(Transcript) Ep 2: Golden Girls

Ep 2: Golden Girls

Noor (00:04):

The year is 2011. It's a few days after my 18th birthday and I'm so excited because that means I can apply for big girl internships, the ones that require you to be 18. I stay up all night applying. Eager and trusting I pray the Muslim prayer for guidance. I ask God to guide me to the best internship, at the best place, at the best time. I felt like God knew it was best so there was no need to ask for specifics. The next morning a friend and I are performing a poem together for an event at school. There's a couple of hundred people in the crowd and I'm dressed in a red and black leopard tunic, a black turtleneck underneath and a gold headband across my forehead.

Noor (00:54):

When we get on stage, I introduce myself as a broadcast journalism major. I wasn't just yet, but I had just gone as scholarship to journalism school so I would be soon. After our performance a woman comes up on stage, takes the mic out of my hand and in front of the entire audience says...

Justine Love (01:13):

Noor you're a journalism major?

Noor (01:19):

Yes, I say hesitantly.

Justine Love (01:22):

Well, my name is Justine Love, and I'm the Director of Community and Public Affairs at CBS Radio. And I want you to intern for us.

Noor (01:30):

The second we get off the stage, I blurt to her in amazement. "Why did you do that?"

Justine Love (01:37):

Your synergy, your outfit. And I know exactly who I want to pair you with. And that's Sunni. I think the two of you would be perfect together.

Noor (02:05):

I had seen Sunni speak at my community college a few months prior to getting the gig. Sleek, straight black hair pulled into a tight ponytail and a bold red lip. She looked like the kind of woman who made her own rules, the kind of woman I wanted to learn from. When I showed up to the studio that first day.

Vildana Sunni Puric (02:29):

Do you remember it?

Noor (02:29):

Overwhelmed and mesmerized by the music, you told me you were Bosnian. And I had never met a Bosnian person before. And I remember you telling me that you were Muslim too. And I was like, "What?" When I saw this gorgeous, fly, radio superstar who-

Vildana Sunni Puric (02:50):

Tatted up.

Noor (02:50):

Tatted up, stiletto nails, wearing Jordans. And then you told me that you were Muslim and you said it so casually. You literally shattered my world. And I saw so much possibility in you. And I was like, "Oh, I didn't know."

Vildana Sunni Puric (03:15):

Channel 95.5 Detroit's hit music station. Wrapping up another mini mix. Tell Chico, he needs to give me just one of, "How you doing?"

Speaker 1 (03:22):

Hey Sunni [inaudible 00:03:24], how you doing? Can you do it?

Speaker 2 (03:25):

How you doing?

Vildana Sunni Puric (03:26):

I love it. You just made my day. I love my job.

Noor (03:33):

Working for an iconic voice of radio in our nation's capital, who happened to be Bosnian Muslim changed everything for me. Sunni taught me the power of audio. During my first week with her, she taught me the importance of smiling while on air, because people can always hear your smile. She helped mentally prepare me for the industry. My first few weeks at the job, people were getting fired left and right. Sunni taught me show up early, be prepared, do your best work every day. And if you want to move through this industry, you can't get too attached to one place. Sunni was super real with me. She helped to thicken my skin and I helped soften hers.

Noor (04:20):

She also trusted me with her story for my first ever video journalism project I produced for school. I called it From Refugee to Radio. The DC, Maryland, and Virginia area know her as Sunni in the City. The midday radio host for WPGC 95.5. What many listeners and fans do not know is that Sunni's real is Vildana Puric.

Noor (04:54):

At Your Service and iHeartMedia present REPchapter two, Golden Girls.

Noor (05:03):

What did you know about America in Bosnia?

Vildana Sunni Puric (05:06):

Oh my God. America. I thought it was so weird. I think I remember my mom always saying, when she would put us to sleep, she would say, "Oh, Americans are waking up and you guys are going to bed. They're on the other side of the world." And then I don't know how, but we saw Beverly Hills 90210, we heard about it. And I was like, "Oh my God. It's big white houses and Palm trees." And I came to Michigan, Detroit, in February. And I was like, "I don't see a Palm tree. Where's the mansion?"

Noor (05:36):

Wow.

Vildana Sunni Puric (05:36):

And I was so shocked. I think at some point I was like, "I want to go back. Is this America?" I really didn't believe we were here because of our idea of what America was. It was this magical place. And that said, I love Detroit, but it just wasn't what we thought.

Vildana Sunni Puric (05:50):

I think once the immigration process started and different countries were offering up to take refugees. I think they offered us to go to Australia, New Zealand or America. And we were like, "Of course we're going to America." But I just think that it's crazy because I still feel that a lot of people in the world don't know the American history. They don't know the actual things that happen in America. I just think they just have this idea, like I did as a kid, where you go and it's peaches and cream and everything's great. And I think a lot of people in places, I mean, I came from a village, I had never seen a skyscraper.

Vildana Sunni Puric (06:25):

So to most people in the world, it's like that. They think of America as this really magical place. And we had to live here now. We're like, "It's a lot of things happening here."

Noor (06:37):

I just want to be clear Vildana shares these stories more casually because she often refers to these memories as a life that doesn't feel like her own, like a movie. The Puric family's choice to come to America wasn't a choice between living safe in their homeland of Bosnia or coming to the states. They were fleeing war and genocide. There's one reporter whose coverage of Bosnia made her a household name in America. She's described her work on this as the most significant in her career. Here is Christiane Amanpour in 1993 on the front lines of the war.

Christiane Amanpour (07:21):

The refugees came through in 11 covered trucks. Those who managed to peek out the sides waved happily, but their smiles belie the horror of this exodus. One truck was full of wounded, it went straight to the hospital. The doctors stunned by what they found inside.

Christiane Amanpour (07:39):

"You're free now don't be afraid anymore." He says to this young boy, so savagely injured.

Noor (07:45):

Amanpour is witnessing the worst parts of humanity. And her reporting reflects that.

Christiane Amanpour (07:52):

The commander of all UN forces in former Yugoslavia has sent a message to the Serbs calling what happened in Srebrenica an atrocity. Another official calls it criminal lunacy. And yet another says, "These people are faced with a terrible choice. Be shipped out like cattle or slaughtered like sheep." And the civilized world is faced with a terrible shame of watching these scenes without doing anything to end the carnage.

Noor (08:21):

Amanpour's Bosnia reporting is award-winning and her journalism was still met with immense criticism. In an interview with the Guardian Amanpour says, "Some people accused me of being pro-Muslim in Bosnia, but I realized that our job is to give all sides an equal hearing. But in the case of genocide, you can't just be neutral."

Noor (08:45):

Fast forward to 2012, my first year in J school and the year I met Vildana that's when I pick up a book about women in journalism and read a chapter on Christiane Amanpour where she spoke about her time covering the Bosnian war, challenging the notion of objectivity and saying, "You must always be truthful, not neutral, and to never draw false moral equivalence."

Noor (09:08):

False moral equivalence. It's the phrase I had been looking for. When there is a clear oppressor and oppressed I believe it is crucial that the reporting reflects that. When making a false moral equivalence and putting the oppressed and the oppressor on the same playing field, a journalist contributes to the oppression. Amanpour's words made me realize maybe I can make my own rules or have my own philosophies on journalism, on how I tell and listen to stories.

Noor (09:49):

Do you remember at all ever seeing the war covered in the media?

Vildana Sunni Puric (09:55):

Back there in Bosnia? No, because we had a war that started way earlier before it got to Bosnia because the entire Yugoslavia was falling apart. So there's pieces when people talk about the genocide that happened in Srebrenica, and everyone knows about that, that's in a whole nother side of our country. Once it started getting closer to us, we weren't hearing about it the way we heard it about the other countries. Things were falling apart and as they were getting closer, we were just like, "Okay, so what happens next?" And then after that we lost electricity, we lost whatever. So it wasn't a coverage that we ever heard of once things got close to us.

Noor (10:40):

Vildana lived through the Bosnian war as a kid, but that didn't mean she understood what was happening around her. It wasn't until she had settled in the U.S. and got a little older that she started digging into the story, and continues to do so. After I shot our first interview we sat in her apartment and Googled images of the Bosnian war. She doesn't have many photos from her childhood so through Google, she made it a game to find people she knew from back home. To find familiar, Bosnian faces. Familiar Muslim faces. I remember feeling a deep haunting watching her put pieces together, like she was still a kid looking for answers.

Vildana Sunni Puric (11:26):

I only speak for my family. We have a really weird way of connecting, we don't really talk about anything. At some point my dad was silent, literally didn't speak to us for a very long time. And my mom said, "Oh, it's because he doesn't have coffee." And I think that once we came to America, I was just like, "Oh, I really want to know what happened because we were just children. And we were just, oh, we have to run. Oh, we're just going."

Noor (11:56):

The story of refugee to radio became one we chip away at over the years, me asking questions and her-

Noor (12:00):

... Over the years. Me asking questions and her piecing together memories. But, for Vildana, the war's effect remained a part of her I didn't understand. And she didn't really talk about it. So when I sit down with a researcher to interview her about Islamophobia and she brings up the Bosnian war, I start to piece together historical context to understand my friend better.

Dalia Mogahed (12:30):

My name's Dalia Mogahed and my title is Director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. There was always this idea that, "Oh, there are crime on both sides," even though report after report showed things like concentration camps that the Serbs were putting the Muslims in, this campaign of ethnic cleansing that no one was even denying. People looked at it with a blind eye, because I think somewhere in their mind, whether they wanted to admit it even to themselves or not, the idea of getting rid of Muslims in Europe was something that they felt wasn't that bad. Maybe they thought that Muslims really didn't belong in Europe. Maybe they did think that Muslims were somehow a foreign entity that needed to be cleansed out. Now, this is not something that they would ever admit or advocate for in a civilized democratic country. But it was very hard to explain how long the genocide was allowed to happen and to take place and to continue.

Noor (13:37):

Vildana's mom explained their family's experience more simply.

Vildana (13:44):

I think that what I really want to leave people with is something that my mom told me. She said, "Remember at the craziest part of our life, when we were in most chaos, and we thought the world was ending for us." She said, "You know what people in charge were doing? They were all sitting together drinking tea." So, that's how I view everything that happened. The people in charge were still drinking tea, debating, maybe going on a vacation, "We'll revisit these issues later. We'll come back in two weeks." And people, regular people, suffered. It's really us, regular folks, poor people fighting against each other while everybody else drinks tea.

Noor (14:40):

You recently visited Bosnia.

Dalia Mogahed (14:43):

Yes. Visiting Bosnia was one of the most moving and really life changing experiences of my life. I was in college during the genocide. I was an activist on behalf of the Bosnian victims of war. So this is a cause that is dear to me, that is close to me. I'd never actually been there. And, when I visited Bosnia, I got to see what the Bosnian people had actually endured. I didn't realize three years Sarajevo was under siege with no electricity in the middle of winter, they were burning their own furniture and books just to stay alive. They had no food. They were living on rations from charity organizations. Something that really struck me.

Dalia Mogahed (15:32):

So I was touring Sarajevo and they were showing me all the different places and, "This small mosque was destroyed in the war, and then it was rebuilt by Qatar. This mosque was destroyed in the war and it was rebuilt by Turkey. This mosque was destroyed in the war and it was rebuilt by whoever." Every single mosque, literally every single mosque in Sarajevo had been targeted in a campaign of religious genocide. It was a systematic campaign to erase Muslims and anything symbolizing Muslims from the face of Bosnia.

Dalia Mogahed (16:08):

And then, I saw something really striking. It was in the square, in the middle of old Sarajevo, and someone just pointed out, "This is the main cathedral of Sarajevo." And what I noticed is that it was completely unharmed. Of course, the Serbs didn't target the cathedral, but neither had the Muslims in retaliation. Not only had they not retaliated by burning down this cathedral, even though all these historic gorgeous mosques were being destroyed, but it wasn't even looted for firewood. And that literally brought me to tears. It was completely unharmed and unlooted. That was actually my souvenir from Bosnia as I bought this engraving of the cathedral, because the cathedral was what told the story of Bosnia to me, it was the Bosnian people saying, "Our tormentors are not our teachers." And they were able to maintain their humanity and not respond in the way that they were being treated.

Speaker 4 (17:22):

Hey, Hey, Hey.

Noor (17:30):

While putting together this chapter of the story, I find myself feeling incredibly stuck. I realize I'm telling the same story I told 10 years ago when I first met Sunni from refugee to radio. And I'm really familiar with that story. But what I haven't been able to unlock is how it's really manifested in Vildana's life in the states. I need to find the cathedral in this story, the pivotal reframe. So, to help me reframe my approach, I'm turning to a professional listener.

Zaheer Ali (18:14):

And so this actually comes back to my work is an oral historian where the whole point of it is to listen. And, oftentimes, when people think they're listening, they're really searching for themselves in what you're saying. They want to hear you say something that they already are thinking. That's not listening, that's narcissism. You are listening for yourself. You're not listening to the other person. And so, for me, listening means being able to sit with someone, sit with a story that you may not think is connected with you at all, but create space for it.

Noor (19:01):

I'd like to introduce you to Zaheer Ali, an oral historian and educator. Zaheer tells me that oral tradition is the practice of almost all indigenous cultures. It is also deeply tied to the Islamic faith. The Qur'an, which translate to The Recitation, was gathered and passed on orally. And the practice of memorizing it is one millions of Muslims around the world engage in. The way Zaheer Ali practices oral history, as he says it, he is a story listener, a story amplifier, and a person who works to preserve the stories of others.

Zaheer Ali (19:41):

One of my favorite verses in the Qur'an is, "Make room in your assemblies." So people used to gather around the prophet when he would speak at the mosque. It was always all the same people gathering close to him so that the other people wouldn't get to hear him, wouldn't get to gather around him. And so the revelation is like, "Make room in your assemblies," like, "There's enough, there's abundance of room. You're not going to miss anything." And I love that verse because it does many things. But one of the things is, instead of trying to fit in the space that is there, expand the space. Instead of trying to find yourself in somebody else's story, expand the frame, expand your listening, expand your sense of who you are, that actually you might find yourself in the story if you just let the story be told. So sit with a story that is not your own. That's what listening is to me.

Noor (20:46):

"Sitting with a story that isn't your own." And then it hit me. I knew what the problem was with the story. I was sitting with the wrong one.

Zaheer Ali (20:59):

So people call it epistemological humility, which is the-

Noor (21:03):

Epistemological humility.

Zaheer Ali (21:05):

Epistemological humility, which is knowing that you... Being humble about what you know, understanding the limitations of your knowledge. And, as an oral historian, my approach is what they call life history. So you interview someone and get their life history. There's no way, whether it's a 70 year old or a seven year old, they can tell you their life history in two hours. So you always are getting an incomplete story. Your knowledge is incomplete. Always, always. You're never going to get the full story. Even in the Qur'an, we're told that the Qur'an comes from Umm al-Kitab. There is the mother of the book, that there is actually something out of which the Qur'an is an extraction, it's an excerpt. We don't even have the full story.

Noor (22:02):

Well, we also have the incomplete story of ourselves.

Zaheer Ali (22:05):

Yes. If I asked you to tell me your life story today, and I came back and interviewed you next year, they might be two completely different interviews.

Noor (22:14):

They would be, yes.

Vildana Sunni Puric (22:24):

Hello.

Noor (22:28):

Are you watching golden girls?

Vildana Sunni Puric (22:28):

I am.

Noor (22:33):

I am calling you because I basically realize that I think there's a conversation that we've never had. You and I have been close for 10 years. But we've never really talked about what it's meant.

Vildana Sunni Puric (22:49):

Yeah.

Noor (22:50):

And if you're comfortable, I would like to have that conversation.

Vildana Sunni Puric (22:56):

Okay. Are we doing it now?

Noor (23:01):

I tell Sunni I need to sleep on this, but I can't sleep after our phone call. I keep thinking about how we're finally going to talk about us, how we helped each other “rep.” We're both early risers. So, on this foggy, rainy morning, with her coffee and hand, we get great straight to it.

Noor (23:25):

I realized that I think I found myself trying to tell the same story I told 10 years ago. And I think that what I realized is that this journey started... I started it with my family because, in order to know ourselves, we have to start from within your home. And then, you work your way out. I guess, where I want to start with is why do you really think we're friends?

Vildana Sunni Puric (23:56):

Wow. I don't think nobody has ever asked me that. I think that, for me, and I feel like you-

Vildana Sunni Puric (24:00):

Think that, for me, and I feel like you know me better than anyone. Probably my family. Anytime I'm around you, you bring out the real person in me. I feel like you're just this, I guess, like a light in my life. And I feel that for me, people are very fleeting in general. People come and go. To me, it's not a big deal, but I just felt like we have this connection because I feel that I see in you, maybe things that I could never be, or wouldn't even try to, and you were representing a part of me, and that's why I always encourage you because I just always felt like in a way you were like a representation of me, maybe like a younger me.

Noor (25:06):

I realized that our relationship transcends words. It transcended language. It was just, it was light. It was NOOR and SUNNI, literally like our light for each other.

Vildana Sunni Puric (25:20):

Oh My God. Why didn't I think about that?

Noor (25:23):

Yeah. It came to me.

Vildana Sunni Puric (25:24):

That's crazy. Yeah.

Noor (25:26):

And that's why we're the Golden Girls.

Vildana Sunni Puric (25:29):

Oh my God. This is amazing.

Noor (25:34):

We love our Golden Girls. Years ago, I even got her the entire DVD collection of the whole show. Golden Girls is the kind of vibe that allows you to sit with the serious stuff while also feeling held and comforted. I think that's why, after all of these years, Sunni and I are able to chip away at the hard parts of our story. It's like every time we create space for each other, we unlock parts of ourselves in real-time.

Noor (26:07):

When you reflect on the fact that you came here when you were 12, leaving a war that included an ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims for being Muslim. When you come here and abandon that part of your identity in order to survive, there's a disconnect in the story.

Vildana Sunni Puric (26:33):

You know, I was an excellent student in Bosnia, and I came here, and I was terrible. And I was like, I did everything opposite, maybe on purpose to disconnect myself from that part of my life.

Noor (26:48):

Well, everything you knew and everything you were taught, got punished in Bosnia. In the war.

Vildana Sunni Puric (26:56):

It felt like coming here and people asking you about it. You're just like, what are you talking about? I just want to be a regular kid. I'm not a Muslim. I don't pray. Clearly, you can see, I don't pray. I don't wear a hijab. That was my thing. And I think because I come from a small village, everybody's related because we all live together, all the families live very close and then going to a refugee camp. And so, you had different people that were fleeing from different parts of the countries, or there were some people that were of different faith, and it was just a lot of different people but it was still our people.

Vildana Sunni Puric (27:40):

But when I came to America, my high school had 33 different languages. So it was all the immigrant kids went to my high school. My school. So, you have kids from every country, they hate each other, in the same school. So, it was fights every day. We had a liquor store on the corner of our school, and there was a different flag painted every day behind the store, because it was whoever was fighting that day, they painted their flag. It was crazy. [inaudible 00:28:11] High School.

Vildana Sunni Puric (28:14):

But I think then also, a part of me was just kind of like when I saw all the hijabi girls and they were all in school, I was like, oh, I'm not like that anymore.

Noor (28:29):

So, when did you feel like you really became American?

Vildana Sunni Puric (28:37):

Oh. I don't really know. Honestly. I always say I'm Bosnian. I never say I'm Bosnian American. I don't think I've ever said I'm American unless I am in a different country and they see my passport.

Noor (28:54):

But you wanted to be so badly.

Vildana Sunni Puric (28:56):

So wanted to. So wanted to. For some reason I'm telling you, I just wanted to disconnect, and maybe I'm still trying to figure that out.

Noor (29:07):

I believe we need stories to make sense of the world. They tell us who we are, who we've been and who we will become. For Vildana, making sense of the world meant denying her story for so many years. I hadn't thought about it like that before. No wonder I couldn't get a handle on this narrative, as she says, she's still trying to figure it out. And me, I just had to listen.

Noor (29:39):

So, now when you look at it, where do you think you really fit in the American story?

Vildana Sunni Puric (29:46):

I could honestly say that I have no idea. I think that I just really view my life as it's kind of like wherever the river takes me. Being in America and putting all these things on myself, as you can tell, in my head, I was like, you can't say this, you can't do this. You're not this. But then, I started working at a hip hop radio station, so then I'm like, oh my God but I'm not even from here, and I'm not black.

Vildana Sunni Puric (30:18):

So, now I'm at this radio station, and I'm taking up space, then I'm an immigrant, but then I'm Muslim, but then I don't really follow. So, it was like all these things at once. But I did feel like here in America is a lot of, you have to identify who you are. It's very, well do you fit here? And are you this? Or are you that? Because if you're not that, then you can't be, it's so much of that. And I just want to live a life where none of that actually matters anymore because in America it's all about labels.

Noor (30:55):

My therapist recently told me that labels are actually dehumanizing because we're limiting ourselves.

Vildana Sunni Puric (31:02):

It's so much.

Noor (31:03):

Yeah.

Vildana Sunni Puric (31:04):

It's so much. But I've learned, I think, even just being around you for the past 10 years, it's really helped me, I guess, connect more, because like you said, I knew all the things in my heart, in my mind, what Islam represents in how I am, but it just made me feel more comfortable.

Noor (31:27):

I think, what I've learned over the last 10 years that you inspired me with too, is that I want to see you and not any of the labels. I like seeing Vildana. I like Sunni. And to me, once you put a label on a person, whether it be faith, gender, race, anything, any label, you immediately see them through that lens. And I think that the way our relationship was built, was that you saw me as Noor, and I saw you as Vildana, and that was enough.

Vildana Sunni Puric (32:07):

Yeah.

Speaker 5 (32:18):

REP.

Noor (32:23):

Something you told me when you were telling me about your story many years ago was how when you first moved to Hamtramck that your parents never really had to learn English because there were so many Bosnians around. They found this community outside of Bosnia that felt like home. How do you think that contributed or impacted their healing from the war?

Vildana Sunni Puric (32:50):

I think a great deal, my father still doesn't speak English. He just retired. He has his Bosnian friends, and he learned enough just to get by if he needed. If he got lost, he can find his way back, but he can't have a conversation with you. For them, I feel happy that they had that because to them, what are they going to do? How would they start over without that support? What would they be doing? So for them, I felt like it was a great deal of healing because these are their people. They have their community there. For me, I was trying to just be American.

Noor (33:30):

What did that mean to you?

Vildana Sunni Puric (33:30):

I didn't want to have an accent. I was just like, I just don't want people to be like, where are you from? Why do you sound that way? Or ask me questions. The whole experience of just living through refugee camps and going back and forth, it felt like a movie. I don't think I ever had a conversation with my teenage friends about anything deep about anything. And, of course, I'm not a hijabi so they didn't really know unless they asked. And we would tell them. I would say it. I think that, at first, I just didn't even associate myself as that anymore. It was like I completely erased it.

Noor (34:20):

Did you think that you couldn't be both American and Muslim?

Vildana Sunni Puric (34:25):

I think so in a way. For me, I think, everything happened after 9/11 because I was in high school. That played a huge role. So, it was kind of like, oh, we're Muslim because we are, but we don't wear a hijab. There's Muslims in every race. That's like, what's the actual face of Islam. Right?

Noor (34:52):

My dad would often quote the old saying, “Show me your friends. And I'll tell you who you are.” How many of us know, know our friends and understand why the people we choose to love are the way they are. To know people intimately gives context to their story and ours.

Noor (35:14):

And how does “intimate knowledge,” specifically, play a role in Muslim storytelling?

Zaheer Ali (35:21):

So, to me, “intimate knowledge,” those are the things that you know because you're in community with someone. Those are the gestures. Those are the nuances. Those are the deeper meanings. That's the interiority of the life from within, not what people see from without. Right? That people who are not in this experience, their image of us is very exterior. Right? So, for example, if you are writing a Muslim character into your story and you want to signify that they're Muslim, maybe you have them dress a certain way. Maybe you have their facial hair a certain way. Maybe you show them praying, right? Those are all exterior manifestations, right?

Noor (36:25):

Right.

Zaheer Ali (36:25):

What are they thinking? How are they understanding the way that they move in the world? What is the interiority of their life?

Noor (36:33):

It's so funny that you've worked in the hip hop and R&B space for so long, and yet as soon as you leave the station, you turn on country music.

Vildana Sunni Puric (36:55):

It's funny because growing up in America, you would never hear me listen to country music. I listened to all hip hop, all R&B. I loved it. I had the videos, the girls, the rappers, I wanted to be a part of that world. When I got to the radio station my first day, they had artists there that had interviews. It was glamorous and I was just like, "Oh my God, I want to be a part of this world."

Vildana Sunni Puric (37:28):

And then later down the line when I discovered country music, I realized how much country music reminded me of home. Oh my God. Every time I listen to it, it literally... Because all they talk about is sunsets, sitting in the grass, country living. And every time I heard it, I was like, "Oh my God." It just reminds me of when I was a kid. Not that I heard that type of music, but what they talked about. And they always talk about love and they talk about like, I don't know, dirt roads, and that's all it is. It literally reminds me of home. And I was like, "Oh my God, if I could listen to country music when I'm like sitting on a little hill watching the sunset, that makes sense to me in my head."

Noor (38:37):

Your family still has their house.

Vildana Sunni Puric (38:38):

We do, and my parents actually wanted to sell it recently, and I was just like, "Don't sell it because it's our land." What if I want to move out of America and go back and set up my shop there?

Noor (38:54):

You thought about that?

Vildana Sunni Puric (38:56):

I've thought about actually moving. It just depends on how politics and all that stuff works out. It's very complicated because we have three presidents or whatever and they rotate. It's weird. But I thought about that. I was like, "We have land, we have a huge house, and why wouldn't... It's right there, close to Croatia, close to Italy. It can be my home."

Noor (39:25):

To watch Sunni connect her own dots is a privilege, as a friend and as a human. She reminds me how important individuality is, knowing who you are outside of the story that's been projected onto you.

Noor (39:42):

I think people are intimidated or confused by or get reactionary when people live in that "why not" space? A lot of times, we project our own beliefs onto other people and expect them to practice or be the way that we want them to be, and that's just not the world I want to live in. I want to live in a world where everybody feels comfortable showing up exactly as who they are, because that's when you shine the brightest.

Vildana Sunni Puric (40:19):

Why not?

Noor (40:19):

Why not?

Zaheer Ali (40:22):

Muslim is not a box you put people in. It's a box they stand on. It is a foundation of their identity, but it is not the sum total of who that person is. We have complex lives with complex relationships, the same kind of human strivings and disappointments and hopes and dreams that other people have. They are refracted through our experience, through our lives as Muslims, but they're just as complex, they're just as nuanced, they're just as rich. We have inside jokes. We have wisdom that's communicated with a smile, with a gesture, with a facial expression. If you can't imagine people with an interior life that is beyond what you see outwardly, you have flattened those people into just props.

Noor (41:36):

Who did you really find community in in America? Who are your people?

Vildana Sunni Puric (41:44):

You know what's so funny? I was in middle school. So I came here and they put me in seventh grade, and I was hanging out with a lot of Bosnian kids because we didn't speak English. And then eighth grade gym class, there was this girl. Her name was Martina. She was this black girl and she came over, fixed my shirt or something. Mind you, growing up, I had never seen a black person before, ever, until we were in the camps and all of our doctors were African. So I never had a black friend. I remember that moment because she helped me.

Vildana Sunni Puric (42:32):

And then it was later when I started doing radio and I was always out in Detroit, community. This was before I even got on the air. People knew who I was before I was on the air because I was always in the community, always doing things. I wanted to do the call-ins from such and such, I'm [inaudible 00:42:54] this. It was older black women that came up and were like aunts. They were like aunties. I can't even explain it. They were so warm and so inviting all the time and that became like a thing in Detroit, and in that space it was mostly always black women.

Noor (43:14):

Right. Whoa. Wow.

Vildana Sunni Puric (43:16):

When they say like, "Who's your audience?" I know I can literally draw the person because that was the sense of the warmth that the community had always given me. So when I was on air, I knew exactly who I was talking to. That's why everything I did was always surrounding women and always empowering women and doing all of these things, because that's literally who embraced me my entire career.

Noor (43:47):

And there's the unlock. Sunni is who she is to me because of the women who did the same for her. I think about Martina fixing Sunni's shirt, how that small act of kindness changed everything for her. I've had those moments with Sunni, many she wouldn't remember, but that always stuck with me, like how you hear a smile in my voice right now. Sunni also protected me in uncomfortable situations and introduced me to people she thought I could learn from. She was always there for me in ways I wouldn't have asked her to be. The inconsequential interactions we have with the people we surround ourselves with add to the context of who we all are.

Zaheer Ali (44:34):

When we encounter a story or someone's story or someone's history, we should never come away thinking like, "Ah, I get it. I get you. I understand." We should come away thinking, "Wow, there's so much more to learn about you, about this thing, about whatever it is." As you said, we should come away with more questions than answers.

Vildana Sunni Puric (45:00):

On WPGC 95.5, don't forget everybody for sisters only is happening. After the year that we've had, ladies, this is much, much needed. You can actually enter for your chance to win tickets to this incredible event.

Noor (45:19):

The stories we think we know best are the hardest ones to tell because it means reexamining who we are. I found myself filling in the blanks to Sunni's story instead of just witnessing it, witnessing her connect with her inner child, little Vildana. The one who enjoys country music, feeling the wind and speaking to trees. As a storyteller. I was so focused on the telling part that I wasn't doing enough of the most important part, listening.

Noor (45:55):

When Sunni and I had our big talk, I noticed the nuances in her story and the way it naturally connected to my own. So even now as I reflect on how Sunni and I came into each other's light, I think about how many other people I've encountered who have contributed to that glow, or I have to theirs. If even in one of my closest friendships, it was this difficult to reflect on the nature of our relationship, how often are we missing that with friends and strangers whose lives we only pass through? How much light are we missing? What happens when we intentionally examine a personal relationship? How does that help us to “rep” one another in more meaningful and surprising ways? Sunni is still the kind of person you can't miss. Her voice, her fits, her knowing smile, her knowledge of self is the essence of her cool. It's what I've always been so drawn to.

Noor (46:55):

Next up, we're expanding into Muslim Cool. This is REP, I am Noor, At Your Service.