When you were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018, they cited your refusal to remain silent.
I didn't share my story for awards and stuff. I shared it so the world could act, and it also brought much more attention on conflict-related sexual violence.
My thanks to Amal Clooney for joining us.
ISIS had raped and abused women and girls like Nadia on a scale that we have not seen in this century. She always said, 'I don't want revenge. What I care about is justice.'
Hi there. I'm so grateful you're joining me here on the Oprah podcast. My guest today is a living testimony to the just extraordinary resilience of the human spirit and one of the people I admire most on this planet. She's a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist. Nadia Murad first shared her harrowing story in her New York Times best-selling memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and My Fight Against the Islamic State. And in that she showed us what it means to survive the unthinkable and what it means to find actually inside yourself the courage to start speaking up for yourself and using your voice for others whose voices were silenced. And now she's written another book and I just really have great respect and high regard for the title. It's called I Choose My Beginning. I Choose My Beginning. It's a story of once again courage but also real activism. She picks up where The Last Girl left off and she shares how she was able to turn her pain into strength and how she was able to turn her pain into a sense of perseverance and the freedom to choose her beginning and to choose happiness. Let's listen to her story.
In 2014, Nadia Murad was 21 years old, the youngest of 11 children, living with her family in Kocho, a small village in northern Iraq. She dreamed of being a history teacher by day and opening a beauty salon at night. She hoped to build a life close to the people in the place she loved. Then ISIS attacked. Nadia is Yazidi, a religious and ethnic minority that was targeted in a campaign of genocide. Nearly 600 men and elderly women in her village were killed. Younger women and girls were kidnapped and imprisoned to be used as sexual slaves. After three weeks of daily torture and rape as a captive, Nadia escaped through the help of a neighboring family. You can read in depth about that harrowing tale in her first book, which she called The Last Girl. After her freedom, Nadia could have chosen to live quietly. Instead, she spoke out, becoming a powerful voice for survivors around the world. In her new book, I Choose My Beginning, Nadia writes about what comes after survival and what it means to build a life beyond what happens to you.
So, welcome Nadia. Thank you for being here.
So, you've said that your first book, The Last Girl, was written from a place of trauma. How is writing this book different? I Choose My Beginning.
Well, my first book was more of like, you know, my testimony of what happened to me in ISIS captivity and what happened to my family members who were taken into captivity with me. And with that book, I really wanted the world to know that and to see rape for what it is, a weapon of war and not just a small side effect of war, because for so long they have seen it as just a small thing. But what I saw and what I experienced was they used rape as a weapon of war to destroy us, to destroy our families and communities. And I wanted to share that with the world so that hopefully we can prevent it from happening again to other women and girls. And that's why I titled that one as The Last Girl because I wanted to be the last girl in the world with a story like mine.
Yeah. Unfortunately, you were not.
But you continue to use your voice.
To help all the girls who continue to have the same experience. So the late great Gloria Steinem writes this in the foreword of I Choose My Beginning. She says, 'Nadia is a survivor of genocide. Her life reminds us that such crimes are never accidental. They are designed, organized and sustained through the systematic dehumanization of others. Survival in such circumstances is not only an act of endurance but an act of resistance. What distinguishes Nadia is what she chose to do next. She did not allow her story to remain only her own.' You could have easily chosen to live the rest of your life quietly. You could have avoided any kind of further threat. So why did you choose to speak out, Nadia?
Because someone had to speak up. And after I escaped captivity, I was in one of the displacement camps in northern Iraq. But then I moved to Germany with my sister. And in Germany, I had this new opportunity to build a new life. You know, people didn't know that I was a survivor of rape. My neighbors were different. The culture was different. But I feel that my survival, you know, carried with it a responsibility to tell the world what was happening to so many women and girls who didn't survive.
And then one of the things that I was so struck by you write in telling my story on page 175: 'Some days I feel proud to be able to tell my story. Other days I hate myself for sharing it. Or I'll change my mind even faster than that. I'll wake up in the morning feeling proud. I spend the day talking to journalists or politicians and go to bed angry at myself for opening up, for still living it, for still being there in the past. Survival isn't the same as finding peace. It's an ongoing negotiation with memory.' Do you find that still? And I hope you're proud to tell your story today.
Yes, I mean, I am proud, and especially after I found myself that I am a part of a bigger community, a global community of survivors of rape, women, men and children from all around the world from different conflicts. And I feel more connected with, you know, that community, that I'm not alone, and a lot of them have shared their stories before me. So having that community, having, you know, other women and girls and men have shared their story, it made it a little bit easier. But, you know, it's like a wound. People keep asking you to go and open that wound and it never heals if you go back and keep opening it. And for years I had to do that. Just, you know, sometimes I would give my story five times a day to people and it was always the same questions: what happened and what did they do to you?
Yeah. So, you're re-traumatizing yourself every time.
Traumatizing over and over again. And it was not just, you know, what was needed to rescue other women and girls, what was needed to prevent this from happening. And I feel like I shared my story to give that, to say that this is how we can prevent it, this is what is happening. But they would ask different questions. And I thought as a survivor of rape, my responsibility was to always say yes and to always tell what they wanted.
Every time anybody asked. And one of the things you talk about in I Choose My Beginning is that you and your fellow sisters and women in the community didn't know the difference between a journalist or an aid worker, journalists, people would come. Anytime anybody asked you to tell the story, you're just telling the story in the hopes that it would help.
Well, the very reason I shared my story was to rescue my niece, who was my best friend. Yeah, Katherine was my best friend. We grew up in the same house and we were taken into captivity.
So, you thought you were making people aware.
Yes. Yes. Because I survived early, but I knew what she was going through.
Yeah. And she found a phone in captivity and she kept sharing her story from every time she used that phone. I was frightened for her. I don't even know how she did it.
Yeah. But she was the reason, and I kept telling the world. I showed her messages and voice messages, photos to the world. And I failed her. At the very end she decided that she couldn't take it anymore. The rape, the buying, the selling and what they were doing to her. So she decided to walk to safety and then she stepped... she stepped on the land mine. She was so close. She had endured so much. The woman, the other survivor who was also with her, she said we actually could see lights, that they were like walking toward the lights.
Sorry.
Mhm. Take your time. You write about it so poignantly, so graphically, and so that by the time this happened as a reader in the story, because I read The Last Girl and so I knew about Katherine, and you pick up the story and Katherine is still in captivity when you start I Choose My Beginning. And so I was like everyone else hoping that she would finally find a way to escape or to get free. And then in the last moment, and I mean, by this time how many years had passed that she'd been in captivity being raped on a regular basis, trafficked?
Yeah. And she documented her... but she was still communicating with everyone in the family with that stolen phone.
Yeah. And she watched me on TV.
She sent me voice messages. I have them. And she says that you speak so well. Please keep telling them what they're doing to us. And even at one point ISIS members took a video and showed it to her and they told her that, 'Oh, we actually do look alike because we have the same tattoos. We have, you know, same hair.' And at one point she said, 'Why are you so sad? Why are you so thin? Why are you not happy?' Because she thought you're out, you're free.
Yeah. She thought that, you know, the second you survive captivity, you're free. You should be happy. But survival is never the end of the story. It was just the very first step that I took.
It's what you were saying, it's a negotiation with memory all the time.
Yeah. It doesn't bring you peace.
And so when you were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018, when you were only 25, you became the first Iraqi citizen and the second youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Malala was the youngest when she was 17. The committee awarded you the Nobel Prize and they said your efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict. They also cited your refusal to remain silent and ashamed. What did that mean to you? Did you feel that once you got the Nobel Peace Prize that is the attention that you wanted to bring to all of the other women who were held in captivity?
You know, before 2014, I never even heard of the Nobel Peace Prize. But you know, when they gave it to me, it was, you know, such an honor to know and to... I thought of all the people who have received it before me like Nelson Mandela and I felt, you know, honored. But it's... you received it along with Dr. Denis Mukwege and my dear friend. And it was important because, well, first when I shared my story I didn't know about it. I didn't share my story for awards and stuff. I shared it so the world could, you know, prevent this and act. And then it also brought much more attention on conflict-related sexual violence. It also connected what happened to women in Iraq to women in the DRC, in Sudan, in, you know, Kosovo, Colombia. And I feel like it was, you know, many more women and girls were recognized, was not just me and the work of Dr. Denis Mukwege. But I think the world often sees that when you receive the Nobel, you've got it all. You have the power to change things and make things better. But it's not like that. It's a recognition. It does amplify your message, open doors. But the issues that I'm, you know, fighting for and working to, you know, with other people like Dr. Denis Mukwege, no one award or one person will be able to solve them.
Right. And you know, one of the things that I really appreciated that you brought to light in I Choose My Beginning is not just the world's perception, but even journalist perception. The way journalists drive the perception of what it means to have been a refugee or what it means to have been trafficked or what it means to be a woman who, you know, has survived the atrocities that you have. And you say they thought because the world had taught them this that being a survivor meant all you had was your sadness and your story. They had the connections and the military and political knowledge. All I had was the ability to make people cry. And I was the window dressing and they were the substance. And it wasn't only men who treated survivors this way. Women at the helm of loosely defined aid organizations also required survivors to look a certain way, say certain things, and appear grateful, as they had told my friend who dared to dye her hair before an appearance. Let's speak about that for a moment. Once you were able to escape, and we're not going to talk about how you escaped, but once you were able to escape these atrocities and then use your voice for those who were voiceless, there was a kind of window dressing, as you describe it, put upon you, a certain way to act and to behave and even dress when you appeared at the UN. Like you can't wear a pretty dress, you should be dressed in black and things that are not fitting. Let's talk about that.
Yes, it was not what I expected because, you know, I wanted to share my story but of course I didn't want them to see me for what just had happened to me. And the moment I shared the story, the moment those, you know, organizations, some journalists, not all, I also talk about the good experiences we're doing like, you know, the 60 Minutes and others. But then they, you know, it was everything I did, you know, I had to wear always, you know, they said if you represent this story and this cause, you have to always wear black, dark, you know, colors, you cannot. And I grew up loving makeup and hair and I wanted to open a beauty salon, but I was not allowed to wear makeup. I remember the first time I wore jeans in Germany to the language course, someone sent a photo of me to my brother in the camps and he called me and he was so mad. He said, 'You've already, you know, you're doing something, you can't be both.' Because that's what he was hearing from people. But then if we were so thin, they would say, 'Okay, she cannot get over what happened to her.' If we were fit, they were saying, 'Oh, she's already over what happened to her.' Falling in love was not an option. Getting married was not an option. Having children was not an option. Smiling meant you get over what happened to you. And then I lost myself.
Because people expected you to never have a life again.
To be that very perfect victim.
And that's why it's called I Choose My Beginning. You know, one of the things that struck me...
But I did, to be honest. I did follow what they... in the beginning.
Yeah. It took you a while to be able to write this second book because everyone had an expectation. Now you are a survivor. You're the spokesperson for us all. You must behave and you must act in a certain way and you must not have a life beyond what we think your life should be. You know, one of the things that surprised me so much, and as a person who, you know, has also lived through the vitriol of people saying things about you online that are not true, it did not occur to me that it had started so soon, that even in 2014, 2016, people online often accused you of fabricating your truth, including saying that you had lied about your mother's death. And you write on page 113 something so powerful. You say, 'If my mother is alive, that's really all I need in the world. I would celebrate until the day I died. But I know that she is not. My sister saw it. I would have given anything to be wrong. For Dima's eyes to have failed her. For ISIS's plans to be different, and for my mother to show up one day at the camp wrapped in her white scarf, alive and ready to lead our family again. I would have traded everything,' you say, 'to be the liar that these critics on Facebook accuse me of being. But to the people who were focused only on using me to send a message, that would be the end of their campaign. If your mother isn't dead, then what do you have?' They were asking. And you thought, 'I would have a mother.'
It's fascinating to me that the takedown came with the lies and stories in the face of your truth. Were you surprised by that kind of vitriol?
Not really, because I grew up in a culture, in a country where women were always accused of doing things, like if a woman wanted to get a divorce because she was living in an abusive relationship, they would always come up with stories that she is, you know, doing it for another reason. So it was, you know, they said that I never went to school, but I went to school and they saw that I went to high school actually. But when you know that your mother has been killed as a part of a genocide and that your sister saw it, and you, I mean, nothing could be more horrific, and then for people to tell you, 'Oh, your mother isn't... her mother isn't even dead.' Yeah. She's making that up. And it was even harder because they kept reaching out to my sisters-in-law and, you know, through fake social media accounts and telling them all these stories. And my sisters-in-law were like, they would call me and they say, 'People, you know, talking about your mother like this, you have to stop doing this work. It's, you know, they see that you are not the best to do this work.' And I said, 'Well, my...'
First they thought you were the best and then they say you're not the best. You know what? One of the reasons I say that you are one of the women I admire most in the world, not because of the Nobel Peace Prize. That's a wonderful thing. But I also understand that getting an award doesn't define who you are nor change who you are. But the courage, just the courage that it took for you to tell the truth about what had happened to you in a culture that sees... in a culture where I think it was your own cousin who had been killed for leaving home to be with another man.
The man is set free and goes back to his wife. Your cousin is murdered. So for you as a young girl to have been trafficked and abused and tortured and then to have the courage to say out loud, 'This is what happened to me.' Where did that come from?
You know, I had to do it. I just saw something and I experienced something and I couldn't feel that I, you know, I was free or silent, but I didn't feel free. I was in Germany and I was always looking over my shoulder. I felt like they were coming after you. Yeah. And then I was always having, you know, these dreams, but I was also always like constantly getting these messages from Katherine telling me that she's been sold again, that she's been raped again, that she's been exchanged with, you know, another sexual violence victim back then in captivity. And I wanted to do what my sisters did. My sisters chose not to share their stories. They wanted to rebuild their lives. And sometimes I feel that they made the right decision because people didn't tell them that they should be the perfect victims, to, you know, dress a certain way, to do certain things. I feel like they were rebuilding their lives faster than me. And they were, and I'm the youngest, you know, I was the youngest of 11 children. I was so loved in my family by my siblings. And they feel so sorry for me that I was going through all of it. But I just, every day that I didn't share my story, I felt that I didn't have purpose. As horrible as this story was, as hard as it was to share it, it also saved me from my own.
Well, you also met human rights lawyer and law professor Amal Clooney in 2016 and that turned out to be a game changer. You say it was the first time you were able to actually see a path for survivors to receive justice in a courtroom because up until then you felt like you were just being used and passed from telling your story to one person and another person and it didn't matter that you were telling the story.
And then along comes Amal. Amal joins us. Hello. Thank you for being here.
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
So I heard it was 10 years ago that a colleague actually persuaded you to meet Nadia for just one hour. What were your first impressions of her then?
Oh, I remember the meeting so well. I was at home in London and I remember saying to my husband, you know, 'This woman's coming over. It's supposed to be for a new case.' And he was like, 'You don't have time for a new case.' And I said, 'I know. I'm just going to hear her out and I'll refer someone to help her.' And then Nadia walked in. She was incredibly shy. I remember she didn't really make eye contact. She didn't speak English. So we had an interpreter. And she started telling me about the horrors that she had just escaped from, losing six of her brothers in one day and her mother, and being in captivity and the torture that she had to experience. And you know, maybe two hours later, I remember George walking past the living room and he just caught sight of me and Nadia sitting on the floor, I think, holding hands, and he just looked at me knowing that I'm taking the case. And it was 10 years ago and I'm still working on it.
And you've been working together to seek justice for Yazidi women and you've succeeded actually in the first three cases where ISIS members have been convicted of genocide. What did that mean, succeeding in those cases? What did that mean for survivors?
I mean, I think Nadia would agree it was against the odds and it shouldn't have been. This should have been the easiest case I've ever taken on. We went to the UN Security Council. We went to world leaders and said, you know, are there crimes that are more gruesome than this? This is genocide. Are there victims that are more worthy than this? You know, is this a perpetrator group anyone cares to protect? It's ISIS, the most reviled and dangerous terror group in the world. And yet, we didn't get any kind of institutional action. There was no global response beyond the battlefield. There was no initiative to ensure that there could be trials of ISIS fighters, including those who had raped and abused women and girls like Nadia on a scale that we have not seen in this century. And it should have been an easy case and it wasn't. And I have to say from the beginning, you know, Nadia showed this grit and this determination. You know, she was fearless from that first day, even when she couldn't speak English yet, she was showing messages on her phone from her niece in captivity from ISIS. And she always said, 'I don't want revenge. What I care about is justice and to have the chance to face my abusers in a court of law.' She had an opportunity... she showed the first day I met her, she had messages on WhatsApp and I was telling her, 'Nadia, this is evidence. Like, you are receiving messages from the perpetrators of these crimes.' It's the first piece of evidence I collected and I went on to collect, you know, hundreds of statements from survivors who had endured things similar to Nadia and her family. And I didn't know if we were going to succeed, but I saw an opportunity in European countries that recognize a principle called universal jurisdiction, which means certain crimes are so heinous, you know, genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, that you can prosecute them in your country's courts even if they took place abroad. And so we started working very closely with prosecutors in Germany and across Europe, connecting them with the evidence that we'd gathered, connecting them with witnesses. And the very first trial in which we succeeded in securing a conviction of an ISIS fighter, I actually represented Nadia's cousin. She talks about this in the book.
I think we call her Huda in the book. It's not her real name, you know, to protect her identity.
And it was incredible. Huda had no education. She, you know, Nadia says in the book she'd never heard of the word court. She didn't know what a court was, but she had been taken into captivity with her daughter. She had to watch her captor kill her daughter before her eyes in a gruesome way and she had to watch it and wasn't... this is when he left her outside in the heat. So Nadia's cousin had a five-year-old daughter. She was chained to the bars along a window and left outside and left to hang in the heat of the summer in Fallujah and eventually died of dehydration. And I mean, you know, as a mother, it's just unimaginable what she had gone through. And then one day she hears that the perpetrator has been caught and he's in Europe and, you know, would she be willing to go and give evidence in the case? And she said yes, you know, to honor her daughter's memory, to do it for her community. And she put herself in a witness protection program. She went to a country that she didn't know. She gave evidence in a court over seven days, with an interpreter, in a courtroom where she had to stare down the man who held her captive. And, you know, she became the first Yazidi ISIS victim to face her captor in a court of law. And when the day of the verdict came, it was incredible. The judge announced a conviction for genocide. In that moment, the perpetrator, the ISIS fighter who'd enslaved Nadia's cousin, collapsed on the floor and she stood tall and strong. And in that moment, you could just see the power of justice. It had reversed the roles. You know, she stood tall and he was on the floor. And he got a life sentence and that was our first victory in court.
I know Nadia reveals that story with such poignancy in I Choose My Beginning because he had a wife who also was a part of that.
Yeah. A German wife. She was put on trial first and then he was Iraqi. And, you know, subsequent to that I represented other Yazidi victims in trials that led to, I think it was six other cases where we got convictions as well, not only genocide but crimes against humanity and war crimes. And, you know, for us that was a huge success. At the same time it's a massive failure because, you know, tens of thousands of ISIS fighters left Europe to go and fight this war in Syria and Iraq and there should have... I mean, I remember Nadia telling me, you know, 'My worst fear is that these people will just shave off their beards and go back to their normal life in a way that the victims never can.' And I think in the book she talks about the interminable wait for justice and accountability being an open wound. And it is a wound. It's like another type of trauma after the crimes if...
people deny them and if there's impunity. And unfortunately, you know, most of the time we're living in an age of impunity at the moment, and we created an exception in these cases. Um, but but the system is is incredibly broken.
Nadia writes this about you, Amal, on page 185. From Amal, I learned that talking to survivors didn't require asking them to relive the worst moments of their lives. Everyone was able to approach us with respect and sensitivity. And survivors had the right to say no to anyone who asked for their stories. I'm wondering, was that a learned skill for how to get the information that you need that is going to be evidence for you and yet not retraumatize the person you're trying to get the information from?
I have to say when I read the book I I was really touched by that. It's not something we'd ever discussed. Um, and I was actually horrified that it was something that was so rare in her experience. Um, you know, of course, we we learn how to do interview as lawyers. You get special training for these kinds of cases, but but really this is just it's just respect for someone. Um, that you only ask what you need to and it was, you know, I remember when we did a we did a really detailed statement, it was only once we knew there was a case coming up. Um, before that I didn't need to know some details and even with her cousin there are some details that I've never asked her about what happened to herself as opposed to to her daughter. Um, so it should be obvious. Um, but but I think Nadia's experience is that actually it was quite rare for people to to deal with her that way and that's really unfortunate.
What do you want to say about Amal and her work?
Well, Amal is special because just like what you you know what you read from the book, but it it was just so easy to open up to her. And I love the way she just treats survivors as humans first, you know, and not just stories. And for me, it was a very different experience. I felt for the first time that someone was, you know, actually asking me questions to do something and not just to put it out there for uh for the world. So, it's um her work I I have I learned so much from her. I keep learning from her. She's an amazing person to be around and uh she she just inspires me.
I just read that you were in Malawi recently for the Clooney Foundation and I was reading about what you all are doing with legal scholarships for women, Amal, who will become advocates for human rights for other people. Like starting a scholarship program just for women to become lawyers to do what you're doing in the world. I just wanted to say bravo to to you for that. And do you have a lot of takers for that?
I did. I literally stood in a field um in one school after another and told girls about their rights and told them they couldn't be married before they're 18 no matter what anyone says. Um, and I spoke to so many of them who said I didn't know those were my rights. And then I said how, you know, does anyone here want to be a lawyer? And lots of hands went up. And so I went to the top law school in the country and you know we're helping them with actually AI tools um and and also creating 30 scholarships for young girls uh to go to law school. So I I'm really excited to see all of their progress. It's it's an incredible country with so much potential but such great harms affecting women and girls and we're trying to connect them to a justice system that can actually deliver remedies. Um, but you know there's less than a thousand lawyers in the entire country. So, uh, I'm trying to get more girls into, you know, into the justice system and and help lawyers, uh, use technology to be more efficient, uh, in in helping.
Well, thank you for that work. Thank you for being with us, Amal. Thank you, Amal Clooney.
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Maybe you're feeling it, too. With so many ways to reach each other, it can be easy to mistake being reachable for being truly connected. But I've learned that what many people are longing for is just to be heard, truly heard by another person. That's what we're trying to do here on the Oprah podcast. I see you contemplating and I can see that you're seeing yourself a different way after he said that. Making space for real connection. Because every time we stop and actually listen to each other, something shifts, something opens. AT&T believes that, too. The right connection at the right moment between the right people can change the course of a day, a relationship, and even a whole life. So the next time you reach for your phone to call someone you love, know that AT&T is with you. Keeping that connection strong because AT&T is there when the connection matters. And connecting changes everything.
So, one of the things that I also really appreciated you sharing in the book is when you were living in the the refugee camp, you write on page 92, you say, "Sometimes we pass things that were familiar enough to remind us that we were actually still on Earth. The sun rose and set. Families sat together eating and talking the way we used to in Iraq. The pleasures of walking, riding a bicycle, studying outside, talking to your friends. These are universal. That's what refugees are looking for, I think. Not big things, but small moments and scenes that remind them of where they're from and tell them that they will survive in this new place." And you say, "One evening we passed a sign for a market with the word halal written in Arabic, and that made us smile." I love this passage because it's just a it's a it's a beautiful reminder, I think, that we all actually want the same things no matter what our circumstances. And after you achieved your freedom escaping, what were the things that you appreciated the most?
Well, every time someone was kind to me, uh it was it just made me feel that like I I would smile and and it was like, okay, there is still goodness in the world and that people were there are kind people. We just need to find them and surround ourselves with them. And um I love just you know looking at the sky um yeah every day because because when you were in captivity you couldn't see.
But also uh I grew up in a small village when you know half of the year we uh slept on the rooftop uh to avoid heat and it was you know where I have the my favorite memories from my mother sharing stories on the rooftop and just watching the sky and she would you know the village was so small she would always say but the sky is is huge and you can see that the world is big and you can dream big and uh so every every day and especially actually after I survived just like looking at the sky.
At the sky and then you dared fall in love. Abid was your was one of your interpreters at one point, right? You share the story of meeting and falling in love with your husband and you write, I will always remember something Abid told me that year. You say when it became clear that our love could survive even the most shattering tragedy. He said you will never have to go through any of this alone. Did you even ever think that you could fall in love, have a husband, go on with your life?
Um, no. I remember I went into a meeting with a rich American guy and he talked to me and he gave me his business card and on the business card before meeting my husband, he wrote, "Dear Nadia, if you ever get married, please let me know. I will pay for your wedding." And I smiled and I kept the card and I said, "Well, I I didn't know that I'm even allowed to to get married or fall in love." And uh when I...
Why? Because being a woman who...
I was Yeah. I was told that, you know, I wanted to do the work more than anything. But I was told that you can't be both. You have to if you do the work, then that is your life. Um, and even when I met Abid, you know, my husband, I I showed him a photo of my niece who lives in Germany, and I said, "By the way, she's single." I was trying to, you know, set them up. And I'm like, because I didn't know that I can that you were allowed.
Yeah. That I was allowed.
But he was different. You know, the moment I I saw him, he said, "I'm sorry for what other men did to you." And he was the first man to Yeah. who who who would tell me that who apologized for what his fellow man did you know to me because it was true it's you know what happened to me and my family and all these women and girls it's what you know man did you know this to us and they keep doing it to us so from that I I just felt that oh my god like someone said that and um he just it was easy to talk to him and I I told him that I just lost my niece and um...
And once Once he asked you to marry him, even people in your family, your brother whose opinions you valued, so everybody said you can't get married.
Yeah. Yeah. It was um there were so many...
You must continue to be the survivor.
