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Amanpour
Interview with Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Professor of Practice and E.U. Foreign Policy Chief Former Adviser Nathalie Tocci; Interview with Former White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator, Harvard Belfer Center Senior Fellow and BioRadar Co-Founder and CEO Ashish Jha; Interview with "Open Wide the Doors" Editor and Co- Translator Bahiyyih Nakhjavani; Interview with "The Gas Station Attendant" Director/Producer/Editor Karla Murthy. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired August 04, 2026 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Hello everyone and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
E.U. holds crisis talks after Friday's migrant surge into Spanish territory. We discuss the fallout with European foreign policy expert
Nathalie Tocci.
And mistrust and misinformation. As Fauci's congressional testimony reignites debates over COVID-19, we explain what went wrong.
Then, "Open Wide the Doors." A new memoir documenting the devastating incarceration of Iranian poet Mahvash Sabet. We'll hear from the co-editor
and translator of the book.
Plus, "The Gas Station Attendant," an immigrant father searching daughter, and the American dream. Director Karla Murthy tells Hari Sreenivasan about
her new movie.
Welcome to the program everyone. I'm Bianna Golodryga in New York sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
The European Union held an emergency meeting today over Thursday's surge of migrants into Spanish territory. Around 70,000 people unexpectedly crossed
into Ceuta on Africa's northern tip with dozens dying. Most migrants have been returned to Morocco, but the incident has revived Europe's immigration
debate and fears of far-right exploitation.
Although Spain's interior minister told reporters today that member states recognize Madrid's quote immediate and efficient response, some European
leaders were threatening to suspend free movement from Spain despite the crisis occurring off of the European mainland. Some are also blaming
Spain's liberal migration policies as a factor, while others accuse Moroccan authorities of facilitating the crisis.
Natalie Tocci is an Italian foreign policy expert and former advisor to the E.U.'s foreign policy chief, and she joins me from Rome. Natalie, welcome
to the program.
So, there seems to have been sort of a confluence of events that led to this perfect storm where we ultimately saw these incredible images of
thousands of Moroccans fleeing into Ceuta on Friday. And let's just go through a few of them. You had Spain's Supreme Court ruling that migrants
arriving by sea can't be summarily expelled. Word of that spread like wildfire throughout Moroccan social media. And then on July 30th, that was
a public holiday, and Moroccan guards reportedly stopped patrolling. Just talk to us about some of the factors, as you see it, that led to what we
saw Friday.
NATALIE TOCCI, PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE, JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES AND FORMER ADVISER, E.U. FOREIGN POLICY CHIEF: So,
indeed, you know, Friday, it looked like this was a migration crisis. I mean, 70,000 people crossing into European territory over the course of
only a few hours really sort of echoed back to the 2015 migration crisis. It soon turned out to be fairly clear that this was a different kind of
story.
In fact, today, and it's only a few days on, there isn't a migration crisis anymore because those 70,000 people have actually returned, all of them, in
almost as rapid a time frame as they came in back to Morocco.
And the fact that, indeed, there were all sorts of information or rather mis- and disinformation being circulated, including, for example, the fact
that, indeed, you know, these people would not be returned to Spain, including the fact that Spain would have regularized their presence. And
this was really based on false facts, right? Because it is absolutely true that Spain over the last months announced the fact that 500,000 migrants
would be regularized, but made it quite clear that that would only apply to people that had reached Spain and had lived in Spain for five years and had
reached Spain prior to January of this year. So, it's fairly obvious that these people would not have been naturalized.
And so, the next question then becomes, why is it that this social media bubble exploded the way it did? Really, you know, sort of risking the
lives, and of course, as we know, tens of people did die of human beings, right?
[13:05:00]
And the story really here leads to what I think the underlying plot was, i.e., that this is not a migration crisis at all, but it's rather been a
manufactured political crisis, which is regional in nature in the sense that there's a Spanish-Moroccan dynamic there. But I think perhaps even
more importantly, there's a broader global dynamic, given the way in which the Spanish-U.S. relationship has obviously been a fairly complicated one
under Donald Trump, and the way in which social media platforms, and in particular X, i.e., Elon Musk, have been manipulating this precisely to
spread that mis- and disinformation.
GOLODRYGA: And you mentioned the dynamic between Morocco and Spain, where there is some underlying tension. The arch rivalry, though, here is really
between Morocco and Algeria, and a longer history over disputed territory in the Western Sahara. And it was just 10 days ago that Pedro Sanchez
visited Algeria and announced, quote, "a new phase in Spanish-Algerian relations." He appeared to have already burned Algeria in 2022 by backing
Morocco's view of the Western Sahara Autonomy Plan. So, how much of a role does that play in what transpired?
TOCCI: I mean, of course, it's all speculative, right? Because, I mean, what we're doing here is we are assuming, I think correctly, that Morocco
basically sort of, you know, gave a nod and a wink for this to happen. It probably would not have happened had there not been, to an extent, Moroccan
complicity.
So, then the question is, why is that complicity -- why was that complicity there? And I think there are sort of two sort of possible explanations, and
they're not necessarily mutually exclusive. One has to do, indeed, with the fact that, you know, Sanchez had gone to Algeria 10 days ago, and while
traditionally Spain, largely because of the migration dynamic with Morocco, has in fact been siding with Morocco, particularly as far as the Western
Sahara is concerned.
Basically, you see Spain partly trying, I wouldn't say to rebalance the relationship, but at least to mend fences with Algeria, given that
especially the energy relationship with Algeria is extremely important, not just for Spain, but more broadly for Europe.
So, one explanation is basically it was a bilateral Moroccan lashing out against Spain and weaponizing migration in order to do so. But then, of
course, I think there's this bigger plot, which probably is even more important, which has to do with the Moroccan relationship particularly with
Donald Trump and Trump's basically despising of Pedro Sanchez's Spain.
I think that unless we get that broader global picture in, probably the Algerian story alone is insufficient to explain why this happened now.
GOLODRYGA: Right. And Morocco is a stable, investor-friendly, very close U.S. partner. It's co-hosting the 2030 World Cup. Tens of thousands of its
young people swarming to the fence has many questioning, how can a country that is relatively successful and stable be enduring something like this?
I want to play sound. You mentioned the relationship and you mentioned President Trump. He was asked about these images. Let's play some sound as
to his view on it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: You know, I saw Spain yesterday and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It was it looks like an invasion
of a country by hundreds of thousands of people. And that same thing is going to happen to us if the Republicans don't get elected. If we're not in
office, our country will be invaded at levels that made Spain look small time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: And his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has accused Pedro Sanchez of deliberately facilitating mass migration into Europe. You
mentioned the amnesty projected at some 500,000 people. Applications have hit over one million, as you know. And his own interior minister, Sanchez's
interior minister, warned last year that regulation that the regular race of regularization act could act as a pull factor.
So, how much pressure is Sanchez actually under at home? He's facing elections next summer.
TOCCI: Well, I mean, there's there is obviously pressure. But I actually think that Spain, in many respects, is the envy of Europe. This is a
country which is growing at 3 percent, right. It's basically sort of, you know, top of the ranking in terms of growth. Bottom of the ranking in terms
of energy prices, largely because of the strides forward made in terms of renewable deployment.
[13:10:00]
This is basically, you know, Spain is doing well, right? And it's regularizing migrants precisely because it's doing well or it's doing well
also because it's regularizing migrants.
Now, I think the interesting aspect of this is just how false some of the things that we've heard. You know, you were mentioning Rubio's statements.
Actually, Spain has been extremely strict in terms of returns of irregular migrants, right.
So, on the one hand, it has regularized migrants that have been living in Spain for many years and have been working and paying taxes in Spain. And
on the other hand, if you compare progressive Spain and far-right Italy, my own country, actually, the number of returns of irregular migrants is much,
much higher. It's something like three times higher in Spain than in Italy, right?
And a country like Italy has not been announcing regularizations. But actually, if you look at the number of how many migrants in Italy have been
regularized, it's more or less, you know, it's hundreds of thousands, basically.
GOLODRYGA: So, let's pull up --
TOCCI: And this is simply because this is what the economy asks.
GOLODRYGA: Let's pull up some data that sort of backs up what the point you're making here. Frontex says illegal crossings into the E.U. overall
actually fell some 37 percent in the first half of this year alone. Arrivals to Spain fell more than 40 percent last year. That is by Madrid's
own figures.
And yet I have to ask you, Natalie, it is images like that. And we've seen more of a conciliatory approach today from the E.U. But you mentioned how
the response has been from countries like Italy, your own and Giorgia Meloni's. I mean, this is -- Ceuta is not even part of the Schengen. And
you have these leaders saying that now they should suspend -- they should be suspended, spain should be from the Schengen. That's what they said on
Friday.
So, do images like the ones we saw sort of trump statistics that we've just played and the numbers that you've just laid out yourself?
TOCCI: Well, I think that, you know, initially then and there, it really felt like this is a migration crisis. Oh, my God. You know, an invasion.
The fact that the ministers today meeting struck a very, very different note, right. And it was all about solidarity with Spain and how effective
Spain had been to -- you know, dealing with this is because I think that they understood, perhaps a few days too late, that they had actually been
played.
And this is why I think, you know, there is a story about images and about narrative and about panic. And then there's a story about facts, right. And
on top of it, there is the political manipulation of this, particularly by external players. Be it, you know, transit countries, origin countries like
Morocco, or in fact, we could be talking about Tunisia or Turkey or Libya or Egypt, be it global powers like the United States that have jumped onto
this, right, in order to sow that division, sow that fragmentation within Europe.
I think that the ministers today, the European governments today that had that knee jerk reaction, you know, three days ago understood that they were
actually being played and they fell right into a trap. And what they tried to do today is gradually crawl out of it.
GOLODRYGA: Yes. And they may have some egg on their face as well. And it wasn't just some of the more right leaning ministers as well. Denmark
center left prime minister was also saying all options should be considered. And it does make you wonder if you're sitting in Moscow or
Minsk right now and you're looking at how quickly you can get this type of response from these leaders. Maybe it could be weaponized again. Natalie
Tocci, thank you so much for joining us and help break it all down for us.
TOCCI: Thank you.
GOLODRYGA: And later in the program, the fallout from Anthony Fauci's Senate hearing last week as debates around COVID-19 reignite. That's after
the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:15:00]
GOLODRYGA: Now, intense debates about the COVID-19 pandemic have resurfaced after Anthony Fauci's controversial congressional testimony last
week. After obtaining Fauci's private diary, Senator Rand Paul placed the blame squarely on Fauci and other public health experts alleging a cover up
at the highest levels. Fauci pleaded the fifth, noting Paul's desire to see him behind bars.
But how much are the experts to blame? And what did they get right? Dr. Ashish Jha just served as White House COVID-19 response coordinator under
President Biden and joins the show to discuss more. Dr. Joe, welcome to the program. Great to have you on.
You were on this weekend with my colleague, Dana Bash, following her interview, which got a lot of pickup. It was a lengthy interview that
covered a lot of ground with the HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And I want to talk about what he said in a moment.
But the overall picture is not a good one in this country when it comes to trust in public health and information coming from public health services
as well. If you look at the numbers in March of 2020, March of 2020, of course, that was just the start of COVID. 85percent of Americans across
both parties, we should note, said that they trusted the CDC for health information. This is according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Today that
number has been cut drastically in half. There you see it. 47 percent.
However, 83 percent of Americans still trust their own personal doctors. So, how do you assess those statistics? What did public health officials
perhaps get wrong that the personal doctors did not?
DR. ASHISH JHA, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COVID-19 RESPONSE COORDINATOR, SENIOR FELLOW, HARVARD BELFER CENTER AND CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, BIORADAR: Yes. First
of all, thanks for having me back. Obviously, it was a bruising pandemic around the world and we have seen a real decline in trust in institutions.
March 2020 was probably the height. I mean, it was a time when the whole country was rallying behind the CDC. So -- but there's no question that
there has been a decline. It is true. People still trust their physicians. There's still a lot of trust in CDC scientists and there's still a lot of
trust in specific public health experts, including actually Dr. Fauci, who still gets pretty high remarks from a large part of America.
The bottom line is that there were things that public health officials got wrong. There are things that I think a lot of experts got wrong. The
biggest thing in my mind was that there was at times too much certainty in a moment where we actually didn't know everything that we needed to know. I
think acknowledging uncertainty in those moments is very useful. I felt like too many public health people didn't do that. And I think in the long
run, that ended up undermining a lot of confidence.
GOLODRYGA: I mean, one can be sympathetic. I remember in those early days and covering and having you on time and time again to help speak to
Americans who were concerned about the latest numbers and how it would impact their families. I remember early on the mask debate. And when Dr.
Fauci and others were saying not to wear masks and at the end it came out that in those early few weeks there was a lot of concern about PPE and
getting it to those first responders and into the hospitals that needed it most. That made sense.
But when it came to what became more of a political issue and a PC kind of discussion about where this actual COVID-19 virus came from. That's where I
think people started to get very frustrated. And you told Dana over the weekend that you went into the White House in April of 2022 thinking that
COVID was almost surely naturally was surely natural. And now, you've come out over the weekend and this made a lot of headlines as well, saying that
you think that it was a lab link.
So, just talk about that. And why, looking back, was that such an egregious thing or conclusion to make at the time?
DR. JHA: Yes. So, first of all, I think the key point is we didn't know. And we still don't know for sure. The reason I thought it was more likely -
- to be much more likely to be a natural is because most spillover events, most pandemics have come from spillovers from animals. So, it stands to
reason that that's probably what happened. That was my view.
[13:20:00]
But what's really important and underlying your question is we should not have cut off debate on this. We should not have said, if you think it's a
lab leak, somehow, you're spreading conspiracies. I think people did that. And I think that was very unfortunate.
My own evolution in this has been the way I've evolved on a lot of issues where I saw more evidence. I saw more data. The circumstantial evidence
behind a lab leak got stronger and stronger over time. I was in on a lot of briefings and walking out of those, I thought, boy, it's probably a lab
leak. Am I sure? I'm not sure. We don't know for sure.
But I think that kind of evolution is good. It's natural. When evidence changes, people's views should change as well.
GOLODRYGA: Should that evidence have been made more readily available to the public at the time when you saw it?
DR. JHA: Yes. I've always felt that as much transparency as possible is really important. Some of that information, I think, has become more
public. I think there's probably more information that could be made public. But at the end of the day, the real issue is that the transparency
has to come from the individuals who are running the lab.
Look, if this was not a lab leak, the Chinese government could put this to rest more or less immediately with a lot more information and transparency
about what was happening in the lab in the weeks and months before the outbreak began. They have not done that. At the end of the day, that's
where the accountability lies.
GOLODRYGA: So, six years on now, what leverage does the United States have? And what would you like to see President Trump do in terms of getting
that information from China?
DR. JHA: Well, I mean, the president was in China not that long ago. I think he certainly could have asked for it. I mean, we have ongoing
conversations with the Chinese or specific things that we could ask for. But also, we need to start preparing for a future where we're going to see
both natural outbreaks and lab leaks, because there are so many more labs out there in the world today.
So, while I still think it's important to sort out that origin, it also on some level is not the single most important question, because the single
most important question in my mind is, how do we get prepared for the future no matter what the source of the next pandemic is?
GOLODRYGA: Right. And that is something that we sadly didn't hear in those hearings with Anthony Fauci, not just because he pleaded the fifth, but
because there were no real questions that were forward looking to how to prevent future outbreaks, what lessons have been learned and to make sure
that more pandemics like the one we saw, perhaps even more serious and deadly, can be handled differently.
And let's talk about the current right now, because we've got a plethora of issues that we're dealing with here in the United States. And the HHS
secretary was asked about this as well. Let's start with measles. Right now, we're well over 2,000 cases. It's the worst in 35 years, 37 outbreaks.
The elimination status of the country has held since 2,000 is now genuinely at risk.
Dana Bash asked the HHS secretary directly if he takes any responsibility. And he said no. He says the communities that are suffering from measles are
almost all religious communities. And he also went on to sit to blame these outbreaks on communities that were under COVID lockdown. And thus, those
children were not immunized, even though the numbers sort of don't back that up, because those children are now five and six years old. Half of
this year's cases are five to 19 and nearly a third are adults over 20.
So, just break down what you heard from the secretary and where you may disagree with him.
DR. JHA: Sure. So, the secretary said, and I part I agree with is, of course, America is not alone. There are other countries that are
experiencing outbreaks as well. But let's be very clear. America is experiencing the worst outbreak it has had in 25, 30 years. This year is
the very worst. Last year was the worst until this year. The idea that the health secretary and our government has no responsibility for it to me just
defies logic.
The health secretary has also, for 25 years, undermined people's confidence in vaccines, has questioned the efficacy and safety of these vaccines. I
think that is a major contributor to what is going on. And it makes zero sense that somehow the lockdowns, which were, you know, for a few weeks in
some places, a couple of months in other places would be causing this. We're seeing outbreaks in South Carolina. We're seeing in a lot of
conservative states. They were not locked down for years.
So, I just think he is trying to blame the COVID response for a lot of things, where he actually and the current administration has a lot more
personal responsibility.
GOLODRYGA: Dana did get RFK Jr. to look at the camera and say the parents should vaccinate their children for measles. He said that is an effective
and efficient vaccine, one that has been studied, even though we can go into the lengthy studies that have been conducted on a number of other
vaccines that he does not think are safe. That's for a separate conversation.
[13:25:00]
But as it relates to the measles vaccine, which he said parents should immunize their children for, you were heartened by that. But aside from his
spoken words, what more would you like to see the administration do on that front?
DR. JHA: Yes. So, first and foremost, he also said a lot of things that were just not true about other childhood vaccines. I want to see a health
secretary who actually reads the data fairly and advocates for what is clearly evidence-based recommendations. I've gotten all my kids vaccinated
on schedule, on time. My understanding is he himself got his kids all vaccinated. He should be advocating for that much more readily.
And then CDC should be much more proactive in helping states get these outbreaks under control. And the best way to do this is to increase our
vaccination rates, which the secretary actually has a lot of capability with a bully pulpit to advocate for, not just grudgingly saying it once on
national television.
GOLODRYGA: Yes. He also recommended the childhood schedule to be cut from 17 diseases to 11. And I know that's something that you disagree with as
well. Dr. Ashish Jha, thank you so much for joining the program. Really appreciate it.
DR. JHA: Thank you.
GOLODRYGA: We turn now to Iran, where the domestic crackdown is only intensifying. Rights groups say executions are rising. Political prisoners
are facing harsher treatment and dissent is being met with an even heavier hand. One of those prisoners is the acclaimed Iranian poet Mahvash Sabet,
who has spent years behind bars because of her Baha'i faith. Her powerful new memoir, "Open Wide the Doors," recounts the first months of her
imprisonment.
And joining me now is its editor and co-translator, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani. Bahiyyih, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a very powerful
book, and I want to get to your participation here and how you became involved.
But let's just talk about how it was written, because Mahvash wrote the book inside Mashhad and Evan prisons. Just take us into how you got a hold
of this book. How was this transcript even able to leave the prison?
BAHIYYIH NAKHJAVANI, EDITOR AND CO-TRANSLATOR," OPEN WIDE THE DOORS": Thank you. Thank you so much, Bianna, for having me here. It's a real honor
to be able to speak about Mahvash and on behalf of all those who, like her, have no voice coming out of Iran at this time, this difficult time.
First of all, I'd like to just distinguish between the book that you're referring to, which is her memoir, and the actual bulk of the memoir, which
came to some 750 pages by the time my co-translator, Azita and I had managed to transcribe it and translate it into English.
So, there is a distinction between what we have published, which is just the very beginning of a 10-year story, and what she actually managed
slowly, meticulously, with great pain and difficulty, to scribble on tiny bits of paper, on tissues. She would split tissue papers. You know, I did
one to show you how extraordinary it is. Little scraps of newspaper that she was able to find, anything, margins of books. And slowly, slowly, over
the course of the years, get these little scraps of her memoirs smuggled out of the prison.
Now, of course, they didn't reach us immediately. Mahvash was first arrested in 2008, and she wasn't actually able to start writing until 2012.
And the last seven years of her 10-year prison sentence was when she was doing these little scribbles, plus her poetry, and managing slowly, slowly
to get them out.
I did not see them until 2018, when Mahvash was released from prison in 2017. She came and visited us the year afterwards and asked me to write a
book based on her memoirs. And that's when Azita and I began this incredible job. It was a mountain, Bianna, of notes. It was really a huge,
huge task.
And we had to think of what to do. How can you publish 750 pages? It's impossible. So, we had to make a few decisions about where to focus. And
that's how we looked at that very early part of the story, when she was first in Mashhad, all in solitary confinement, and then in Evin, in
solitary confinement. And it was just those first 10 months, nine, 10 months, of her 10-year sentence, which is the substance of this book.
[13:30:00]
GOLODRYGA: And you just described her Herculean effort there to get this first part of the book published, so that readers, everyone around the
world, can get a sense not only of her bravery, but what she endured, and almost exclusively because of her Baha'i faith.
And let's give a little bit more of a timeline in her life and put it up against the regimes, because they coincide in many ways. In 1979, she was
fired as a schoolteacher because of her faith. In 2008, she was arrested as a Baha'i leader. Ten years in prison, as you noted. In 2022, rearrested at
the age of 69. Broken kneecaps another decade after a one-hour trial. Today, she is 73 years old, recovering from open-heart surgery. She is
essentially in medical furlough under a travel ban right now.
What does her life tell us and her commitment to her faith about the strength that she carries with her? And from what we've seen thus far in
what's been published, there is nothing that stands out other than compassion.
NAKHJAVANI: Yes, that really is one of the hallmarks, Bianna, of this book. It's a prison memoir, and usually prison memoirs are about the
individual who is suffering.
Mahvash absolutely reverses all the cliches. I mean, for a start, she just flips all the misery and turns it into a magnanimity towards others. She
really has turned the despair that one normally feels in these circumstances into a kind of hope. And as you say, that compassion that
comes out from her towards others, so that it becomes a memoir not just of herself. It becomes a memoir about others, about the women that she meets
in the prison, even about the guards.
Even she has compassion towards -- the well, a sort of comic compassion towards the interrogators. She ends up saying she just can't hate anyone.
She has this remarkable capacity for switching misery into hope. And that's one of the hallmarks of the book.
The other thing which I might mention is that in her style, there is a quality of humor. When I met her, I was really shocked for the first time I
met her in 2018 when she came out of prison. I was expecting, you know, when you hear someone suffered in prison, you thinking of them being in a
state of disarray and misery. Not at all. She was full of humor. She was full of joy. She had light in her eyes and full of happiness. And I just
couldn't believe it. You know, she was breaking all the cliches.
And that quality of hers, which really boils down to one of the hallmarks also of her faith, which is constructive resilience, which is not giving in
to a sense of being the victim. She absolutely refused to be a victim all through this period. And that is very distinctive.
And this quality that she has, as you put it, of going out of herself was one of the reasons why I'm so happy to be able to speak about her work.
Because she is truly one of many in Iran who are suffering, as you know, particularly, of course, the Baha'is, but also beyond the Baha'i community,
as you pointed out in your introduction. But the Baha'is, of course, have had an extremely difficult time, not just since the revolution, but since
the beginning of the emergence of the Baha'i faith.
It's a homegrown faith. It comes from Iran. It was born in Iran in the middle of the 19th century. So, for 178 years, the Baha'is have been
persecuted as heretics, accused of apostasy. Now, it's thinly veiled in the guise of espionage, in being agents of foreign governments, all kinds of
egregious lies. But deep down, it's a profound religious animosity towards the Baha'is because of their fundamental beliefs in the oneness of God, the
oneness of religion and the oneness of humankind. And these ideals seem to be a great problem for the current regime. But, of course, that's what
sustained Mahvash herself.
GOLODRYGA: Especially women who uphold those ideals. U.N. experts found more than three quarters of the Baha'is summoned to court or prison were
women like Mahvash. I'm wondering if you can read us a passage from this book that you translated.
[13:35:00]
NAKHJAVANI: Surely. It's in a place where she has come to the point where she's beginning -- she's looking into herself. And she asks herself, you
know, what has happened to her in this condition of solitary confinement? And she realizes that the spiritual power to overcome the fears and defeats
that surround us, all these marvels, I unearthed in the silence of the solitary cell.
And then to my utter disbelief, I found that I was not only growing accustomed to solitary confinement, but beginning to appreciate the value
of it. In fact, I was learning the meaning of free will in that gray cell. Solitary confinement had been forced on me, yes, but it was up to me how I
chose to live with it. It was my decision whether to accept it consciously or to merely endure it in turmoil, resentment and growing terror. The
choice was entirely mine. I was free to do as I willed.
GOLODRYGA: That is incredibly powerful. And as you noted at the beginning of our conversation, just a piece of the work that she has written for
years and that you, thankfully, continue to translate as well.
You yourself are an Iranian writer. You have spent the majority of your life outside of the country. I don't want to assume that you can speak for
Mahvash, but I'm wondering if she were to speak to the Iranian people right now, what would you guess she would tell them?
NAKHJAVANI: Well, I have a feeling that her book is what she would tell them. She really has this book like a gift to everybody, of course. But
it's a legacy. She's reminding the Iranian people that they have in their own hands this legacy of seeing hope in despair, of seeing freedom even in
prison, of not being victims, but being able to construct in this incredible way with the resilience that will endure through difficulties
and emerge. That's the gift she wants to give to the Iranian people, I believe. That's the message of her book.
GOLODRYGA: Strength and compassion. And we are so grateful to you, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, for translating it and bringing this to us. Thank you
so much.
NAKHJAVANI: Thank you, Bianna. It's a huge privilege.
GOLODRYGA: The privilege is ours. And we'll be right back after this short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GOLODRYGA: Now, to an intimate look at family roots and the American dream. Journalist Karla Murthy's father left India for the U.S. in search
of a better life. Through a series of phone calls recorded over the course of two decades, her father shared his experiences being a first-generation
American caught between two worlds. Now, these recordings and old footage have culminated in Murthy's directorial debut. And she joins Hari
Sreenivasan to talk about what retracing her father's steps has taught her.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARI SREENIVASAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Bianna, thanks. Karla Murthy, thanks so much for joining us. You directed a really personal film
with your father. It's called "The Gas Station Attendant." And it's just this sort of beautiful look with all these recordings and photographs you
have of your life with him. What questions made you want to do this film in the first place?
[13:40:00]
KARLA MURTHY, DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/EDITOR, "THE GAS STATION ATTENDANT": I mean, this film was really born out of that need and that desire to really
understand my dad and his life and to understand the decisions that he made. And so, it was a chance for me to go back to stories that I had heard
my entire life of how he came to this country from India.
And as a kid, when I heard those stories, it was kind of like, you know, a fairy tale with a happy ending. And I kind of equate it to, you know,
lyrics of a song that you just memorize as a kid. And then one day you realize what those lyrics actually mean. And I had that moment as I was
making this film and trying to understand his life and going back to the stories of what it was like for him to live on the streets of India and how
that experience shaped who he was here in this country.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MURTHY: And so, here I am reliving the past while trying to live in the present. Wondering what it means to be a good father, a good daughter, a
good mother.
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY, KARLA MURTHY'S FATHER: I love you.
MURTHY: Dad, how did you get up and keep going?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SREENIVASAN: So, your father, H.N. Shantha Murthy, he grew up in India. At the age of 10, he runs away from home. What kind of life did he lead before
he got to the U.S.? How did that shape his future here?
MURTHY: Yes. I mean -- and, you know, the -- being able to make this film allowed me to kind of really try and put myself in the shoes of my dad and
then trying to kind of, you know, fill in those, make it much more of a visceral experience.
And so, one of the things that occurred to me as I was making this film is that for him to survive on the streets -- you know, he ran away from home
when he was 10 years old and was living all over India. And to survive, he had to keep going. And he kept moving from, you know, job to job just to
survive. And when he came to the States, you know, he did the same thing.
But for me as a teenager growing up, I was so kind of mystified. Like, I wanted my dad just to have one job, but he kept going from job to job to
job. And I was like, why can't he be like other, you know, dads and just stick with the one thing? And it occurred to me that that was how he
survived in India. And those experiences, you know, imprinted on him. And he -- that was just a survival skill that he continued to use, you know,
here.
SREENIVASAN: You know, there's this kind of incredible moment of luck. And tell us a little bit about what happens and how that changed the course of
his life and led to yours.
MURTHY: I really wanted to explore sort of these macro, micro forces that affected my dad's life in very profound ways. And sort of, you know, the
macro forces, you know, that you don't -- can't control that kind of forced my family into poverty in India, for instance, was, you know, during
India's independence, and it was a very chaotic time, you know, Gandhi was assassinated, partition, all of that led my father's family, who was
relatively kind of a middle-class family, into poverty, they had to leave their home and move to the village.
When my dad, dad came to this country, the same kind of thing sort of happened with my dad's first real job as an electrical engineer at Boeing
in the early '70s. Again, you had, you know, this giant company on the verge of collapse and it forced, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of
people to, you know, lose their jobs. And many foreclosures happened in that region.
So, these macro forces, but then also, all it took was, you know, the kindness of one couple to completely change the course of my dad's life in
a very profound way. And they met him, you know, at a hotel in Delhi, and decided over one night that they wanted to take a chance on him and bring
him to this country. And so, I wanted to show kind of that, like, there are these larger forces, right, that can really change, you know, thousands of
people's lives. But all it took was one couple one person to kind of really also alter someone's life.
SREENIVASAN: There's so many stories that you hear on tape that you've -- you know, in the conversations that you recorded, I mean, you probably as a
kid had heard them before. Is it different hearing it, you know, I don't know, 15 years ago, where, you know, every teenager was just kind of
rolling their eyes and like, oh, dad, this story again, versus now, when you're kind of combing through the archives, and you're trying to construct
this story, I wonder if it hit differently?
[13:45:00]
MURTHY: I mean, it hit differently, right when we started recording the phone calls. So, I recorded the calls on, you know, 20 years ago now, over
20 years ago. And prior to that, I had known all these stories before. And this was just a way for us to like, spend time together, you know, he'd
always wanted to kind of record his story. So, I was like, let's just do it over the phone. I can keep you company while you're working.
And, you know, so he started telling the same story that I knew by heart, almost verbally, like verbatim. But then it was like the interruption of
the cash register, and sort of the soundtrack of a gas station coming in through these phone calls. And through his story started to make me think
really differently about what I was hearing.
SREENIVASAN: You know, I also wonder why you chose specifically to focus on the gas station attendant, because in a way, it sort of shatters this
model minority myth that, oh, well, this is this must be the story of a successful rags to riches, you know, story, the kid was homeless, and here
he is probably a tech billionaire now, right. And that's, that would be very easy for a lot of people to believe about an Indian man.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MURTHY: I tried not to let my mind go to those dark places. But I couldn't stop thinking how people would see my dad now, as the butt of a joke. An
easy target. A scapegoat.
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY: Karla. Karla, you there?
MURTHY: I'm here.
But I kept those thoughts to myself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SREENIVASAN: I mean, why did you specifically say this is the job that we're going to talk about? Obviously, do these recordings while he's
working the night shift, right?
MURTHY: I mean, I think it was exactly that I wanted people -- I wanted to invite audiences to get to know this person that they probably have see
every day in their life and just pass by the gas station attendant, the convenience store clerk, the taxi driver. And I think there are these
tropes, you know, when we think about immigrant narratives, you know, it's like, we're often defined by the work that we do, you know, the gas station
attendant, you know, we get the job done. There's that trope.
There's also like the victim trope, or the -- you know, or the portrayed as saints. And I really wanted my film to show someone to invite people to get
to know this person and to see the expanse of their life and not as like a narrow window, but very new. Like this is my dad makes mistakes, you know,
he's human, he's flawed like the rest of us. And I wanted you to still fall in love with them and maybe even like feel like you could have been his
friend by the end of the film.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY: Hello.
MURTHY: Dad.
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY: Yes.
MURTHY: Hi. It's Karla.
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY: Hi, sweetie.
MURTHY: How's it going?
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY: OK, my love.
MURTHY: Is it busy?
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY: Oh, it comes and goes. 11:30 12:00 is kind of slows down. Read the paper and keep myself busy.
MURTHY: So, are you going to try and close the store?
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY: I don't know yet. We spent some money for the advertisement. You know, it didn't even work.
MURTHY: Not even like people from the church?
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY: Huh?
MURTHY: Not even people from the people from the --
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY: Not even people from the church.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SREENIVASAN: One of the things that you talk about, which I don't see many people certainly in our South Asian community talk about is the financial
mistakes that he made the debt that he incurred that you helped bail him out of. And there's a lot of, I think, just sort of stigma and shame about
talking about that. And I'm assuming this was an active choice for you to discuss this.
MURTHY: Yes, it was. And I think, I mean, a lot of this film is about kind of reconciling difficult moments that I had with my dad. And that was
definitely one of them. But, you know, also, just as I've been traveling with the film, I mean, we premiered last year, and I've now been all over
the country with the film with all kinds of different audiences. And so, many people are like, oh, that happened in my family, too.
It is so common, you know, these sort of financial hardships and sort of these difficult money situations within families that no one wants to talk
about. And so, I feel really gratified for kind of -- for putting that in there and just opening up that door for people to kind of talk about that
stuff more. Because I think once it's out in the open, then there's so much guilt and shame about that kind of stuff and to keep it like just within
families.
But I feel like, you know, maybe we could have just helped each other out more in those situations, you know, with financial hardship. And I just
feel like there's so much room for conversation and dialogue about that, that can be very healing for families, too.
SREENIVASAN: Yes. But what did you figure out was your dad's, I guess, big American dream? And maybe what did that teach you about how yours might
have been influenced by it? How different it is?
[13:50:00]
MURTHY: Yes, the American dream. I mean, it's a dream. And I think it's, you know, maybe not. I mean, I think, like, you know, the American dream is
you get the golden ticket to come here. You work really hard. Don't break any laws, you know, and then you can make it, you know, pull yourself up by
the bootstraps and bam, you know, model minority.
And yes, that can -- that's true for some people, but not for many. And I think for me, it was, you know, understanding the American dream through my
dad's eyes was very different, you know, and yes, he did get the, you know, great golden ticket to come here. But it continued to be a struggle for him
to -- you know, for -- and for our family financially.
But I think also -- I mean, I also just owe a lot to this country, like I wouldn't exist both my, you know, my mother came here to work as a nurse
from the Philippines, and I would not be here if it weren't for that opportunity for them to come to this country. My kids wouldn't exist. You
know, my husband's family is from Lebanon, and they came here to flee the civil war.
I mean, so there is this promise of that, of the American dream. And, you know, so I have a very complicated relationship with it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
H.N. SHANTHA MURTHY: When I used to sleep on the street, looking at the stars and moon and always prayed, someday, somehow, my life will change. I
want to have a family with my wife, I can hold her hands and my kids. That was my dream.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SREENIVASAN: You start the film out with a quote by Laila Lalami, humanity is fundamentally a story of migration. Why was that important? I mean,
because right now, there is a conversation about immigration and migration in this country and all over the planet.
MURTHY: It was one of those moments when I was thinking about the world that my film would be born into. And I really wanted people to see the
universal, to be introduced into this film in a very universal way. And to see that my father's life and his story is very universal in terms of,
like, immigration and migration. And, you know, I don't know, this is a little bit off, but it reminds me of every time anyone goes up into space
and then they have this, like, epiphany that, like, oh, we're all one world and we're all one being.
And for me, it was -- I was having those moments a lot when I was making this film and thinking about, like, how can you see this film in a much
more universal way? And it -- I mean, and it is true, you know, that we are species that is constantly migrating. It is not unnatural, but yet, we are
having these conversations about, you know, borders. And I just wanted people to understand that this is a history that goes far back -- you know,
this is part of who we are as a human species, is to be migrating. And we do this out of need, out of trying to survive, not, you know, to take from
other countries, but as a -- you know, as a means of survival.
SREENIVASAN: This was kind of a, almost a love letter to your dad and just really a lot of things that you wanted to get through. But you've said
before that, you know, you want us in the audience to get to know him. And by the end of it, you've totally succeeded in that there is a part of me
that kind of grieves for your dad. I'm very happy that I got a chance to even get this glimpse into his life. And it's really remarkable what you've
done with it.
MURTHY: Thank you. Thank you. And I mean, I also want the film to be a call to action to people watching it to also kind of get to know their
parents' stories in a very intimate way. And yes. And to kind of open that door for dialogue, you know, intergenerational, and it doesn't even have to
be, you know, I'm not even talking about like immigrant histories.
There are so many things that, you know, you can learn from different generations and to kind of open that dialogue and to really open the door
to become just more empathetic with each other. Like we just need a lot more, you know, empathy in this world right now.
SREENIVASAN: Yes. Karla Murthy, director of the film, "The Gas Station Attendant," thanks so much for your time.
MURTHY: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GOLODRYGA: And finally, France has been battling devastating wildfires for weeks. And according to the country's prime minister, they are finally
under control. It's a feat made possible in part with the help of Ukrainian friends who, despite facing their own crisis at home, traveled 52 hours to
the west of Bordeaux over the weekend. There they joined their French counterparts in efforts to extinguish a massive blaze spanning roughly
42,000 hectares.
[13:55:00]
Among all international partners assisting with firefighting efforts in the area, the 70-person Ukrainian firefighting squad is the largest team
deployed, displaying an act of courage and generosity to an ally in a time of need. Wow.
Well, that is it for us today, if you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can
always catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media. Thanks so much for watching, and goodbye from New York.
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