Paul Calvert chats to Kay Wilson about her traumatic experience, writing her memoir and going on to create The Yellow Brick Road project helping children in Israel.



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Kay: It's a bit blurry, one said he was from Fatah, the PLO another guy affiliated with Hamas, Political - yes, religious - yes. Because they wanted to kill Jews in the name of religion.

Paul: And is that the end of the story as far as them two is concerned?

Kay: I don't know, I mean I am doing everything I can to ensure that these people never get out of prison. Astonishingly countries give a lot of foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority and in turn the Palestinian Authority rewards murderers with a monthly salary. So at the moment our assailants are getting, around $3200 a month each. So is it the end of the story? It's not the end of the story for me until they stop the salaries and it's not the end of the story for me until I make sure that they will never get out.

Paul: So let me get this right, they have murdered your friend and they have stabbed you so many times, they have been arrested and put into prison and the Palestinian Authority is paying them?

Kay: Yes, the Palestinian Authority works on a two folk system and I know this because I have many Palestinian friends and I have been in these areas. The two folk system is this; one is incitement, their curriculum, their camp songs, their literature, TV. It is all filled with Nazi Propaganda, like murder the Jews, kill the Jews, the Jews are pigs and monkeys. So there is an incitement. It works like this, how can people in the 21st Century reward cold blooded savages? Palestinian society is rife with incitement against Jewish people, about how Jews are unworthy of life. So if you grow up in that kind of atmosphere you are going to believe that this is what Jewish people are.

Let's not forget that the Palestinian authority have received 70 billion dollars in foreign aid - that is a lot of money! Yet when I go to these areas I look and I think, some areas are horrible and some are very nice. But I think where are all your museums, your libraries are your clinics, your new buildings? They could have built a state. But instead of spending money responsibly to better their own people, what they do is they set aside 8% of foreign aid and they reward these murderers. So you have got incitement and financial incentive, and that is how innocent people get murdered.

Paul: How long was your recovery?

Kay: It is still recovery, I see it as a life long road to recovery physiologically. Physically I was up and around but I would imagine about 3 years until I started feeling I could get up without too much pain. Psychologically I have come to terms with it. It is something you live with, I have done very extensive trauma therapy. I think I am learning things, good things that I can learn about myself, about life but I don't think it is a ...I was in a murder and everything is ok, because it is not OK, so it is an ongoing thing.

Paul: You still struggle with the trauma of it?

The Rage Less Travelled

Kay: I don't have flashbacks or anything, I did trauma therapy at Hadassah hospital and it was amazing, very helpful but I struggle with PTSD. I don't like a sudden noise or too many crowds, I used to be a tour guide, I can't now because I have low emotional mental energy, and it's hard for me to take a tour group for 10 days. Things change, so it is that kind of less emotional mental focus.

Paul: You have written a book called 'The Rage Less Traveled', tell us a little bit about that?

Kay: It started off in trauma therapy. I am not a hysterical person where I fall apart. But the trauma expressed itself in me, I was completely numb, it was a disassociation from what is going on around. And part of my therapy was to write an account of what happened and as I did this the therapist said to me, "Look, this is a very accurate account". In fact it was used as corroboration from the police in the court.

She then said, "Now what I want you to do is revisit every sentence and use your senses; what were the colours? What were the textures? What was the movement? What did I hear? I heard the birds, I heard the crickets. Did Christine whimper or shriek or cry? Did they grunt or did they moan or did they bark or growl? I did that with all the senses and by doing that it put together a very visual account of what happened. It was 20 pages long and I used to give that out to people and they said to me, "You should write a book".

So, I spent the next 7 years writing what turned out to be a very short memoir. It is all written in the present tense, it's not like hindsight you know, it's not like my pearls of wisdom. It is what it is like to be in my head, what is it like to actually survive such a brutal murder and I wanted the world to know that an innocent woman was hacked to death because they believed her to be Jewish. I also thought for other people who have had trauma and PTSD, maybe something can be helpful.