Taken: Lisa’s story

Life Changing

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.6 • 735 Ratings

🗓️ 12 April 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It was September 2000 when Lisa and her 10-year-old brother Gary were taken to the airport. Their Dad said they were going on holiday and that mum Tracey was going to join them later, just as soon as she could get time off work. As the children boarded the plane full of expectations for the trip they could not know how profoundly this moment would shape the rest of their lives – they were soon told Tracey had died and there was no point ever going back to England.

Dr Sian Williams hears about Lisa’s struggles to adapt to a new life in Pakistan, trying to keep memories of home and her mum alive but falling into despair and loneliness. Meeting her Mum again and returning to England aged 17 comes with a whole new set of challenges.

This story is told from two perspectives, to hear mum Tracey’s experience scroll back to the previous episode.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of Your Dead to Me, where the best names in comedy and history
0:05.5	join me to learn about and laugh at the past. You are a traitor. And in the new series, we'll meet
0:11.2	Aristotle. I think he might have been a time traveller. Someone who's like almost a glitch.
0:15.3	We'll dive into the causes of the British Civil Wars in the 1600s. In England at this period,
0:19.8	there's people can't get on the housing ladder.
0:21.5	This sounds familiar. And we'll discover the arts and crafts movement. I love the clothes. I love
0:26.5	the vibe. Yes, we're a comedy show that takes history seriously and then laughs at it. You're dead
0:30.8	to me. Listen first on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to this episode of Life Changing,
0:41.3	where we'll hear the story of a moment which tore a part of family, but from a different perspective.
0:47.7	Last time, Tracy Martin told us what it was like to discover that her two young children, Gary and Lisa, had been
0:55.0	abducted and taken to live abroad with their dad in Pakistan. For years she fought to find
1:01.0	them. She used lawyers, the media, anything to reach them. Hope seemed lost, until a profile
1:09.0	on a social media site, discovered on the internet by her new
1:12.5	husband revealed her children, now teenagers, were still alive. We've heard Mum Trace's horrific
1:20.1	experience, but what was it like for little Lisa, then age six, who was taken on a plane with her
1:26.6	10-year-old brother Gary and dad Taz in September 2000
1:30.5	she's here now hello Lisa hi what was it like to hear that as I was reading it out I guess I've
1:38.3	never heard it heard someone else read it like that yeah it kind of hits me hits me hard. Like, it just feels like it's actually
1:46.0	reality now. Because I normally try to not think about it and try to move on from it. But
1:51.8	yeah, when it's put in words like that, it's like, oh my God. That actually happened. That actually
1:58.2	happened. And you were only six. Do you have, before I take you to that day, do you have any childhood memories of earlier than that?
2:08.2	I have a lot of memories of being at Nana and Granddad's house. Granddad would take us to McDonald's and Marquiton Park in Derby. It was just something we did every weekend. I remember
	...

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