The Moth Radio Hour: Fathers

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This is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show, and I'll be your host for this episode about our fathers, grandfathers, stepfathers, and our first story about becoming a dad yourself, a moment that's transformative.

for most men.

It's the moment you join the generational flow, when you play an actual role in the continuity of the species.

And you discover the wild love that, as it turns out, was lying dormant, waiting for that moment of birth to flame into being.

Before you get there, though, there's the actual process of birth to go through.

Admittedly, quite a bit easier for men than for women, but for some, like our next storyteller, still a challenge.

Here's Andrew Postman from A Moth Show with the theme, Guts: Stories from the Razor's Edge.

I was 18 the first time I fainted my cousin's Briss.

He was eight days old, and he was to be circumcised.

It was summer, very hot and overcrowded room, and someone pushed a movie camera into my hands and told me to film it.

For some reason, I listened and I put my finger on the Zoom button.

And as the moil was about to do his business, I remember hearing my mother call out to my father and say, Neil, catch him.

And I wondered who she was talking about.

The next thing, someone was loosening my belt, someone else was loosening my tie.

And as I realized what had happened and the commotion I must have made by fainting, I looked up.

and I was panicked that what I had done might have made the Moyle miss.

But he looked down at me and he assured me that almost every time he did this, he lost at least one man.

So I was in good company.

A little less than a year later, I was in college.

I fainted for the second time.

This time it was in a movie.

And I wish I could tell you it was

a hyper-violent film like the Salvador Dali movie where someone apparently takes a razor blade and slices open an eyeball.

But I believe I am the only person ever to faint at an Ingmar Bergman movie.

It was cries and whispers and the woman who not surprisingly was in a tragically unhappy marriage is in her nightgown sitting in front of her vanity and I won't go into detail except to say that lots of little bits of glass and blood were involved.

I felt my head getting snowy.

And I whispered to my friend that I had to get out and because it was a school classroom, it was those chairs with the desk tables and it was very hard to sidestep.

The next thing I remember, I was looking up at blackness, and I heard the crackling of a walkie-talkie that the campus policemen carry around.

And I remember hearing Man Down Film Society.

The next time I fainted was also in a movie, only this time it was not from something I saw, but something I heard.

Again, I wish I could tell you it was a Sam Peckinpaw film, but in fact, the movie was all that jazz.

The story of choreographer Bob Fosse.

In the movie Roy Scheider, who plays Bob Fosse, is about to have open heart surgery, and at this point I knew myself well enough to cover my eyes, but I didn't cover my ears.

And the sound of the rib stretcher with its twisting, cranking, almost metallic sound of pulling the ribs apart was was too much for me to bear.

I expanded my fainting repertoire the next time when I was fitted for contact lenses.

My eye doctor said he'd never had a patient he couldn't get the lens in, and he kept coming at me and I kept pulling away.

And he said, you know, women are usually better at this than men because from the time they're little girls, they're putting on makeup, so they're used to touching around their eyes, but I'll get it.

And he kept trying, and I pulled away like a fish on a hook.

And he said, you are one of the tough ones, but I'll get it.

And I remember the last time he came at me, I could see the lens, and I thought, we're going to do it this time.

I remember looking up at him from the floor of his office.

And he looked over, and he said, you really are one of the worst patients I've had.

And I proceeded to throw up all over his office.

I got to my feet.

He helped me down the corridor.

We got to the reception area, and I threw up all over the reception area.

And in disgust, he waved me away, told me to go home for a week and practice in front of the mirror, touching my own eye.

I thanked him, I apologized, and I threw up all over the entrance to the office.

There are about a half dozen other episodes.

I won't go into detail.

But my friends and family laughed at the idea of my being a surgeon or even a soldier.

And

a friend of mine said, I'm just going to tell you the plot to reservoir dogs because you're never going to see it.

And when my wife got pregnant, everyone just sort of assumed that there would be no way that I could be in the delivery room.

In fact, I'd probably be barred from the delivery room.

But I wanted to prove that they were wrong and I wanted to be there, so I went into training and I rented Godfather 2.

And with the remote control in my left hand and my finger on the step frame super slow-mo button,

I watched the scene where Robert De Niro plunges his dagger into the belly of the Sicilian crime lord who had killed his mother years before and frame by frame I watched him gut the man as the knife rode up his chest.

I rented Reservoir Dogs and watched the notorious scene over and over where Michael Mattson slices off the ear ear of the policeman.

And when my wife's water broke, I felt that I was about as ready or unready as any other expectant father.

We drove to the hospital, we got into the delivery room, everything was going well.

She asked me if I was okay and I said I was, and I thought I was.

And

everything was going fine, and then suddenly everything was not going fine.

And lots of meconium was coming out of her and the obstetrician went over and felt her belly and I could see something was wrong and he said that as the baby was coming down the chute he had folded back and and was breach and he was going to have to do an emergency c-section

the phrase emergency c-section is not something anyone wants to hear but someone who has fainted at the movie all that jazz really doesn't want to hear it

And as my wife was wheeled into the operating room and I was given hospital scrubs, I went in, I sat next to her.

She couldn't see anything.

There was a sheet between herself and her belly.

I couldn't see anything either, but I could see the flash of the sharp instruments the doctor was going to use.

She asked me if I was okay, and I said yes.

And I was holding her hands, but I did keep an especially wide bass in case anything happened.

And the thing that I had not expected is how quickly everything would happen.

And before I knew it, I saw the baby lifted up above the sheet, kind of like Simba at the beginning of Lion King.

And I looked over and it was this pink, slimy, very bloody thing, and it wasn't moving.

And it felt like a year passed, and I was looking at it.

And as soon as the baby started to squirm, I felt myself stand up from the stool, rise up, and I felt as strong and solid and certain on my legs as I'd ever felt before.

I think more than any biped had ever felt before.

And besides the thrill of being a new father, I remember telling myself and others later that I had vanquished the fainting bug.

because I had now seen blood in its most elemental way.

I was seeing it doing what it's supposed to do, which is give life, rather than seeing it spurt out of stumps and parts of bodies and be the result of mutilation and violence.

And I think telling myself this made me feel somehow morally pure, as if it was something that it was good that I had gone through.

And I wish I could tell you that was the end of the story.

Two years later, my wife was pregnant again, and I told her I was going in with her to the Amnio.

I would help her get through it even though she had a stomach of steel and we all knew my history.

And we went in and I was standing next to her and holding her hand and I said, just focus on me.

I'll help you get through this.

I said, I'm going to give you state and you give me a capital and before you know it it will be over.

And the doctor plunged the big horse needle into her abdomen to bring out the amniotic fluid.

And I said to Alex, my wife, I said, California, and she said, Sacramento.

And I said, good, good.

And out of the corner of my eye, I could see the beginning of the pinkish fluid starting to fill up the syringe.

And I said, Kentucky, and she said, Lexington.

And I said, actually, it's Frankfurt, but a lot of people think it's Lexington.

And I couldn't help, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the fluid, a sort of

grapefruit juice color starting to fill up and I said to her

Nebraska and she said Lincoln I said that's good and I looked over and now I saw that the the needle was almost completely filled and I said Nebraska and she said you just said Nebraska I said no I didn't

And I knew that I wanted to say Nebraska again, but suddenly it felt as if there were marbles in my mouth.

I passed out

and the entire dead weight of my body was now heading toward her pregnant belly with the giant needle stuck in it, the end of which was maybe an inch from our unborn child's body.

To this day, I do not know

how she did it, but from her back, My wife reached out her arm,

half traffic cop, half superhero, and put it on my chest and stopped my momentum, this dead weight of her husband falling on and possibly killing our child.

She held me up and she pushed me away and I crumpled unconscious on the floor.

About an hour later, as I was sitting on the curb on the Upper East Side, in the sunlight, trying to get my wits about me, dazed and woozy, I was repulsed by what I had just almost done.

I was inconsolable and I just kept shaking my head thinking, this cannot happen anymore.

This cannot, how can I do this?

Alex tried to make me feel better, but I thought this is unacceptable for a grown human being, for a father.

It can't happen.

And it forced me to think about what fainting really is to me.

And what I thought is, fainting is really about skipping time.

It's really an end around on the most intense, raw moments in life, real or imagined, a way not to confront them, not to meet them, to get around them.

And if it means going unconscious, fine.

And I said, this can never happen again.

And when those moments come, I will face them.

And I will face them even longer than they need to be faced

as a man and as a father.

Six months later, our second son was born, everything went fine, and the doctor gave me the forceps to hold the umbilicus while he was going to cut it.

Normally, I would want to look away, I would want not even to feel the tension, but I remember forcing myself to hold on to it, to feel that kind of eelish, ropey, uneven, curling, pink, bloody tension.

And even after he cut it, and I could have let go I made myself look at it it was almost like something that had been skinned alive and yet it was life and even after he cut it I held on just for one moment longer thank you

that was Andrew Postman

Andrew has written more than a dozen books including the novel Now I Know Everything.

He lives lives in Brooklyn.

Sam, the C-section son, lifted up like Simba, is now a strapping 16-year-old.

Charlie, the son Andrew nearly killed by fainting on the giant amneo needle stuck in his mother's belly, a scene I probably don't need to remind you about, is now 14 years old.

And in the decade and a half since that moment, Andrew has not fainted again, not even when his now nine-year-old daughter Nell came into this world.

Coming up, more stories of fathers, grandfathers, and stepfathers.

Mother Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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This is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Jay Allison.

In this hour, stories about all kinds of fathers.

As a parent, you wonder, what stories will your children tell about you?

It's worth thinking about, so maybe you can give them a few good ones and hope they stick.

Our next two stories are about a grandfather and a stepfather.

First up, Boris Timanovsky, whose dedication to the memory of his ancestors is subject to debate, but he tells a good story about it.

Here's Boris at a moth show in New York City.

Thank you.

Last summer, after 16 years of absence, I went to the city in Russia where I grew up.

I went there in company business, and I was bringing with me a suitcase filled with second-hand clothes that my mom asked me to distribute among her relatives there.

I was really the first in my family to go back there after all those years.

And she also gave me a hand-drawn map showing the location of my grandfather's grave at the local cemetery and she asked me to go there.

And when I was leaving, she asked me again, are you going to go there?

Yes.

Promise?

Promise.

It was really important for her that I go there.

My grandfather died when I was little, and she wanted me to remember him.

She would tell me stories about him.

I guess it was all a part of dealing with the loss.

He was still very much alive in her mind, and

she wanted him to continue to live in my mind, too.

But I was just too little when it all happened, so I didn't remember much.

So I thought maybe this visit to his grave at the cemetery,

for her would make things up, would make up for what she thought was her loss, her failure in keeping his memory alive.

So I promised that the first thing I do when I get there would be go to the cemetery.

Well, the first thing I did when I got there was locate my high school girlfriend.

And I got caught up in work and I had a lot of catching up to do with my childhood friends.

So it wasn't until a day before I was leaving that I actually found time to go to the cemetery.

And it was late in the afternoon.

And right by the entrance, there was a woman who was selling flowers and by then she only had seven carnations left in her bucket and I bought them all but when I reached for my wallet I realized I didn't have the map with me.

I had no idea what happened to that map and I had no idea where my grandfather's grave was located.

I could call my mom and ask her there was a payphone right there and I still had 10 or 15 minutes left on my calling card and it was already morning in New York.

But the problem was I had already told her that I went to the cemetery.

And really, you know, what was I going to say that I decided to go again but lost the map.

She knows who she's dealing with.

She should see right through it.

So I thought I'd find some help and I went to look for the main office.

And I found the main office and it was actually in the middle of the cemetery and it occupied an actual family mausoleum.

So I figured some affluent family

must have commissioned it for themselves, but then maybe immigrated to the United States.

So the management took advantage of the opportunity and moved right in.

And fortunately for me, it was open.

And inside was a small office

filled with file cabinets.

It kind of looked like a financial aid office at some community college.

And behind the counter was an old woman.

She was reading.

And she said, yes, she'd help me locate my grandfather's records and she started looking in those file cabinets and she was doing everything so slowly I knew it was going to take forever

and then the backroom door opened and a little boy walked walked in an eight-year-old I think

and he said grandma I don't want to play anymore let's go home And I could see through the door that there was a computer in the back room with Pac-Man or something like that on the screen.

And she says, do grandma a favor, go do a grave identification search.

The name is Abraham Pukarski.

And the boy says, yeah, should I look in the mass graves too?

And she turns to me and she says, did you say he died in the war?

No, he died in the early 70s.

So the boy went back inside.

And a couple of minutes later, he comes back with a printout.

And I was going to reach for it, but the boy's grandmother says, no, no, no, let me see it first.

It's $5 per grave.

And I say, well, is there more than one?

She says, yes, there is always more than one.

So it turned out there were 17 Abraham Pukarskis on the list.

And I paid for two.

The two who died in the early 70s and whose age, I believe, closely matched my grandfather's.

And I went to look for them.

I was hoping that at least one of them would have a portrait on the tombstone.

At least it is the custom with the Russian immigrants here in New York to put portraits on tombstones.

So I thought this way I'll know which grave is mine.

And I was walking through the cemetery and

lots of tombstones had portraits on them and I was looking at the faces and I was thinking that the faces I saw there didn't look quite as happy as the faces that I see on our Russian tombstones here in Brooklyn.

So I thought that maybe to have immigrated wasn't such a bad thing after all.

Maybe all those immigrants did find that happiness the day that they went after.

So I found the first grave and it said Abraham Pukarski on it, but there was no portrait.

There was an inscription from the loving wife and children.

I had no idea whether this was the right one or not, so I went to look for the other one.

I found it too.

And that one was virtually indistinguishable from the first one.

Even the granite was of the same color.

It said Abraham Pikarsky, no portrait.

The inscription was slightly different.

It said from the grieving family.

So I had really no idea what to do.

Was my family the loving one or the grieving one?

I was standing there and I was waiting.

I was thinking maybe some sort of a special feeling would come to me.

I thought maybe

I'd feel some sort of a kinship with the person

who was laying there.

But I just kept wondering whether this wasn't a total stranger

who was buried there.

I tried to remember all I knew about my grandfather.

He was a locksmith.

He was a father of three.

One of them died in a war.

He was a soccer fan.

He died from a heart attack.

Who was this Abraham Pukarski?

A dentist?

An auto accident victim?

I really didn't know.

I put three carnations on that grave and I went back to the first one.

I stood there too for a while.

And again, I was hoping that I'd feel something special.

But it was getting late.

And

I remembered that I had yet to pack for the trip back to New York.

So I put three more carnations.

Well, I put three carnations on this grave.

And I stood there with the last flower.

in my hands and I didn't really know what to do with when, with that one.

Which Abraham Pukarsky should it go to?

Should I just get rid of it?

Should I take a flower from another grave maybe and make sure that each Abraham Pukarsky gets the equal number of flowers?

I couldn't leave.

I had to come up with some sort of a formula.

And then suddenly I knew what to do.

I put that flower

on that same grave where I was standing.

I thought, if this is really my grandfather who's...

who's laying there, then all is well and good, and he got the most.

But if not, then let this be a consolation to the stranger because it wasn't his, but somebody else's grandson who came all the way from America to pay his respects.

And I left, I went to the hotel, and I never found that map again.

I flew back to New York the next day.

Mom and dad picked me up at the airport.

They have this thing about picking me up at airports.

Really, I would have been home at least an hour sooner if it wasn't for them.

First they couldn't find the parking, then Then they went to look for me at the wrong terminal.

Then they lost each other.

Finally, I found them.

I found them.

And on the way home from the airport in a car, my mom started crying.

And I asked, mom, why are you crying?

It's only been a week.

And she says, I'm just so happy that you took the time to visit your grandfather's grave.

It really means so much to me.

I appreciate it.

You know, when you called and told me you went there, I thought you were just saying it

to make me feel good.

But this morning, when I was still in the air,

her second cousin, who still lives in Russia, called her and told her that she had just come from the cemetery and that she saw my flowers there.

So my mom really knew that I went there.

And

she stopped crying and she was sitting there and she was wiping her

eyes.

And I was thinking, should I ask her

how many flowers her second cousin saw?

Three or four,

but then decided that maybe I should just not say anything at all.

Thank you.

Boris Timanovsky was a software developer and a playwright who lived in New York.

Boris told stories in the early years of the Moth Story Slam in New York City.

He passed away in 2024.

We will continue to remember him through the wonderful stories he shared.

Our next story is about the often unsung member of the paternal order, a stepfather.

It comes from Annalise Rakiz at a moth story slam in Chicago.

I was saved by a large black man with a booming voice and snow-white hair.

When Bill first saw my brother and I, people were saying there was something wrong with us.

But he took one look at us and he said they're just depressed.

I was seven years old.

My Palestinian father had been diagnosed with a mental illness, and there was a lot of insanity going on in our house.

And finally, when he started saying that my brother and I were not his real children, my mom decided that she had to move out, and it was sad and horrible.

We went to go live with my grandparents, who tried the best they could to instill some order and some calm, but I still felt lost until Bill came along.

When I was in fourth grade, Bill Bill moved in with my mom and my brother and I and everything changed.

My mom worked, so he was a stay-at-home dad.

He was the cook, he was a writer.

He was a great cook.

Of course, as a kid, I could have cared less about that.

He had raised all of his siblings because his mom worked, and we now had rules in our house.

And Bill and I had a very fiery relationship from the beginning.

Frequently, our conversations would end with me screaming, I hate you, I hate you, and he would say, that's okay, baby, because I love you.

Which was infuriating, by the way.

And then he would say, stick that lower lip out further, I can't quite see it.

So

I was always pushing the boundaries, I was always grounded, and one of our biggest battles was dinner time.

And he wanted me to eat stuff that I did not want to eat, especially vegetables.

and especially Brussels sprouts.

And so I became really good at sleight of hand at the dinner table.

You know, I know a lot of kids do this.

Like you could scoop it off the plate into your napkin and then throw it away at the end of the meal.

He caught on to that fast.

He's smart.

So we started having napkin check before we could leave the table.

If I had something with pockets on, I'd like put it in my pocket, which could be disastrous if it had a lot of sauce on it.

Then I devolved into I would chew it up, but I would like pack it into the back of my mouth and then like spit it out when I got up from the table.

I was a genius.

So

this one night we're sitting at dinner and I've got three Brussels sprouts sitting on my plate.

I'm like, I'm not eating them.

And my brother starts arguing with Bill and my mom about something.

I said, Can I go to the bathroom?

And I got the nod because they were distracted.

I scooped them into my napkin, I ran into the bathroom, and I was like, This is brilliant.

Why didn't I think like throw them out during the meal?

Don't wait till the meal's over.

So I close the bathroom door, run, raise the lid of the toilet, plop them in, and I'm just getting ready to flush the toilet when I hear bam, bam, bam.

Don't flush that toilet

like can this guy see through doors I mean it was incredible and I was like but I just went to the bathroom I don't care don't flush that toilet you're gonna be grounded for a month open this door okay okay I'm coming so I stick my hand in the toilet and take them out

I'm like crap what am I gonna do with these I mean the bathroom is like the size of a postage stamp I'm thinking I could jam them down like the the tub you know drain but then maybe I couldn't get them out if I put them in the towels in the closet he's he's going to look through all of them.

I was like, what am I going to do?

Bam, bam, bam, open the door.

And I turned around and I was like, the window.

And there's stuff on the windowsill, so I move it.

I open the window.

I knock out the bottom of the screen.

And when I knocked it out and dropped the Brussels sprouts onto our neighbor's driveway, two floors down, I also knocked out this glass jar of blue rosebud bath soaps that had a big plastic flower on top of it.

It was dusty.

I don't know how long it had been there.

And I heard it crash on the driveway, but I thought he didn't hear it because he's banging on the door.

So I closed the window, put everything back, opened the door.

And he comes stalking in.

He's like, he knows.

He looks in the toilet tank.

That is good, by the way.

You know?

I mean, I'm glad I didn't think of it because right, he would have found it.

But looks in the toilet tank, looks in the closet, and he's just getting ready to leave.

And he turns and he looks at the window.

And I can see like the wheels turning, like he knows something's off.

And I'm going, go, go, go, please go.

And he goes over and moves the stuff, opens the window, and sticks his head out.

And he's hanging out the window, I'm not kidding, for the longest minutes of my life, just hanging there.

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So later on, years later, when we talked about it, what he told me was that the reason he was hanging out the window so long is that he was trying to contain his laughter.

Because when he looked down at the driveway, what he saw was like a sea of broken glass, a big plastic flower, millions of little blue balls, and then three Brussels sprouts right in the middle.

So Bill, he has Alzheimer's and he is in a nursing home right now.

And I don't know how much he understands when I go to visit him.

But recently when I was there, I said, hey, Bill, guess what I had for dinner last night?

Brussels sprouts and he laughed thank you

that was Annalise Raquiz she's a Chicago-based performer writer peace activist and grateful mother.

Her creative endeavors have ranged from leading theater workshops with incarcerated women to singing in bands and playing the back end of a dragon.

In a moment, our final story about a father tested by extreme circumstances while his daughter bears witness.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour.

I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show.

Our last paternally themed story comes from Dory Samadzai Bonner, a storyteller who came to us through our pitch line, which I'll tell you about afterward.

Here's Dory, live at the Moth.

I grew up in Afghanistan during the Russian occupation, and as a child, I remember my dad being gone a lot.

The subject of my dad's whereabouts was somewhat taboo in my household because my mom told us we were to never ask about him, so we never did.

And

sometimes I wondered if he cared about me.

Growing up during the war was very difficult because we had bomb explosions and missile attacks on a daily basis in the background of our lives.

And by the time I was 10, these explosions were getting closer closer and closer to the city of Kabul, where we used to live.

In fact, sometimes the explosions would be so close

that there's a distinct whistling sound that the missile makes right before hitting its target.

And you could hear that.

In the meantime, there was a rumor about a regime change, which was devastating news for my dad.

who was a high-ranking officer working for the current regime.

And historically, the new regime takes over by violently dismantling the old regime.

My parents were desperate to try to get out of the country, but they couldn't because the government put a lockdown on everybody's visas.

They needed everyone to stay and fight the war for them.

The only way to get out of the country was on forged papers.

In the early 1990s, after a daring escape in the middle of the night, my parents and my brother and I migrated to the U.S.

on forged papers and asked for political asylum.

This meant that we could stay here temporarily while they reviewed our case.

They gave us a work permit and driver's license, social security card, those type of things.

So we started, all of us started working, and our family in California helped us get settled.

And

five years fast-forwarding, our lives were so normal that

the worst thing in my mind at that time was how I could get my mom to let me stay out late, like extending my curfew.

And I'm at my first job at the men's warehouse, and my dad calls me.

And I could hear by the certain excitement in his voice that there was something going on at home, and he tells me, you need to come home right away because there's a letter from the immigration, and I speak the best English in my household so he wanted me to come home and translate.

And for those of you who've been lucky enough not to be familiar with the immigration system,

they don't send you regular updates like, hey, still thinking about y'all, haven't forgotten about you.

So we were kind of puzzled by this letter and ultimately decided it was a good letter because they inquired, you know, they sent us this letter without us inquiring about it.

I rush home and I find my dad in his security uniform, which he often wore.

And

my mom comes home too, and my brother comes home because my dad called all of them.

And

I'm sitting on the dining table, and all three of them are kind of hovered over me, and they're like kind of rushing me.

Come on, come on.

Read it.

What does it say?

What does it say?

And so I read, just the highlights really quickly, and it says, our appointment has been moved up to next week.

week and it says that we need to bring all of our legal documents and our family photos and things that are important.

We start jumping up and down and we're thinking this is it.

This is the appointment that we've been waiting for.

And the day of our appointment we drive about 45 minutes to downtown Los Angeles and we go into a big government building.

You walk in and there's metal detectors.

We go past that and check in with security guards.

We go upstairs and there's an immigration officer waiting for us and he guides us into this room.

And the moment that the doors open up, it was like all of us looked at each other.

We felt like we were in the wrong place.

The people that were sitting there, they looked like they were visibly upset.

Some of them were still crying.

But we still went ahead and we sat down and they told us that just sit down until you hear your last name.

And after a while, my dad asked me to go and ask the security guard how long this appointment was going to take and what were we here for because he was dressed in his uniform, he needed to get back to work.

So I go up and I ask this immigration officer, hey, can you tell me how long this appointment might take?

Because my dad needs to get back to work.

And he says, Your dad will get back to work all right, just not in this country.

And

it was like my heart just dropped.

Going back is not an option because we're now considered traitors.

And I sit down and hesitantly told my dad this.

And it was like the moment that I told him what the security guard said, what this immigration officer said.

It was like my dad just lost all the color in his face.

He just looked pale.

After a while, I'm looking over at my dad.

He's hunched over and he's holding his chest.

And he's visibly in some kind of pain.

And this pain continues on.

So I get up and I go up to the same officer and I ask him if I can use the phone.

He says no.

And then I ask him if I could use the bathroom and he lets me.

I just open up these doors and I start rushing.

There's a long hallway and I'm looking to the left, I'm looking to the right.

I'm just looking for a telephone.

and finally I spotted at the end of the hall and I grabbed the phone and I dial our attorney's number.

Now

I was extremely upset with our attorney because we couldn't afford even our own meals yet.

The only thing that we wanted to be sure that we could have was an attorney and so for her not to be here was really upsetting to me.

And this girl answers the phone.

She sounds like she's about 18 years old, like my age at that time.

And I have to convince her to put our attorney on the phone, and she keeps refusing.

And finally, I tell her it's an emergency.

Please put Jodi on the phone.

And as soon as I hear her voice on the other end of the phone, I just completely break down.

And I explain to her that something is wrong with my dad, and they won't let us get help for him.

She tells me to just sit still, sit tight, and that she was going to see what she could do.

And so we're sitting there, and my dad continues to be in pain.

After 30 to 45 minutes later, a man walks in and says our last name, and all four of us get up, and we're following him.

We're not sure where, but we're following him.

And we...

end up going into this small office, which was so small that only my dad and I could barely fit in it.

And there's a man in there who's working on his desk.

He didn't even acknowledge that we were standing there.

He didn't speak to us one word.

He just

hands over this paper, and the paper said that our visa had been extended for three months

so that we could go get my dad some medical help, which we did right away.

And afterwards, The next three months is the worst time of my life by far

because we're afraid of, we're fearing deportation every every single day and whenever we would see the mailman show up and put mail in our mailbox it was like a dreaded task we none of us wanted to go and check our mailbox and my dad's behavior was so completely over the top he moves out of my mom's bedroom and moves into the living room and our blinds are closed whether it's day or nighttime and he sleeps with a pair of clothes right next to him.

And whenever he would hear footsteps, he would jump out of the couch and look through the blinds and see who it was.

We finally go to our final appointment at the end of the three months.

And we walk in with our attorney.

And I noticed that it was a different judge who was sitting there.

It was an older gentleman.

And he looks really intense.

And I remember the first time that I saw him in my mind, I was so intimidated by him because he wouldn't smile, he wouldn't talk or anything like that.

And I was pretty intimidated because I had to translate whatever conversation was going to happen because I was our family's translator.

So the judge carries on with our attorney for a little bit and then turns his attention to my dad.

And after some basic questions, he gets right into it and starts.

asking my dad if he has a translator.

My dad says, my daughter will translate for us.

And he tells me what, he says, young lady, whatever I say to you you say you translate exactly what I say nothing more nothing less and whatever your dad says you tell me exactly what he says nothing more nothing less and I agree

he asks my dad questions really demeaning questions like

do I understand correctly that you came here on forced papers

And my dad starts to say, well, yes, but, and then he goes on on this long explanation and then he cuts my dad off and and says I just want to hear yes or no I don't care about the explanation I don't need the explanation and so they kind of this conversation goes on like this back and forth and it's not going well at all

and finally he tells my dad you know

We here in the United States do not give citizenship to people that break the law.

We can't and I won't.

And as soon as I translate this to my dad,

I just put my head down and I just start praying.

And when I open up my eyes, I see my dad rising out of his seat and he starts unbuckling his belt at which point I'm thinking he's completely losing his mind because I'm not sure what he's getting ready to do.

But he lifts up his shirt on the right side and in his native language looks at the judge and says, this is what the communists did to me.

He's pointing at a four to five inch knife scar.

And then he lifts, he pushes down his pants in the back and turns around a little bit and again says, this is what the communists did to me.

pointing at it pointing at three gunshot wounds.

And then he takes off his shoes and takes off his socks and points at his toes and says, This is what the communists did to me.

He's pointing at his toenails, which they had tried to pull with pliers.

And I remember thinking,

I know I am hearing what I am hearing, but somehow everything wasn't registering.

Because as I am translating these horrible things,

I am also learning for the first time

about my dad's whereabouts.

In all those times

that I didn't know where he was, he was in prison being tortured.

And in that moment,

I have never felt more sorrow.

He continues to tell the judge, it's easy for you to judge me.

You sit in that seat and you wear this robe.

But if you came on this side and you looked at me one man to another,

you will see that everything I did, I did to save my children, I had no other choice.

And you might deny it right now, but had it been you, I know you would do the same thing.

And if you have to show the American public that you didn't take it easy on us,

I understand.

Send me back.

I volunteer.

But please let my children stay.

Please give my children a new home.

And then he just puts his head down and starts just crying like a baby.

And the judge leaves.

We're on a break.

And he comes back after an hour.

And as soon as he enters the room I noticed that he doesn't have his rope on and we thought we were still on break but he goes up to his chamber and grabs something and starts walking back down and towards us we're pretty nervous because we're not sure why he's walking towards us and the entire time his both eyes were on my dad

He goes past me behind me and stops right next to my dad.

My dad turns his chair and looks at him him up, and he says, Mr.

Samadzai, let me see your hand.

My dad shows him his hand, and he puts a stamp on my dad's hand and says, Mr.

Samadzai, I would like you to be the one to stamp your children's papers.

Together they stamp our papers, and when they move their hands, it reads, asylum granted.

He then flips the page to my parents' papers and stamps it with the same stamp, then looks on to my dad and still puts his hand on his shoulder and says, welcome to America.

It took us 18 years from the day that we arrived here for me to be granted an American citizenship.

On January 29, 2009,

as I stood there and I was sworn in as an American citizen, I pledged allegiance to my new homeland.

And it is through my children, my two-year-old son, and my unborn child in my womb, that I will make sure

that this gratitude that overflows in my heart every single day will continue to live on long after I am gone.

Thank you.

Dory Samadzai Bonner is a writer and first came to the moth through our pitch line.

She's told her stories on stages around the country and has gotten a standing ovation every time.

You can listen to her first moth story about her journey out of Afghanistan at them.org.

Maybe you'd like to do as Dory did and leave a short message telling us about your story, you can record it right on our site, themoth.org, or call 877-799Moth.

That's 877-799-6684.

That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour.

We hope you'll join us next time, and that's the story from The Moth.

The stories in this show were directed by Catherine Burns and Maggie Sino.

The rest of the Moth's directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin-Janess, Jennifer Hickson, and Meg Bowles.

Production support from Whitney Jones.

Moth Stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.

Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest.

Our theme music is by The Drift.

Other music in this hour from Chandler Travis and his various bands.

You can find links to all the music we use at our website.

The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, father of five children, and I work on the show with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D.

and Catherine T.

MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Rhys-Dennis.

For more about our podcast, for information on pitching, your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

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