We at The Rumpus get bored with reading the same old interviews with the same old people. So, every now and again we like to publish “mini-interviews,” our readers talking with people we wouldn’t normally get to learn about. We like to hear from your friend with a Neil Diamond obsession, your neighbor fawning over his pet ferret, your best friend’s mom; the random nooks and crannies of planet earth.
Here are five of our favorites.
1. Chris Graham in Conversation in a Syrian Taxi
Mohaned works at a small hotel in Palmyra, a desert town in northeast Syria. On the side, he helps a friend pitch taxi rides to tourists. (Mohaned speaks Arabic and English; his friend, only Arabic.) The following is an edited account of our conversation during the three hour taxi journey between Palymra and Damascus.
***
Chris Graham: Do you have a girlfriend?
Mohaned: No, but that doesn’t matter.
Graham: What does that mean?
Mohaned: My mother will choose a wife for me.
Graham: You mean you will get an arranged marriage?
Mohaned: Yes. If I see a girl that I like, I will tell my mother and she will make an appointment with the girl’s father. Then she [Mohaned’s mother] will say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If she [Mohaned’s mother] says ‘yes’, we will give some money to the family [of the girl] and they will have one week to decide whether to accept the proposal. If they say ‘yes’, we are engaged.
Graham: Is it a good thing for a woman in Syria to get a divorce?
Mohaned: No, very bad. For a man it is OK, but not for a woman.
Graham: Why not?
Mohaned: If she has been married, another man has opened her. I want to open the woman. We prefer that.
Graham: Would you marry a woman who was divorced?
Mohaned: No! Very bad. I want to open the woman. [Smiles, pats me on the shoulder.] In Europe you can open the women, it is easy.
Graham: What if the woman is ‘opened’ not from having sex?
Mohaned: You mean… [gestures with his palms together and then pulls them apart]
Graham: Yes, so the hymen is broken but not from another man.
Mohaned: No, I don’t want that. If I see that on my wife [claps his hands] I immediately get a divorce. No hymen means she sleeps with many men. You don’t understand, for us, it is important to open the woman.
Graham: What do you think about democracy? [Syria is officially a republic but functionally authoritarian. The president is subject to a confirmatory referendum every seven years. The current president, Bashar Al-Asad, was confirmed in 2007 with 97.6% of the vote.]
Mohaned: [Confused] I don’t know that.
Graham: It means voting for the government.
Mohaned: Listen, my friend – we are friends – let me give you some advice. Don’t talk about the president. Don’t talk about politics. It is not good for you or for me.
Graham: Why not?
Mohaned: No, do not talk about politics. People will tell the police and then I get arrested.
Graham: What do you think of Israel?
Mohaned: Very bad. Don’t talk about politics.
Graham: Why is Israel bad?
Mohaned: Terrorists.
Graham: Have you ever met anyone from Israel?
Mohaned: No. If I meet someone from Israel I kill them. If you were from Israel I would kill you.
Graham: With this smile?
Mohaned: [Laughs.] Listen, my friend, do not talk politics.
Graham: How do you know there is a god?
Mohaned: Because it says in the Qur’an.
Graham: How do you know that’s right?
Mohaned: [Looking incredulous.] That is the Qur’an. It comes from Allah, to Jibril [Gabriel], to Muhammad. Why do you ask me these questions? My friend, you must respect our religion. I do not ask you these questions because you are Christian.
Graham: I understand…
Mohaned: Do you know Denmark? Bad people there, they do not respect our religion. God will do bad things to them, you will see.
Graham: When?
Mohaned: I don’t know, it will be now, or later, but some time. I am telling you.
Graham: What do you think of Salmon Rushdie?
Mohaned: Do not talk to me about Salmon Rushdie.
2. Joen Madonna in Conversation with Cherry Crawley (Her Dead Mother)
This is an interview with my mom. I was hyper-critical of her when she was alive and never gave her enough credit.
She was an only child, raised in DC by older over-bearing parents. She married the first man she dated, and at twenty-one joined him in his rural Oklahoma Episcopal parish. He died from skin cancer six years later, leaving her a widow at age twenty-eight with three kids, no education, and no prospect of a career. She never remarried. After her children were grown, she went back to school and started writing poetry, and began a journey of self-discovery. She didn’t get very far; breast cancer ended her life when she was fifty-three.
I have the collection of journals she kept over her last eight years. I never would have touched them while she was alive. Recently, I have started asking her questions, then going to the journals and randomly opening up to a page to look for a reply. I decided to conduct an interview of her in the same fashion. Her replies are transcribed direct from her journals.
***
Joen Madonna: After us kids moved out, you started searching for who you were and went to stay at a friend’s cabin in Virginia to begin your first novel. What did you discover?
Cherry Crawley: I am a near fifty-ish woman in search of herself in an apple orchard in the Blue Ridge Mountains of VA. I’ve been lost wherever I’ve been so it makes just as much sense to begin here as in OK. Besides, there are too many of my children in OK. They are part of the shield that keeps me lost. I caught a glimpse of myself while they were gone. I became lost—disappeared at two when my mother threw my doll down the stairs, crushing her head. I began emerging at forty-five after the third and last child left home. I was doing fine until they all returned. Somehow I get lost in the family I created. I was lost in the family my parents created as well. It’s frightening to think I can only find myself if alone. I hope who I am likes being alone.
Madonna: We never talked about your death while you were dying. I was scared shitless. What was it like for you, dying of breast cancer at age fifty-three?
Crawley: I just really don’t know what to say. This health experience has shed new light on my life. I’m making some changes and they are for the best. I like myself more now, even enjoy myself some. What do you do the day your hair falls out? You buy a sports car you have always wanted, that’s what you do. I wonder if I’ll ever make love again—I love it so much I hate to think not. Will my whole body itch as the hair grows back? My eyes are moist almost all the time—my nose runs a lot.
Madonna: Do you have any departing thoughts about yourself or your self-discovery?
Crawley: I had moments of beauty, but I never knew it. I had glimpses at times, but never full recognition. As a woman becoming older, I was saddened by my lack of understanding about myself. I seemed to always catch on just a little too late. In my forties I realized half was over and that I probably had a better chance at happiness then. Not until my fifties did I realize what could actually have been. I could have had a different life if my attitude hadn’t sucked. My mantra during the 70s and 80s was attitude. Took a long time to take affect. I need to let go of the past and get on with the future. It has taken a toenail, a few teeth, and a left breast to get the wake-up call.
3. Hannah Miet in Conversation with Her Brother, Gabe
Hannah Miet: So we’ve never spoken directly about the fact that you were recently dual diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and Schizoaffective Disorder. I’ve been wanting to know how you feel about that. What do those things mean to you?
Gabe: I have trouble looking people in the eyes and understanding if a person is interested in what I’m saying. I also talk over people and cut them off, but that’s all that there is to my Autism. It’s minor.
Every second of my life I have what I call “mind creations,” where I believe a fantasy about something that didn’t happen. Sometimes it has to do with something I’m excited about and sometimes it’s something I’m upset about. I’m always very afraid when I think about it.
Sometimes, my mind creations mix with things that are true because I was loaded on medication at the time of the memory. For example, lately I have a mind creation that, when I was about 15, our babysitter [redacted] gave me the death sentence, and in the last weeks of my life she let me experience her body naked. She would drive me in her sports car totally naked.
Hannah: How did you determine that this was a “mind creation?”
Gabe: The fact that the story was just so long and weird. I was on so much medication that it felt real, but the truth is, if I were to get the death sentence, it would be from someone tougher than her. She also would have gotten arrested for driving me around naked.
Hannah: Probably. What is a death sentence?
Gabe: Sometimes minors who do illegal things, things that I was doing at that time, like being manic and pointing knives at family members, get saved from going to prison by getting the death sentence. I think I was given the death sentence then, but my body was too strong for the medication, so it didn’t rot my body like it was supposed to. I lived, but I also died.
Hannah: Once you identify that you’re worrying about something that’s not real, how do you stop?
Gabe: I don’t even know how to describe this. It’s like saying “I don’t want to do my chores because I want the aliens in space to do my chores.” I try to stop obsessing over mind creations because they prevent my body from growing into a man’s body. Your body develops depending on what goes on in your brain. If you don’t stop thinking about mind creations, you won’t become a man.
Hannah: My next question is about a time in high school when my boyfriend broke up with me. I was sad for a while, but then we got back together. Soon after, you threw food at my boyfriend’s face. I think I acted mad at you. But I wonder, in retrospect, if you were trying to defend me. Do you remember this at all?
Gabe: I remember that. We were at Andrea’s Sweet 16 party. You and [redacted] broke up because he had a sexual affair with some other girl. At the party, he kept saying “leave us alone, we’re talking.” That pissed me off, so I threw snack mix at him.
That year was a really weird year for us, because I was on a lot of medication and you were both suicidal and homicidal.
Hannah: I was suicidal? I was homicidal?
Gabe: Yeah, you were extremely suicidal. You were into grunge bands like Nirvana.
Hannah: So because I listened to Nirvana you thought that I wanted to kill myself, and also other people?
Gabe: Yeah. Well, you were homicidal meaning you wanted the world to die. You wanted the world to go away.
Hannah: And now?
Gabe: I think you’re much better now.
4. Anthony Aceti in Conversation with Dan Wang (and Vice Versa)
My friend and I interviewed each other. We’re students and have never done anything special. We like to talk, though.
***
Dan Wang: Are you happier now than when you were twelve?
Anthony Aceti: No. That’s impossible.
Aside from some puberty-related things and the fact I’ve done a lot more activities since then, nothing about me has changed. I’d say this is a universal principle, but saying that doesn’t sit well with people who like to think progress over time is anything but a slope of zero.
I’ll add: I was a pretty happy twelve-year-old, even if I didn’t know it.
Wang: How do you feel about being the age that you are?
Aceti: Mostly upset. The best parts of being [my age] aren’t clear to me yet. And possibly might only be clear in retrospect. As you get older, time slows down and you begin to have a sense of the terrain of your own life. But right now, things rush by like out of a car’s window.
Wang: I always think I’ll become happier if I learn to be less attached to what other people think. Like, if I can bring myself to walk back up to the guy who shortchanged me on my newspaper, I would be an overall happier kind of guy. But then I think that if everyone did this the world might not look the way it does, which is a way I rather like: this kind of give-and-take dance between people, over-compensations and beautiful hurt feelings.
Aceti: Is leaving behind extra dimes going to make the newspaper man happier? No. Is losing extra dimes to the newspaper man making you unhappy? Probably not. Is being willing to share and be open and communicate true things directly to a practical stranger going to make both of you happier? Way more than yes: yes times two.
[Now we switch places.]
Aceti: Children in kindergarten very regularly hold hands, hug, and say cute things like “I love you verwy much”—why and when do you think this habit ends?
Wang: Do you think those children really know what love is? Their notion of love is defined byBarney and giant hovering adult faces, which is, to say the least, an incomplete view. Also who says that’s cute? I find it kind of creepy (partly because it makes me think of babies having babies, eww).
That’s a bit of a cynical answer, so let me try again: I think children do it because adults tell them to; once you start to develop emotional range you realize that there are other options, like hating that bitch who stole your dino. Which, you might say, makes real love far more significant than that picture of twelve different-colored humans holding hands in a circle around a tiny globe – because it’s a choice and not just a happy default.
Aceti: Choose an aspect of our lives, common in the West, and describe how that aspect would terribly upset and appall our genetic predecessors circa, say, 1400. Obvious responses (which shouldn’t be included) are iPods, machine guns, and severe skepticism.
Wang: Can I say, this feeling we all have of ourselves as God? At least the God of our own lives. Which is normally presented in a much more appealing way, like, “Be all that you can be” or whatever. But it really means that you ought to have control over every aspect of your life, and if something isn’t perfect you should do something about that. I don’t think people used to think this way. I think people were more willing to accept the hand of fate. Now every life has to be this unique product of intense frustration and prolonged thinking and experimentation and epiphany, which is exciting but also tiring. What if you just want to be a milkmaid? These are things that don’t exist anymore.
5. Jen Percy in Conversation with April Somdahl
On February 20, 2007, April Somdahl’s brother Sgt. Brian Rand shot himself near Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He had just returned from Iraq and was about to become a father.
Nearly everyday while Brian was deployed, April spoke with him over Yahoo chat.
***
Jen Percy: You mentioned that your brother Brian thought he was a vampire. Why?
April Somdahl: He kept getting shot at but he wouldn’t die. He thought he was immortal, like a vampire.
Percy: How did you respond to this?
Somdahl: I said, ‘Well you know, Brian, vampires are just a myth. It’s a made up story.’ And he said, ‘But if you think about it every made up story has some truth in it somewhere.’
Percy: Is this why he shot himself?
Somdahl: No. He said the Iraqi man he killed was following him. I told him to apologize to the man, and he told me that when he did, the Iraqi man said: “you need to come with me.”
Percy: When you talked over the internet with Brian, can you recall any of your conversations?
Somdahl: I’d always try to talk to Brian but he’d say, ‘April you know these guys need you more than I do.’ Then he’d put the other soldiers in front of the computer. One of the guys told me that all of the Iraqis looked like cockroaches to him. He said ‘Iraq is infested with a bunch of cockroaches and he couldn’t wait to kill them all.’ Most all of them had PTSD. Once I was talking to Brian and he told me there was a guy outside that needed my help. He said that there was this soldier outside who had been walking around in circles for hours in the sun. I told Brian to send his buddy Chris outside to ask the guy what he was doing. After a few minutes Chris came back and said, ‘Well, remember those people in the convoy that blew up earlier today? He said they blew up into billions of pieces and that he’s looking for them because he thinks he needs to collect a fragment of their body to take home and give to their family. He keeps yellingbillions and billions.’ I told Chris to get him inside and sit him in front of the computer:
April: Hi, hey. How you doing? I’m out here in North Carolina.
Soldier: BILLIONS OF PIECES!
April: What?
Soldier: Billions. I gotta find one.
April: Now that’s not very nice to pick up a piece of someone and give it back to their family is it? I think that would freak them out.
Soldier: No, no. They have to have a piece of them. I just need one little piece. It could be anything.
April: Those men are dead. You’re not going to bring them back. The families will have a funeral for them. If you bring a piece of their bodies back to their families you could hurt them. You don’t want to hurt them do you?
{silence}
April: You going home soon?
Soldier: Billions of pieces! Billions of pieces! Billions! Billions!
April: Okay. There may be billions of pieces of them all over the earth but do you know those pieces will sink into the earth and they will form new soil or even fossils and they will become part of the world again. That was only their bodies–but their souls, they already passed onto heaven and they are probably looking down on you right now thinking how crazy you are. That was just there bodies that they left behind.
Soldier: Billions!
April: I’ll tell you what, when I die, you can take my body and throw it over my neighbor’s fence.
Solider: Really?
***
Rumpus original chalk art by Jason Novak.
This piece was edited by Blog Features Editor Karen Duffin.
