KAREN KIRSTEN: I'm sitting in the back of a Toyota Corolla, and wedged next to me is an 83-year-old, five-foot, extremely plump nun.

ZALAIKHA WAHID: I remember my body being pushed onto the flight with hundreds of other people.

Two weeks later, we arrived in the United States.

MEG STAFFORD: I need to see her.

I need to be there.

I need to reassure myself as much as I want to visit this beautiful country.

THERESA OKOKON: Tonight's theme is "Quest."

You don't need a knight in shining armor to go on a quest.

What you do need is a dream, and you need some courage, and sometimes you need a little bit of luck.

Well, tonight's storytellers are bringing their stories of going on a quest and coming back with stories filled with love, and heartbreak, joy, and hopefully, some triumph.

♪ ♪ KIRSTEN: My name is Karen Kirsten.

I was originally born in Australia, I live in the Boston area, and I'm in marketing.

I'm also the author of a forthcoming book and an educator.

I understand that much of the education work you do is in genocide.

Can you talk about the role that storytelling plays in that work?

The students learn about how democracies break down, how laws change, they learn about in groups and out groups.

And they learn about war, but when I go in and tell them individual stories, or other people tell them individual stories, they can connect those bigger concepts... - Mm-hmm.

- ...to the impact of war on individual people, and that's pretty powerful.

And how are you feeling about telling your story today, and in this particular way?

I feel I owe it to my family to tell this story, and not just my family, but for all families who've experienced war, and refugees who hide secrets about their experiences because they're just too painful to tell.

And I didn't experience what my family experienced, and so therefore, it's my responsibility to tell their story.

I'm sitting in the back of a Toyota Corolla on the outskirts of Warsaw in Poland.

I'm Jewish, and wedged next to me is an 83-year-old, five-foot, extremely plump nun.

My mother had spent part of World War II in a Catholic orphanage in a town in central Poland.

And at 69, from Australia, she asked me to help her find the sisters who'd cared for her.

I emailed dozens of churches.

I searched for the sisters for months.

And just when I was about to give up, a friend in Boston, where I live, introduced me to a man in Poland who was well-connected in Catholic circles, and he phoned Sister Honorata, and she told him about a little Jewish girl her order had hidden during the war.

So in the car, I'm feeling hopeful, because Sister Honorata is wearing a polyester cream shirt, a black calf-length skirt, Birkenstock-type sandals with white socks.

(laughter) And Mum had told me that her sisters wore skirts and shirts, not head-to-toe habits.

But I'm feeling skeptical still, because whenever Mum shared her memories with me, I would research them, and sometimes the dates didn't line up, and the details were different.

Plus, she'd been in Poland ten years earlier searching for the sisters, and couldn't find them.

Finally, we get out of the traffic snarls, and we're on the open highway, and the sister driving us turns up her Catholic pop tunes.

Hours later, and we pull into a gravel driveway, and behind a convent painted daffodil yellow, is this enormous old wooden building, the orphanage my mother had described.

After my grandmother was killed, my mother's aunt and uncle took care of her somewhere close to here.

And when she was 18 months old, they were arrested, and sent to an extermination camp, and they left her wailing in her cot, holding her white teddy bear.

And, at some point, she was taken later to the convent.

Mum had told me about these enormous mountains behind the orphanage.

I don't see any mountains, just a grassy knoll.

Mum was three-and-a-half when she left here.

How could a child possibly remember anything accurately?

Suddenly, sisters start popping out of the yellow building, and they rush to the car, including the Mother Superior, who, like Sister Honorata, was close friends with a sister who took care of a little Jewish girl, supposedly my mother.

But no one's left alive who knew her, but the stories about the girl are legendary here.

Mother Superior tells me that the little Jewish girl didn't live with the 75 older children in the orphanage, but they kept her hidden.

She slept with Sister Cornelia in her room above where I'm sitting now.

And she also tells me that Nazi officers interrogated and killed Jewish people in a building at the rear of the property, and that the little girl was fascinated by their tall jackboots.

Fascinated?

I'm pretty sure the woman who's translating has made a mistake.

Mum had told me about her nightmares of men in uniform with black boots, and the Gestapo men who came for my grandmother that day wore boots.

There's no way this child they're talking about could be my mother.

So I pull out my laptop, and I show the sisters a photo taken close to here, of my mother in a white bonnet tucked into a stroller.

Mother Superior looks at it, and then she reaches into a cabinet, and she hands me a picture of a sister holding this scrawny, pale, sick-looking child.

I've wasted my time.

This doesn't look anything like the child on my laptop.

But then, I notice the bonnet; it's too big.

Could it be, if my mother hadn't had enough to eat before she was eventually taken to the convent, could it be her?

Mother Superior hands me another picture, this one taken at the end of the war of a little girl, three-and-a-half, four years old, with a full round face, glossy black hair, dark chocolate eyes.

This looks like photos I've seen of me as a child.

We line this photo up to the one on my laptop.

This is my mother and these are her nuns.

Five months after I hug the sisters goodbye, I return with my mother from Australia.

And after a long day at the convent, I follow her into the chapel, and I watch her slide into a pew.

Sisters file in for afternoon prayers, and then they stop and they stare at my mother, the little girl they've all heard about.

I watch Mum's face switch from frowning to smiling, like she's vacillating between the past and the present.

She's listening to the sisters chant this low, soothing rhythm, mantras she heard here morning, midday, and night.

Now, I can picture her.

Outside, there's the violence of war, and inside, a routine that anchors a child who's lost everyone she loves.

Mum flew 30,000 miles here to reconcile memories that have haunted her for years.

She laughed at the mountains that turned out to be hills, but the old pews that she'd sat on for hours, swinging her legs while Sister Cornelia prayed, they are real.

And so are my mother's memories, even with their inconsistencies.

I know Mum is at home here now.

It's as if, for the first time, I know who she is.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪ WAHID: My name is Zalaikha Wahid, I am from Afghanistan.

Currently, I am a student at Bunker Hill Community College, and I am working as a medical assistant at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Why do you feel like it's important for you to share your own personal story?

It's because I want to give women hope all around the world.

Especially, for those women and girls in my home country who are not able to get an education post-grade six.

I want to give them hope, and I want to take this huge responsibility to talk on behalf of all the women in Afghanistan, and ask the world that they should stop this humanitarian crisis from continuing.

So what are you hoping that tonight's audience takes away from your story?

To never give up on your dreams.

No matter how many challenges you will face, you have to go for your dreams, and work hard to achieve it.

♪ ♪ I have never met my grandfather, but growing up in Afghanistan, I remember listening to stories about his passion to medicine and how an amazing doctor he was.

He was very famous for having a good hand, and making his patients feel comfortable, despite the limited medical equipment and resources.

When I was at grade 11, I had this amazing English teacher.

She was the kind of person who was able to tell you how good you are.

One day she said to me, "I am seeing a wonderful doctor in your face."

At that time, it kind of struck me and I was like, what does it mean to have the face of a doctor?

Could she see my grandfather in my face?

But in another way, it really encouraged me, and from then on, I decided to become a doctor.

I was born in 2001, the same year that Taliban left the government in Afghanistan.

With them being out of power, this mean that I grew up in an era where girls were able to get an education.

Although the security situation of Afghanistan was never completely stable; there were often events of suicide bombers and attacks, and there were never enough surgeons to care for patients and the injured ones, and there were never enough woman doctors.

I remember telling my mom, I want to help.

Two years later, on 2020, I'm a first year medical student at Kabul University of Medical Sciences.

I'm one of the 70 women among 150 classmates in my class.

This is an amazing time for me and for my family, and we are seeing a good future for myself.

I love the studying, going to cafés, and attending labs, until the Taliban attacked our university on November of 2020.

I was at school that day, and I heard the explosion, and the screaming of the students.

Our teacher told us to run.

Because our campus was surrounded with the large walls, we had to climb the ladders over the razor wire to jump to safety.

It was the scariest moment of my life.

This event frightened my family, and they asked me that I have to apply for a scholarship to go outside the country, and continue my medical studies.

Since the Taliban are being known for preventing girls from going to school, and forcing them into marriages, I told my family I would apply just to make them feel happy.

However, in my mind, we are living in 21st century, this will never happen, we have freedom in Afghanistan despite the attacks.

But I was wrong that day.

On August 15, 2021, we learned that the Taliban took over the government.

My father, who worked with the United Nations for almost 20 years, which put him at risk.

Earlier that evening, a cousin who lived near the airport has told us about the evacuation flights.

My dad and my brother went to investigate.

When it seemed possible, my dad sent my brother home to get us.

Honestly, leaving Afghanistan seemed so impossible, I didn't even pack a bag, and my mother, who is eight months pregnant, stayed behind.

She said it would be difficult in her condition to travel, but I think she didn't believe we would actually get out.

If we had known, I would have begged my mom to come, but everything was happening so quickly.

I remember my body being pushed onto the flight with hundreds of other people.

Two weeks later, we arrived in the United States, in Virginia, at a military base.

This is my first time traveling out of Afghanistan.

At registration, they put a bracelet with our names around our wrists, and at this point, the officers told us that we cannot stay together since man and woman are being segregated.

I look at my father, and I realize I have never been alone without my family.

As my father and I say goodbye, both of us start crying.

I'm assigned to live in a big hall of 70 other women and children, mostly from rural areas of Afghanistan and more conservative families.

I feel alone; I feel alone because I'm the only single woman in the room, and I'm not fluent in their language, which was Pashto language.

For the first week, I am sitting in my bunk bed crying all the time, not eating food, and I can only see my dad and my brother outside during the day.

There is no good internet connection to reach my mom.

I felt like everything that I had worked for is ending.

However, I tried to not give up on my dream of becoming a doctor, even though I didn't know how it would be possible.

I learned that there were medical tents in the base where staff were treating patients.

One day, I went there and I asked, "Can I volunteer as an interpreter?"

I told them I can speak English, and they said to me, "Sorry, we don't need your help.

We have interpreters."

And I kept going back because that was the only thing in my power that I could do at that time.

I wanted to learn about the United States medical system.

Eventually, they let me help, and I start asking questions about what does it look like to become a doctor in the United States, and they would tell me about their journeys.

This made me very hopeful again.

Working at the tents also helped me to get up from my bed and to not be overwhelmed all the time by the anxiety and stress of what I left behind.

Four months later, we moved to Massachusetts.

And this is the time when everything starts to get real as we start to build a new life from scratch, whereas we were provided shelter in the base, and everything is very expensive.

I also started to worry about my dream of becoming a doctor.

Some people say to me, "You have to give up on your dream.

Medical school is very expensive in the United States."

But my father tells me "Do not give up on your dream."

He said he would work two or three jobs if he has to support me to get back into medical school.

So from there, I decided, no matter how many challenges I faced, and I will face, I will become a doctor somehow.

I want to make my father proud, and my mother, who said to me, "You must go to the airport."

And I also want to honor all the female classmates who were unable to get out of Afghanistan, and now they are stuck at home and they cannot continue their education.

I want to give woman hope everywhere.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪ STAFFORD: My name is Meg Stafford.

I'm originally from New York State, but I have lived in Littleton, Massachusetts, for nearly 30 years.

I am a psychotherapist in private practice, and I've written a column and two books.

Can you tell me a bit about your first book and how that came about?

My first book is called Topic of Cancer: Riding the Waves of the Big C. And it came about, because during my treatment for breast cancer, I was writing an email distribution list that I was telling people what was going on.

I was happy to tell people what was going on, but I couldn't bear to tell it over and over again, so I was writing people, and people started encouraging me to get it into book form.

What's your favorite part about moving a story from living on page to living on stage?

STAFFORD: Whenever I write columns, I have to read them out loud because that's the way I hear it, and that's-- when I hear what it sounds like, I know if it lands right.

♪ ♪ It's 2014, and I can't wait to visit my daughter, who's living and working in Colombia.

We spend a couple of days in the beautiful walled city of Cartagena, which is right on the coast, before we head inland.

We're bouncing along in an open air Jeep with half-a-dozen other passengers, in the beautiful lush countryside, when darkness falls like a curtain and the Jeep stops.

Two policemen board and demand to see our IDs.

We fish out our passports and identification, and the whole process only takes ten minutes, but the mood shifts from relaxed and chatty to silent and serious.

I'm thinking about the conversation that I had with our credit card company right before we left.

The rep is asking me, "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to Colombia to visit my 23-year-old daughter, "who's living and working in a rural part of the country.

"And by rural, I mean it's a 45-minute open air Jeep ride and an hour-and-a-half hike to get there."

"Wow," she said.

"My daughter's a year old, and the nearest grocery store "is two miles down the road.

I can't imagine having to go all that way for some milk."

Right?

I continue-- she's working as an accompanier witness in the community that she's living in, because they are intentionally not aligned with the military, the paramilitary, or the guerrillas.

But none of those three groups trust their neutrality, so my daughter and the group that she's with wear bright blue T-shirts when they walk with them, and serve as unarmed accompaniment in the countryside.

They're connected with the U.N. and other international agencies, and so people know not to interfere with the community.

"Whoa," the rep said.

I couldn't agree more.

When Gail started looking for jobs after graduate school, I tried to keep my big, loud opinion to myself, and crossed my fingers that she would not choose this job so far away from home, and so filled with potential danger.

But it was her passion to be working with social justice, and she needed to be here, and I needed to support her.

I knew that her predecessors on the job had been present when shots were fired.

And I knew that several years before that, a number of the leaders of the community were rounded up and shot.

(inhaling): I had to take a breath, and know that it was my passion to support her and her work.

I need to see her.

I need to be there.

I need to have my own feet on the ground.

What is it like here?

Is it tense?

Are people guarded?

Are they friendly?

Even though I can't protect her-- not only from physical harm, but from the emotional challenge of talking with those who have been disappeared or hurt-- I want to support her as best as I can.

I need to reassure myself, as much as I want to visit this beautiful country and visit with her, I'm no stranger to travel.

At 22, I crossed the United States by bus by myself.

I've trekked to the Annapurna base camp.

I've lived in England and France.

But none of that came anything close to the responsibility and thought and care that needed to go into this job that Gail had.

She sometimes needed to confront those three groups about not camping on the land of the community, not taking their things, and particularly, not harming them.

The Jeep drops us off at the halfway point, and we're going to stay with a nun who greets us dressed in chinos and a T-shirt.

I'm worried that I'm not going to fall asleep because I like it chilly to sleep, and it is not chilly here, and I'm claustrophobic under the mosquito netting, but after our long travel day, I drop right to sleep.

We arrive at Gail's little dwelling that she shares with her colleagues, and there is a broken refrigerator serving very nicely as bookshelves, a large tank of water, and a cold shower as amenities.

We sit down on the stoop to chat, and a horse comes over to say hello.

And I can see how Gail is glowing when she talks about getting to know the farmers and the community, and about her job there.

And one of her responsibilities occasionally involves negotiating with the military.

So my 23-year-old daughter and her 23-year-old colleague are negotiating with the military?

Gail talks about one meeting where she was translating from Spanish to English, and realized that the words coming out of her mouth, as accurately as she could portray them, were those of the military, and she began to feel like she was almost one of them herself.

Gail takes me to meet Marie Elena, who lives in the far corner of the community, and makes lunch for the farmers before they go out in the field.

We pass a densely grown yard and there's a donkey there grazing.

She shoos two tiny cats off an upturned log, which served nicely as a place to sit, and she points out a duck and a chicken who are curled up asleep together underneath a small table, and I'm just totally charmed.

In moments, Marie Elena turns around and hands us two bowls filled with oversized kidney beans, chunks of banana, and an egg on top.

Oh, I'm flustered, Oh, gracias, muchas gracias.

I had not been expecting a meal.

She peppers me with questions.

"How do you like it here?

Where is your husband?"

I'm stammering through in my high school Spanish from many years ago.

And then she looks me right in the eye, and she says, "You do us great honor by being here."

I fill with tears.

I feel that I am the one who's honored to be here.

She knows what the risks are in this community, and she has chosen to take a stand, and to live here.

She has a daughter a similar age to mine.

She asks when I'm going to return, and I know that she really wants to know.

And, suddenly, I get it.

I realize that she's communicating to me that she cares about Gail.

Gail is not alone in this community.

There are people who see her, who get her.

And I realize that I must open up my own heart, and trust these people to be there for her, so that I may return home and breathe easier myself.

Thank you.

(cheers and applause) ♪ ♪