Bonus: Lives Less Ordinary

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:59The Interview. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

1:09Hello, I'm Jo Fidgen and welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. I host Lives Less Ordinary, the podcast featuring the most incredible true life stories from around the world. And in this bonus episode, I'd like to share this story. All of a sudden I'm just swallowed whole by this beast. this beast of rage pushed back and forth between its walls like a pummeling cage they're throwing fists from the right i'm throwing fists from the left and i hit my right ear and it all suddenly goes death and i'm just holding my head now trying to reduce this cacophony of blows occasionally lashing out to get them away from me and i feel a hard punch on my back which throws me down to the ground and my head hits the concrete floor and my nose bursts but you know I'm none the wiser.

2:01And dazed, I turn over to leave as a survivor, but he stands over me holding a bloody screwdriver. And we lock eye contact. And within those eyes, I see a flicker of sadness, like he knows what he's just done.

2:27What he's just done is stab 16-year-old Dan Whitlam in the back with a screwdriver, twice, puncturing his lung. The physical wounds actually healed quite quickly. The mental ones took a lot longer. And it was poetry that fixed him. And maybe not just him. Dan started posting his poetry on social media for what he calls his lost generation. Young people who are struggling to find their footing. And he now has hundreds of thousands of followers. I'm Jo Fidgen from the BBC World Service. This is Lives Less Ordinary.

3:12on the day of the fight 14 years ago now dan was in a fantastic mood he'd just been auditioning in london for a play that was to be put on at the edinburgh fringe festival where many a career has been launched he loved performing and he saw this as his big chance i was really excited and to be honest i think the reason i love it so much is that it's it was the first time that i I felt a feeling of self-worth when I was younger, kind of being on stage. So for me, the idea of this Edinburgh Fringe Festival and doing this play meant a lot to me. Because it wasn't just sort of being with your best mates for 20 days.

3:47It was a time where I felt like I truly belonged to something. I think at school, I played a bit of a class clown a lot of the time. And this was the first time I really felt sort of centred. As soon as I found myself on stage, I really felt this calmness and this place called home, I guess, in a way. so yeah it was a lot of excitement but a bit of bit of nerves as well did the audition which was amazing and then came out and as I came out of the theatre that's when I kind of noticed something was was happening what did you see I turned around and I saw my friend was getting sort of hit in the face he was getting mugged and I kind of knee-jerk reacted and just went straight over to him got in a fight with these these boys when you say boys what sort of ages pretty similar to where we were at so 14 15 16 and then later on some older people sort of came out of the side roads and stuff like that right and this fight it was like fists flying yeah it was fists yeah it was um a lot of pushing a lot of fists and um yeah someone within that sort of barrage of fists I got um stabbed twice in the back with a screwdriver and then we I mean what were you aware of when that was happening um nothing to be honest i was just kind of focusing on what was happening and i knew as soon as i was in that fight as soon as i was in it i wanted to leave it because i was completely surrounded on all sides and then i managed to get away and that's when i had a moment to kind of breathe and like you know say okay cool that's done i got away from that um but then i just noticed a really strange sensation all down my back so you hadn't realized at the time you were being stabbed that you were being stabbed no i had no idea yeah i think it's one of those things that people say about adrenaline you're just you're so filled by it that you don't really know what's happening um but as soon as it wore off i knew that something was was not right at all it was a strangest sensation it's like um if you've ever had a dead leg and your whole leg goes a bit numb it was like that done my whole back um and i then i had my friend george with me and he was like okay let's let's get on the tube and just get you home and thank god i didn't get on the tube because it would have been um it would have been pretty bad but i um i lifted up my shirt to him um and he sort of told me that you've you've been stabbed he just said it like that he said it like that and i didn't believe him i was like what so I ran over to a nearby convenience shop and it had the reflective sort of mirror surface in the window and I looked over and looked in the mirror and I just saw blood.

6:28I'm lucky that it was a screwdriver that I was stabbed with in the sense of the internal bleeding external bleeding wasn't as bad as sort of you know a big a big blade but then also it's a blunt instrument so it went deep and it did internal damage so. What damage did it do? Well my lung collapsed so my lung was punctured and then was panicking, called an ambulance. So when you saw your back in this mirror and you saw the blood, I mean, did you go into shock at that point? What happens when you see that? Yeah, I went into real shock. I was really terrified. And I just remember on the phone to the ambulance, and these people who answer the phones are incredible because they are really, really well trained to keep you calm.

7:15and I was definitely a 16 year old who was just freaking out because well on multiple levels you know we kind of grew up seeing stories about young boys from the ages of you know even 12 to sort of 21 22 who get stabbed and die and I think I don't know if it's afterwards I sort of realized that but I think at the moment I think the idea of sort of not surviving this definitely went through my head what did the doctors say to you about your injuries and the likely they um yeah they checked They checked my lungs and my heart and my vitals, I think, straight away. And then they noticed that my lung collapsed.

7:50So they did what's called a chest strain. This is so gruesome, but it kind of... Yeah, I just remember, like, once I was numb on the side of my chest, them opening my ribcage up with sort of tongs and stuff like that. You could see that. Yeah, I could see it all, yeah. And I was on a daze. It was kind of really weird, the fact that this was happening because I'd been stabbed by another boy who was the same age as me. It was all kind of running through my head. and then I was thinking about my dad and I was thinking about my sisters and I just wanted to see them, I think, rather than being surrounded by about six or seven doctors.

8:24Your dad and your sisters, we should talk about your mum because your mum you had lost some years before to cancer. How old were you when you lost her? I was about seven years old. So very young. Yeah, young, definitely young. I imagine a lot of people in times of trauma ask for their mum. I mean, that's, you know, conventionally what people do. Yeah, yeah. Talk about when you lost your mum, and we'll come back to how you felt when you stabbed and she couldn't be there. You know, at that point, you said very young, but what kind of relationship did you have with her? it was it was a close relationship i think as a kid i was very high octane and high energy and just running around all over the place compared to my sisters who are a lot calmer i think um but it was a close relationship i mean we we traveled a bit when i was younger my dad was amazing at languages and so you lived abroad i lived abroad yeah yeah i grew up in russia and i grew up in turkey still convinced my dad's gonna tell me he's a spy he hasn't yet He hasn't yet.

9:43We'll see what happens. But yeah, so I grew up in those different countries. And I remember my mum was, she was amazing at, you know, it's the little things you remember, isn't it? Like she was amazing at making birthday cakes, I remember. And she kind of found ways to put our faces on the side of a cake that looks like a boat. And we were in the portholes, just like little things like that. And she was really smiley. She used to take photos all the time. So we've got these albums in my dad's house that are just filled with photos that she took. And the weirdest thing is that she's not actually in the photos because she was always the one taking them.

10:12so I kind of make up my idea of who she was when I'm struggling to remember parts of her through the way she took photos rather than her being the actual photos herself how did she take photos um she was brilliant but I think it was in the way that me and my sisters might be adoringly looking at her instead of at the camera and the way she captured these beautiful moments made me think that she was always part of those really lovely moments so yeah it's it's it's really sad that I've not been able to have a relationship with her as an adult because I think what's difficult about losing a parent when you're younger is that you don't have them there to kind of form who you are in a way and I think what's sad now is that she's not there to see how I have been formed and for me to have like an intellectual sort of conversation and just you know see what makes her laugh see what makes her cry see what makes her happy etc so it's more your dad who forms you who helps form you yeah I'd say so yeah and how did he do that what kind of dad I mean it's single dad with three kids yeah doing the most yeah um he he was he was there for everything which is amazing i did a lot of running with him when i was younger played a lot of football with him did you do a lot of talking as well as a lot of playing sports were you you know sharing feelings was it that kind of relationship i think um we certainly shared some feelings did we talk about you know what was going on in life at school the sort of day-to-days for sure but i don't think i ever really had what traditionally maybe a mum might be there for in terms of I'm really struggling with this um can you help with that I don't think I ever had that kind of relationship with my dad um so having this dreadful experience then when you were 16 I mean did your thoughts turn to your mum did you think what would I say to her what would she say to me at that point yeah yeah absolutely I think certainly when I was and I'm sure we'll get into it but the the aftermath when I was really struggling with thoughts in my head about what happened panic attacks and everything else I think it would have been lovely to be able to either be asked by someone you know are you doing okay or for me to be able to voice I'm not doing okay to someone so that's quite difficult just sort of holding that holding that in no one did ask you no no I'm sure I'm sure there was some level of that but nothing that comes to my mind that led me to actually speaking about it how did your dad respond to what had happened because i'm sure he would have been absolutely devastated and terrified his um yeah i think he was terrified he was angry um and he was he was he was wonderful after that he was really good at sort of chaperoning me to and from and making sure I felt comfortable and safe.

13:01Chaperoning. So you wanted him to be there to help you move around and feel comfortable and safe? Yeah, I felt pretty nervous just travelling, like walking to the tube station or walking to the bus stop or to a friend's house. So I'd often ask my dad to come with me to the bus stop or the tube station or whatever. That can't have been easy for you as a 16-year-old. You're sort of a pletching adulthood. Yeah, I felt pretty lame. to be honest. Lame. It's hardly lame, is it, in the situation, but frustrating. Yeah, yeah. I think the idea of the freedom that comes with being 16 and trying new things and going out with your friends was, it was hurt by what had happened.

13:47And then even when I was able to sort of go out by myself, that led to me worrying that it was going to happen again, or if it was dark and I saw a group coming towards me in the distance I would like run off down a road and then probably it would actually just be you know just a group of friends or family and there was nothing to fear in the first place but that really ate away in my mind just of what could happen if it could happen again and then that was also layered by the fact that I had these worries that my lung was sort of spontaneously collapsing again which can happen and I kind of got it into my head through probably excessive use of Dr.

14:21Google that something was going to happen again. And then I just had these random episodes of thinking that my lung was collapsing. What would you do about that? Well, it went on for ages and I'd kind of try and help myself through it by telling myself it's just me panicking and me worrying and anxiety. But it got so bad that the way I got over it was by I bought one of these sort of finger blood oxygen meters where I could see that my both lungs were full of oxygen and I was, you know, breathing okay. Were you following the situation of the attackers when they were arrested and what was happening to them and going through court or were you trying to block that out?

15:04I was definitely following it to some degree. There was our detective or the person in charge of my case and they were giving us updates and there were a lot of people looking at this case and the same place that I got stabbed in a boy called Ben Kinsella sadly got stabbed 17 times and died he was similarly 16 similarly was approaching or had done his GCSEs and I think it was the same road about 20 yards from where I got stabbed there was a lot around this case around the same time or I think it was a few years before were you thinking that could have been me I could have died in that spot. Yeah, which is awful to think about, to make it about me in that case, but I was sort of whispering in my own distress about that, yeah, because it could have been me, and it is so many boys every single day.

15:52You know, people get stabbed and they aren't as lucky as me, and I'm really aware of that. How would you feel when you'd hear from the police? A lot of anxiety. It was always quite scary having to dip back into the memory of what happened, and and then i believe there was there was a bit of a breakthrough where they said we found the the boys who have done it the oldest being 21 22 the youngest being 14 which is wild to think that someone who's 14 but it's what happens every single day and they were charging them on something called joint enterprise which again i might be wrong but i believe it's when everyone kind of jointly gets dealt the penalty because no one's coming forward and saying i did it it was me and And they were getting done on grievous bodily harm, GBH, which as an adult carries the same sentence as attempted murder.

16:39So it was a serious charge. And we were approaching then a court day. And I was really anxious about that. And I was building myself up to it. And I was like, OK, I'm going to see these boys. And I was told that I'd be in a sort of special witness protection sort of place where I could see them, but they wouldn't be able to see me. and then honestly like two days before we get a phone call or an email saying that the person who's done it has come forward and I'm not going to have to to see them or meet them um which was sounds so weird but kind of anticlimactic is the wrong word but kind of I I'd hyped myself up for it and I was ready for it and I kind of I wanted to go and do it and see them and then really happy that this person had the either conscience or whatever it was to say, you know, I'm guilty.

17:30But I was then denied the opportunity to kind of see that person and in my eyes make further peace with what had happened. They got 18 months in juvenile detention and then a further two years with wearing an electronic tag. Were you satisfied with that? um honestly no i don't think so um i think it's difficult because one part of me really strongly believes in rehabilitation massively but yeah part of me was really upset that it was just 18 months i thought that it deserved a lot longer but then again this person was 15 16 years old you said at the time age 16 you wanted in a way on one level to see this person to confront them You get an opportunity two years later when you're 18 to be in contact with the person who attacked you, part of a restorative justice process.

18:31What were you wanting to get out of it? Like I said, I'd really struggled with panic attacks. I'd really struggled with my breathing and really struggled with sleeping and other things to do with this event. and I thought maybe if I did fulfil this want and need and wish when I was younger of seeing the person, maybe it would all subside and go away. Just seeing them or was there something you needed to hear? I think in hindsight now I'd say I needed an apology and I needed understanding on why. Why would you do that to someone? How were you feeling that day? Yeah, very similar to how I was feeling just before the court case.

19:13a lot of anxiety a lot of worry I guess the obvious worry that someone might leap out of their chair and something might happen all over again which is ludicrous I know but you know these were the thoughts going through my head and then going into the the room and I'm not going to pretend like it was a very long sort of interaction it wasn't but I think just being able to sit down opposite someone and being able to see what they want to say to you and be afforded the chance to apologize and say this is why this is what I've learned this is what I'm going to do with my life I think you humanize what happened because I think for a long time I was turning that event and the people into a bit of a monster if that makes sense so then just to see this boy in front of me who's 18 I was just like okay I can I can take on your words and first sight um yeah it was very strange very strange I think just being able to look in someone's eyes and just seeing last time we saw each other was when I was getting stabbed uh when I was 16 um yeah very strange I think at the time I went back to that state of adrenaline and I went back to that state of not really being able to take on too much information until I could process it later.

20:40So it was a lot, but it was a really strange feeling to be able to be face-to-face with someone who caused such trauma. How did you greet each other?

20:54Sort of sitting down, just high, and then getting straight into it. But I think this is what the charities are amazing at because, you know, to be able to intro two people and sit down and say, this is why we're here, this is what we're going to do, that's an intro in itself, isn't it? Why did he want to speak to you? To apologise and to say why and how he was going to go forward with his life. Can you tell us why? Yeah, I mean, it was within how I told you the story was me running over to go and save my friend. His story was very much that he was running over to go and save his friend. I think when boys are young, when they're 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.

21:31They're young, they're impressionable, they act out of impulse. And that was all woven into his answer and saying why he did what he did. Did you feel he was genuinely sorry? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I do. What did that mean to you? In hindsight, that was the kind of turning point for me to be able to make peace with it all. And then in turn, turn that trauma into art and turning it into something.

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23:52America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

24:46Sir Anthony Hopkins. The interview from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

24:57It's a couple of years after that when you're age 20 that you write this very remarkable poem. Yes. About the attack. Why did you want to write about it? I think there's been two things in my life that I've really struggled to write about and those two things were my mum I've really struggled to because I've always said that I don't have the right words to do her justice or what happened justice because I want to make it perfect almost because it was such a big you know she was such a big person in my life and losing her was such a big event and the other one was the stabbing I just um I didn't touch it for so long because it meant so much to me and affected me so so greatly so when I finally did write about it it was through wanting to make sense of it all in a way but then also through wanting to hold on to where I find most self-worth which was performing and kind of trying to channel that story into into something really positive something without witch hunting or victimization something that kind of told the whole story rather than just one picture and just finding the humanity in it a little bit I'd love to hear a bit of it um please please give us some I turn the corner and I see a sight that bites on my eyes.

26:12It's a darkening pool of blood surrounded by the hoodies that ran past me a minute earlier and they're just stamping on the face of this limp lifeless form. There was no stop to this beast, no peace at the eye of the storm. There was no stop to their rage. They did snarl and did transform into bloodthirsty monsters begotten from hate and scorn and I just froze numb to my bone marrow. You know harrowed by the stench of running blood and just a visual of five hooded figures with five different minds beating down upon this man not once but five times and these five different men were five times unkind yes five pairs of eyes but those five pairs were blind and then I see it's my friend who's on the floor who's now broken and is bleeding and my heart's beating and these feelings of inner demons are seething and I don't believe what I'm seeing I'm looking for higher reasons but meanings have left this earth yes we're blessed until death takes us to the darkness in the earth yes we're blessed until death takes us off in the dark hearse but you're here and you're breathing there'll be no coffin no church and I'm running right I'm just moving towards my friend and I'm shouting and I'm screaming get off him and all of a sudden I'm just swallowed whole by this beast this beast of rage pushed back and forth between its walls like a pummeling cage they're throwing fists from the right I'm throwing fists from the left and I hit my right ear and it all suddenly goes death and I'm just holding my head now trying to reduce this cacophony of blows occasionally lashing out to get them away from me and I open my tightly shut eyes for an instant and I see another figure he running in joining in from a nearby estate and as he runs in I decide I have to move and I have to move now so I push off with all my might but I get caught in the crowd the voices grow loud we're caught and I feel drowned and I feel a hard punch on my back which throws me down to the ground and my head hits the concrete floor and my nose bursts but you know I'm none the wiser and dazed I turn over to leave as a survivor but he stands over me holding a bloody screwdriver and we lock eye contact and within those eyes I see a flicker of sadness like he knows what he's just done and then he thrusts forward once again driving the screwdriver deeper into my right lung and then all the voices grow deathly silent and it's just me alone on the street and I throw my head to the sky and keep my breathing silent soft and for some reason I still don't know why I think about my mum you know I think about the words that I'd say to her since I last saw her how I've grown a bit older and with growing older I've grown a bit bolder and now admittedly growing a little bit colder

28:59thank you Dan it's a very powerful performance when you perform it does it take you there? I found it so tough when I first started performing that piece I just really struggled to get through it but I think now that I've done it so much and so often in front of so many people I'm able to just get through that moment a lot better What happened to the panic attacks? Did you get on top of them? Yeah, they subsided. I'm still very much someone who lives with anxiety, but I think a lot of people do. But the panic attacks about my lung collapsing went away. Do you know why? I think with a lot of peace and understanding from, first of all, getting over the trauma and the event, but then also just through performing the poem.

29:50And through doing that again and again and again, I was able to kind of distance myself away from what happened and now see it as almost something else or someone else. You've worked so hard in this poem, which continues for a lot more than we heard, to think about what the perpetrator may have been like, what his day may have been like. and I know you've imagined some of these details, but you've imagined them in a way that not only humanizes him, but in some ways you sort of make out that he might be a better person than you in some ways. You said that you were beginning to think of him as a monster.

30:26And then in this poem, you make him kind of kind in some ways. Why did you go that far? Why did you do that? I think, again, just to humanize it and to show that people are never one thing. so for example earlier in the in the poem we didn't hear it but um there's an instance where i pass a homeless person on the street and i just walk past him whereas in the other side of the story the boy who attacked me he sits with the homeless person and they speak about parents they speak about what they're going through and in both stories i get annoyed at myself for not staying with the person at all and the other boy gets annoyed at himself for not staying with him longer and I think I just wanted to highlight the humanity within that boy's life and you know yes there's a lot of sort of artistic licensory in me creating that side of the story but I think I mainly wanted to highlight the fact that you know people are not one thing basically Is that a bit like forgiveness?

31:29Yeah I reckon so yeah you could say a bit like forgiveness Do you know if he's aware of this poem? No I don't at all no but I do hope that he's in a good place and he's doing okay. I think I imagine saying this was the poem that really got you noticed. Yes, it absolutely was. You may have guessed Dan isn't one to dwell on hate. He's much more inclined to write about love and his hundreds of thousands of followers on social media really go for it. It is actually really lovely to hear that people and especially young people want to hear about love because it feels like there is so much hate around.

32:08Why do you focus on it? I saw my mum and my dad have a really loving relationship and I always kind of grew up romanticising the idea of love and the elusive idea of finding your forever person. And I think I've been really lucky that I've been in love a few times during my life so far and I've kind of always been attracted to that emotion, how it makes you feel, how you tell others about it, how it can be really all-consuming. I found certainly through my work on social media, I found that predominantly the poems and the songs that have really kind of taken off as the wrong word, but like done okay.

32:40I could take it off as well. Take it off as well. But they've been about love. And I think it's, yeah, I just think it's, without sounding too corny, it's a wonderful emotion that people want to kind of show off, like, you know, keeping it private between you and your partner, but also showing it sort of publicly. It's interesting that you say, I've been lucky enough to be in love a few times, because I think some other people, maybe less optimistic people would say, I've broken up with people a few times but you tend to see they're positive do you? I think so yeah I think every person that you've loved if you've been lucky enough to fall in love you've learnt something from that person and you've then taken things that you've learnt onto the next relationship whether they're how to be in a relationship or lessons you've learnt about yourself and I think I'm one of the people who thinks that everything sort of happens for a reason so if love doesn't work out it's just leading you towards the right person so that's what I think Ah, it'd be great to hear one of your poems about love.

33:32Of course. Yeah? Fantastic. This is called Three Lives, and I'll read it to you now.

33:41If I had three lives, I'd marry you in two. And in that other life, that slightly slower, dimmer one, I probably would have been a writer. Sat up in corner-side cafes, trying to pen you into existence. Not knowing you, but still knowing I was missing something. A part of me that would have made me a little more whole. A little more together. And so I'd write. Penning the idea of you to paper in hopes you might form out of ink and our story might begin. And that's not to say I wouldn't be happy in this life. Of course I would. I'd have friends to laugh with and complain about how much or too little work I'm getting.