one of the ambulance men looking down at me and saying, poor kid, he's got two black eyes. And the other one going, nah, he's got eye makeup. After that, the decision never to sing in public was a relatively easy one. And it got complicated when I met and fell in love with a rock singer who was convinced that all human beings are at their happiest and most comfortable when on a stage singing. And she would say to me, you should. You have a nice voice. You should sing. Come and do a song with me. And I'd say, no. And she'd say, what do you think's gonna happen? They're gonna throw rocks at you? And I'd say, yes, something like that. It happens. And then it was September 2009, and my wife Amanda had two gigs booked here in Union Chapel, Islington, in this beautiful, wonderful formal religious space. And. And she learned a Bach piece which she played on the magnificent organ back there to impress everybody. And I'd sung her something once in the car while we were driving across Scotland, and she made me teach it to her because she went, that is a perfect thing to sing in Union Chapel. And the first night she did it and on the second night at the same point in her set, because she knew that I knew the song because I taught it to her, she said, and now I would like to welcome to the stage my husband, Neil Gaiman. And I got up and I stood here and I had no idea what to do with my arms, so I swayed gently from side to side. And you can see if you are curious on YouTube, the hunted trapped look of somebody who is certain that in the back row there's a group of big boys with full cans of lager and they're getting ready for round two. But I got up here and I went. As I was walking down the street one day I saw a house on fire. There was a man in an upper story window shouting and screaming to the people who were gathered there below, for he was sore afraid. Jump you fucker, jump. Jump into this blanket. What we are holding here for you and you will be all right. He jumped, hit the deck, broke his fucking neck. There were ha ha's no blankets. Laugh we nearly shat. We have not had so much fun since grandma died or Auntie Mabel caught her left tit in the mangle. We are miserable sinners, filthy fuckers, us.
- [09:32]
Sarah Austin Janess
Neil Gaiman is the author of the comic book series the Sandman and the novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline and the Graveyard Book. But Neil also wrote a torch song called I Google youe. And he said, I wrote it just before I met my wife Amanda. I sang it to her and she put chords to and performed it immediately. And just so you don't have to google it, here's a little bit and.
- [09:57]
Neil Gaiman
It really shouldn't matter, ought to blow up my computer, but instead I Google you.
- [10:17]
Sarah Austin Janess
They don't do it often, but Amanda Palmer still inspires Neil to sing with her on stages all around the world. Next up, Matthew Day. This story is set in London's Highgate Cemetery, but was told at an open mic Story Slam competition in Sydney, Australia, which is supported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, abcrn. The theme for the night was Home. Matt came to our very first Sydney Story Slam just to listen to the stories. He said he had fun so he came back the next month and put his name in the hat. Here's Matthew Day live at the Moth in Sydney, Australia.
- [10:55]
Matthew Day
It was 1am and I was leaving Archway Station in Upper Holloway and I walked up the B519 to Lauderdale house which is around 30 minutes from the heart of central London. And I did it so I could go into Waterlow park and then jump a fence into Highgate Cemetery at nighttime, because there's something nice about cemeteries at nighttime. I walked around for a long time looking at all the graves of famous actors, politicians and celebrities before I eventually found my way to the grave of Karl Marx. And I sat down, having done a good job, and I pulled a sandwich out of my rucksack. Mayo, alfalfa, bit of chicken. I was enjoying it. I was enjoying it for a good 10 minutes before I looked up and saw amidst billowing fog which is rising from the ground under the light of a full moon, a solitary figure, thin and gaunt, standing, looking at me with a black cape, which went right down to his shoes. Black clothes, black hair, back over a long, thin, sanguine face. You couldn't doubt the fashion sense. A vampire was watching me eat a sandwich. Now, I'm not an occultist. I'm not a superstitious guy. I'm very sensible. And so I did what non occultists, sensible people, would do under this scenario. I turned around and I ran away at full speed. Because sometimes you don't want to work things out. Sometimes it's life or death. And so I started running, and I got 10 meters before I moved. That would have made Fay Wray very impressed. Tripped over a tree root, ran sprawling on the dirt. I dropped my backpack, I dropped my torch, I turned around. The figure was coming towards me, gliding over the fog patiently. Cat, like I was terrified. Fight or fright? Definitely come down the side of flight. And I was moving at full speed like an Olympic athlete. And the thing about moving at full speed when you're scared blind and looking behind you at Nosferatu every three seconds is you're not really looking where you're going. And so when I hit that elm tree, I hit it hard. In the early 70s, a guy called Sean Manchester kicked up a bit of a stir when he claimed there was a Romanian vampire living in suburban London. And he eventually convinced a whole town of thousands of kids to march on Highgate looking for him, helping him in his Van Helsing style quest. And he was eventually locked up for desecration. The thing about concussions is you don't really think straight. They're strange things. And so while I was there, writhing on the ground in pain, and I hear the footsteps running up to me in a voice that was decidedly more London accent than Transylvanian accent, saying, oi, mate. It was just a joke. It was just a joke. I Responded by screaming at the top of my lungs, please don't eat me. To which he laughed, helped me up with a tattooed forearm, and gave me a toothless grin, and introduced himself as Arthur, one of England's 10,000, London's 10,000 homeless people. He'd been living in a tent by the side of the gate, which I'd jumped over for the last three or four years. And maybe it was the twilight craze, or the bad, or the true blood craze, or the fact that on the Google Maps website, Highgate Cemetery is captioned by the phrase reputedly haunted cemetery. But apparently kids found their way in there all the time, and after watching them stalk their way around, he decided to go to a joke shop and buy a Dracula outfit and scare the shit out of them. He'd actually been there in her 70s, dragged along by his sister and her boyfriend when these kids had stormed the graveyard. She died on his 22nd birthday. His parents had died a few years later, and he'd gotten to drugs, got into drinking, gambling, and had lots of debts. And then he moved around for years before eventually he found his way to the park, settled down. The cops didn't worry him anymore. It wasn't a great home, he said, but it was a good home. Somewhere to be himself, somewhere to have a bit of meaning. After all, it's not every day you get to be a legend. He walked me to the night bus, and we sat there, a teenager covered in mud and a guy dressed as Dracula, until the bus came and drove me home. I sort of forgot about it until then, until early this year when I saw that a group of occultists and amateur historians ran something called the Highgate Vampire Symposium, a London pub charging 12 pounds a ticket. And they concluded comprehensively that it was a hoax, there's no such thing as vampires, and that the cemetery is devoid of any undead presence. But there is a vampire in Highgate Cemetery. He smokes Marlboro Reds, has arm tattoos, has problems with his teeth. He likes a drink, and in a way, he'll live forever. Thank you.
- [16:02]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Matthew Day at an open mic store SLAM in Sydney, Australia. I asked Matt if he tried to see Arthur the man in the graveyard again, and he said yes. I remember circling back a week or so later, looking for his tent with three packs of cigarettes and a few pounds to say thanks for helping me get onto the bus safely. But Arthur's tent was gone. I never saw Arthur again. We would love to see you at an upcoming moth event. Go to themau.org and see the schedule and themes for our open mic story slams. We are now in many US cities and around the world. Up next, an activist is exiled from his home in Nigeria after coming out on national television.
- [16:59]
Christina Lamb
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX.
- [17:07]
Sarah Austin Janess
The moth is supported by Wix.com, the easiest way to create your own stunning website. With hundreds of flexible templates and easy drag and drop tools, you can get the website you've always wanted all on your own. You don't need to be a programmer or a designer to create something beautiful. Just just go to Wix w I X.com to create your own stunning website. Today, Wix. It's easy and free. This is the Moth Radio Hour from prx. I'm Sarah Austengeness. This episode is a love letter to England. Bisi Alimi, our next storyteller, lives in London and that's where he told this Moth story. He was born and raised in Nigeria, but he can't live there any longer. The following story tells you why the British government gave him a visa and now he's a British citizen. I met BC in a Moth community workshop where we crafted personal stories with global health experts from the developing world. BC was nostalgic afterwards.
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Bisi Alimi
As somebody who grew up in Africa and being told stories under the moonlight, I always have this feeling of childhood whenever I sit and listen to somebody telling their private story because it reminds me of how beautiful and how connected our lives are.
- [18:28]
Sarah Austin Janess
We'll hear more of that interview after his story. Now here's BC Alini live at the Mock in London.
- [18:45]
Bisi Alimi
As I sat on that chair in the hospital in Lagos, Nigeria, a lot of things was going through my head. First was what am I really doing here? This is not the kind of place that I would want to come to. The second is what could my best friend be doing in this kind of place? So I got lost in my thoughts, remembering that earlier in the day I'd got a call asking me to come down to the hospital. There's an emergency and I have to be there as soon as possible. And I was trying to understand what was going on. And while I was going through this terrorist, you know, lost in everything, I got a nudge and was the nurse and she said, oh, you can go in now. So I started this journey of three minutes that felt like three hours. And I opened the door and I saw lying on the bed a very skinny, emaciated, scaly skin human being. And as I approached the person on the bed, he turned around and he was my best friend. I met Ibrahim in the University of Lagos, where he was a year ahead of me studying sociology. And I was admitted into the university to study theater art. I'd always wanted to be an actor, so I was excited. I got into the university to study theater and Ibrahim happened to be a year younger than me. But because he was a year ahead of me in the university, he assumed the role of the big brother. And he believes that he has to show me what it is like to be in university. So we bonded immediately and we became so very close. Now that few weeks before I got that call, we were out celebrating the end of term and we. We were attending an underground gay party in Lagos where, you know, we got in, we were having so much fun. And few hours later we were drunk and I was using my beer bottle as a microphone. I love to sing. And I started singing out of tune. And before we knew what was happening, we were on top of the table, we were dancing and enjoying ourselves. And when we got back home, he had told me he has confided in me that for some time he's been feeling dizzy, having headache and feeling quite uncomfortable. But we made no notice of that. We went away on holiday. And then everything started coming back to me. And I saw him at that time lying on that bed, very skinny, his eyes really big in his very tiny skulls, his hands withered, his skin pale and scaly. And I could not believe that I was looking at my best friend I saw a few weeks ago. So I got a little bit emotional and I reached to touch him. And the nurses said, no, no, no, no, no, you can't just touch him. You have to wear your gloves and use face mask. And I was like, to touch my best friend, I have to wear a glove. And after wearing the glove, I sat next to him and he stretched out his hand, his very fragile, frail hand. And I held them firmly and he looked into my eyes and he said, BC I've got aids. And the doctor said, I've got few days left to live. I could not imagine one, how a gay man can get aids. You mean like I come from Nigeria, right? Where all HIV prevention messages are targeted at heterosexuals. In Nigeria, HIV and AIDS is what straight people have. Gay people don't have hiv, we don't have HIV simply because we were never considered as a group of people that we have hiv. Why? Because we don't exist. And if we try to exist, then we are in trouble. We either end up in jail or get beaten by the crowd. So it was basically that we were not there. And so I could not understand how my best friend, how he got HIV and then how he got aids. And I started crying. And all of a sudden the real Ibrahim came back and he said, bitch, why are you crazy? I was like, but you told me you're going to die. He said, yes, that's what he told me. I'm going to die. But I want you to promise me something, that you will get to know as many things as possible about hiv and you will get to get this message across to every of our friends. Because this is real and this is killing many of us now. Like I said earlier, I went to university to be an actor. I never wanted to be an activist. So how I was going to deal with his demand, I had no idea. But that day I left the hospital with all the emotions in the world. I was angry, I was upset, I was blaming myself for nothing. Everything was just going on. But I was determined that I was going to learn as much as I could about HIV and try to fulfill the promise I made to my best friend. So a few days later, I entered an Internet cafe and I started researching. And while I was there typing away, my best friend died. And as I was typing away, I was trying to research about hiv. Then suddenly it occurred to me that some of the symptoms are some of the things I personally have been experiencing. So the fear of the image of Ibrahim on the bed got so much to me that I pushed the fear or whatever I have at the back of my mind away. And I was determined that this is not about me, this is about Ibrahim. So I started researching, and I found an organization in Nigeria called Alliance Rights. I wrote them, they invited me, I started volunteering for them. And 18 months into volunteering, they asked me to join their staff, which I did. And then I became their program director. And with that comes the responsibility of trying to lobby the government to include men who have sex with men and gay men in HIV prevention in Nigeria. And just then, one day, I got an email from the organizer of the national HIV conference in Nigeria saying, you know, we want to talk about gay men now, so you come and talk to us about it. So I went to Abuja and I got in a panel. I talked. I shared the panel with, you know, sex workers, drug users, and representative of women, and we talked about hiv. But when I got up, I told the story of Ibrahim. But it wasn't just about Ibrahim. I told the story of so many of my Friends that I have lost to AIDS in Nigeria because we were made to be invisible. And when I finished, the Minister of Health, he got up to the podium and he looked at us and he said, well, it's time for you now to join us and let us work together to fight HIV and AIDS in Nigeria. Now believe me, Nigeria is a country where being gay, like I said earlier, means you go to jail. That's if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, it means you get beaten on the street, a tire around your neck, petrol poured on you and the match is gone and you're on fire. That's the price you have to pay. And there I have a government representative saying, you know what, come with us and come, let's work this together. So I felt this man is just trying to look good in public, so I'm not going to pay him so much attention. I went back to my normal day life, but something else happened on that day. When I came out of the talk, I was with my friends and they said, bisi, have you ever had HIV tests? And I said, no, I've never done HIV tests. And he said, would you like to do an HIV test? And I said, no, why do I have to do an HIV test? And they were able to pressure me so much so into trying to do the test in a very good way, in a very friendly way. So I agreed. I went into the booth, I did my tests, and few minutes later the doctor came out and looked right through me and he said, young man, I'm sorry to break this to you, but you've got hiv. And then I realized that just like my best friend, I am going to die soon. And that anger of the fact that I'm going to die with a fear also got to me to lock it off. I kept going. I went back to Lagos, I was still in university. And luckily few weeks later I went for an audition for a TV soap and I got the leading role. So I felt like, you know, there's still hope for me. And then I started acting and I became quite popular in Nigeria, quite famous. And with fame came media interest. This guy can't be as good as he seems. There must be something wrong with him. So we're going to go after him, we're going to find out what is wrong with him and we're going to make a lot out of it. Unfortunately, they were able to get pictures of me and my boyfriend, not in any compromising way. And I was threatened that they were going to publish my story. I'm just starting out in my career. I have a long year ahead of me, and just now I'm going to lose everything because of my sexuality. So what I did was there's a big show in Nigeria called New Dawn. Everybody in Nigeria will watch this show. It's a breakfast show, and it's like the biggest thing going on in that country. So I picked up my phone, I rang the producer, and I said, I've got an exclusive for you. And I said, what? I said, I would like to come out on your show. And they were really shocked. Like, come out as in. As I said, I want to come out as a gay man. A gay man in Nigeria. Come out. Are there any gay people in Nigeria at all? Yes, I said, yeah, there are, and I want to come out. And she took a risk on me. She invited me to the studio. And that day in October, I sat on the sofa and I talked about my sexuality. I talked about how I been struggling with it. I talked about so many other things. But one thing that was very important to me that day, considering the amount of work I have done around HIV prevention and then getting condom across to so many gay men in Nigeria, even when it's so hard to reach them in the underground and so many times being beaten up, you know, being arrested, was the fact that I sat on that chair that day talking about myself with the realization that I was actually fulfilling a promise to my best friend on his deathbed. But not only that, that for the first time in my life, I realized I was actually in control of my fate. I was actually in control of my future. I came out being the first openly gay man to come out on national television in Nigeria. A big price I have to pay, but one that I'm sure Ibrahim is having a big smile on his face now. Thank you.
- [32:16]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Bisi Aligni. The story took place in 2007, and the price Bisi paid was exile from Nigeria. The UK gave him refugee status for years and he was granted British citizenship in 2014. Here's more from B.C. about his story.
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Bisi Alimi
I really didn't want to remember the fact that I lost my best friend, but also the fact that I got diagnosed. I struggled a lot with it, and then I had the opportunity to tell it at the London main stage. What really happened was the feedback. It was just overwhelming. A lot of people invited me to come to schools and to come to universities to talk about this.
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Sarah Austin Janess
And tell us how you're feeling now, tell us how your health is now.
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Bisi Alimi
I'm doing amazing. Like, extremely well, you know, I'm on medication and my viral load is undetectable. It's not just about me now anymore. I think I've also developed more self confidence to do more work because, you know, I've come to realize that HIV is not the problem. HIV is a result of the problem. You know, the problem is stigma, discrimination and lack of knowledge around sexual orientation and gender identity.
- [33:42]
Sarah Austin Janess
After this Moth show, a woman came up to B.C. and she asked what he planned to do next. He told her he wanted to start a foundation dedicated to improving the lives of sexual and gender minorities in Nigeria. And she said, I can help you do that. And she did. To find out more about the BC Alimi foundation, go to themoth.org BC is still speaking out on sexual health and human rights, focusing on HIV prevention, treatment and international LGBT rights. Bisi says he still does all of this work in the name of his best friend, Ibrahim.
- [34:18]
Bisi Alimi
He's going to, you know, look down. I'm very sure of that. And he will say, yeah, I've not in any way disappointed him. If there's a chance that he can see me, he can hear me and he can feel what I've been doing, I'm very sure that he's very proud.
- [34:55]
Sarah Austin Janess
After the break, a story from a mother trapped in a ditch and under crossfire when the Moth Radio Hour continues.
- [35:04]
Christina Lamb
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the public radio exchange prx.
- [35:14]
Sarah Austin Janess
The Moth is supported by Parachute, an online bedding brand based in Venice Beach, California. Parachute has created a line of everyday bedding essentials, from sheets to comforters designed to give you superior sleep. Their sheets are luxurious and soft and come in a wide variety of colors. Moth listeners receive $25 off your first order by going to parachutehome.com moth and using code moth. That's parachutehome.com moth and enter moth for $25 off at checkout to start sleeping better today. You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from prx. I'm Sarah Austin. Janess. This hour is filled with stories of England and our last storyteller. Christina Lamb is one of Britain's leading war correspondents. She told this at a Moth night themed state of affairs. Here's Christina Lam live at the Moth.
- [36:14]
G
Good evening. In my wardrobe, where most women keep their little black dress, I keep something I call my war bag. In my war bag, I keep my flak jacket, my helmets, some boots and a medical kit not with band aid or Tylenol. But with tourniquet ties and Cilox powder which magically clots your blood if you get shot at or step on an ied. I also keep toys, children's toys that my son has given me or clothes that he's grown out of to give to kids that I might find it's all part of my strange double life. Being a mum and a war correspondent that sometimes leads to some extreme situations. In October 2007, for example, when I should have been at a school parents evening, I was on Benazir Bhutto's bus when it was blown up. Most extreme of all, however, was in June 2006 when I was in Helmand, Afghanistan. Back in the days, we were being told that Afghanistan was a reconstruction project, not a war. I'd been going to Afghanistan since 1987. It was my first story as a foreign correspondence. In those days, I didn't really know what a foreign correspondent did or needed. I just knew I wanted to be one. So I took something called the Flying Coach up to Peshawar in Pakistan and I had with me a case in which I had a big bag of wine gums, a copy of Kipling's Kim, my lucky pink stuffed rabbit and a trade bottle of Chanel no. 5 that a friend had given me. When I got off the flying coach in the old city of Pesha, dusk was just settling and all I could see was men, most of whom seemed to have guns. And everybody seemed to be trying to sell me something. So I got into a rickshaw and I asked him to take me to a cheap hotel. He took me to a place called Greens Hotel, which I later discovered was where arms dealers stayed. I discovered this because somebody tried to sell me a Chinese multi barrel rocket launcher at breakfast for a very cheap price. Apparently that first night in the hotel, I lay on my mattress and I looked out the window and I could see these mountains silhouetted in the distance. Beyond them lay Afghanistan. And I thought about all the people who'd invaded over the centuries. Alexander the Great, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan Baba, the first Mughal emperor, the British several times. And at that time, 1987, the Russians were there. I never imagined then that I would be back 20 years later covering troops from my own country. But. So it was in 2006 that I was embedded with British troops from the Parachute regiment, which we call the Paras. When they went into Helmand for the first time, they were the first combat troops that we sent in. And one day we were sent on a hearts and minds patrol to a village called Zumbale. And we set off. There were about 45 soldiers and me in 15 vehicles. And when we got near the village, we parked outside and we left the vehicles and the big guns and about 15 soldiers outside, and the rest of us walked in so that we wouldn't look threatening. And it was a kind of hot, sunny day, as it always is in Helmand, and it was a sort of picturesque part of Helmand, and everybody was in high spirits, almost as if we were going on a picnic. I was wearing my flak jacket, which has the word Press in big white letters across the front, which is supposed to indicate that I'm a member of the media. The British soldiers thought it was very funny to come up and press. When we got to the village, I noticed that there weren't many elders around. And it was also odd that nobody invited us for tea. Afghans are usually very hospitable, but I was with the elite of the British army, so it was kind of their show, not my show. And I did say to them, there don't seem to be many elders around. And the commander actually asked, and he was told, oh, the elders are at the mosque praying. Well, actually, later on, we discovered it wasn't prayer time. Anyway, we went and sat on this muddy bank with a few elders that were there, and the commander said to them, we've come at the invitation of your government to bring you development. I couldn't help thinking that that's probably what the Russians had said 20 years earlier. And then the commander said to the elder, are there any Taliban in your village? And he said, no. And then he just chatted a little bit. And then at the end of the conversation, the main elder said to us, if you go out of the village that way, as opposed to the way we'd come in this way, you'll find that there's a bridge over the canal and you won't need to jump over it. Well, that seemed rather good, because coming in, when we jumped, I actually fell in and got very muddy, much to the amusement of the soldiers. So we start going the way that he said. The commander says to me, well, that seemed to go well, didn't it? And I had my notebook out writing it down, and literally, as he said that, the first shots rang out and his radio crackled into life, and it was the guys that we'd left outside with the big guns, and they said, we've been ambushed. So we stopped to try and understand what was happening, and we could hear these shots going. And within a minute we were under fire, too, and somebody shouted, helmets on. Get down. Everybody just ran. And there are all these irrigation ditches. So we jumped into a ditch. And as I jumped, I dropped my notebook. Now, in 28 years of being a foreign correspondent, I have never lost a notebook. So I immediately started scrambling back up the trench to try and get the notebook back. As I did, an RPG came so close that the whoosh made the hairs on the back of my neck lift. So I left it and went back down. I sometimes wonder if the Taliban went through that notebook and thought, these are the secret British plans for Helmand. My husband says they wouldn't be able to read your writing. So we stayed in that trench, and there was all this firing going on. And then somebody shouted, we've got to get out of the trench. And I was like, no, it's fine in the trench. Everything's going over the top. And he said, no, we've got to get out. So they started getting out of this trench. And it was really scary coming out because there was a kind of earthwork over the top which made you very exposed as you came out. But literally, as we got out, there was suddenly a burst of orange flame and a mortar had landed in the ditch. So we got out and we started running. And for the next two and a half hours, we were under fire with Kalashnikov fire, RPGs, bullets sending up clods of earth everywhere. Sometimes it was deafening and blinding. And it was like really being in a First World War movie where we were just running through these muddy fields, jumping in ditches and trenches. My heart was just thudding against my chest, and my mouth was so dry because I dropped my water bottle when I dropped my notebook. And Helmond in the summer is about 120Fahrenheit, so it was so hot, and my breath was coming in these sort of short, rasping pants like an animal. And I just couldn't see how we were going to get out. But every time I thought I couldn't run anymore, the paratroopers were shouting at me to keep going. And to start with, I thought, okay, it's fine. I'm with the elite of the British army, the Parachute Regiment. They'll know what to do. Then I realized that they didn't look as though they thought we could get out. In fact, most of them were young enough to be my son. And I realized I'd been under fire, probably much more than they had at that point. And then at one point, the Sergeant Major Mick Borden, said to me, can you Use a pistol? And I said, what do you mean? And he said, we're going to probably have to fight for our lives. We'll be pinned down in these trenches. And can you use a pistol? So we were just, like, running, and everywhere there was all this firing going, and I just really couldn't see how we were going to get out. And the one thing that kept me going was I could see in my mind's eye a picture of a little boy with curly hair and big blue eyes the color of the sea, which was my son Lorenzo. And I had to get out for him that Sunday I was supposed to be hosting his seventh birthday party, a football party. And I just kept thinking about that, and I really, really didn't want to die in that muddy field in Helmand. But we just kept running. Firing was happening, and then at some point we'd run one direction. The firing would come that way, we'd run this way, it would come. We'd been totally surrounded, and you just couldn't see a way out. Later on, I talked to the commander who we'd all been split up, and he said to me that he was radioing headquarters and begging them for air support. And they said, there's nothing available. And he said, but I've got 45 people and a journalist. We're all going to get fucking rolled up here. And they said, no, there's so much fighting elsewhere because everything's been used up. So at that point, he realized that they would have to fight their way out. And it was pretty impressive how they did once they realized. And actually, the way we got out really was because the guys we'd left outside with the big guns managed to get out of their ambush. And they came along the ridge at the top, and they could see us down below, and they could see one particular group of about 10 to 15 Taliban. And so they trained their.50 caliber gun on that group and shot them. Afterwards, the fire support commander said to me, rather graphically, we turned them into pink mist. So we managed, because that group had been taken out, we managed to get onto open hillside, which the army liked better because then they could kind of see all around. I didn't like it. I preferred being in the trenches. The sergeant major, once we were on the open hillside, said for us to run across the hillside, but with big gaps between us so that they couldn't fix a target. I didn't like that. I wanted to stand by a soldier. So he shouted at me, this isn't fucking Club Med, you know. So eventually we Got out and at that point an Apache helicopter appeared, which the Taliban are scared of, the Hellfire missiles. So we managed to get back to our vehicles, but then it wasn't over because the commander said we can't go back to our camp because there's only one way back and the Taliban will know that we have to go back that way. So he said we'll have to go and camp in the desert for the night. So we went towards the desert and camped. And I'm not going to lie to you, being in war and surviving is exhilarating. And we were all in quite a high and I couldn't stop talking. In fact, we lay on the sand and under all the stars and I even forgot about the scorpions and the scary camel spiders, which are these sort of Martian like transparent spiders in Helmand which the soldiers used to collect and used to fight against each other. So we spent the night there. And then in the early hours of the next morning, an American pilot got in touch and said he could offer air support from his A10. So we started to leave, but even then it wasn't over because he said he'd only got fuel for 45 minutes, which is about the length of, of time for us to get back to camp. And when the commander started to try and drive his car out, it was stuck in the sand. So we were running out of time. Eventually we got the vehicle out and we just got back to camp as the fuel was running out. And it was really cool actually. As we went over the bridge into camp, the American A10 was dropping these white flares all around us as color, like kind of eggs dropping around. And so we managed to get in. And afterwards the British commander then said to him, thank you very much for that in a very British accent. When we got back to camp, I thought about what had happened. I thought about what had been odd about the village, which actually was there was no children. In Afghan villages, kids always come and ask for candy. I also thought about the fact that this was war, this wasn't reconstruction. And when I told my editor what had happened, he gave me five pages to fill, which was unprecedented for a story in the Sunday Times. I managed to get back to London on the Sunday just in time for the football party. So I went straight from Heathrow airport to Tesco's to buy ham and bread, to make sandwiches and then was in this park hosting this football party watching 26 and 7 year old boys running around. And I couldn't help thinking how weird it was that I was still covered in bruises and thorns and things from this ambush. In all my 20 years of being a foreign correspondent at that time I covered wars from Angola to Zimbabwe, from Iraq to to the West Bank. But that was the most terrifying experience that I'd had. Of course, a few weeks later I was on a plane again and a few years later the commander got married and his best man read some of my article out at his wedding speech. And as you know, the foreign troops, the British have left Helmand now, the Taliban mostly coming back into those places. Zombile has become a very notorious Taliban stronghold. And after having been told that we wouldn't fire a single shot in Afghanistan, the British actually ended up firing 46 million bullets in Helmand. Thank you.
- [51:51]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Christina Lam. Christina has written seven books, including the best selling I Am Malala with Malala Yousafzai, which was named nonfiction book of the Year in the British Book Awards. When we were working on this story with Christina, we asked her, why did you decide to go back after all that? She said, I felt that if I hadn't been there to see what happened, nobody would have known. If these stories make you think of a particular story you'd like to share, go to our website themoth.org or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-6684. The best pitches are developed at Moth shows all around the world. Listen again and share these stories or others from the Moth archive through our website or by using the Moth app, which is now available for iOS or Android. Android. We're also on Facebook and Twitter hemoth. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from the Moth.
- [53:12]
Christina Lamb
Your host this hour was Sarah on Austin Jeunesse. Sarah also directed the stories in the show with Kathryn Burns. Additional coaching in our community workshops by Larry Rosen. The rest of the Moth directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Whitney Jones. The Moth would like to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for their support of the Moth community program as well as Andrew Quinn and Rachel Rachel Stretcher from the Aspen Institute. Moth Stories Are True is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Tom Waits, Brad Meldow and Bonobo. You can find links to all the music we use at our website The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by prx. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth. Org.