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Sanam Welcome to If You Were In Charge, a podcast about people, power, and possibilities. I'm Sanam Naraghi-Adulini. And I'm Kavita Nandini Ramdas. Hi. Oh, Sanam, how are you? It's been such a horrific week. I've been watching all the, you know, what's happening inside Iran in terms of what is being hit. And 14 hospitals in the space of one week, nine schools, the Azadi Stadium, which my uncle had designed. Azadi means freedom. It's a football stadium. They've destroyed. I mean, it's, and then Kashan, which is my paternal family's kind of town. And my great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather built the Masjid al-Aqa, which is this beautiful mosque and school and a girls' school. And I was on a radio show for the BBC a couple of days ago with an Israeli journalist. And I said, you know, what we're seeing in Iran is a little bit like the Gaza playbook because they're hitting these civilian targets. And civilians. I mean, over 1,000 civilians have been killed. (.) And he went off on me, first of all, accusing me of being a regime apologist or a regime agent sitting in London, which I found so disgusting. It was extraordinary because it's this sense of entitlement about what they can do. And what I worry about is that the wheels are off. An escalation could lead to a Moab, you know, the mother of all bombs that Trump dropped on Afghanistan. I asked people about the question of a little, you know, a tiddly little nuke because, of course, now they call them tactical nukes. And my American colleagues are like, well, it's never happened before. I'm like, yeah, exactly. Like, did the Moab happen before it happened?
Kavita Ramdas Well, have nuclear weapons been used by anybody else other than the Americans ever in history?
Sanam It's like they're operating in the realm of something rational and what they know about. But I'm saying they're talking Armageddon and invoking God, both in America and in Israel with Amalek. Amalek, I think, yeah. You know, and then they're like, well, Trump is transactional. And, you know, what does that mean?
Kavita Ramdas There's nothing transactional about this. And I think, as you said, when we were talking earlier, Iran's efforts at trying to bring an end to or sort of to somehow cease economic activity is a desperate signal to say, can we bring this killing to an end? And can we have a discussion about a ceasefire? And I think there is no understanding. And in fact, what has been so distressing is the way media has been reporting this as though this was really actually a war, which is the same thing we saw in Gaza. So, you know, it's not just that we're seeing a repeat of Gaza in terms of the attacking of civilians, the fact that it was 150 little girls who are the first victims of this war.
Sanam It's not by accident. Apparently, it's quite possible that the targeting of that school, which was a deliberate targeting, was due to the fact that it was AI determining the targets.
Nancy Yamout Wow.
Sanam And that it was going off old information because apparently that site had been 10 years ago, had been part of a military something, yeah, like a station or something. The gravity of what's happening and the logic of escalation, which all sides have, because the Iranians, I would imagine, are trying to invoke as much economic cost, both to the region and to, you know, to force them to stop. Right. But the Israelis also want to escalate as much as they can, and the U.S. is going to be caught in a bind of they can't be seen to lose to a smaller power. So we need to reframe it as a win. And my brain, I mean, my creative brain is going in all sorts of bizarre political satire, because I think, I was thinking the other day, I was thinking, you killed Khamenei, you turned him into a martyr and an imam.
Kavita Ramdas And you forgot the whole story about how much martyrdom means in Shia Islam. I was like, great. Now you just did that overnight? You turned him into a martyr?
Sanam And it would have been so much better if these guys had been rounded up and arrested so that we could have court cases against them. But hey, who cares about rule of law? So that's one. Second thing is that the assembly of experts or the body that gets together in Iran to vote in the next supreme leader, there was some news that Mojtaba, his son, had been elected. Now, Mojtaba is despised and reviled in Iran. There's no way if the father had been alive, this guy would get it. But I'm looking at it and say, okay, so we now have the Khamenei dynasty, right? I mean, father to son, it's regime change, it's monarchy, can we just sort of say that to Trump and just stop, stop this whole thing? I mean, because the whole thing is so absurd. And then meanwhile, we have our monarchist cult. I mean, like literally the Pahlavi cult folks that were celebrating the assassination of Khamenei on the same day that all these little girls were killed and somehow justifying the death of the girls as its collateral damage. And it's because of those protesters. And I'm thinking, did the protesters die so that more little girls could be killed? Did the protesters die for the Golestan palace to be targeted? I am destroyed. (28 seconds pause)
Kavita Ramdas exercises. You have an American submarine torpedoing? Torpedoing. Do you know that a torpedo hasn't been used to sink a ship since 1944, since the end of the Second World War? And India, Modi hasn't said a word about this. And they didn't go to help them. And they didn't go to help them. It was little Sri Lanka, you know, which is not a naval power, which had the courage and decency to send ships to help the sailors who were just beyond belief.
Sanam I actually, I was following that. And again, the rules of engagement. So during World War Two, if a German submarine torpedoed an American or British ship, they would go and take the sailors and, you know, they take them as prisoners of war, whatever, but they would save them. Correct. The Americans left them. The Indians left them. The Sri Lankans go in. And I, because we work very closely, I have a Sri Lankan colleague, Visaka Dharmadasa, who started the Association of Missing Servicemen. So this is very close to her heart.
Kavita Ramdas Yeah, exactly.
Sanam So I contacted her and said, is there any way of, you know, contacting the Navy just to thank them?
Maya Yamout Yeah.
Sanam And so I sent them a message to say, thank you. Thank you for... Oh, I'm so glad, Sana. ...abiding by the humanity and decency. And the rule of law. And they just also gave safe passage to another ship.
Kavita Ramdas Two ships that were invited. And this is what I'm saying, the powers that have the most resources. India has been sort of positioning itself as a great naval power in the Indian Ocean region. And we're now in this awful place where it's not willing to even abide by the most basic agreements of decency. And what we would call South Asian hospitality, even by hospitality rules, it is embarrassing.
Sanam It's that alignment of, you know, what in our, again, in my work, we call them the extremisms, right? Like, it's these identity-based... So you've got your white Christian supremacy stuff in the States. You've got your Hindu nationalism with Modi. You've got your extreme Zionism with Israel. And then the irony is that in the Iranian context, it's now Pahlavi and the Migha guys. I mean, it's the same playbook that they've used. But it's this bizarre fervor. And with it comes justifying inhumanity, right? Like, somehow we are better than the others. But they're all aligning with each other in a really dangerous way. And so I'm like, yes, thank you, Sri Lanka, for actually being humane and decent. Thank you, Nordic countries, you know, Norway and Sweden, for saying this is against the law. And Spain, Pedro. Everybody loves Pedro these days.
Kavita Ramdas Finally, somebody to show some courage and some sort of... But the truth is, is that it's really what we were all saying during the time that we were watching Gaza being obliterated, which, by the way, is continuing. And that is very conveniently off all media, just like the Epstein files. Sanam, I can't believe that barely a week ago, you and I were talking about the Dirty Old Man's Club. And now the Dirty Old Man's Club has decided that it didn't want its underwear on display and has now gone to war. And actually... Or a crusade, as Mr. Hegseth calls it.
Sanam They have now publicized. Yeah, they've publicized the documents that implicate Trump in the abuse of a 13-year-old girl, right? It's there. But as you say, nothing is being done. Meanwhile, in Congress, they go in to vote to, you know, about war acts. But the War Powers Act, which is what it's called. The vote is lost, right? So it means that the Americans are allowed to go to war. But they come out and they say, well, no, no, this has got nothing to do with going to war because we're not at war. They literally say, we're not at war right now. This is a limited operation. And I'm like, where is George Orwell? Where is he to help us understand this propaganda and nonsense?
Kavita Ramdas Yeah, I mean, we are now in a weird moment also, I think, politically, because you have the extreme right wing of what we thought was the MAGA, you know, make America great again. Marjorie Taylor Greene saying it's now become MAGA. And interestingly, she doesn't mean make Iran great again. She means make Israel great again. So that has been a whole fascinating thing. And she now wants Tucker Carlson to run for president. (..)
Sanam Well, I tell you, I have to say, I called Tucker as running for president when he left Fox and started his show because I was like, he has the audience, he has the name. And he's been very brave in what he says. As for Marjorie, if she ever listens to this podcast, I'm like, you have an open invitation because, you know, when she first came on the political scene, we all thought she was crazy. She was she was the leader of QAnon, which was saying there's sex trafficking and, you know, horrible things being done to children. And we were saying, what are these crazy people saying? Turns out it's all true. The geography was wrong. It wasn't in D.C. It was in New York, right? So it's a pizza shop in D.C. This week, I saw that she she tweeted saying the division in America isn't between left and right. It is between those who want to spend our money fighting Israel's wars and those who want health care.
Kavita Ramdas Bingo, thank you. That is thank you. We are you are absolutely right. We are on the same side of this argument. If you had told me I'd be singing the praises of Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, even a month ago, you, you know, I truly.
Sanam You know, this is why I would never fit into a political party because I'm like, whatever is the right thing to say and where's where's the integrity? And frankly, on this story of Iran and this question of the fear of escalation and everything, I keep saying, I hope to God I am wrong. Like, I pray that that anything that I'm saying about what could happen, all of it is untrue. And I'm just being crazy. But the point is, we've seen it all before. We've seen it all before.
Kavita Ramdas We have seen it all before. And I think I have been feeling particularly low this week because, you know how I think it's hard for people who haven't spent their whole lives working in international spaces where, our family becomes extended over borders that we didn't even, you can't even imagine. And you heard the very tragic news about my friend Yanar Mohamed, who was assassinated on a Baghdad street. I'm so sorry. In front of her home. And it happened two days after Khomeini was assassinated. And there's a lot of speculation, probably accurate speculation. I mean, she had had death threats for years. But she was the one who said, you know, the United States is claiming they're coming to liberate Iraq. This was in 2003. And she said, let's call this what it is. This is not a war. This is an invasion. And she also reminded people that when the Americans were saying, well, you know, the women of Iraq will be liberated. This whole irony of sort of, we're doing this for the women of Iraq. She pointed out, I remember at the time, she said, you know, you might not like Saddam and he's absolutely a dictator. But women in Iraq have better protections under law in terms of gender equality than any other Arab country. So it's really quite ironic that this woman now lies dead on a Baghdad street because Shia militia, most likely, who the U.S. supported against Saddam Hussein, took her life.
Sanam We are also hearing from our Iraqi colleagues that the environment is becoming incredibly tough for women's rights activists. And again, we warned about this going back to the Taliban in Afghanistan, especially in terms of women's rights. But you're absolutely right. And I'm so, so sorry. //S01: Thank you.// My condolences.
Kavita Ramdas I mean, our condolences for our movements, for all of us who are trying to do this work. I mean, you know this, Sanam, in the work that you do with peacekeepers, with peace wagers all over the world. The women who take on this challenge of trying to speak truth to power and trying to keep peace in the space of, you know, escalation of conflict are taking on a very huge risk.
Sanam We know that. What's extraordinary for me at the moment is that we saw the playbook, as you said, with Iraq. We saw it with Afghanistan, right? And the Americans trying to claim they were going to go and liberate Afghan women. And 20 years, you know, and they never listened to the Afghan women and handed them over to the Taliban. I saw, again, in the States, some senators standing outside of, you know, Congress saying, look at the picture of Iranian women then and look at now. And I just, again, I was back on Twitter saying, don't you dare, don't you dare try to use us. Because not only women have been fighting their fight going back 100 years in Iran. They were part of the constitutional revolution. They were part of the, during the Shah's era, during this era. But they're also, even under this regime, we have 70, 80% of our students are women in the sciences, in the nuclear space, in, you know, as pilots, as in all sorts of jobs. So, how dare you use us? And, of course, what we're also going to see is that with this war, all the opposition that has been forming in Iran, that's been indigenous and homegrown, when you have an external attack, like in any other country, any other country, when you have homegrown opposition and you're faced with an external attack, the homegrown opposition is completely silenced because it becomes about national betrayal. So, this is not about democracy. This is not about helping the local voices. It never was. And there's been a bait and switch, I think, with Iranians, which I've been observing, because they waged the 12-day war, almost as if to say to people, well, you know, this is what war feels like. It's not too bad. It's okay when we come again. Literally, right? And so, this time around, people were like, oh, great, the Americans are coming. And the first night, there were celebrations. Where are the celebrations now? Of course, there are not going to be celebrations when everything is, you know, beginning to get shut down and people begin to get the news. They don't necessarily hear all the news internally of what's going on. But they know that something pretty bad is happening. And it's like the bait and switch, which is, it's now too late, right? It's the damage. For a lot of people, the damage has been done. And I'm thinking, where are the monarchists? And where's Mr. Pallavi, who's declared himself the leader of the transition, by the way? (..) I mean, it's like a bad joke. It's like a...
Kavita Ramdas The hubris is really quite, you know, telling. I mean, ah.
Sanam So, you know, one of the other things which is really worrying, again, which we had always predicted, was that the Americans were somehow going to try and amass some ragtag mix of mercenary forces to be the boots on the ground. You know, they weren't going to send their own boots. So, we're hearing news about the Kurds. Now, the Syrian Kurds and the Iraqi Kurds are saying, keep us out of this. As Iranians, we are Iranian and then whatever ethnicity. So, I was with family last night who are actually Kurds. And they're like, you know, don't put this on us. But you just don't know. And part of the problem, I think, is that in these situations, whether it's Iraq or whether it's in Iran right now, when you get to this point of economic desperation, it's very easy for people, especially young men, to be lured into fighting and arms and joining. And again, the radicalization one way or another, including from the other side, right? And including in Iran, radicalizing to fight the enemy. And all of these guys, you know, the forces, to me, they're all forces of extremism. And we've seen it. We saw it with ISIS. We're seeing it with far-right movements in the States. You know, in India, you have the various militias. And at the end of it, they are all, so many of them are just lost young men. So many. Have not been given opportunities. So, anyway, listen, it was lovely, lovely to chat. And let's listen to Maya and Nancy and talk to you soon. (.) Maya and Nancy Yamut. They are two sisters, trained social workers and psychologists. They run an amazing little organization in Lebanon called Rescue Me. They are partners of ICANNs. And they do extraordinary work in de-radicalization and rehabilitation of people who have been charged with terrorism, many of them young men. And they work in the prisons, but also in the communities with their families, as well as with the families of victims. So, I hope that this conversation is interesting and inspiring. (......) Okay.
Kavita Ramdas Hello, everybody.
Sanam Hello. Very excited because today I have two old friends and colleagues, Nancy and Maya Yamut. And you ladies run an organization called Rescue Me in Lebanon. And tell us, what is it that you do? What keeps you up at night? And what gets you up in the morning? What's your work?
Maya Yamout So, I am Maya. I will start from the beginning. I was doing social work. And Nancy, she was still studying translation. And Nancy, she said, I wish I can join you in our class. So, I took her papers and I submitted it to the university. Many incidents happened in that year, which is in 2011, that terrorism started to show up. Terrorism. Terrorism in Lebanon and in Syria, because the revolution happened in Syria in 2011. Small groups came out called Nusra and ISIS-Nusra. Nancy, can you tell what caught your attention?
Nancy Yamout So, if I want to answer Sanam's question, what keeps me up, how we are driven, most of my projects and my life is when I'm among people. People inspire me. So, I was inspired by my sis because I was watching her doing something where we were working in Nahril Barrett camp with an international NGO. But every time I go among people, I ask questions. We're, like, talking. Like, we have people who are playing chess in front of their shops and who's winning and who is doing what. So, you're nosy. I'm very nosy. //S00: You're very nosy.// I'm dyslexic. I like to see the big picture. (..) So, the first program, to be honest, that started about extremism is program Al-Munasaha, which is started in Riyadh.
Maya Yamout Nancy, she said, how interesting this prince, that he put his title aside. Yeah, what did this guy do? What did he do?
Nancy Yamout So, what he did is he bought an 18-year-old extremist and sat with him in a fancy office and he was talking to him. He said, how can I talk to you? So, the 18-year-old thought, I don't talk to an atheist. So, what he said to himself, he said he put his ministry title aside. He put his being a prince aside. He put his ego aside. And he said, I want to go to the bottom of it. (.) Why this 18-year-old has become a, is killing people. So, how can I, he said, how can I become a Muslim? (.) According to this young man. According to this young man. So, the young man said, say, (..) So, he did and he started from there. He went to the world of the extremist and he brought him back to what is reality. Because sometimes they don't distinguish what is fantasy and reality.
Sanam So, meanwhile, you guys, this is a prince who's doing this in Riyadh with all the power and privilege and protection. //S03: And the minister also. //S02: And the minister.//
Okay. And it's a government policy. Yes.
Maya Yamout You two are two, at that time, very young Lebanese women. A personal thing happened and Nancy, she comforted me, which is in the same class of my high school. One of the students, he is a Sunni converted to Shia and joined Hezbollah. Wow. Another person from the same environment, from the same community, joined ISIS. Both of them went to Asal al-Warid in Syria and they killed each other. These are ex-classmates.
Sanam Yes.
Maya Yamout One of them is classmate and someone, like, he's from the same neighborhood. He was in the same school, then he moved to another school. So, one working with Hezbollah and one working for ISIS. And they killed each other in Asal al-Warid. And the funny part is, I was watching the news and I told Nancy, I know this guy. And I called my friend. Back then, I used to work in the Lebanese parliament as a consultant. So, we have very connections with the media. Yeah. And the video came to me that the friend from the community decapitating my friend. We used to share sandwiches and he used to leave my cucumbers. He told me, you are very healthy and he used to eat my sandwiches. (.) He's a chubby person. And I said to myself...
Kavita Ramdas How can this be happening?
Maya Yamout And as if the humanity being stripped, I collapsed that day when they killed each other, Sanam. Should I go to the funeral? But there were symptoms. Yes. That I was very young at that age. I was denying it, that he's not an extremist. No, the science showed up. We used to have a coffee every Saturday in Starbucks. And we started to see the signs that he became more Islamist, more extremist. And I said, what's wrong with you? Since when? Since when you change like this? Like, we fight for tabouleh and hummus. About women. I'll talk about men. What's wrong with the dating and stuff like that. And when I received this incident, I shed in tears. And I said, why? He has no divorce in the family. Financially, he's totally stable. He was in one of the best universities in Beirut. What is the cause? Nancy, she told me, listen, I watched Mohamed Naif, the documentary about it. I said, we need to go to the prisons. And the journey started from there.
Sanam So to go to the prisons to find others like this? Why?
Nancy Yamout To understand why they are going. Why a person who comes from a good family dynamics, but then you realize that the mom was pushing him to go. You have other peers that's pushing. And if we interviewed more, we will learn more. So we ended up, after 15, 16 years, we ended up interviewing more than 200 people. So it wasn't easy. People think that 215 years is a small number. But for them, prisoners and ex-terrorists to trust us, it took a lot of time.
Sanam So take us through this moment of how does somebody pitch up in front of a prison and say, hello, excuse me, I want to come and not only interview your inmates, but I want to interview the ones that have been charged with terrorism. I mean, this label.
Maya Yamout The moment my two friends got killed, I spoke with the dean of social work, bless her. Her name is Dr. Huda Sleem. She said, we need to know why. (.) She signed the paper without waiting for the committee. (.) She didn't even blink or speak with the president or anything. She signed it. But she told us, every time you go to the prison, please call me. And before you leave the prison, please call me. And this is what really happened because she was, every day she was praying for us. She said, we need to know. And at the same time, I'm playing with fire.
Nancy Yamout So let me explain about prison. It's like a Pentagon shape with the five buildings. So the internal security forces of Lebanon, they put all the Islamist, meaning all extremist terrorists, they put them in one building.
Sanam And this is Shia, whether they're Hezbollah or Al-Nusra? No, only Sunni.
Nancy Yamout No, only Sunnis, ISIS, Qaeda, Islam, all. While the ones who cause problems from Shia, they put them in another building because they will kill each other, and which they did before.
Maya Yamout And Maya took her papers before then, I.
Nancy Yamout And Maya, when she went to the Block B, which is all the Islamists are there,
Maya Yamout Maya start with, I spoke with a warden and I told him, I need to, can you introduce me to one extremist? And I said, yes, sure. So they, I'm going to stop you there.
Sanam What, so you are five foot two. Yeah. You have blonde hair. Yes. What were you dressed, like, how did you look?
Maya Yamout Beforehand I go to the prison, we read a book about what I'm going to expect inside the prison. //S03: Especially Rumi prison.// Especially Block B, you know, and I read a lot about it. I watched a lot of videos. I prepared myself. So, in, also, in social work ethics and codes of dressing, that we not provoke them. We need to understand their environment, and we're not allowed to use any religion or politics. Some, some social workers, if they use this method with different countries, we respect that. But in our country, we find it very suitable and easy to, uh, reporting with them. What I have done, I wear a t-shirt with a long sleeve, uh, jacket, very thin, because it was very hot in that days, and a scarf. But they know that I'm not wearing hijab, and they would ask me if I do wear hijab. I told them, no. And they're asking, why are you putting scarf? I told them, because I'm respecting you, because I'm coming to their environment. Did they ask about your religion?
Kavita Ramdas Yes. Because I know in Lebanon, there are so many different religions, and all of you manage in this very complex. Not religion, also sect.
Nancy Yamout Yeah. If I was, if we were Shia, we weren't allowed to go inside. Exactly. So, because we are Sunni, and our family names is known, by the way, even if we, um, we didn't tell them our name, they will know it.
Maya Yamout Mm-hmm.
Nancy Yamout They, they're well connected.
Sanam So, okay, so you're going in, and you're saying, yeah, I'm coming in to look.
Maya Yamout So, I came, and I spoke with the warden, and they were, like, uncomfortable, because I'm a woman. And I said, Maya, look, you're a beautiful Barbie inside the prison, so we need to put more guards for you. And I said, don't make fuss about it. It will cause me more tension with the prisoner. He said, well, put me one guard. Anyway, so he introduced me to this prisoner. He's, like, half burned, and he came to me, and I said, what do you want? I told him, listen, I'm a student, first-year master's, I'm studying people who are accused, and I said terrorist. //S03: Accused.// Yes. In terrorism. And I want to know their story, why they end up in the prison. And I said, what is your story? (.) And he said, I'm beyond terrorism. I told him, nothing beyond terrorism. And he said, I'm a student of Osama Bin Laden. So the first reaction, he said, stop it. You know, Osama Bin Laden, you know, no, no. The security guard, he looking at me, and he said, he is. He is, like, Osama Bin Laden, the 11th of September, you know. And I said, yes. (.) And I said, okay, can I have, do an interview with you? And he said, I'm not in the mood. (..) Okay. And he said, come tomorrow at 9. I told him, okay. So the next day I came, I wore, you know, my hijab, and I said, and he brought with him this coffee, and he poured me some coffee, and he poured himself some coffee, and he was testing me. Back then, back then, I was 23, I don't like coffee. So I drank it, I spit it, I said, where is the sugar? And I said, bring the sugar. He said, I thought if you didn't drink it, he said, you're afraid to put poison on it. Oh, okay, yeah. And I told him, listen, if you want to hurt me, you're not waiting for the coffee. Okay. So this prisoner introduced us to two, and the snowballing happened, because they would start to tell each other. Our master's degree, we did, interviewed 20. Then we created Rescue Me, and we started to work inside the prison for years.
Sanam So what was their story?
Nancy Yamout You know, I remember when that person, that extremist said, okay, Nancy, you know how to drag the snake out of the hole. Or you know to drag the snake out of the hole. Because even, I can let them relax so they can give their stories. So they had many stories, but, and if you go through all their childhood story, you can see there's a problem with the family dynamics. There is, like, seven type of families, like the neglectful, the abandonment, the narcissistic, the perfectionist, the criticizing, the passive. But we realize, Maya and I, like, we have abandonment or neglectful father or a perfectionist criticizing mom. (.) Consistently. Consistently. Consistently, or sometimes passive. Like, she, I don't have any strength, so I throw it to my husband, the responsibility. Oh, I will not say, ask your father. As if, if the father beats up the child, she will not stand up and defend him. So you can, sometimes you see lawyers that they had problems with their fathers and their mother didn't beat them all the way around. //S00: So they become defending.//
Sanam They become lawyers.
Nancy Yamout Or peace builders. //S03: Or peace builders. Yes.//
Kavita Ramdas They want to defend. This is the first reaction. Also a lesson, Nancy and Maya, that we have in the space of feminist work, because victims of domestic violence grow up to be one of two things. Either they grow up to be abusers because they don't want to be abused, or they end up in situations where they are again abused.
Nancy Yamout The thing is, Freud spoke about it, that you imitate your parents. Either you become like them or you become totally not like them. You go to the other direction. So he spoke about it, but your subconscious will try to tell you what to do.
Sanam In a lot of the work that at ICANN, we see our partners do, they talk about this question of neglect. And then how a lot of these, often men, but also the women, get drawn in by the local sheikh or the mullah or somebody or a peer, maybe a cousin or a friend who becomes the first sort of point of contact to pull them in. And it's a trusted source. Like, it's somebody that you care about and love, and it's almost like grooming. Is that an experience that you guys witnessed with these people?
Nancy Yamout I'm a fan of the psychiatrist who passed away. Her name is Nawal Saadawi. She's an Egyptian psychiatrist. She said a very interesting... She's one of my favorites. She spoke about obedience. So we are a nation, especially in the Middle East. I cannot say, it's hasty generalization, but we are raised on obedience. We are always following the imam. We are always following the khalifa. We are always following someone, the leader. We are not allowed to have critical thinking. It's not there. I'm learning critical thinking here in London, but it's never in my country. We are not allowed. It's only descriptive. So that child will obey the mother. The mother will obey the father. The father will obey the sheikh. The mayor goes to the member. of parliament, and so on. It's the obedience chain. So the thing is, I'm not happy with that type of obedience, but I go to another type of obedience. However, Dr. Amal Kourami spoke to me. She told me, Nancy, why women in Tunisia, they had domestic violence, but they go to ISIS? I told her, if Freud was saying this, so sometimes we choose another family, more violent family, but different role. I'm a different role that I'm not a scapegoat of the family. I'm not a black sheep of the family. So I am more violent. I'm repeating that. I'm having more revenge and different role.
Sanam And it's interesting you say this because there was an American woman who many years ago we interviewed, and she had been raped as a young girl, 14. And she'd taken that anger, became involved in punk music, but then through that had gotten involved in neo-Nazi work and the white supremacist movements. And in those movements, she was always one of very few women, and she would become the girlfriend of the big guy, and he would beat her. Like, there was a lot of violence, but she felt that she had power, and we were asking her, and she said it's about adjacency to power.
Nancy Yamout Exactly. So because they didn't have power in their own family dynamics, they go and have a power and leadership and money, and you have a role.
Sanam So you're getting to know these guys, you're interviewing them, you're getting, you know, you're building some affinity and trust with them, right? Yes. And empathy also? Does empathy come into it? Of course, as a human being.
Maya Yamout In the end, you're a human being. Sympathy and empathy always plays a role as a human being.
Sanam Did you ever find out?
Nancy Yamout Some of them regretted what they had done.
Sanam I was going to say, did you find out what they did, and how did that?
Nancy Yamout One of them, he put the bombardment from the bus.
Maya Yamout Tell him, Maya, what you did with him. So I had a very interesting case. I did therapy intervention for social work to help this extremist to go back. //S03: Rehabilitation.// Rehabilitation. And he still had very high guilt. What he had done, he was 17, and somebody, you know, brainwashed him, and he said, this bomb is just a sound bomb. And he can put it in the bus and makes a huge sound. It scares the people. He thought it was a sound bomb. It was a real bomb. And actually, and the bus blew up, and he killed a baby. Oh. He didn't sleep, by the way. He couldn't sleep. And he said it was intentional to scare the people, not to hurt any from the Lebanese army or from the community. But I killed a baby. I said, I'm a murderer. So I told him, there is a Mahatma Gandhi story that really moved me. Somebody, he was Hindu. They invade a village, and they killed a Muslim family. //S03: That's right.// And he said, I killed a baby. I didn't mean to. He was, like, a gruesome act to have done with this village. And then he said, try to adopt a baby, a Muslim baby, and not to really change the religion and accept him the way it is. Raise him up. Let him go to school. I printed and translated into Arabic. I told the story to this young prisoner, and he shed in tears. //S01: The story?// Yes. And he shed in tears. He put it in his wall. The next day, he talked with all the prisoners, and he told them about his story, whether he felt guilty. He collected maybe $2,000, $3,000, which is a really big amount, and he gave it to orphanage. He adopted a child.
Kavita Ramdas Wow.
Nancy Yamout Yeah. We don't have adoption in Islam, but we have, like, you are, you can... You can become the guardian. Yes. The guardian of porn.
Sanam So this, he was... When you interviewed him, he was 17 years old, or he was older by this point?
Maya Yamout He was, like, 24. Right now, he is 30. He's my age. He's going to be released soon. He's really well-behaved. But at first, he used to bring a wooden stick. He wants to abuse me at first. Yes, yes, yes. They would allow him a wooden stick in prison? No. Inside the prison back then, Sanam, it was, like, loose with security, and they can't control it because the amount of the prisoners is higher than the security itself. So they don't want to provoke the prisoner. And at the same time, the guards... And what happened is, some guards got kidnapped inside the prison, which is...
Kavita Ramdas Maya, I have to ask you both. How did your parents... I mean, I'm going off for a second, but both Sanam and I are the mothers of daughters. We are the mothers of daughters. How did your parents respond to your... It sounded like you were convinced that this is what you were going to do, and you had the support of your teacher in the university. How did you convince your parents in a society, like you said, which is so authoritarian-based, and where everybody obediently obese?
Nancy Yamout My mom told me, why you are learning, go get married, why do you want to put the certificate on the wall, another certificate, another degree, why go get married, and I want to see the picture of you and your husband here. (..) Like, any Middle Eastern mom, we need... I need to learn cooking skills. But she said, okay, you can go to prison. I support that, fine, you're good, but go and fetch a husband. From prison. From prison. (....)
Kavita Ramdas But on that, you both failed.
Maya Yamout We both failed badly. We failed. You know, the funny part is, I know how to speak with the prisoners, so I don't know how to speak with a man. Or academics. It's just, I can speak with academics, so, but... So, okay, so, again, this story of this one young man who...
Sanam You knew what he did, he felt guilty, you helped him somehow have some moment of restorative sense and give back. So, he...
Maya Yamout Is that the same for all of them? I mean, do people... Some of them, they regret. Some of them, they don't. Some of them, they take more time. The idea of prison is to sit with yourself and calculate what you have done. Maybe a movie, maybe a friend can help you to move on and to regret. And to move on with their life. And their story should be a lesson learned for other young generation.
Sanam And also, again, in all of our work, we've always promoted the idea that it's not enough just to be against something. Like, you want to prevent terrorism or violent extremism, but these people are being drawn because they have grievances or aspirations. So, you need to... And they're being given belonging or purpose or some other value, right?
Maya Yamout This guy, he was searching for sense of belonging. When I spoke with him that he had an issue with his dad, that he used to really abuse him. And he said, Maya, I was joining because I had sense of belonging. And he dropped school because he was dyslexic. Now, when I told him the other story, like, somebody have this similar story that he didn't felt alone. That the guilt is not only for him. //S03: Many people have feeling guilty.//
Nancy Yamout So, when I met an 18-year-old who beheaded a Lebanese soldier, he showed redemption and he was diagnosed with a psychiatrist that he has borderline personality disorder. He likes philosophy. We taught him books like Sophie's World and introductory. He said, when he was 16, his father went to Africa. Then, after a year, his mom went to Africa, leaving him. He went to his cousin and his uncle, who are extremists. And he joined the group to have this sense of belonging.
Sanam Yeah. So, you're seeing that this whole, the gamut of the ones who have the borderline personalities, the ones who have these other social problems. Did you ever, I mean, if someone is listening to this, or if it's the family of the young man who was beheaded, or the family of the baby, did you ever also close the circle of figuring out who the victims were? I mean, is that part of your work, or how does that? I can fund it big time, this concept.
Nancy Yamout Oh, really? Yes.
Sanam We trust you guys. Yeah, yeah. We trust you guys.
Nancy Yamout That's exactly. So, Maya started with the idea, with King's College, that we need to put the families of the prisoners, who their sons and fathers are accused or terrorists, and they are imprisoned with, whom they kidnapped and killed from the internal security forces, and put them together together, and do mediation. As usual, I can always fund our craziness. (...) But that craziness, that we were afraid, and we were terrified at that moment, when we put those people together. And guess what? They said, oh, you're a mom. I'm a mom. And they start crying. And they started, okay, because media always shows you that those people are without mercy. Those people are harsh. That day, they cried a lot. They ate together, and they tried to see who was benefiting from this. It was, unfortunately, the bigger umbrella of politicians and people who like to put things.
Maya Yamout I need to add something. I still remember when I spoke with both mothers from the prisoner's side, who did the crime, and the victim's side. Both of them said, who do you blame? And both of them from the same environment said, environment. And I said, what does it mean, environment? They said, school, social services, sense of belonging. We didn't heal from the civil war. The trauma of the war.
Nancy Yamout The trauma of the civil war.
Maya Yamout Although they are the same religion, they said, but it did still, the echo of revenge and hate still going on between us. And the complex trauma is still there.
Sanam Our cultural DNA. //S02: Yes.// Like there's, you know, I, my connection to 2,000 years of Iranian history are limited, really. Epigenetics.
Kavita Ramdas But it's almost like those values, those attitudes. It is epigenetics. That's what Rana studies. Rana Dajani is a, is a professor. //S01: I know Rana Dajani.//
Nancy Yamout She's amazing. Rana is, is an amazing lady.
Maya Yamout I was literally with the University of UCL. And they're, they're launching a book about violence and suffering like that. I asked the writer, his doctor write something, ask why violence is interesting for many people and why peace is boring.
Sanam And what did they say?
Maya Yamout They have, he didn't give me a good, good answer. And why the publicity all about, uh, about, uh, the criminals. If you can go to Netflix or go to a prime, uh, prime TV or whatever it is. Because everybody knows Ted Bundy and who decapitated James Foley. //S01: Yeah.// Okay. Everybody interested. Not James Foley, the murder. Yeah. So this is, uh, the, the, the idea of accountability and what's, what's really, what's really going on. It's, it's, uh, for the victims is always nothing.
Nancy Yamout If you remember Alfred Hedgecock, who, who started Psycho and he started the, the movies of crimes and people were fascinated about, uh, crimes. Nobody is fascinated about peace. They watch Malala, the stories, they watch the documentary, but it doesn't have that huge impact. That Psycho from Alfred Hedgecock is still there.
Kavita Ramdas Yes. Actually, I was going to ask you both, um, what is a favorite movie, uh, that either of you might have that you would say actually does tell the story from the perspective of Rescue Me? it really has a perspective that you would say, yes, this is something that brings the we forward, brings this build, this bridge building or community building together.
Nancy Yamout There are no movies. There's no movies, but I'm always fascinated about Silence of the Lambs. And especially when one of the extremists came and was frying fish with our mom. And I was, what do you mean he was frying fish with your mom?
Maya Yamout So the guy of the first, for the first case, Nancy, tell him, tell them the story.
Nancy Yamout So we forgot our keys and we were having a quick meeting somewhere in a cafe near us. And we went back and I was knocking the door and waiting for my mom to open the door. Then I realized that, oh my God, the, the Kaida guy from prison, he's opening us. He'd been freed by this part.
Maya Yamout Yes, yes, he was freed and he was freed and he said, okay, welcome. I got fish and he got the most expensive fish, by the way. And how did he know where he lived? I told him, ah, you're here. How did you know our house? I said, I spoke with the mayor, said, hey, do you know Maya and Nancy? Yes, they live here. So, and we were very well known that we always, you know, care about our community. He was, he was, have good intentions, the mayor. I know him, I know him. And he said, ah, they live here, facing this building. (.)
Nancy Yamout And, and he just went to there and. And my mom, okay, you're a friend of Nancy and Maya.
Maya Yamout You're most welcome. You're the man. //S02: You're the man.//
Nancy Yamout And, and the thing is, when he was, was, when my mom was frying fish, is he frying my mom? Is it a Hannibal Lecter moment? And I said, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And then my mom comes to him and say, my darling, why you burnt your face and your, your, your hands? And I was thinking, oh my God, he was launching a rocket to hit the Apache in Kabul, but backfired on him and it didn't go. And Maya said, oh no, no, he was opening a gas tank and it didn't go well. (.)
Maya Yamout And, and, and, and, but, but the moment, but can you imagine the moment? I, I felt like a ice bucket challenge on my shoulders. Did you, did you finally tell your mom after he left? //S01: No, no, no. I didn't tell her.// I don't want to scare her until.
Kavita Ramdas Now she's going to listen to our podcast and have a heart attack.
Maya Yamout She mainly use it, the, the WhatsApp. She's anti-technology. So the moment he left the country, I told her mom, do not open the door to anybody. Even they said, until like, even I said that to friends with Maya and Nancy and said, why? I thought, because the last time he was an ex-prisoner, well, he's a freed prisoner. And he was from the Kaida and she said, oh, but he seems nice. I don't know. Was the fish good?
Nancy Yamout Yes. The fish was good. And my mom told her, okay, stop standing there. Go and prepare the, the, the table for, for eating fish.
Kavita Ramdas But Nancy and Maya, I think this is a perfect example of rescue me. Because actually, you rescued not only this person who had such a difficult history of violence, but you also rescued from all of us just now by telling this story, the easy assumptions we make about someone who has a violent past. And your mother, amazingly, brought her humanity into the space of, (.) she was like, ah, he was such a nice man, you know? Yeah. Without knowing about them. Yeah.
Sanam He likes my mom. Yeah. (..) I think this, this is, this is one of the issues, right? That, again, we have these, you know, unidimensional comic character, caricatures of bad guys. But actually, when you meet them, in fact, some of the most psychotic, some of the most horrific can be very charming because that's what they are, right? So, so this, the, the, the dimensions of humanity that you come across, and it must be in, in your work that, you know, you know, the question, when do you have empathy, when do you think he's a nice guy, but actually he did some horrible things. I mean, balancing that out must be incredibly hard.
Maya Yamout Listen, when I told him why he didn't come to the center, we have a small office, and he said, what if it was bugged? At least your house is safe.
Sanam Okay.
Nancy Yamout But, but let me answer something. So, sometimes when I speak to judges and lawyers, lawyers can, those people need to be executed, blah, blah, blah. And, and, okay, I'm not against the lawyers or judges. They know the best, especially judges. They know the best. But we need to see the whole picture, not just the law, because law is rigid. But also we need to see the humanitarian aspect, because those people, one day they're going to be released.
Maya Yamout Yes. (.)
Kavita Ramdas So, on this issue, I think we are now living in a world where it's so easy to dehumanize a person by calling them a terrorist. Or right now in the, you may have just seen what happened in the United States. This young woman was killed. She was your age, like 36, I think, mother of three, for challenging ICE in Minneapolis. And she was shot and killed. So, it's easy. And they're calling her a domestic terrorist. That's the word they're using, a domestic terrorist. So, one question I have is, how do you think about what the use of this word terrorist actually does, both to our own conception of those people's humanity, and on how you rehabilitate and bring people like that back into community? As you said, at some point, they will be released. You're not just going to kill everybody. (.)
Nancy Yamout People like to label. So, even in therapy, there is one of, they call it the error thinking. It's called labeling. We like to label. We like to put titles. You're divorced. You are single. You are married. You are a terrorist. You are a murderer. We like to put labels. (.) Singular identity. Singular identity. And they want to stigmatize you with it all your life. Even if you are released and you did your rehabilitation and everything, people like to shame and judge other people. And the thing is, before judging and shaming, I think Jesus spoke about it. Look at yourself first, what you have done. But we like to judge each other. We like to shame each other. Why do I need to have the role of power and authority on others? This is the question of the other people.
Sanam It's also a way of trying to suggest that they are different to you, that you're somehow superior, right? That you would never do this. Yes. But it's ironic because when we look at Western states, they have been bombing half the world for many, many years, from a sky, from whatever. And they're killing civilians. And if terrorism is terrorizing civilians, we're doing it. But somehow it's as if, you know, clean from the sky is different to...
Kavita Ramdas Well, and also state actors are never accused of terror. State actors are legitimate, are given legitimate rights to use force. And non-state actors are called terrorists, right? So if you're struggling... For some people...
Sanam The states that we like, right? Because the states we don't like...
Kavita Ramdas No, it's not even the states we like or the states we don't like. I would go back to Gandhi, Maya. You were saying the story about Gandhi. When countries were colonized, the struggle for our liberation, we were easily dismissed as being terrorists. Exactly. In our struggle for freedom. So I think one thing that's interesting is that, yes, people can be coerced or can slide into extremism or ideas of using violence because of all of the things you described earlier. Family situations, lack of belonging, growing up with violence. But it's also true that you can be defined as a terrorist simply by virtue of fighting for your rights to be free, as Palestinians have been, for example.
Maya Yamout Many people ask me, what do you think about the Israelis and the Palestinians? I told them, before that, why didn't you do accountability for Bashar al-Assad killing for 13 damn years the Syrian people? Before that, the Putin killing the Ukrainians and the damn houses, and they're being untouchable. This one was tied on with the extremists. Of course, the extremists and the bubbles of extremists will come out. Sooner or later, we're going to hear extremists but Christian side from the Ukrainians or with the Europeans. We never know what will happen. This trigger won't stop if there's no good accountability.
Sanam If you were in charge right now, if you collect or if we, as this work that you're doing, when you're thinking about either rehabilitation of prisoners or prevention, right, the pipeline of things, if you were in charge, what would you do?
Nancy Yamout I will make sure that before any release of any prisoner, that we have a well-rehabilitated person that is going outside. And I wish I have the social welfare have better branches all over Lebanon for them to integrate back into the community and prepare the community not to stigmatize that person. Yes. So I know we are right at time, so I'm going to end by asking you both, what gives you hope? (..) When I see ex-inmates not dragging themselves back into that. So, like, I know someone who is an expert in mind action. He, an extremist came to him and told him, I will pay you $3,500. $3,500 in Lebanon is a fortune. So he said, no, no, no, no. And now he's fine, he has two children, he's doing great. That gives me hope. It means there are some people that they don't want to go back. And they do, they're all not to go back.
Maya Yamout What gives me hope? When somebody asks me, like, how are you? The explosion that happened in Lebanon six years ago, I still remember, I don't know, Stacey or you, I don't remember, forgive you. It was very PTSD and tell them, what do you want so we can help you? Like, how, told them, I need therapy for myself because I'm not well. And I said, we support you. Somebody wants to support you when you're drowning, you feel that you're not, you're not alone. And it feels so good because you feel like you're fighting against violence and you're feeling like you're alone all the time. But when somebody, like, you're drowning and somebody asks you, what do you want so we can help you? You're not, you're not left behind it.
Kavita Ramdas It feels so good. That's a beautiful, that's a beautiful sentiment. Thank you for sharing that. And I think that seems very fitting for us because I think the whole notion of us saying we the people, that we cannot do this by ourselves. that even two remarkable people like yourself starting the project Rescue Me, you need each other, you need the people in your community, you need, you need your mother, you need, I can, you need.
Sanam I was going to say, okay, now let's just, now let's get to the series. The husband, what happened to the husbands and the boyfriends?
Nancy Yamout I'm still seeing the guy, but still I didn't have the last word of it, which I'm still. Does he know what you do? Yes, he doesn't care. Oh, good. Good. He's a chef, so I guess he doesn't care about anything. He likes me as I am, but I don't know how long, but I told him if you do soup, I'm going to consider a long. (.) He said, I'm good. (...)
Sanam This was If You Were In Charge, a podcast brought to you by ICANN, the International Civil Society Action Network. Get in touch and tell us what you think at info at icanpeacework.org and follow our newsletter. Like and subscribe and please tell everybody else who might like the show. My thanks to ADA Productions for making the show possible, to A Little Monster Media for our music, and of course to my amazing co-host, Kavita Nandini Ramdas. And finally, to all of you for listening. We'll be back soon. Thank you. Thank you.