Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Over the years at NPR's Fresh Air, we've gotten to talk with a lot of great filmmakers. Now we've made a playlist of some of our favorites, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Ava DuVernay, Mel Brooks, Spike Lee, Werner Herzog, and others. Find all our new playlists and more at Fresh Air Plus at plus.npr.org slash freshair. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Our guest today is the Syrian photojournalist Lubna Murai. She first joined the Syrian revolution as an act of rebellion against her father. Before we meet her, it's my pleasure to introduce our guest interviewer, Arthi Shahani. She's a former NPR tech reporter. You may have also heard her interviews on her podcast, Art of Power, on
or read her migrant memoir, which is about fighting ICE to protect her father. It's called Here We Are. Now that I've introduced Arthie, here she is with Lubna Mirai.
Fifteen years ago, the country Syria joined the Arab Spring. Lubna Mirai became part of this movement, first as a casual protester and over time as a photojournalist who documented the attacks and killings that the government claimed never happened. She was unlike the majority of protesters in a key way. She is Alawite. the religious minority that ruled the country.
Lubna didn't consider herself political at first, but she did deeply resent her father. He came from a poor Alawite family and made his money by allegedly being an assassin for the father of Bashar al-Assad. When daughter defied father, he punished her for it horrifically. The Syrian civil war lasted far longer than Lubna Mirai ever expected. The estimated death toll is more than 650,000.
Another 100,000 people have been forcibly disappeared. And more than 13 million Syrians remain displaced.
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Chapter 2: How did Loubna Mrie’s upbringing influence her rebellion against her father?
Syria had 22 million people at the start of the civil war, so that's more than half of the population. Lubna Mirai's new book is called Defiance, a memoir of awakening, rebellion, and survival in Syria. Two parts in particular really got under my skin. First, the toxic family dynamics that honestly feel wincingly familiar to me and probably to many of you listening.
And then the less familiar part, she documents how her country fell apart. That's something a lot of us feel increasing anxiety around. Lubna Mirai, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. Both of your parents are Alawite, a minority in Syria, a bit more than 10% of the population, and the same religion as the ruler at the time, Hafez al-Assad.
And your mom's mom does not approve of your parents' marriage, even though they're both Alawite. Tell us about how your parents met and why grandma didn't like it.
So my parents met at the funeral of my grandfather, my mother's father, who was a big figure in her life. My grandfather was, he was a consulate in Turkey, in Brazil, in Germany. And he loved my mother so much. And he always told her that that her future depends on education. It does not depend on marriage. And he truly wanted my mother to seek education like all her siblings.
And my mother was very... She loved her father so much. And my father was the opposite of my grandfather. My father comes from a family that did not have the privilege to go to school, to go to college. And they were involved in some...
dirty business for the Syrian government and my grandfather was aware of that so my grandmother was also aware of that and my grandmother was very clear with my mom that if this marriage goes south you will be bearing the consequences on your own
And did your mom ever tell you about why she fell for your dad?
Did she say it in her own words? Throughout my childhood, my father was very, very, very abusive. But there was always this side of him that was very charming and very loving that my mother really wanted us to see. And I think that's why my mother was really keen on keeping my father into our lives, me and my sister, despite all the abuse that he was showing her and us. Um...
Can I speak about the memoir a little bit? Of course, yeah.
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Chapter 3: What role did Loubna play in the Syrian revolution?
Because trying to figure out those sides of my father and trying to remember my childhood without being tinted with so much pain and grief was one of the most difficult aspects of writing this book. Because memoirs, especially memoirs that are filled with pain and grief...
They are very difficult to write because you really need to write about people with love and nuance and write with love even about the people that you hate and despise the most. And pain tempts us. Pain and anger tempts us to see things in absolutes. To flatten people into heroes and villains. And when you do that, you risk leaving parts of the truth out.
And this is not fair for them and it's not fair for the reader. I loved how I was being treated when someone asked me about my full name and I mentioned my father. It was all painful and kind of shameful to admit that, especially after all what my father did later on in my life.
But although as a daughter, I despised him, as an author and as someone writing this memoir, it felt like I had the responsibility towards him to show all sides of him, even the sides that I don't want to remember anymore.
When you were born, your dad told your mom, I want to name this baby after my mistress.
Yeah, so my father had lots of mistresses before my birth and during my mother's pregnancy and even after. And in that time, in that society, it was very normalized for a guy to have mistresses because as the say was, nothing disgraces a man except his pocket. So as long as the guy was taking care of his family financially, he can do whatever he wants. And that was not exceptional to my family.
This was kind of the broad understanding of the gender dynamics. And if a guy ends up in an affair, it's always on the female.
Tell me, Lubna, when you were a small child... Your first home is your grandmother's home in Damascus, your mom and your older sister, Alia, and you live with grandma. But grandma, she wasn't spoiling you, you know, kind of as we expect grandmas to do.
No, so when my grandmother told my mother, if this marriage does not work out, you are going to bear the consequences alone. When my father eventually left the country and my mother took us to live in grandmother's house in Damascus, even though I was very young, I was able to sense that we were not welcomed in the house anymore.
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Chapter 4: How did Loubna's family dynamics affect her view on the regime?
She would take us out every day. And eventually, my grandmother wanted us to leave the house. And I remember at some point, my mother was like sobbing on the phone with my father, asking him for help. And he offered to help on one condition, that we move from Damascus to
to a small coastal town called Jeble, where he would offer us a house, where he would also support us financially, on the condition that we will be raised near his big family in Jeble.
So not living with him, but living amongst his family.
Not living with him, but like living near his sisters and brothers. And looking back, I truly wish my grandmother acted differently because the whole trajectory of my life would have been different. My mother had to choose. our freedom over hers. She was willing to uproot herself completely from everything she knew to move to a city that she doesn't know anyone in.
Like she was not even close with my father's family in order for me and my sister to have like a stable life. She wanted us to have a home.
So you move from Damascus to Jebel basically because you cannot stay in your grandmother's home and your mom's at her wit's end. Jubla is a coastal town. And it's, in some ways, it sounds really beautiful. You use one of my favorite words throughout your memoir, Corniche. And I have to say, I love the word Corniche because my father, he was actually a child refugee who landed in Beirut long ago.
And he would tell me about his walks along the Corniche. So when you say it, I think of dad. It's the scene on the beach, right? It's where people are courting each other, looking fabulous.
I mean, Jebel is a very small city, but... It felt like bigger than life itself. It was so vibrant. It was full of life. The air was... Because we moved to Jeple in the summer and I remember how the air smelled of the sea and how our balcony would have kind of like... Like this dew in the morning, and sometimes I would just like wipe my fingers on the windowsill.
And I sometimes, I know it's gross, but I would taste it and it would be so salty. And it was very different than Damascus. Like in Jebel, there is this like card sellers everywhere and everything. And the houses were so close to each other and you would see neighbors like inviting each other over for coffee, you know, by just like shouting to each other from the balconies across the street.
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Chapter 5: What traumatic experiences did Loubna face during protests?
And she was so furious. She calls him and she tells him that he's illiterate and he's trying to destroy everything she's trying to instill in us. And two weeks later, we tried to get money from him and he demands my mother to be on the phone and to apologize from him. And I remember seeing her on the phone whispering, may God bless your hands. I'm so sorry for what I said.
And that gave me a hint that I needed him. I needed my father's approval. I needed his money if I wanted to have a good future.
Lubna, you write very frankly on this relationship with your dad where... you're, as a child, learning to play the game. You also talk about being, in some ways, kind of a bratty rich kid, right? Like drinking top shelf liquor, you splurge on American fast food, which somehow is a status symbol all over the world. Right. It's crazy. Yeah.
And it becomes impossible to keep playing this game after something you discover one night when you were at your father's house.
Yeah. Can you tell us about that night? I mean, it's really hard to go there. But so as I mentioned before, my father had lots of mistresses. And at some point I became very close with my father and he was kind of rewarding me for spending more time with him by giving me more money. So money became my understanding of what love is.
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Chapter 6: How did Loubna's father's actions impact her life choices?
And the more money he gave me, the more love I felt coming from him. So at some point we became close and I would spend my weekends at his house. And, you know, sometimes women would come. And I mean, I was I was old enough at that point to know what was going on. And there was this one woman who would come and she often brought her daughter with her. And first I was very like.
I admired my father that he allowed his mistress to bring her daughter because probably the daughter has no one else in the house to take care of her. And so I felt like it was very generous of my father to allow the daughter to also stay at the house. When I used to stay with my father, we had separate floors.
One day I went to my father's floor and I saw the mistress in the kitchen and I heard sounds coming from my father's room and And I remember just like being frozen. And I look at the mistress' face and she lowered her eyes. And I remember she started to push me slowly towards the door. But then I hear the voice again. I hear the sound again.
And I realized that my father was not sleeping with the mom. He was actually sleeping with a child.
And I was so horrified. You discover that your father is raping the 12-year-old daughter of his mistress. Yeah. And that her mother knows she's facilitating it. Yeah. And when he learns that you have now found out you're in on the secret, he calls you to his room. And what happens?
He gives me a folder, sorry, like an envelope with $100 bills. And he asked me to count them. And I remember it was almost like the equivalent of a million Syrian lira. And he takes $400 of the stash and he gives it to me. And I knew what he was doing. He wanted to remind me that I can judge him as much as I want, but he has the power.
And I took the money from him and I kissed his hand and I thanked him.
You know, Lubna, as I came to that part of your memoir, what I honestly thought is, I thought about the Epstein files, which are coming out.
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Chapter 7: How did Loubna document the atrocities during the Syrian civil war?
which continue to come out. Again, the daughter was 12 years old.
And what's so sad about all of this is that it's also on the women. In this instance, I mean, even with the Epstein files, he has a female facilitating all of this for him. I mean, it's really hard for me to make any big claims, but in my culture, there is this kind of
collective agreement that the younger the girl is the better and you know it's not it's like and this is what it becomes scary like how young is too young And like in a way it was normalized. Like there were girls in my school who got married in like eighth grade and ninth grade. And these were like 14 years old girls.
Chapter 8: What lessons does Loubna hope to convey through her memoir, 'Defiance'?
No one questioned that. No one said, OK, this girl still is not developed mentally to make this decision.
We're listening to guest interviewer Arthi Shahani's interview with activist and journalist Lubna Mirai about her new book, Defiance, a memoir of awakening, rebellion, and survival in Syria. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Let's get back to our interview with photojournalist and activist Lubna Mirai, who's now living in exile in the United States. Her new book is called Defiance, a memoir of awakening, rebellion and survival in Syria. Her father was part of Syria's al-Assad regime, but when the Arab Spring began, she joined the movement against the regime.
In the book, she takes a very personal approach to the Syrian civil war and tries to make sense of how her family and country fell apart, perhaps for similar reasons. Mariah had to learn to hold a camera steady as civilians, including children, fled snipers and barrel bombs. She also talks about grappling with alcoholism and reluctantly making New York City her home.
She spoke with guest interviewer, Arthur Shahani.
You decide to leave your father's hometown and move to Damascus. And there you experience a political awakening. Describe the very first protest you joined.
So the very first protest I joined, first of all, I was, I mean, I'm raised in a society that is so shielded from the realities of what's happening in the country. So even though I was seeing protests online and kind of aware of what was going on, I did not expect anything bad to come out of me going to the protest. I actually stumbled upon the protest. I was scrolling through Facebook.
I saw this announcement for a protest that was happening next hour. And I just called a friend and I tell him, hey, let's go to this neighborhood. I mean, I didn't say protest because, you know, I know like phone lines were monitored everywhere. So I just mentioned the name of the neighborhood and my friend freaks out. He's like, why are you saying this on the phone?
Because he knew that even if I just say the name of the neighborhood, whoever is listening or if anyone is listening, they will know we are going to a protest because it was a hotbed for anti-government protests at that time. And I remember when I was getting dressed, I was thinking and I was like wondering, like, should we go for hookah after or should we go for lunch after?
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