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The world is a turbulent place in 2022, but it's often traveling—whether for pleasure or out of necessity—that can shine a light on the enduring kindness and hospitality of strangers. Lale chats with London-based actor, cookbook author, and theater producer Dina Mousawi about her work with refugees around the world, as well as her own Iraqi heritage, and Maria Romanenko, a Ukrainian journalist who fled her country the day after the Russian invasion and currently leads walking tours for other Ukrainian immigrants around Manchester. Plus, we hear from two listeners about getting rescued during their travels.
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Lale Arikoglu: Hello. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and welcome to Women Who Travel. A podcast for everyone who is curious about the world, and excited to explore places both near and far from home.
Whenever I visit my dad's side of the family in Turkey, it's usually impossible to leave a relative's house without having a variety of different dishes shoved in front of me, regardless of the time of day or the fact that we've all, say, literally just had a three hour lunch together. It's considered deeply rude if you don't eat everything, because it's meant with such kindness. Especially if, like me, you're a guest visiting from someplace else.
Some of my favorite childhood memories, or actually travel memories, are of being on the terrace at my family's house in Istanbul, overlooking the Bosporus, during long dinners on late summer evenings, as the sound of the water laps in the background. And so, it was such a joy to introduce my husband on his first trip to Turkey, to some of those meals. And to that slightly overbearing level of kindness and generosity that comes with extended family welcoming new visitors into their home.I'll never forget watching him politely eat a piece of cheese, a food he detests, to appease a distant older cousin.
After all, probably one of the most universal ways of showing hospitality is through food and drink. It's something that London-based Iraqi actor, cookbook author, and theater producer Dina Mousawi understand inherently. It's not just thanks to her own background, but it's also through her work with refugees from different parts of the world. Work that frequently relies on the kindness of strangers.
Dina Mousawi: I was born in England, but when I was five weeks old, my parents took me back to Iraq, so I was brought up in Iraq. But yes, my dad's from Iraq, but my mom is British-Ukrainian, so... But now, most of my family are in Jordan or kind of scattered all over the world.
LA: Are there sort of, from, I guess, from those sort of early years or ties when you've been able to go back to Iraq, have there been sort of characters that you've come across you think have expressed like particular acts of kindness or-
DM: So, one little story is that, a few, three or four years ago, I went to an arts festival in Turkey, and I met a musician from Iraq, and we kind of just connected, 'cause he was Iraqi and so was I and we got chatting loads of... It was just one or two days that we were sort of at this festival, and then, a year later, I went back to Mosul, for the very first time, and he was from Mosul, in northern Iraq.
And I sort of texted him and just said, "Oh, I'm coming to Mosul." And he said, "Anything you need, I'm there, I will help you with everything." And he, I got a taxi there, from Erbil, 'cause like I think it was two or three hour drive, and he met me and he just basically took me 'round the whole city and introduced me to loads of people. And I find that, in England, you know I live in London, and people don't have f- time for you. Everyone's just too busy.
LA: It's funny sometimes, I hate when, at least in my experience, when I've been traveling, where you have those interactions with people where they insist on paying for you or covering the cab or, you know, just being-
DM: Yeah!
LA: so generous, and there's this part of me which is always like, actually kind of uncomfortable with it. And I sort of default to feeling like I'm somehow taking advantage, even though this person's actually just being really nice.
DM: Exactly, yeah. But I guess it's jut kindness, isn't it, it's kindness and generosity and it's really beautiful. [laughs]
LA: Yeah, and I guess it's sort of, you have to look inwards and be like, "Why does this make me feel so uncomfortable?"
DM: Yeah! And also, admittedly, I'm not sure I would do the same. Would I do that, if I had guests here, would I say, "I'll pay for your taxi," and, "I'll pay for lunch." I'm not sure if I would or not, I don't know.
LA: No, and I think of when I, when I have people visit me in New York, how you just wave them off into the sunset and that's it. [laughs]
DM: Yeah. [laughs]
LA: That is great, though. And you then moved back to England?
DM: Yep.
LA: Still, as a child.
DM: Yep.
LA: And you moved to Bradford, in Yorkshire.
DM: Yeah.
LA: Was everyone welcoming? I mean, I feel like the north always has a reputation for being very welcoming and hospitable, but how did that actually manifest in real life?
DM: Yeah, I think, so, I was about eight years old when we moved from Baghdad to Bradford. Great title for a film, isn't it? [laughs] [inaudible 00:04:41]. And you know, I had a, an accent, Arabic was my first language, so I spoke English with a broken accent. But we used to come to England as often as we could, during the summer holidays, so it was quite familiar to me, to be here.
I do remember missing my cousins in Iraq. We escaped the war, as well, so it's not like things were amazing over there, you know? There was always the threat. It was during the Iran-Iraq War, so it wasn't on our doorstep, but it was more on the borders. But you still would hear gunshots and you would hear the war sirens and those are the sort of memories that I still have. And if I ever hear a war siren now, I, I kind of, ugh, get shivers down my spine. We were just gonna come for a year and then go back. And then, we never went back. And then the Gulf War happened, and then it was kind of, felt like it was war after war in Iraq, so... We've never gone back.
LA: You have, as an adult, you produced and directed Terrestrial Journeys, which was devised with Syrian women in refugee camps. During that experience, what were the stories that came out of working with those women, that kind of emphasized the way that strangers helped each other or go out of their way for other people?
DM: The first project I worked on was Antigone of Syria, and then, that was with 60 women. And then, I went back. And I didn't produce or direct that, I just worked on it, training women and working with women. And then, a year later, I went back and produced and directed my own project called Terrestrial Journeys, which was very much devised from their own experiences.
I think one thing was always blown away by was the fact that there was so many women living in refugee camps, which didn't have the best conditions, and they had big families, were not earning money at all, living in tiny like one room or two room apartments, if you even call them an apartment. And they were just so generous. So, they would argue over who was gonna cook us lunch the next day. So, they would invite us over to their place, to have lunch. And they would have cooked this massive feast that like, if you saw some of the pictures, there's just so much food you just think, "They've got barely two pennies to rub together, and they have cooked us this incredible feast," with like one tiny camping gas stove.
And then, one woman would do it and then another one would get jealous and she'd go, "Come to mine tomorrow, tomorrow you're coming to my house, okay?" And then next week, "How come you haven't been to my house yet?" And I'd go, "Oh, um, well, well maybe we'll come next week." [laughs] It's kind of like they were fighting over who... And they would get offended-
LA: [laughs]
DM: if we didn't go to lunch at their house. And I just thought that was really beautiful. And we were, a lot of the time, we would sit together, we would cook together.
LA: Did any of the women, that you were cooking with, share any of their own stories?
DM: Yeah, lots of them. I mean, some of them were really inspiring, some of them are really moving, and some of them are really heartbreaking and some of them are funny... [laughs] So, one woman, she was telling me a story about, so she was living in this area in Damascus and it was under siege. So, they had to, they left their house one day and they weren't allowed to go back. And she said... Well, I think her husband or her brother-in-law got sick and she said, "Oh, I have, I have to go back, I have to go back to the flat and get the chicken."
And he goes, "Are you crazy? There's a war, there's rockets and missiles falling," and she said, "We've got to get the chicken, we've got no money! We need to eat and chicken's good for you." So, she convinced her husband to drive her back to their neighborhood, and she goes, "Give me the key for the house," and he was really angry that he said, "You can't go down that street, there's missiles falling." She goes, "Gimme the key!" And she grabbed the key and she starts running down the street.
A missile falls and she hides under a, a veranda, and she said, "And I'm sa- and I'm sat under this veranda," and then she sees her house and she goes in, goes upstairs, open the fridge, and finds this boiled chicken still in the pan, in the fridge. She takes the pan out, runs back out the house, runs down the street, hears another rocket falling, and hides, again, and she said, she said, "And I was, I was crouching down and I thought, if I die now, they'll say, Ahlam died for that chicken." [laughs]
LA: [laughs]
DM: And she was like laughing about it. And um, anyway, it was just one of, a really, really funny story, and that story made it into the show that we were making, 'cause it was just so brilliant and, and she actually opened the show, with that story. And the audience loved it.
LA: Dina is the creative producer at Good Chance, the theater company in the UK that created Little Amal, the towering 12 foot puppet of the 10 year old Syrian refugee girl who recently visited New York. An artistic response to the global problem of displaced children, she's visited 12 countries since 2021, parading along streets, parks, and through other public spaces. Here she is in Times Square.
Speaker 3: [Singing]
DM: We kind of saw that having this puppet made people react in a different way, it made them more friendly and more open and more inquisitive, to this stranger walking through their city. So, she walked from the border of Syria, through Europe, and she was welcomed by communities in lots of different countries, who spoke lots of different languages and had different religious backgrounds. And none of that mattered, suddenly. Suddenly it was the human story and the human connection, even though she's a puppet.
LA: For those who haven't seen a picture of Amal, what does she look like?
DM: Well, she is, I think 3.6 meters tall-
LA: Okay, so she's quite-
DM: she's pretty big.
LA: she's a tall girl.
DM: She's tall, tall for her age, she's nine. And she's got long, dark hair, big, big, big eyes, with long eyelashes, a huge smile. She wears a pink skirt, and she's got her hair sort of like half tied up and half down. And she's definitely a presence, when, when she walks through your town or your city. You definitely notice her.
LA: And through it, you've been become apparent to me that all of your work and the way that you sort of become part of these different communities is, that you're kind of [laughs] the embodiment of the theme?
DM: [laughs]
LA: Did you intentionally move towards this sort of work, or did it find you?
DM: I think it found me. I think when the war in Syria happened, in the early days, I kept seeing all these image on the news, and at the time, I was living with my dad. And my dad constantly had Arabic news on and Arabic channels, and it was just, it was relentless, it was just all the time. And I just kept feeling really like, anxious. I go, "I just don't know what to do, I don't know how to help." And it was so heartbreaking, to see what was happening to people.
And then, I got the opportunity to, I met somebody at a dinner party and then a couple of months later, she said, "Do you want to come work with us on this project we're doing in Beirut? But we can't pay you." And I was like, "I'll do it, I'll do it for free." And they paid for my accommodation and that was it. And I was like, "Yes, I'll be there, ill be there!" And I spent four months with them and I really loved it and I just saw the impact that art can have on people who, a lot of the women we worked with had never, ever experienced theater before. And when I saw what that brought to them, personally into their lives, I just thought, "This is so powerful," and I want to do more of it.
LA: Each week, we ask listeners to share stories of their travels in their own words. Today, we've got Kirsten Wing and Michelle Nicola, both of whom are talking about getting rescued.
Speaker 4: I was living in Abu Dhabi a few years ago and I had brought my dog with me and he lives a very kind of quiet apartment style life, and I'd heard about this dog beach from a fellow expat and she had told me that there was kind of this secret expat dog beach where we could let the dogs just run free. So, one morning, I decided to be brave and find this beach on my own. So, um, I set off with these very basic directions to this island about 15 miles outside of the city of Abu Dhabi. I was on the highway and then I exited at this half constructed bridge, got onto this small, sealed road, and kept driving, trying to find this beach where I could let my dog go.
And as I made my way though, I realized the road was running out and all I could see was sand. And having not been a very experienced Middle East expat, I did not realize or think about the consequences of driving a, you know, normal car into the sand. So, I decided I would just cut through this sand and hope that the beach was on the other side. So, I, with my dog at my side, I drove into the sand, and did not make it very far before I was completely stuck. My tires were just spinning, spinning, spinning and kicking up sand, and I was thinking the more I hit the accelerator, the more stuck I'm going to be.
And so, I stopped, I turned off the car, and I sat there thinking. "What do I do now?" Because I looked all around my surroundings and there was truly nothing. It was just sand, as far as I could see. Everything I've ever read said never leave your vehicle in an emergency. I considered taking Foxy and walking her back to the main road, but it was a long way and of course, the heat would just get worse and there was truly nobody out there. And I, I did not think that was a wise thing to do, so I stayed with my car. And after a while, again of course, sitting there kind of still pondering what I could do, and then I looked up, and out of nowhere, I saw these three figures coming towards me.
And I was thinking, "Oh, my gosh, who are these people that are coming at me in the middle of nowhere?" I got out of my car, and they got closer and I realized they were construction workers. And they did not speak any English, and they just immediately took control and they asked me to, kind of gestured at me, to get out of the car, with my dog. And so, they got in the car, and then... One of them got in the car and the other two were outside, digging in the sand, trying to release my tires. And then, they were rocking the car and shifting the car and eventually, they did move it free out of the sand, and was able to push it further, further away from where I was, closer to the main road.
And I was so, so incredibly grateful. These gentlemen just appeared, literally out of nowhere, in this miraculous fashion, and saved me from what could've been a really catastrophic situation. And also, just as a single female traveler, being vulnerable in that situation, you know three men against me could've been a totally different scenario, but all these men were doing was just being incredibly kind and rescuing me from a very silly situation I shouldn't have gotten myself into.
I did make it to the beach, with Foxy. She did get to run around the beach and when I went there the first time... I went regularly, but I really could never thanks these three men enough.
Speaker 5: My friend and I were both teachers, and so we were looking forward to uh, we were done with school in June, and so we were looking forward to going somewhere. She had always wanted to go to Scotland and I did, too. We wanted to just see as much as we could. So, we were traveling on the road, from Edinburgh to Inverness, and we were only 30 or so minutes into our drive. So, we were driving, it was a two lane road in each direction, and we had hit, on the passenger side, the median.
We, our car spun and flipped and we landed upside down and I don't know that we were upside down more than a couple of seconds, before the construction site, just on the other side of the median, I could see them from the car running towards us, to either side of us, and they were talking to us about how they were gonna open the doors, what we needed to do, to unbuckle ourselves, and how they were gonna get us out. And I think within moments of letting us out of the car, over to the side of the road, they just had put their jackets on us.
It wasn't rainy or anything but it was cold and we were visibly shaken up by the whole situation. And so, the jackets just kind of became part of us and, and was a manifestation of just how the rest of that encounter would go. We were so cared for by all of these, all of these people. They had called for an ambulance, and we had expressed that we were uh, didn't want that, that we were you know, concerned about the cost of it all. When we said that, one of the people that was helping me kind of held my shoulders and said, you know, it's, "This isn't America. Y- It's free here."
When it was time for us to be driven to this town where there was another rental car place, we were about to take the jackets off and they insisted that we keep them and I'm sure we burst into tears again and, and thanked them so much. But it really became our security blankets, for the rest of the trip.
LA: Remember, to stay up to date on all things Women Who Travel, make sure you're subscribed to the Women Who Travel newsletter, via the link in our show notes. And that you're following Women Who Travel on Instagram. After the break, a journalist fleeing Ukraine receives help from foreign media.
Speaker 6: [singing]
LA: Maria Romanenko is a Ukrainian journalist the day after the Russian invasion in February of this year. And found that the journalist around the world, who wanted accounts of her experience, actually gave her as much support as she gave them.
You talk about the strangers that helped you along the way, and also people you knew and loved ones. Talk about some of those people that you encountered, from the start of that journey to when you got to the border.
Maria Romanenko: The people that were part of that journey, as we were escaping. So, the first one was definitely my dad, because on the 23rd of February, in the evening, he ran me to say that he's heard something bad will happen in central Kyiv, which is where I was living. So he was like, "It's probably best if you come to my place for tonight." And he lives like 12 miles away from Kyiv, so, still very, very close, but better than being bang on in the center.
So, we got a taxi to his place and we stayed there overnight. I slept all right, you know, I had my earplugs in, I didn't hear anything. But around 7:00 AM, my partner starts shaking me and is like, "Wake up, wake up," and I was like, "What's going on?" He's like, "Oh, there's bombs being dropped everywhere in the country." Dess started saying that we needed to get out. My dad was like, "Well, I'm not sure that's the best idea," because everybody would be doing the same thing right now, uh, it's probably better to wait a couple of days. And my partner was like, "No, no, no, I'm not waiting anything," you know, "I'll go on my own if that's what it takes."
LA: I remember you wrote something that kind of like stuck with me, in your piece, which was that, for your partner, he wasn't from Ukraine, and so it was sort of easy for him to make that, it was such a clear cut decision for him to be, be like, "Well, I'm g-" you know, "I'm leaving," and for you obviously, it's a lot more emotionally wrought. I'd loved to know a little bit, once you actually hit the road, what was that drive like, with your father?
MR: There was so much happening at that point, we were on the road for such a long time, but during that journey I was also on the phone to various media organizations.
LA: What were those interactions like, and what were those journalists' responses? Because clearly they wanted you for the content, but do you feel like there was something more of a human connection, having those conversations with people who were in a different country, in a different place, watching from afar?
MR: Basically, my phone just kep ringing, and I think one of the reasons is because I gave the first interview to, I think it was BBC Cardiff or something like that. And what happens with the BBC that once you give an interview to one of them, they just share your number across their whole BBC platform. So, I got like lots of calls from like BBC Northern Ireland, BBC Scotland, BBC London, BBC Cambridge, and there were also people like The Guardian rang and we did like a video thing of me just talking from the car and describing what I would see.
It was kind of hard to really understand how many of them I talked to that day and that the journey was 10 hours long. But I think eight hours out of the whole journey, I was constantly on the phone. And I think that helped me, because I tend to get very anxious and if I'm in a quiet place and if I can reflect with what's going on, like it's easy for me to just like break down and start crying.
LA: It was like that sort of human interaction and that human connection gave you like a place to focus on, when everything else felt...
MR: Yeah, it w- it just gave me something to concentrate on, instead of concentrating on what's actually going on.
No, it was a, such a strange environment at the border, I think because we spent such a long time in one place and surrounded by the same people, whether you wanted to or not, you kind of get to know other people around you and talk to them. We were in this sort of cage, I don't really know what, I don't really have other words to describe it, it literally felt like a cage, 'cause it was as, a small section that was cordoned off for a fence and on two sides and two walls and the other two sides, that was probably only good to fit like 50 [people, but in reality, it was at least 2,000 probably people in there, just all crushing.
and because of all that crushing, a lot of people felt sick, including myself. Also in the same time, my period started at the same time and that just made me very, very sick. And when you talk about acts of kindness, you know just like somebody I was like, "I need some water," there was no access to food or water or drinks or even toilet facilities, at that point, because we were so, so crushed together. I needed some water, because I was feeling sick, and I just drank somebody else's water, because people were happy to offer that.
LA: You've painted such a great picture of that journey and what it was like at the border. And now, I'm interested to know a little bit about once you got to the UK, and you got to Manchester, where you're now currently based, what was some of the acts of kindness that you received there? I'd love to hear whether there were any in person interactions you had, as you saw, as you immersed yourself in this new place, which isn't easy in the best of times. Who were some of the people you met that you think you'll think about for a while?
MR: There were so many, to be honest, that were really, really kind to me, in the first few weeks. There were some media publications like offering me very, very little work, but paying very generously for it, which all seemed just like, you know, a way to support me. They didn't really care what I would do for them but they just wanted to contribute towards me settling in, which was really, really nice. Or even we went to an Indian restaurant, in central Manchester, where when it was time for us to pay, they were like, "We, we know who you are. We saw you on TV. There's no need for you to pay."
And I think that just hit me, that instance hit me especially hard, because that was the first time I relaxed, in a very long time, during that meal. And Dess and I were just having a dinner, on our second night in the UK, I think. And before that, he showed me a video for [inaudible 00:26:04] in the Kyiv region being bombed, and it was all black, all ashes and everything. And that was the first time I could take in all of that. And I cried before that. And you know, that was like a very weird dinner experience, seeing people dine in happily and discussing like very, very trivial things, and we just fled a war.
And then to have the waiter say, "You don't need to pay, because we followed your journey and we, and we know who you are," I just broke down in tears again, and I was just like, to the waiter, I was just like, "Can I give you a hug?" And he was like, "Yeah," and I was just like, "Thank you so much," and he was like, "Well, that's just the least we can do."
LA: You started doing walking tours for Ukrainians who have arrived for the UK. What do you think... And you know, it's to help people who are newly arrived get to know the place and you can pass on some knowledge that you already have... What do you hope people will gain from them, and also, what do you feel like you gain from leading those walking tours or participating in them?
MR: Yes, well, I think it's a way for me to give back. And I lived in the UK before, I went to a university here, but also, I have more support than most people around the UK have, because I have a partner here, and a lot of Ukrainians come here without knowing anybody, without ever having been to the UK, without knowing the language much. And we had the first one in May, we had over 100 people sign up. And then, we had three more after that, pretty much doing them monthly.
But coming back to you question, what I'm hoping to achieve with it is... Well, A, it's a way to offer people something to do as a family. The UK government unfortunately, hasn't organized many things for Ukrainians to engage in once they're here. But another thing that this tour has allowed people to do is just to meet each other, and I don't think many people realize this until they actually are in the environment how important it is to sort of talk through your experiences. So, there was some people from the same city, and they never have met each other before, but they met for the first time doing the tour, and they would realize that they have mutual friends.
LA: I love that. And I feel like you're experiencing that as there's like more of a sense of community forming among Ukrainians here in Manchester. Is there a food or a song or a sound or smell that immediatel;y transports you back home, when you're in Manchester now? Is there one thing that anchors you back to Kyiv?
MR: So, every Saturday there is a Ukrainian rally, between 2:00 and 4:00 PM. I think that's, A, it's good to still make sure that there's the awareness in the world and in Manchester, but B, it always just brings tears to my eyes because they play Ukrainian songs that became popular as, ever since February 24th.
LA: Is there a particular song?
Speaker 8: [singing]
MR: There's one called I Don't Have a Home, which actually, ironically, kind of came out before February 24. I think when you listen to that, it's in Ukrainian, obviously, but when you listen to that, you kind of think, "Well, it's about all of us now, because we don't really have a home." I don't really have anywhere to come back, at the moment, and I'm not sure when ill be able to come back. Yeah, so, probably, you know, there, there's a few, but I think that one always kind of brings tears to my eyes.
Speaker 8: [singing]
LA: So, coming full circle, Little Amal is greeted by music and crowds on her journeys across the world.
Speaker 9: [singing]
LA: While Maria and her newly adopted British city initiates and leads regular walking tours for other Ukrainian immigrants around Manchester. Thank you for listening. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and you can find me, as always, on Instagram, @lalehannah, and follow along with Women Who Travel, on Instagram, @WomenWhoTravel. You can also join the conversation in our Facebook group. Allison Leyton-Brown is our composer. Jennifer Nulsen is our engineer. Jude Kampfner, from Corporation for Independent Media, is our producer. Next week, rituals and ceremonies. For more stories from Women Who Travel, visit cntraveler.com.