I get a team. Welcome to another installment of the You Project. Craig, Anthony Harper, Melissa, Marie Cameron, and Kylie. We're not sure what her middle name is, but we'll find out. Kylie Moore Gilbert. Welcome to another show. Everyone high, Melissa, Hello, how are you? Oh bloody good? If the sun's out, the birds singing, the bees are buzzing. I just took one of the motorbikes out of the garards for a little bit of stretching of the metaphoric legs, and I
lifted some heavy shit at the gym. And it's still only one five and I'm about to have a scintillating conversation. So for me, win our chicken dinner. It's been a good day, fantastic.
And have you been enjoying your I think it's the National Day of Morning or something. That's what they're calling it today.
I don't know if that's like, that's a loaded question. That's a lot. I feel like I'm not meant to enjoy a National Day of Morning, rush, I don't know. Let's ask Kylie. She's smarter than us. She will know the appropriate answer for that.
Hi, Kylie, Hey, thanks for having me on Craig.
Yeah, welcome to the You project. What do you do? And on our national day of mourning, allegedly our national day of mourning other than talking to a buffet end Hampton, I mean.
Other than wearing black and shedding tears and lighting candle. So I'm kind of chilling at home, going to go on a run this afternoon and maybe spend some time in my garden.
Are you Are you an avid gardener or a casual gardener.
I'm a casual gardener. Yes, only when the weather's good. Do I bother going out there.
I'm a little bit with you. I have the lowest maintenance garden in the world. I had it built. I'm sure you don't get built created, I don't know, planted about ten years ago. It's primarily bamboo trees that create a screen around my house. And they are about twenty meters not twenty meters, twenty feet or six meters higher than the top of my house. So I have this beautiful, wow green screen. And I live in suburbia, so when I look out all the windows in my house, I
can't see any suburbia, any road, any traffic. I just see trees. So I feel like I'm in the middle of something not urbanskay bamboo jungle. Are you a an avid runner or a casual runner?
I am an avid runner who's sort of casual at the moment, trying to get back into avid if that makes.
Sense there, No, there's a scale. Have you done any not that it matters. Have you done any runs? Like have you ever done a half or a full marathon or anything like that?
I've done one half before, Yeah, how'd you go? I've never done a full? Oh not bad, but actually it was in the UK and it was snowing at the time, so that really set me back and kind of put me off doing another one. But I might someday.
That's yeah, I reckon doing half a marathon in the snow is analogous to a full marathon not in the snow. So I'll give you an honorary marathon a title. You're welcome.
Thank you. I don't know if I can claim that.
Yes, it was tough.
Tell people what you do at the moment before we go round and round with your story and back and forth. But like, what's your job as we sit here at the twenty second of September twenty twenty two, what's your job, Kylie, what do you do?
I don't have a job at the moment, per se am. I wrote a book called The Uncaged Sky, and that came out about five or six months ago. Now, so my quote unquote job for the past half year has been promoting the book and I've been doing very speaking engagements as well, so that's taking up the amount of my time as well as doing what's of advocacy stuff as well, human rights and you know, hostage diplomacy, advocacy behind the scenes.
That's a job. Well, it's not a job, but it's work. Well, if we're being technical, I've had a job for thirty two years, so we're both unemployed. How's the book. Has the book gone?
Yeah, it's going pretty well. I've had a very positive reception. A lot of people have given me great feedback on it. So no, that's all that matters to me really. I just want to get the message out about what's happening in Iran and the phenomenon of arbitrary detention that you know, I got caught up in, and if that's happening, then I'm happy.
Yeah, amazing. All right, Well let's start there. I was going to get there eventually, but let's start there. So your book was called The Uncaged Sky, My eight hundred and four Days in an Iranian Prison, which has been shortlisted for the twenty twenty two Nonfiction Age Book of the Year. Congratulations, So you must have done a good job. Is it your first book?
Yeah?
My first book? Actually? Yeah, I was writing a book when I was arrested, can you believe? And that book has now been canned because it's out of date, which is very frustrating, one of the unintended consequences of getting thrown in prison in a foreign country. But that book was sort of an academic work based on my PhD. So this is the first non academic piece of writing I've ever really published.
Oh wow, wow, Yeah, I've done it the other way around. I've published only non academic things, and now, two hundred and fifteen years of age, I'm writing academic papers, which is ridiculous. Can you help? Do you like writing academic stuff? You know?
I used to like it.
I'm pretty good at it, but now I find it quite try and boring. Can you believe?
So? Shit, why don't you just discovered this? Well?
Look, I always.
Thought my research topics were very interesting. And you know, my research was in political science, mainly focusing on the Middle East, so a lot of stuff's happening in that space, and I found the research really interesting. But the actual writing and the style of writing that you need to adopt in academia, it's, yeah, it's pretty boring. It's pretty
unreadable to the average person as well. I much prefer, you know, like my book, something that's a bit more accessible and easy to read and more fun to write as well.
Was it liberating being although I'm sure recounting everything wasn't particularly enjoyable at times, but it was liberating and also therapeutic writing it or was it something else?
Oh, it was definitely therapeutic. It was cathartic. I just it poured out of me. You know, I actually wrote twice the amount that's in the book, and I essentially had to cut it in half, which was a very torturous process because you know, you're very attached to every anecdote into every part of the story. But yeah, it
just helped me process everything. It helped me make sense of what happened to me, and I guess put it into order in my mind because it was all jumbled mess before that, so I found it to be a really therapeutic exercise. Actually, I really enjoyed the writing process.
So let me guess it started out at about one hundred and sixty thousand, and you wound it down to bad id.
It was about two hundred and twenty thousand. Oh wow, and now it's one hundred and forty so it's even that's a book.
Yes, yes, it's at.
The max of They told me you can't even add one more page because we don't have enough paper for the printers. We've already bought the paper and we've got we've scheduled the max number of pages and you've just about to exceed it.
So yeah, it was a real wow.
That is a really big book. One hundred and forty thousand words. I'm guessing that is around four hundred and fifty pages or something.
I don't even know how many pages. It's probably probably four hundred odd pages. Maybe that's a lot.
And how long did that take you to write?
Ten months? Yeah?
Wow? All right, so let's talk about let me just I'm stealing this straight from Mia Friedman. Thank you, Maya from No Filter. Let's give her a plug as well. Thanks mea thanks Mia. Shout out to Maya. On the twelfth of September twenty eighteen, Australian academic Kylie Moore Gilbert was rested in Tehran's International Airport in Range. She spent eight hundred and four days incarcerated in Tehran's Evan And how do I say that? Is a karchak carchack karchak
prison for espionage, a crime she never committed. She was in an Australian stuck in a foreign prison with no way of getting home. Kylie's story about her imprisonment and what happened after she was finally released is unbelievable, except it really happened. Do you get bored of telling this story? I don't want you to feel like you're in groundhog Day? But do you get bored recounting this?
No?
No, I don't get bored. No, I mean it is. You know, I've done a few interviews for the book, and sometimes they're a bit groundhog Day. But also if it's a good interviewer, you know, you guys all think of new stuff to ask at, new angles and comments on it, so you know, it is my life, so to talk about it if it actually happened to you, then it is if it's just some you know, specialty, your expertise you've got.
So that's right, and it's not like you've got to It's not like you've got to try and recall data from something you read, like you're literally recounting your experience. All right, Start wherever you want, and I'll try not to interject too much. So how did this end up that you were arrested at an international airport and spent is what is that sober? Two years in Jaiga?
Two years and three months. Yeah, I went to Iran for a two and a half week trip. That was, I guess a business trip proof by my university, and i'd attended a one week conference there and I was actually invited to come by an Iranian university to that conference, and it was specifically for foreigners. I wasn't a scholar of Iran. I was studying the Arab states off the Persian Gulf, you know, particularly Bahrain actually at the time, and it was sort of relevant to my research, especially
the religious aspect. I needed to learn more about that, so I thought it would be a good opportunity. And because of my research project, I met a few people in Iran who I interviewed for that the research project
was about Bahrain again, not about Iran. And I had a great time and I did a little bit of tourism too and met some interesting people and to the airport to fly back home and was approached by a group of men and told they have a warrant for my arrest and that I'm not going to be making the flight and instead I need to come and be interrogated by them.
So yeah, it was It was quite a shock.
And I hadn't done anything wrong, so you just you know, yeah, initially you tell yourself, well, I'm innocent, so they'll figure that out and they'll let me go. They'll realize it's a bit a mistake or a misunderstanding. But I came to understand pretty quickly that that didn't matter. You know, they didn't care if I was innocent or guilty. I had some sort of value as a foreigner. It's a foreign citizen that they saw that they could trade me
for something, some diplomatic leverage. I'm a UK citizen as well, so either from the UK or Australia, and you know, I just became a kind of a hostage in a way.
Is that looking back, is that do you believe that that's the reason that they just identified you as potentially a valuable pawn in a political game.
I don't think that's the initial reason why they picked me up. What happened was a chap that I had met in the city of Kom which was where the conference was being held. He was a Bahraini guy living in Iran, and I interviewed him about Bahrain. He had some sort of connection to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the militant group that arrested me. They are
kind of a state within a state in Iran. They're not the government, but they're kind of associated with the government, and so he had either been working for them as an informer or might have even been arrested by them, but he had some link to them, and it was him that dabbed me in and flagged me as somebody of interest of somebody suspicious with this IGC Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that is why they initially picked me up. But then obviously they once they picked me up, they weren't
going to let me go. And if they knew that I'd done nothing wrong, why because.
They had value that.
They have a history of arresting foreigners and using them as a bargaining chip in a transaction with the country of origin, whether that be US, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia wherever. They've done it many times before, going back to the nineteen seventy nine hostage crisis where they took all of the US embassy staff hostage for more than four hundred days.
So they know what pays dividends for them. If they catch some sort of genuine spy, great, but if they catch an innocent person, well that's also great because they can just trade you for something. So that's how they operate. And I think they knew that I wasn't. I was ultimately charged with spying. I think they knew I wasn't actually a spy, and that was ludicrous a. I think that was just the sort of you know, narrative that they were.
Sin justify it.
Someway, Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah.
What were you at the airport by yourself, Kylie? Or were you with someone?
No?
I was by myself.
Oh god, so you couldn't even tell it, like there was no one even there that could ring someone and go this is what's going.
On nobody, and I was actually, when I was being arrested, I was looking around frantically trying to catch somebody's eye, you know, an Iranian foreign tourist, anyone, and nobody would look at me. Everyone sort of gave us a white berth and I wanted to scream and shout, but you know, I had nobody there, And yeah, it was It was quite terrifying.
Were you thirty three?
That's crazy, that's and I mean, I know this is dumb because I think I know the answer, But in that moment where you're bewildered, you're overwhelmed, it's ridiculous, It makes no sense, and you're trying to even understand why. What was going through your head? What was happening emotionally? Were you angry? Were you terrified? Were you confused? What was the dominant kind of on a know state?
I think I was mainly confused. I wasn't terrified of them yet because I didn't know who they were. I obviously had heard of the Revolutionary Guards, but these guys weren't wearing a uniform. There was no badge, no license, nothing. I had no idea who they were. I assumed there was some sort of border police or something at the beginning, and that the whole thing would be cleared up. It was a misunderstanding, and you know, they'd let me go and catch my flight. So I was initially just confused
because I didn't speak the language Farsi. Everything was happening in Farsi around me, and I had no idea. I couldn't even understand what they were saying, and only one of them spoke basic English. So even this page they were brandishing the arrest warrant they were showing me, the whole thing was in Farsi. I couldn't read it, and I had no idea what it was. It just looked
like a random print out from a computer. So I was super confused and just I think in shock, and I didn't let myself believe that I was actually being arrested. I thought, okay, that they mean they're going to ask me a few questions and then the or let me catch my flight.
Yeah, And when do you think or at what stage did they realize do you think that you weren't some like you said, they weren't going to let you go no matter what because you were valuable to them. But when do you think they realized that you weren't some kind of I don't know, bloody criminal trying to perpetrate some injustice or some crime. I should say, Oh, I think.
They knew from the first day or two, you know, it was clear that there was no evidence of any spying. I mean they there was no evidence of me trying to hide anything I was doing either. I had all my research material, everything, my laptop, my phone. I just sort of presented it to the want a platter at the airport when they arrested me. You know what kind of spy would do that? They'd go and hide there, you know, listen, definitely fails by school exactly Like I
actually said to them, Look, I'm not stupid. Do you think I'd be that dumb if I was a spy, I wouldn't try and like, I don't know, I upload this stuff to the cloud and just the evidence or send it to some agent somewhere. You know, I've just given it all to you straight up.
So how did they How did they treat you? Where did they take you? Did they take you to a room at the airport or transfer you out of the airport? What happened?
Yeah, I was at a room at the airport for about six hours or so, being interrogated there, and then they put me in a blacked out car with a couple of female guards in between me, and drove me to a safe house in North Tehran. I was interrogated overnight there and didn't really sleep until about ten am
when they stopped the next day. And then they put me in a hotel, initially a hotel that I was sort of imprisoned inside of and wasn't allowed to leave the room I was in, and it was under their control, you know, they had video cameras and things there. So I was in that hotel for about a week and they would the interrogators would come each day and interrogate
me all day in the hotel room. And then after that week they made the decision to throw me in prison, and I went to Evan Prison in North Tehran, which is an infamous prison in Iran for political prisoners. And I was thrown into the two A unit there, which is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards and it's a sort of a max security detention compound inside Evan Prison.
And so was there a whole lot of internationals at that prison, No, very few.
From time to time, foreigners were arrested and then released. There's a few foreigners, in particular dual nationals so Iranians who have foreign passports in Evan Prison, and some of them have been there for a number of years. There's a handful of Americans. There are a couple of Brits, some Germans, some Austrians, et cetera. But I never had anything to do with them because they had been sentenced
years before me, and most of them were men. Actually, they were all in the public part of the prison, in the men's ward. A few foreigners came through the women's unit when I was there. There was a Bahrainy woman who was actually recruited as a spy and was one of the most evil people I'd ever met actually in my whole experience. There was also a couple of Australians.
So I don't know if you remember those two backpackers that were arrested for flying a drone in Iran in twenty nineteen, so they were in the same unit as me, and I had a couple of encounters with Jolly, the Aussie female who was in the cell down the hall from me when I was there.
So there were.
Occasionally foreigners, but I was really the only foreign woman that was there for any long stretch of time.
So you've been picked up at the airport, Obviously somebody back home is waiting at Sydney Airport or wherever. Where were you.
Flying to Melbourne? Yeah?
Right, so your family or friends who was waiting at the other end? And what happened at the other end.
My ex husband was waiting at the other end. I was actually allowed to message him and my parents on my own WhatsApp in Iran by my guards, and they told me to come up with this sort of bogus excuse. So they said, message your family and tell them that you've spontaneously decided to stay in Iran for a few more weeks and you're doing more research and you've got some research opportunities, and that's why you're not coming home.
But they would have known that was BS because I'd actually messaged them when I was at the airport before checking in, saying, Hey, I'm at the airport, I'm about to come home. So they would have smelled a rat like right at the beginning, I think, right right?
And so were any panic buttons pressed back here? Was anything activated? Was anyone alerted. Was the government notified or.
Yeah, I believe they notified defat in the first day or two that I'd gone missing.
Essentially, Wow, so and so so, tell us about before you got put in jail, Tell us about so what did in the hotels? All day? Every day you're being interrogated, What I mean, how much stuff can they ask an innocent person who's not committing any crimes. They essentially asking you the same things one hundred different ways.
Often they were yes.
Basically they got into my emails, my mobile phone, my laptop, and you know, I was forced to give them the passwords for those, and they went trolled through all of my thousands of emails and thousands of contacts and bits and bobs over the years, and would pull out every minute thing. You know. Often I have no recollection of what they were talking about because it had been something
that happened four years earlier. Or I remember even a couple of people who were c seed on an email that I received years earlier were suddenly brought up as being people I knew were acquaintances of mine of interest, and they'd interrogate me about these people, and I had no idea even who they were because it was just a CC on an email, you know, so they went sort of with a fine who is going through everything?
Photographs I'd had of people? Also, what was I.
Doing in Iran? Where was I going? Who was I talking to when I was in Iran?
Too?
They were very interested in the university sector in Australia in all my contacts in various universities. They were interested in UK universities too, and if I knew this person or that person, this academic, that academic.
So yeah, it often seemed.
Kind of pointless in arbitrary, but also yes, they would ask the same questions again and again in different ways and on different days to see if my answers changed as well to kind of trip me up there as well.
Did you go you know I'm smarter than you? Did you do you know? I know what you're doing?
Like I knew they were.
Did you get pissed, Carl? When did the anger come or didn't it? Oh?
Yeah, I was very angry at many many occasions. You know. I first got properly angry and upset when I was thrown in prison because I didn't even know I was going to be thrown in prison They're constantly lying to you know, they were constantly telling me just to answer all our questions, and we're going to put you on a plane back to Australia on the weekend, you know. So they were lying to me right up until the end. And when I figured out that I was being admitted
into prison, I mean I had a meltdown. I was not just angry, but upset, scared, anxious, and I was thrown in solitary confinement, which was really traumatic and you know, confronting. And also I had no idea what was happening, because again I didn't speak the language, so nobody explained to me.
Even where I was.
I didn't even know I was in Evan prison. I didn't know that the solitary confinement cell was be where I would have to live for the next month. I didn't know why I was there. I knew nothing, and I couldn't even communicate with my jailers because the prison guards didn't speak English. So it was just I was a all of rage and anxiety, and yeah, it was horrific.
How did you survive that? How do you be in another country in a box, locked away? I can't talk to people you love they can't talk to you being like literally, you know, incarcerated for something you didn't do. It's not like you did a bad thing and now you're suffering, and oh fuck, I did a bad thing. I feel I realized, you know, this is like you didn't do anything and you're being punished. How did you manage, like tell us about the emotional and the psychological management that had to happen.
I didn't at all cope at the beginning. I was obviously, you know, completely frantic and traumatized by solitary confinement.
I think it took me about.
Two weeks to properly get a lid on my emotional response and my terror to being in solitary because it's psychological torture and they're deliberately putting you in there to break psychologically, and you do break, and at the beginning, your brain doesn't know how to deal with it, because you've gone from being overstimulated now and you know, today's lifestyle, to having zero stimulation whatsoever, zero mental stimulation, and your brain just snaps. I mean you literally bounce off the walls.
I would actually hear other people in solitary throwing themselves against the walls. Throwing themselves against the doors and screaming because they just couldn't take the hours and hours and
hours of isolation with no stimulus whatsoever. You know, you become your own torturer, really, and I went through that phase, but luckily it ended for me, and I say it ends for probably eighty percent of the people because I spoke to many many other prisoners who've been in solitary too, and in this extreme solitary situation, and you know, the human brain finds a way to adapt and survive for most people, but I would say about twenty percent or
ten percent never do and are just flipping out out permanently. And in that case, often they end up being hospitalized. And I've heard it as well, but luckily it didn't happen to me. My brain sort of slowed itself down.
I found ways of just occupying my mind for hours and hours, and it would sort of be best to sleep for as long as possible and inhabit like my memories as much as possible, lie on the ground with a blanket over my head and just close my eyes and think through childhood memories and just as best as possible not notice the passage of time. And stop caring about time, and stop caring about yesterday and tomorrow and just focus on the prison routine in the here and now.
That's what sort of got me through in the end.
Do you think that that's incredible? Do you think that because you're an academic and and part of that is curiosity and learning and being open minded, and like, did you get to a point where you started to think, like, was there a metacognitive breakthrough where you're aware of how you're thinking and what's happening in your mind? Did you find any space between the chaos and you? And did that help?
There were many times when I did, but not really when I was in that extreme solitary confinement situation, I was only there for one month. In that it was a tiny box two and a half by two and a half meters, no window, no natural light, lights on twenty four seven, no furniture, no pillow, no sheets, no anything. I couldn't even bring in food into the room. I couldn't bring my own toothbrush, nothing, and I was only allowed to shower once every three days.
It was extreme deprobation.
And you know, you'd be in there for twenty three hours a day on your own and that I didn't find any cognitive peace per se. It was more about toll rating what was happening to me and stopping it from breaking me down. Entirely, I think it was you were just in extreme survival mode. I don't think any human would ever become fully comfortable or be able to fully detach from their fear and negative emotions in such a place. You know, maybe the Dalai Lama or somebody,
but certainly not me. But when I was look I spent twelve months in solitary all up, but not in an extreme solitary like that cell.
When I was alone.
In other cells, you know, which had toilets attached, terrible filthy squad of toilets, but still you could take yourself to the toilet when you wanted. And a small television which would There were only four channels, and they were all Iranian soap operas. Again I didn't understand the language, but at least kind of watching that would often pass the time, even though I had no idea what was going on, and that after a while, after a few months, I got some books, I got some writing materials, and
they eased up on me a bit. And that's when I started to use my academic curiosity and intellect to examine critically what was happening to me and how I was responding to it, and try and find ways and methods of surviving in a more healthy fashion. But in that first one month that I spent in that extreme solitary box, no way. I was just just trying to survive. That was my only instinct.
Really, And the one hour a day that you weren't in that box, where were you and what was happening?
So they took us for half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening to an area called Tabajori, which was like a balcony about ten meters in length with fully screened off by corrugated iron, attached to the women's unit, and we were just I would be allowed to pace backwards and forwards for half an hour in the outside fresh air there. Yeah, And.
How many other people were in this space when you were there?
Oh? Nobody, because when you're in solitary you can't see anybody, that's the point. So you're alone there as well.
And could you see the sky?
Yes?
The sky was really the only free space I could see. And you know, it's one reason why I called the book the un Caged Sky, because actually I was in a few different units with a few different harbory spaces, and some of them actually had caged the sky, like they had literally built metal bars above your head, so that three hundred and sixty degrees of the space had
been caged in. And that was the worst because you could look you had to look up through bars if you wanted to watch the birds or the clouds or
look at the sun. But this particular one at the beginning didn't have a cage, and you know, I would just spend all my time looking up, following the various birds in the trees, and you know, just looking at the trees in the far off distance, and they would lose their leaves in the autumn and rig grow them in the spring, and so I'd be watching for buds for you know, all that tree's got more leaves today, and you know, observing the natural world, you know, was
how I liked to spend those half hour breaks outside.
And after the initial months, where did you go from there?
I went into a slightly biggest cell about three and a half meters by one and a half and yet it had that TV and that squatter toilet by yourself help by myself.
Yes, and what were how how long were you in there every day? And was there were you allowed in gen pop or anything or.
Oh, exactly the same, So twenty three hours a day in the cell, half an hour in the morning, half an hour in the evening outside.
But I should note I was taken.
For interrogation still, So after the first few days of kind of breaking me alone in that extreme solitary, they started to take me for a few hours a day for interrogation. And even when I moved to that slightly larger cell with the squatter toilet attached, I was still at times being taken for interrogation, but much less frequently,
maybe once a week or so. And I used to like want to be interrogated even though they were really horrible to me, because it was somebody to talk to and I wasn't alone, yes, and.
You could interact and connect in a weird way. And yeah, it's probably less painful than just sitting in a.
Box, definitely, Yeah, And they know it. They know that you want to keep it going as long as possible because you fear being left alone in that box afterwards, And they sort of take advantage of that psychology as well. Yeah, they know exactly what they're doing.
Wow, such evil people in the world. And so at what stage in your eight hundred and how it was, I don't know, in four days, at what stage did you interact with other inmates where you could eat with others and talk with others or did that not happen or that it happened.
Oh, it happened.
So my first interactions were illicit communications, you know, that were banned, you know, not allowed. But when I was in that extreme solitary cell after about two weeks, a couple of other prisoners across the hall from me had heard me. They knew I was there, they knew I
was a foreigner. I didn't speak Facy, they'd spoke English because they were very educated, and they'd heard me constantly struggling trying to communicate in English with these prison guards, heard me crying, heard me upset, and they reached out to me, and they left some dried fruits and nuts in a bag inside a pot plant that was in the outdoor exercise area, and a small note for me that they'd written on a square of toilet paper, basically
saying you're not alone, you know. Wow. Yeah, And they'd written they'd scratched this stay strong, You're not alone. They scratched this into the wall with a rock of the outdoor exercise area too, and you know, it's it's very dangerous. The guards are aware that they do these things, and they punish them and they block up the wall again.
And it was very lucky that I found this gift and this note that they'd left for me, and I was able to put it in my underwear and take it back to my cell and read it and eat the fruits and nuts, and so we established a kind of a note passing network. And I managed to steal a pen at one point, and when I was in the second cell with the bathroom, I hid my stolen pen in the plumbing of the toilet, which because they would search your cell every day, but they never went.
Into the plumbing because the toilet was pretty filthy.
I knew the guards wouldn't want to go near it. So I managed to do that and correspond in English
with the neighboring cell. And later on we discovered we could speak through in a conditioning vent in the middle of the night when the guards had retired to their guard's room, and I managed to sort of snatch ten minutes every three days on a particular guard shift with my neighbors English again, and these are the people who gave me, you know, all the information I had about where I was, who had arrested me, what would happen to me, that I would be put on trial, that
I would probably be found guilty and then swapped with Australia, you know, in a prisoner swap or something, that this was a pattern of behavior that Iran regularly engaged in. And also how I should handle the interrogations, what I
should or shouldn't do. You know, they gave me so much useful information, and you know, as a foreigner with no context or knowledge of Iran, really, you know, it saved my life in a way, because you know, I might have made a false confession, I might have done anything, and these guys really kept me on the right track and also crucially made me understand I'm not alone and I'm not going through this alone, and there are others too, and that they care about me and care about what
happens to me, and that I have friends. So that meant the world to me.
Wow, all that goodness and all that evil in one place. Did you get to meet them face to face, Kylie?
Yes, I met well the first two who reached out to me, one of them, Horda, She was bailed a few months later, so I never met her face to face. But Nil Alfar, who was the second inmate in that cell, she became my roommate about ten months later, along with her colleague Cepidere. And these two women became my sisters.
You know. I shared a cell with them for ten or eleven months, and everything we did together, we knew each other intimately, and they taught me so much, and they became as close to me, if not closer than an actual birth sister. So these women were just remarkable. I had a number of other cell mates before them. Some were evil, horrible people, and others were lovely and friendly. And it really is, you know, the solidarity that develops between fellow prisoners who are all but being put through
hell and going through a horrific experience. It just is It means everything to you. It's the difference between becoming a bus case and finding a way to survive. And I really credit that human connection and that support and that sisterhood with getting me through really, isn't it?
Isn't it like when you break everything down and all the bullshit in society and all the stuff we obsess about and focus on, and all the things we want and all the stuff that we think that we need, and all the problems that we think that we have. But when you get to the lowest, lowest, lowest common denominator of a human in a box with no contact, with no support, with no kindness, with no love, with no connection with at times I would think no hope or seeming like no hope, just a bit of love?
What an incredible like somebody could offer you ten kilos of gold or a hug, you know, or just like fuck your gold, just talk to me, just listen to me, just be kind to me. Did that must have been like the greatest gift?
Honestly it was. I mean, the first time someone actually hugged me probably was several months. I hadn't been touched by another human being for several months, and just that basic expression of care of compassion meant the world to me. It was an incredible hug. And yeah, I mean, we are group animals, human beings. We need others and this is why solitary confinement is torture because we're not meant to be alone for prolonged periods of time. You know, socially,
we need others around us in order to survive. And it's that's why it's so damaging solitary confinement. And we need other people to care about us, and we need that interaction and that support and that friendship. I think it's vital.
Tell me about We'll give me a snap shot of the ten months that you spent in that room with your sisters.
Actually, we had a lot of fun. We got up to a lot of mischief. We did a lot of naughty, bad things.
Thanks God, what naughty things did you do?
Oh? So well.
We went on several hunger strikes together making demands, and we organized a joint hunger strack with the men's unit because my friend Sipitera, her husband was in the men's unit Uman he was his name, and we were able to pass a note to him during a family meeting that she had with him and got some recruited some of the men who were downstairs to join us, and we really freaked out the prison authorities by having about nine or ten person hunger strike all starting on the
one day when none of us was supposed to be in contact with one another. So we did stuff like that, But we also managed to disrupt other prisoners interrogations by yelling and screaming outside their windows when they were happening. We sipeter broke into one of the extreme solitary cells and managed to go in when one of these prisoners was in there and give her a hug and sit on the floor with her for a couple of minutes before being extracted again. We would pass food and things
to other prisoners. We would bribe some prison guards, sometimes with food of our own, to help to get them to turn a blind eye to us giving food items to other prisoners, this kind of thing. You know, we did a lot of resistance, and we occupied certain areas and refused to move, sat down on the ground, refused to leave until we got dragged away. And you know, we started resisting essentially and supported one another in these schemes and these ideas as well.
Amazing, amazing, And so how did how did you get out? Like? What transpired? What was the situation around that? Oh?
Gosh, So I was ultimately on trial and convicted and given a ten year prison sentence for espionage.
I so fucking stupid anyway, I know, I.
Know it would have been funny if it wasn't so upsetting, but yeah, So I spent then about seven months in solitary following that conviction, and then I was transferred to a public prison where I was living amongst you know, everyday criminals and other women, which was actually great. I
much preferred being there. And at that time the Australian government had undertaken negotiations with directly with the Revolutionary Guard, course so not with the Uranian government, but with the group that had arrested me, And after a few false starts and things falling through, they managed to get a prisoner swap deal in place involving three convicted terrorists in Thailand who were also Revolutionary Guard members, and they were exchanged for me by the Australian government.
When did you first have a conversation with an official from Australia.
Yeah, I had an embassy visit at about the four month mark. The ambassador came into the prison and I had a sort of a twenty minute visit with him, but I wasn't allowed to discuss anything, certainly not my case. So it was sort of a health check or a
proof of life or something. And I remember he was telling me some news from Australia, this kind of thing, telling me my family loved me and they cared about me, and etc. But we weren't really allowed to discuss any of the particulars of what was happening to me or my case.
But I got.
Banned from consular visits after a few months because of my resistance, so also got banned from family phone calls as a punishment. So I was cut off from the Australian authorities for long stretches of time and didn't have any news or any information whatsoever.
So what was what was the date of your liberation? November twenty What date was it?
Twenty fifth of November?
Tell us about that day.
I had been visited by the Ambassador Lindel Sachs forty eight hours earlier in the prison, and she had told me we're going to get you out in two days. But I didn't allow myself to believe it because it
had been like this a few times before. I'd been told something's happening, I'm going to get out and it never did, never happen, So I didn't want to give myself false hope, but I knew that that was the day, and I'd been taken out of the prison a day earlier as well, to the headquarters of the REV Guards in downtown Tehran. I'd met the envoy that Australia had
sent to negotiate my release. He was present there in those headquarters, so I understood that something very serious was afoot and it was likely or possible I could be released. But on the day I was supposed to leave at nine am, and I was still there at midday and myself so clearly something was going wrong, and I thought, oh God, here we go. It's going to fall through again. But eventually, eventually I was taken out of my cell. I was handcuffed, blindfolded, putting a car, and first forced
to film a propaganda interview. By that point, I had taught myself Farsi, so I had to speak in Farsi to the camera in front of the prison gates, which was all ridiculous, and you know, I kind of did my best to sabotage the interview, but they sort of forced me to do that before they would let me go.
And then they dropped me at the Ambassador's residence in Tehran, and from there me, the ambassador, and the envoy got into a car and we drove to the airport and I was put on I guess like a private plane in the rev Guards wing of Mehrabad Airport a few hours later and flown from the country.
Where did you fly to?
We actually landed in Doha in Qatar, first stayed overnight there in the airport, and then the next day continued on to Australia.
What was that like getting on that plane flying out first time? When you're like clear, you're off the runway, you're three minutes in the air.
Honestly, I was still on tenterhooks because I just until I left Hernian airspace, I just could not fully allow myself to believe that I was free.
And the Red Guards had actually said.
To me a couple of times, Oh, we can let you get on a plane, but we can force it to turn around in the air and force you to land still, and if we want to bring you back, we will. And you know, I had all those thoughts in my head and was still kind of highly strong and stressed until I'd received word that we'd crossed out of Iranian airspace and then I could properly breathe again and understand, Yeah, it's really happened.
You're free.
Wow.
Yeah when you got back to Australia, and maybe you still don't feel normal, but I mean, it wasn't that long ago. Like it's not like it was twelve years ago. I mean it's not even two years yet. Yeah, you got back. It's less than like, what is it now, it's about twenty two months or something like that. How long before you kind of felt safe ish, normal ish and I don't know, less anxious or is it still a work?
It's definitely still a journey. I'm on. I don't think I've got to the end of it yet. I was doing really well until the Melbourne lockdowns in twenty twenty one, because that just sort of felt like a curtailment of my freedom again. You know, I wanted to just be free to do what I wanted, and you know, a lot of my family live in New South Wales. I wanted to be able to see my family cross the border, you know, drive to see friends more than five kilometers away,
and just be out and about enjoying my freedom. And that kind of knocked me around a bit those lockdowns, but yeah, I mean I think it took me some months to feel properly safe. I was very hyper vigilant and aware of security cameras in particular, but also anyone walking past or looking suspicious or might be hanging around a bit too much or you know. I was very uber vigilant and looking out for threats I guess, and
not fully settled or feeling safe. And in a way, I still have that tendency a little bit, but it's definitely faded over time.
Do you have PTSD? Do you think?
No? I don't.
Yeah, great, And so what do you do to what do you do for your mental health? I mean we all have mental health challenges pretty much everyone, but anxiety or overthinking or depression or that rumination do you how do you manage that day to day?
Yeah? I have some of that.
For me, the most effective way of managing that is just to be running in nature. I live in a very beautiful part of Victoria in the Dandenong Ranges and I have a beautiful nature reserved near my house and
every day, especially during lockdown, I would run. I would see kangaroos every day, I would see lots of beautiful parrots and birds, and I would just be alone in the green amidst the trees, running and I found that really really soothing for my mental health, and it just allowed me to think, allowed me time to as I was running, to process things and just think, and alone time me time to just go through thoughts that I
had in my head and make sense of them. So honestly, I think that being out in nature and having that, like, yeah, that time in nature to run and exercise each day was what got me through, to be honest.
Think about this. Think about you in a box, in a concrete box with no windows, with no stimulation, with no pillow, no blanket or no sheets, no toilet, in the worst environment, under the worst conditions, and then in the days running with the kangaroos. I mean, it's the opposite end of the scale, right, Yeah.
And I'd been craving that, I think, you know, I'd been craving trees.
I've been craving.
Green because when you're in prison, especially in a big urban city. You know, there's so much smog in Tehran that often you wouldn't even see blue sky because there'd be so much epollution.
Yeah, you know, I wanted to be in a forest or at a beach, or I wanted to be outside somewhere and not just be caged in concrete and.
Iron bars and you know, rais of wire and this kind of thing all the time. So being able to just drink in that green and have that nature around me just, yeah, it meant the world to me, really helped with my recovery.
Is there was there a spiritual kind of component to your existence, Kyli?
Yes, I do think in a way you draw close to God when you go through such an experience. I mean I saw both. Most prisoners think about religion obviously
when they're going through some sort of horrific ordeal. The ones who came in religious often either they would cling to the religion and pray five times a day and you know, like we're talking about Muslims here, so you know they have set prayers five times a day and do all the extra prayers and extra you know, fasting on Ramadan and everything, or they would become completely disillusioned with it and say, God, where are you?
How did you let this.
Happen to me? And you know, let it slide. So as a sort of a secular person. I definitely started praying more when I was in there than I ever would have outside.
How are you if you crystal bullet or we step into an alternate reality and we go, let's say that never happened. How do you think you're a different person? And too, you know, the Kylie that would have been on that alternate path of your life minus this eight one hundred and four days of you know, misery.
It's hard to say. I don't think that the fundamentals of who I am as a person have changed that dramatically. I think I've learned more about myself and who I am as a result of this trial. It's a trial that I had to go through in my life, and there have been blessings that have come out of that too. You know, I've learnt so much about myself and about human nature and about others and about the people around me as well. I mean, who has your back and
who doesn't. When you go through such a traumatic experience, it tells you a lot. So I actually, you know, try and look on the bright side and see it as a positive thing. And I don't know if I've dramatically changed as a person. I think I'm more confident and less tolerant of people's bs, less some caring about what people think of me, more strident in expressing my opinions. But as a human being, I think I'm essentially the same.
Yeah, did you have to do? You have to work at not being bitter, twisted, angry, residentful, mad, violent at the people who did all this bullshit to you?
Oh? Definitely, And I'd say I probably am all of those things that you just said. It's more about trying to find a way, a positive direction to push it in rather than just lashing out at everyone around me and flailing about, screaming at the unfairness of it all. I'm trying to channel because I do have a lot of rage inside me. I'm very angry about what happened to me and certain individuals, organizations, and actors that were
involved in it. And I'm trying to channel that anger and rage in a positive direction by trying to support the family members of others were unjustly held abroad, by trying to support the Uranian human rights movement. I'm in touch with a lot of the families and even some of my former prisoners themselves who have been let out. Trying to support them and raising my voice and drawing attention to what Iran is doing and the phenomenon of
arbitrary detention or hostage diplomacy as well. All these things are positive ways I can try and channel that anger, but I certainly do struggle sometimes with the resentment and the just heare the rage at it all?
For sure?
How dare you be human? And so? How dare you?
So?
Is this your mission for now? Your mission is to bring light to this stuff and to speak to groups and to spread that message and I guess shine a light on all of this bad stuff that's happening.
Yeah, i'd say so.
I don't know if I have a specific mission, but I certainly feel like this is something that I should be doing. A lot of people have reached out to me, especially on the back of the book. We have several high profile Australians who are hostages abroad in foreign prisons in places like Chinami and mah Iraq, And there are also a lot of foreigners who are in Iran, and a lot of them have reached out to me, to their families, you know, in the UK and the US,
in Germany and Austria and France, Belgium. You know, there's a lot and there's a strange community of us too, a strange community of return to hostages and very active campaigning families of current hostages, and we all know each other and swap ideas and talk, and that's really nice as well.
You know, I guess having that albeit not a not something anyone wants to have in common, but you have that in common, and so there's a I guess there's a connection that you can have with people who have got family members in that situation or who have been in that situation themselves that you can't have with others.
Exactly. No one else understands. You can't. No one else can properly get what we went through in that place unless they've been through it. To no amount of me trying to explain or describe will ever really convey that to someone. But the others who were there with me, or people who've been through this prison system before me, they get it, they understand, and so it's actually really valuable to be able to talk with them as well in terms of healing and processing things.
Yeah, that's the best therapy for you. I would think, what about your sisters that you spent your cheeky rubble trouble making sisters that you spent ten months with. Do you ever talk to them?
I have spoken to them, yes, but they are still in prison, so wow. A couple of the times they've been out because they got COVID or for some medical reason.
But unfortunately, more than five years after they arrest Sipia and Nilufar and Sipiter's husband to mine and they're in a group of eight, they're all still in prison, and they're innocent, and you know, they're just some of the many thousands of innocent people that are Ryan's imprisoned because of political reasons or because of unfounded espionage allegations or whatever. So it's heartbreaking to me, really, and I think of them often.
It is heartbreaking. So the name of your book is The Uncaged Sky, My eight hundred and four Days in an around in prison in all good bookstores and crap ones and online. Is there an audio version, Kylie?
There is?
Yes, I read it myself.
In fact, yeah, I like it when authors do their own books because I kind of feel like I get to know the author. Thank you so much for having to chat with us. I could go on for another hour, because there are so many other things I would like to quiz you on in terms of the psychology and sociology of getting through this and self managing and navigating and moving forwards, but I don't want to take up too much your time. How do people find you or connect with you, or follow you or pay you an
obscene amounts? Come and talk to their group.
You can contact me on Twitter or Instagram. It's Twitter is at k Moore Gilbert. Instagram is Kylie Moore Gilbert. I have a publicly available email address on my Twitter account, Kylie MG atprotonmail dot com.
Awesome, well we will. We will promote your book ya our when we put out all this to the world once again. Gain everyone the Young Cage sky My eight hundred and four days in an Iranian prison. I'm going to buy the book on What's that thing I have? Melissa Audible, Thank you Audible. I'm going to buy it on Audible when I get off here, and I'm going to start listening today. So we appreciate you, Kylie, Thank you so much. Stay there. We'll say goodbye, affair, but
thanks for being on the new project. Where really glad you?
Thanks so much for having me on Craig. It's been a pleasure.
Thank you, Thanks Melissa, thank you both.
Oh my goodness, what a story. I'm so sorry you had to go through that, but thank you so much for sharing it. Appreciate it.
Thanks everyone, Love you,