The this is about review our from parents, I'm catherine birds, and today we can hear stories about finding your falling in medicine, fire fighting journalism and politics like our first storyteller David. Let I fell in love with the presidential candidates message and move towards She turned in the hopes of being called deserve. I first met. Even when you call me up a few years ago, he said hi, I must be, trigger for obama. Can I buy you a cup of coffee and I was like yes, you can hear it. If it were live voice hall, in los angeles in two thousand and eight,

I was one of those young people who became obsessed with Barack obama I was a senior in college at the time and after Graduated I drove out to ohio, and I worked on his campaign and act campaign. I drove to washington because hope and change. And two years later, the white house till he hired me They hired me to write speeches and people. But here about my new job and they would say well, you must be really good and I'd say I hope so. And they thought I was pretending to be humble, but I was entirely sincere. It's not that I didn't think I had any talent whatsoever is. that I knew there are three hundred million people in america and some of them are babies.

But a lot of them are adults, Just seemed unlikely that I was the best we, the people could do so every day I walked through the gates of the white house, absolutely sure somebody had made a mistake and why This was going on. My friends and family were equally sure they now had direct access to the president of the united states, like I'm sitting in my white house office and I get a text for my sister rebecca and it says how come the department of homeland secure pretty doesn't have a mailing address now, even in the best if circumstances this is a disturbing question to get from a family member. But if you work in the white house, you want to know the answer to this kind of stuff, and I have no idea- and it's like this- with everything I mean Suddenly everyone has a law that only I can get through congress. Every

Everybody has something wrong with obamacare that I need to know about mostly everybody has the same question. They all want to know. Have you met him? Yet? Have you met obama? Yet? and I say no- I haven't met him yet, and I get this look. And it's a look? I soon learn means you, maybe twenty four years old, working at the white house, but you're still a disappointment to your family and friends. and I have to say I totally get it. I mean everybody thinks that the white house is either like the tv show, the west wing wherever and hanging out with the president or it's like a tv show. Skin wherever and having sex with the president, but if you're looking For four hollywood analogy, the white house is like the death star, I mean by that, is just that: there's thousands of people there they run around the hallways, they're, all just trying to me, should there little bit of their job works well and just because Darth vader is the public face of the organ. Nation. It doesn't mean that every storm trooper gets personal one one time so

try to explain this whole death star thing and it doesnt work. I still get that disappointed, look and frankly nobody's board disappointed than- I am I mean nobody wants me to meet the president more than me, there's two reasons for this. The first is kind of corny, but it's true. I moved to washington because I thought I dont know it is, but there must be something I can do for my country. I want to be the kind of person where the president of the united states is just a little bit better at his job because I'm in the room and second reason is, I would really like Barack Obama and I to become best friends, Now now I'm not saying that every white house staffer imagined that they would become bodies with the past I am just saying that none of us ruled it out. Like you here these stories, you know somebody got a fist bump in the hallway or someone else got invited up to play cards and air force. One.

And the moral was always the same at any moment could be the moment that changes your life forever. Now my foot chance at a life changing moment came in november. Two thousand eleven when I was to write the thanksgiving video address. I will say a front if state of the union is all the way on one end of the presidential speech. Riding spectrum happy thanksgiving america, is kind on the other side. but as far as I was concerned, this was the most important set of words, Barack Obama would ever say, and so I threw myself into this- I mean I wrote and I rewrote and I made edit and then I may add it to the edit and finally, the day of the taping came and I went to the diplomatic room, which is one of the most beautiful rooms and the white it is this wraparound neural of nineteenth century american life and. Advice I always got, was you have to act like you, ve been there before it's. I'm standing there trying to act like I've been there before, and the woman

and the camera takes. One look at me and goes. This is your first time here. Isn't it and I crack immediately I'm just like. Yes, I have never been here before. Please help me and she says: don't worry, she explains her name is hope hall. She films, the president, all the time she's going to take care of everything. All I have to do is wait, so I wait And I wait and I wait and I wait and just when I'm wondering is this whole thing a nightmare. Is it a practical joke Somebody gets an email on their blackberry and they say: okay he's moving and then there's kind of a crackling in the air and a minute later, president obama enters the And he's standing up, so we all stand up and he sits down. So we all sit down and he looks at the camera to start taping when hope stops him and she says actually. Mr President, this is David. This is the first video he's ever written for you and president Obama looks at me and he says oh how's it going David.

I had exactly one thought in that moment. I did not realise we were going to have to answer questions. And I have literally no idea what I said after that I actually blacked out like I went home for thanksgiving in my family was like so have you met him yet and I was like yeah and they were like what did he say and I was like how's it going and they were like. What did you say and I was like I don't know I blacked out and I get that disappointed. Look and I can't blame anybody, because if I'm going to be the pr kind of- Who makes the president a little bit better at his job when I'm in the room? I am going to have to deal with questions more complicated than how's it going and at the moment there is no indication that I can do it, but I make a promise to myself. I say if I ever

get another shot at a life changing moment. I am not Oh let myself down and I did no, if it whatever happened for me, but in fact it happened just a couple weeks later I was sitting my office, I got a phone call from the chief speechwriter at the time, a guy named John fabric, and he called me up any said. Betty White is turning ninety years old NBC, is doing the special we're different famous people wish her a happy birthday in these thirty second skits and Pretty funny, and no one else wants to do it- want to give it a shot, and, I said, absolutely and again, I understand state of the union is over here and happy birthday. Betty White is over there, but this was my gettysburg address. And so we had one week to make it perfect: we started off John and I came up with a joke for the president. We were gonna, have him fill out a birthday card and then, while he was filling out, you will hear his voice

it's a voice over say, dear buddy, you're, so young and full of life? I can't believe you're turning. Ninety. In fact, I dont believe it. Please send a copy if your long form birth certificate to sixty one hundred washington d c, 's that so we feel good about the joke, but but we still need a birthday card so one day that you, gotta, go to see the s near the white house with a half block away. I grab a birthday card that I think is gonna, be pretty good and then right when I'm about to leave, I realize we are actually one birthday card. We need two identical birthday cards, because we have two different camera angles don't want anyone to know that the president has already written his birthday greeting and I think yes, this is how. White house staffers are supposed to feel I mean I've. I've saved the day and so I walk back to that too. That homework rack and I get an identical card and I bring it up and I go back to my office and I'm feelin really. Good

and then the last thing we need. We need someone to end the video, and so what I come up with is we're gonna have the president Putin headphones? and then he ll listen to the theme song from the golden girls, which is betty, whites most popular show. So I find the perfect parapet. They go over the ear, the great on camera and I lost into the golden girls theme, song on repeat just to get in the mood and then finally, on friday, I get the call come on over. Now: here's what they dont tell you about. Having a meeting in the oval office you have a meeting in the oval office. You do not just walk into the oval office. The first thing you do you wait in this, kind of windowless chamber, it's a little like a doctor's office, except instead of last year's Marie clare magazine. They have price, these pieces of american art and inside receptionist, they have a man with a gun who, in a worst case scenario, is legally obligated to kill you. It turns

This little room is the perfect place to second guess: every life choice you have ever met. and so I'm I'm sitting there with hope hall, the videographer and I'm just thinking. Do I remember how to explain the joke? Are both the birthday cards in there? I check my pants pocket or the headphones. Still, there are the headphones still, there are the headphones still I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown. When, finally, one of the president's aids pokes her head out and says: ok he's ready for you go on in to my credit, the first time I entered the oval office, I do not black out. I can remember this very clearly right in front of me. I can see a painting, the statue of liberty that was done by norman rockwell. That someone has told me is valued at twelve million dollars and behind me out of the corner of my eye, I can see the emancipation proclamation, not a photocopy of the emancipation proclamation. The emancipation

proclamation, and I can feel the message that this document is sending through the room and that message is I'm here, because I free the slaves What are you doing here and I look I look. ass, the desk at the president, and I realized he may also be wondering what I'm doing, but I feel good, I mean I've spent an entire week just practicing how to explain this one joke to the president. So I step up, I look at him. and I opened my mouth and welcome How does like I'm trying to ask for directions but in spanish like the nouns in the verbs are there but there's nothing in between. I just say: betty white, video NBC very funny. Everybody lapse hysteria and

president gives me kind of a confused, look and hope, of her jumps in and explains everything and rescued me, but I'm a little concerned, because I am here to show the president how professional I am in my professional opinion. We are not off to a great start. Still I'm not that worried, because I have that second birthday card in my pocket. and so I'm gonna get a chance to show president obama how I save the day, and as soon as hope has finished filming. Even I am surprised by how confident I sound when I walk up to the desk. My hand down, and I say, MR president, I really need to take that birthday card and replace it. With this identical birthday card, We don't want anyone to know you ve already written your birthday greeting and president obama, up at me and he says we're we're film on this from all the way across the room- and I say yes, that's right and he says so no one's going.

De the inside of the card, and I say That's right, and he says so. I can just pretend In the card, we don't actually need another one, and I say yes that's right and I put the card back in my pocket and it strike too But I'm not giving up yet because I made that promise to myself, And besides, I really do feel good about the ending with the headphones. So the moment hope is done filming her second camera angle. I walked back up to the president and I reach into my pocket, and I pull out what looks like a hare. Ball made out of wires I don't really know what happened, I guess somewhere in that waiting room. I have just worried this thing into a hopeless tangle.

And now I don't know what to do so. I just hand the entire thing to the president: the united states yeah for now. If you work in the white house, you will hear the phrase there is no commodity on earth more valuable than a president's time, which I Always thought was a cliche until I watched morocco, untangle phones for thirty seconds while looking directly at me. and he entangles and untangled, when you finish, is you looked at home? when just goes shoddy, advance work and he does

in this way that lets you know that a he's only joking and be he is not even a tiny bit joking and tell you my heart, just six, I mean this was my third chance to make a second first impression on the president and I myself down and all want to do, is get out of there and president obama says something like well. Would it be funny or five my head in time to the music and I take it. That would be funnier, but my heart is in it. I mean. I know I don't belong there. And the President looks into the camera to tape this final scene and then suddenly he stops, and he says what wait a second. If I'm gonna above my head in time to the music. you know how the music goes. Does anyone here? No, the golden girls theme song

president obama looks at hope and hope doesn't say anything. So I look at hope and hope doesn't say anything. so president obama, looks at me and suddenly I know exactly what I can for my country, I'm standing there and the oval office with the amounts patient proclamation right behind me and I look our commander in chief in the eye, and I say, bump bump bump bump. Thank you Being a friend trap, hold down the road and back again something's

I think you're a pal and a confidant, but he looks kind of amused. So I keep going unlike a naked, threw a party invited everyone. You knew and that's when he gives me a look. That is like okay president's time, but it works. President obama Bob's his head in time to the music and betty White gets her Urgent NBC gets their special and Leave the oval office that day with my head, held high, knowing that the president of the united states was just a tiny bit better at his job, because I was in the room and people still. After that they still say. Have you met him yet? Have you met obama yet? And I can finally say. Yeah, actually I have and then just to myself I think not to brag or anything. But technically I'm thankful he's a friend.

Thank you very much. The David speeches for president obama in two thousand and eleven to two thousand and sixteen for four years. David, was also the lead writer for the president's comedy monologue at the white house correspondents dinners, his memoir about his time at the white house. Thanks obama was published in two thousand seventeen, his most sent book I foresee and one book or less how it works wyatt desert and why fixing it is easier than you think was, published in june of this year. You gonna be a presidential speechwriter. The pictures, the story you can just go. our pitch line, which will let you leave a two minute version of a story you'd like to tell the number to cause seven, seven, seven, nine nine ma we can the story visor website the marked out away again,

You can purchase your own story, but how we ate seven, seven, seven, nine, nine moth we're going to the marked out org coming up long, four watergate a young Carl Bernstein, its first Abbott newspaper and in Inexperience firefighter must confront a deadly basement. Fire I read you our continues the The moth radio hours produced by atlantic public media woods whole massachusetts and presented by p r ex oh dear,

who is the most popular open source e r p, for many reasons is affordable, easy to use. However, most companies rely on oh do because their applications are fully integrated. What does fully integrated mean? Imagine a mechanic and keep everything they need in one convenient toolbox. Oh do is just like that, instead of a hammer we'll get applications for every aspect of your company there always connected and communicating with each other, letting you stay up to date at all times for a free trial visit, oh, do dot com, slash, moth, that's o d, o o dot com, slash moth, this Some off radio, our from pierre acts, I'm catherine burns. Our next retailer is Carl Bernstein He's a world renowned journalist but

stories about how he got into the newspaper business. In the first place he told it back in two thousand and six at the new york public library, here's Carl Bernstein. So it's very it's very good that we get to tell these stories and puncture ourselves, and the same is true of my muse, but my mom use a woman women and how I got to be a writer or a journalist is, is a. I took typing with the girls and- and this was in in eleventh grade

And until then my muse had been been a cue ball at the silver spring recreation center in maryland, because I shot a lot of pool during school hours and it was kind of represented the kind of student that I was, which is to say most of the day I was at the pool hall and but I was really tired of taking shop which I had taken since the seventh grade, and every year you make another one of those trays for your mother that have little things for toothpicks cinnamon, of shape of a fish, as I said screw this, I'm not making another game tray with a fish, I'm going to take typing with the girls. So I I took typing I was the only guy in the class and it was one of the few classes did I went to and quickly got up to. Eighty five. Ninety words, a minute

an end. It is served me very well in life, because my father, recognising that I was not likely to graduate from high school, had the good sense to say how would you like to go to work for a newspaper? Maybe I could get you a job as a copy boy there, because he had a friend at the evening star the washington evening, star newspaper, who owed him a favour, because my father in the Mccarthy europe had been a source for this guy's reporting on some of the excesses of the Mccarthy

And he said I think I can get your interview for a job as a copy boy. I didn't know what a copy boy did, but my father correctly perceived that I had some ability to pass a few tests because they were written exams and I could kind of bullshit my way through the written exams and those were the only courses that I could really pass. So I just turned sixteen and I was about five foot. Two and later I went to the washington star about a freeway in southeast washington and I was escorted up to the office of a man named rudolf kaufman, the third who was in charge of the copy boys- and he was the son of the owner old one

in family- and he had wanted to be a geologist and had gone to princeton to be a geologist, but the family wanted him to be in the newspaper business, and so he was in charge of the copy boys. So he said: why do you want to be a a copy boy, son and- and I said well I'd like to get a job and the- and I think you know maybe sometime I'd like to write an hour. I once was a newspaper boy

In fact, for this very newspaper ad annie, he says. Well, let me show you the newsroom, so he opens up the door and it takes me into this cavernous hall about bigger than this place and as the most exciting thing I ever saw in my life, it must have been about three hundred people among them names well known later, mary mcgrory, David broder, haynes Johnson, lot of great great reporters, but there was an excitement to this place. That was unlike anything I ever Do you know my life and pete we're yellow copy, and these kids would come running out of nowhere locks little squirrels and they would grabbed a copy and they would squirrel up to the desk and give it to the editor up there

or the guy wouldn't I shade, and he would start looking at it, and this was an afternoon paper with five additions in a six hour period and this place operated like this all day and the sports department was in the rear out that way, and so you had ball games going on, and people yelling copy in and it would ball. Scores would come and then there would be a shooting downtown and people would run outside and I never seen anything quite like it. My life and I really wanted to go to work there, but I didn't get hired and I couldn't quite figure out why. But I thought, maybe because I was too short because I was only five foot two at the time- and I was still growing- and I just turned sixteen and most of the copy boys were united, come on and marine corps are out of out of yale and they were twenty two and twenty three twenty four,

kept coming back and knocking on the door, and so you know I really like to go to work here and finally, they gave me a typing test piece of cake, so I got hired as a copy boy, while the copy boy is doesn't exist anymore, but a copy boy really was an office boy who did every manner of thing from running copy a reporter would be on deadline, and he would finish one page of a story and he would yell copy and you'd run up and grab it. from him. Take it to the desk in any go back typing and you would have a room off to the side called a wireless room which is where all teletype

stuff came in from all over the world or about fifteen of these machines, are going to click clack, clack, clack, clack, clack the whole time. Now, of course, you go into a newspaper office and it sounds like you're in an insurance company. It's got carpet and no typewriters any more, but but this place, which is constant, noise and motion and and in the copy boys, would run, and he would go up to the mail room and get the papers as it came down off the press and put them on a cart and bring them in into the newsroom, and this was my first day at work and it was so exciting and they were telling me my machine.

Your copy boys, the names of all the editors around a destined national letter, the telegraph editor to foreign editor and a foreign editor? Also, he had a little lamp, a little eyeshade which a lot of desk people wore in those days and and then it got to be two o'clock and head copy boy who was actually about thirty years old, came up to me and said Bernstein, I said yeah. He says two o'clock, so I have these big repeater clocks gone from here all the way to the back of the room. So it was pretty easy to tell it was two o'clock. So yes, two o'clock, he says well working eight to four shift. Whoever works a divorce you have has to wash the carbon paper say what he says: yeah. You know the eight to four shift. You wash the carbon paper at two o'clock every afternoon. Well, the reporters would type their stories on six ply paper. There would be it. We call them book

and in between each of the sheets, would be this hideous. Purple double sided carbon paper that just to type on it, would send a cloud of purple dust up in the air and what you did when you got a story from a reporter. You ran it up to the desk, pull the carbon paper and thrown in a basket. This basket would start to build up like that and by two any afternoon there will be baskets of kind of all over the place like that, and I had copied both same Bernstein's two, oh five you'd better go watch their carbon paper you're going to be in deep trouble here. You get your shift, you gotta say! Well, where do you watch the carbon paper? Simply? What do you think? at the carbon paper, you're going to be in a men's room and you wash the carbon paper. So sorry was my first day at work. Read by now, I'm five foot, four and and and I

no label lewis on G street, and I bought myself this cream colored suit, and it's the summer you and I'm looking like a million dollars of my forty four dollar. Twenty five cent a week job and I go start collect carbon paper I'll. Take one of these baskets. And trying to hold it out like this, because I don't want to get on my suit from no label louis and and my grandfather who was a tailor it very carefully. Crafted everything really made it look. Nice held this damn thing out. And I went around. I got a few more pieces com paper and I put it in a top somerset. What are you doing? I say I'm gonna go watch the carbon paper on second Jesus washed carbon paper, and

and I had copy of workers are better hurry up, Bernstein but again in our wash their carbon paper. Some kind of back out of news room like this in the manoeuvres in the hallway and men's room back, and there's a row of sinks, I look at the sinks aligarh, so I'd take one thinking, I'd take this much carbon paper and put it under the next thing put a little carbon paper. third, a carbon paper hundred area- and it was this was nineteen sixty, which was an era when plumbing was changing because they had invented air raid fussing. So it meant it instead of the fuss it like. You had in your kitchen, which just water came out. This stream lack

Fire hose would cover so kind of went back like this, and I would like that and all of a sudden there is like this all faithful. Well, my creed, that would suit from no label always looked like out had been honest, safari look like a leopard, and at that moment I notice did behind me. While I was trying to do have two carbon paper that there was a gentleman who is. Poland is flat and. Turned around me and said son. What are you doing and I immediately

recognized him because he'd been pointed out to me, it was newbold Noyes Jr, the editor of the paper as very happy to see Mr Noyes said Mr Noyes, two o'clock, I'm just washing the carbon paper, finished zipping up his fly and he said. What's your name Listings, Mr Bernstein, I want you to go on at newsroom and you go back there and you tell who ever told you to do this debt if I ever find out who is responsible for this or if this is ever done again,

in this newspaper- that we are going to clean house in the copy boy department. I mean I had an inkling, so I went back to the copy boy who had told me to do this, and I said you now and I could leave this business, but I think I'm going to stay but Don't want to do this again and that was my first day at work. Thank you. I was crowned bernstein friends here, the pulitzer prize republic. We risk coverage in the watergate scandal for the washington test with woodwork. the author of the book, all the president's men and he also wrote a woman in charge the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Currently writing a memoir about his apprentice years at the washington star. our next I was told it whenever a story same competitions in Washington DC, where we partner with the public radio station w EM you the story, tellers job, putting out fires nearly got killed when a basement fire broke out the first night he was on the job. Here is nick baskerville live at the mall is the basement. He shouts that's when I knew it just got real.

That's when I knew of finally going to get to do what I've been wanting to do for a long time. This is my big opportunity we put up to this house it's to two story: single family home. It's got a attached garage to it that guy was yelling. That's my very first fire officer, he's, probably forgotten more than I'll ever learn He's a few rooms ahead of me and will me at that point. I was three months out of recruit school and this is my very first buyer as a full time firefighter. Now it's not my first buyer I've been volunteering, three years. I understand I get it so I've learned that not every time you get put on a house.

fire. Is it really a house fire? Sometimes the report, a house fire is really burnt food on the stove, because people put toaster cakes on, but not this time. This time I'm the fire into in order in this hose slinging around. I get around arise if not liking it out. around two more people show up there from the other crew, we all get adjusted and a decision is made. We need to go through the front door, so we pick up a charged hose line. Now we go around, we go through the front door all the way to the back down into the basement and innocent. This time I realized I might need a pep talk for myself as a self essay huh. I said. Let's look. Look at here. Look here, look

basement fires are among the most dangerous fires. That's going to deal with. There's only one way in one way out normally get down to the basement, but this thing out don't mess around. So it s what we tried to do we get down to the bottom in we found all the heat. You know that kind of heat that you feel when you you open up your oven, innocent pre heeded the five hundred check. We found all the darkness in that dark thick black smoke. It's the only way I can describe as like this. If you, if you take a minute right now and close your eyes and that level of darkness, you see that's what I saw the difference is right. Now you can open your eyes down heat bound, dark

can't find a fire. We'll crown. How do you misplaced fire Ethel we're looking I'm looking to doors, I'm looking for any thing is, is nothing in it by now. At this point in the heat, knowing it. My ears is gnawing at everything that I'm wearing I opened up. fire hose and up whip it around to try to get it cooled off and if it's not do anything. Finally, I I feel a tap on the shoulder from the other guy says We're going to take it out of the devil so out we go out the front door now we're around to decide and we found another entrance in this time. All we can see is fire and now I'm doing it open it up, and I am

I'm doing my job. What why you're laughing at me and it is in the process we are here to sounded, set some air wounds. And that's the signal that the pirate ship gives you, then, when you want you to evacuate out of the building, because there's a problem- and I walk out with this added to like stupid fire chief with thirty years experience Do you even know you weren't there? You weren't. because then I realized that the entire second floor and the roof, the roof, the rule,

is on fire to her, but that wasn't the scary part as time goes on and in my understanding of buyer behavior increases attend a class called the art of reading smoke and has all kinds of new new science and understanding in one of the things they say in there is that smoke is fuel, Like the bureau to smoke that me and my crew were covered in, as we said at the bottom and I the only reason why we weren't her is because I never found that spark in looking for that buyer and its is that that moment, I've come to appreciate not getting what I want exact.

when I want it back, you need Baskerville, isn't air force that with fourteen years of service yet tells us I'm? No one sir, the fire service, the person expert. to do what my officer did for me every day. It's my hope to help protect the people I work with, for the danes they don't know exist. If I can take care of them, they can take care of the public. for me up a young physician working at the makeshift medical tit and Syria must make a difficult choice. That's next the mouth, radio, our The moth radio hour is produced by atlantic public media in woods. Hole massachusetts and presented by the public radio exchange pr x, dot, org.

This is the mouth, radio, our from parents, I'm catherine burns and our final story it's from doktor vivian wing vivian a physician, was done. Work for doctors without borders. She contacted us to say, the number of her colleagues as storytellers, but after hearing one of her stories, I knew we had to get her up on the stage. Here's doctor vivian wing live at the moth. It is the dead of summer. Temperatures are swelling above one hundred degrees, the hot desert, sun. as unrelenting. It is the end of ramadan and the beginning of eat. Eat is usually a time a celebration, but intense fighting has broken out I am a medical doctor with doctors without border northern syria, though

or has been raging for over three years. Now people are going to work, children aren't going to school, there is no safe place. There is no clean running water, there is no electricity, and the healthcare system has collapsed. Just a couple months ago, my surgical colleagues were operating a small operation inside a secret cave. To crawl into a small entrance to get inside. inside there was an inflatable operation, tent summit. Emergency beds and chalky dust everywhere, but they managed to take care of patients. Since the war has begun the sea,

the government has been attacking healthcare facilities and healthcare personnel. the patients that are looking for care are in danger and the people that take care of them Patients are also endanger. we have now upgraded to a building that was once a chicken farm. There are no more chickens there, but this isn't, like see and out of the episode of grace anatomy. That afternoon I was assigned to look over people that were sick, but stable. It is one room divide, In too many areas there. the tree azure area. There is a inflatable, Parading turned their a. Eternity ward

And also in the front, we ask that the patients leave their weapons there, earlier in the day there was intense heavy bombing, the guy men like to bomb when people got out of mosque because they could get more bang for their book, there was chaos in the hall. But all people were lying everywhere and there. I saw this man. he was laying in the middle of it. He had been wounded by shrapnel. Earlier we had stopped his bleeding and bandaged him up. but he looked uncomfortable to me. So I tried to ask him in arabic: are you in pain, and he wouldn't look at me, and so I thought Maybe he didn't hear me.

I try to walk closer to him and I. Got a little scared because he was a big guy twice my size. but I mustered up a little bit more courage and arabic, I asked him. Are you in pain and to my surprise, you didn't look at me, but an english you said cover her hair cover your hair and I was a bit surprised when he said that, because I had already been covered from neck down, as was customary for foreign women working in Syria? His com and sent me into a time where I endorse sexism and gender inequality. When I was little. My grandmother would always tell me: stop growing taller We can't marry you off

I was ten years old, my father wouldn't may get glasses. I couldn't see the chalkboard and he said if you hi glasses, you wouldn't be pretty and we couldn't marry you off. he said you haven't a lot better, your great grandmother in China. She had her feet bound. And my aunties, I would hear often the times they would say. Boys are easy, we'll take care of than girls. Boys are just better than girls, but through all of that sexism, and through all of the favouring a boy is over girls? My family did value education. And so as a little kid my father would go around telling people. I was going to be a doctor and lucky for him. I

Did feel the same way menace Fascinated me: I absolutely love the bugs that invaded the bodies and when I was in college there as an Ebola outbreak in congo, and I was just fascinated how this but could wreak such havoc on the body and soul. I read everything I could about this. Outbreak and that's when I discovered doctors without borders. Doctors without borders is an international humanity marion organization that was started in nineteen. Seventy one and their basic principles are impartiality, neutrality, independence and it is because of these tenants there are able to go to places, and

the work that they do and when I was in college, I said to myself one day: I'm gonna be a doctor with that organization and I'm going to try to help alleviate the suffering in the world And years went by and I went to medical school and I thought that being a doctor, I could level the playing field a bit. That being a doctor, I wouldn't have to face. but I think that was a bit naive, because when I then training nurses would rather take orders from a male doctor patient. always say what a nice nurse you are an doc female doctors still get paid less than male doctors, and many of my female colleagues feel the same way. But despite that, I finished my training and I was accept

didn't to doctors without borders, and there I was in syria, I thought, I had made all my dreams come true that become a doctor and I thought all the sexism and the gender inequality, but here I was with this man. He was wounded and he needed help, but in that Second, he took everything away from me that I had worked so hard to fight against and I was so angry at home, and I just wanted to walk away. I thought you, you must be not that sick I'll, just like to be there and you can just suffer but my conscience. Wouldn't let me do that. I couldn't watch him suffer.

and I thought about how we were meeting at that particular moment and that he believed in something so strong that religion brought him there with his suffering, and then I thought, What about why I was there is because I believe so strongly in medicine and that came before being a woman and so for him. Religion was like medicine. For me, religion, trumped everything, even his son, brain even equality for women, and so I met him where he was- and I forgave him at that moment, and I learned Go of that anger in that moment, and I was a doktor first and a woman second. So I did what he asked me to do. I went into it other room, I took the purple scar

that was around my neck, I wrapped it around my hair. I went back out. I gave him some pain and then I put him in an ambulance for him to go to turkey and hopes that he would get better care in shock. every country libyan who believes that the positioning epidemiologists previously worked in the organization partners in health, ass, Vivian, there's a follow up the story. She wrote. I feel like now is at a crucial time in our history to tell stories of what is really like in places where violence is the norm, especially in the world, is becoming so much more xenophobic. I'm in new york seen patients that tuberculosis I think these days and last month I saw a syrian refugee family and immediately I felt a closeness to all of them. In some ways I breathed a sigh of relief and see

this family from Syria. Now in your city restored my faith a little in this current. Political climate, that's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time, for the moth rating of our solar system. Also artistic director, Catherine cavern also directed the stories in the show. The rest of the monster actuarial staff include Sarah haber men, Sarah Ostend, genetic jennifer hickson, and make balls production support from timothy lulli special thanks. all holding graver and everyone who live at the new york public life more stories-

Our true is remembered and affirm by the story. Tellers. Our theme, music, is by the drift of music in this hour from the tv theme, players max rubberneck, still, wagons infinite and jamie seaver them all This produce for radio by me, J alison with vicki merit at atlantic public media woods. Whole massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the national endowment for the arts, the moth radio hours presented by pr x for more about, podcast for information on pitching is your own story and everything else go to our website. The moth dot org.