Shirine Khoury-Haq

Shirine Khoury-Haq0:01

BBC Sound

Presenter0:02

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the businesswoman Shireen Kurihak. She's CEO of the Cooperative Group, the first female CEO and the first from an ethnic minority in its 180-year history. The group faced numerous challenges when she took on the top job in 2022, with disrupted supply chains, high inflation, and a £920 million debt. She's reduced that debt by 90% and is now looking to grow the business substantially, but that progress has demanded difficult decisions, cost cutting, and redundancies.

Presenter1:18

Change has been part of her life since early childhood. She was born to a Turkish mother and a Palestinian father who was a geophysicist in the oil industry. His work took the family around the world and by the time she was 12, she'd lived on every continent except Antarctica. But in 1986, the price of oil crashed, her father lost his job, and the family's fortunes became uncertain. She was 14 and took on several jobs to put herself through university and achieve the stability she craved. She says, if everything around you is moving and changing, one has to be centered in oneself, which is why I chose from an early age to invest in myself, save my money and set my goals. I decided I was going to be my own anchor. Shireen Kurihak, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you so much, Lauren. The co-op isn't just about shops, Shireen. It has a funeral business and insurance and legal services too. As CEO, how are you able to take people with you when you're implementing big changes?

Shirine Khoury-Haq2:19

What I try to do is be very, very transparent about where we are. And I've had advice before that if you're very honest with people, you might lose the locker room. I think people are in the locker room because they want to play. And I'd rather speak to them very honestly about where we are and then work together as to where we're going forward.

Shirine Khoury-Haq2:45

People will not stand behind a vision. They will not work towards it if they don't feel that they've had a part in creating it. I wouldn't. I need to understand the context of where we're going and I need to know that I've been listened to. So I think it's important to show that respect to every single person in the organisation. Did you have sleepless nights then when you

Presenter3:05

You took over, you knew big changes had to be made.

Shirine Khoury-Haq3:07

Yes, lots of sleepless nights because there were roles that had to go from the organization, which is something I absolutely hate. I'm a builder, I'm a grower. My comfortable place is not where people lose their jobs.

Presenter3:23

How do you prepare yourself to have those kinds of conversations both at a board level and then with the individuals affected?

Shirine Khoury-Haq3:31

You have to take a deep breath.

Shirine Khoury-Haq3:34

I always try to think, you know, what if it was happening to me and how would I want to be treated? But I can be very hard. The way that I always look at it is: if I don't focus on myself, if I focus on the organization and I focus on the colleagues and customers and members for which I have an obligation, if the decisions that I make are for their good, not my good, then I do what I have to do. And I have had to make some very tough decisions.

Shirine Khoury-Haq4:09

But that's how I get through it.

Presenter4:11

It's time for your first disc, Shireen.

Shirine Khoury-Haq4:13

Yeah.

Presenter4:13

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq4:13

Borvico? Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq4:14

So, I have Jamaica Farewell. You mentioned at the beginning how my family traveled all over the world due to my father's job. So, wherever there was oil and gas, that's where we ended up. But the one constant that we always had growing up were my parents. My dad would play the guitar, my mother would play the mandolin, and this song was one that they played all the time. My sister and I love this song. You know, it talks about leaving a place that you love, and that is a feeling that I had throughout my growing up. I know my parents have that throughout as well. The other reason I know that I love it is because of Harry Belafonte himself. You know, he was a person really focused on civil rights, on social justice, and I like it all the more for that.

Speaker 45:06

Down the way where the nights are gay And the sun shines daily on the mountain top

Speaker 45:13

I took a trip on a sailing ship And when I reached Jamaica I made a stop but I'm sad to say I'm on my way

Speaker 15:21

Yeah.

Speaker 45:23

Won't be back for many a day My heart is down, my head is turning around I had to leave a little girl in Kingston town

Presenter5:36

Harry Belafonte and Jamaica Farewell. So, Shireen Kurihak, you were born in Beirut in 1971, the eldest of two girls. And as we've heard, your father Munir was a Palestinian, your mother Inji, she's Turkish. Your dad was a geophysicist working in the oil industry. What are your memories of him when you think back? He was.

Shirine Khoury-Haq5:56

Uh

Shirine Khoury-Haq5:57

Very smart.

Shirine Khoury-Haq5:59

Very, very funny, a joker, but someone who never quite settled. You felt like you were always on quicksand with my father. And when you look at his history, you understand why. Right, and that goes back to when he was two, I think. Life changed for his family completely. So my father's side of the family from Nazareth in Palestine, and they've moved to Bethlehem. where my grandfather was a teacher. He taught maths and he taught languages. So he spoke German and English and Arabic.

Presenter6:16

Jeffs.

Shirine Khoury-Haq6:34

But he also worked for the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, which was a school that was opened by the British Army.

Shirine Khoury-Haq6:42

And they lived in Bethlehem because that school was in Jerusalem where he taught. My father would always joke with me in that he said that he was born in a stable because Jesus's family was from Nazareth. Jesus's mother came to Bethlehem to have him, which was exactly like my father. He had me believing this for years, by the way. Eventually, when I was embarrassingly old, I asked my grandmother and she just told off my father for keeping me going for so long on this story. But when my father was two, the state of Israel was created and it was created through violence, ethnic cleansing, through land theft, and it's why so many Palestinians left.

Presenter7:28

So, yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq7:30

It was the end of the British Mandate. My aunt, who will be 96 this year, remembers Muslim men being lined up against a ditch and shot one by one when she was just going to the store. She was only 20 at the time. My father's earliest memory is hiding behind the sofa with his family while bullets were being shot into their house. And because my grandfather worked with the British government, the school was in Jerusalem. It moved briefly to Transjordan and then it moved to Beirut. So what he was told was that the violence would only be for a few weeks. So to just pack a few things. So my grandmother packed enough for a few weeks, left everything they owned, family photos, family everything in the house, locked the door, took the key and they moved to Beirut at the time. And how long were they there? How long were they away? They were there until the 80s, until the war broke out in Beirut. And by the time they left, they moved to Holland after that. They lost, no, because you can imagine during that time, you wouldn't have known if you could come back. So my grandparents never bought a house. I mean, they'd lost everything anyway. Not that they could afford to. But they wouldn't even buy a fridge. They wouldn't even buy white goods because they didn't know whether they'd be able to go back. And my father would have spent that, you know, with his memory of being shot at. And he would have spent it with his family wondering whether they could ever go back home and during that time of intense instability. So when I fast forward to what life was like with him then, I understand now. I didn't understand it at the time and actually I held it against him for much of my life.

Presenter8:26

How long they

Presenter8:34

That's kind of

Speaker 18:39

Community.

Speaker 18:43

Not in they put us a

Presenter8:44

Or

Presenter9:05

To think about life was

Presenter9:09

Ow.

Presenter9:14

Were you able to talk to him about that ever?

Shirine Khoury-Haq9:16

No.

Shirine Khoury-Haq9:17

No, because I've only really and actually watching what's happening right now in in Palestine and in Israel. I'm understanding it better now. And I wish I could talk to him about it now, but he died. But I do have my aunt, I have my uncle, and I talk to them.

Shirine Khoury-Haq9:35

It's time for your second disc.

Presenter9:37

Shireen What are you taking to the island next?

Shirine Khoury-Haq9:39

It's called Jatalein Aljabal. There are lots of versions of it.

Shirine Khoury-Haq9:44

The version that I have chosen is by a lovely woman called Rola Zahr. She is also from Nazareth. And this is a song that I've chosen because of my aunt. She was separated from the rest of her family. They were in Bethlehem. She was in Nazareth because she was working as a teacher there. And there was a moment after the creation of the State of Israel where people could have gotten along, where they could have lived together. And at that moment, the two communities were working to integrate. And they had a choir competition between a Palestinian choir and an Israeli choir. And this was one song that they sang. It is back from the time of the British Mandate. It is the song that women used to sing to their husbands and their brothers and their sons outside the prison walls. And it was in code, and it would explain to them to hold on, that things would get better. And if they needed to communicate messages to them, they would do it through that code. And was your aunt involved in the competition? She was, and they won. So she was in the choir. She was in the choir. And she said that when they sang this song, she could see the people in the audience who were Palestinian crying.

Presenter10:56

So she was in

Shirine Khoury-Haq11:06

She cried when she told me that. So this song is one that breaks my heart, but gives me hope all at once.

Speaker 411:17

Yur to li aina aini lil jabali ya mulil mukuidinan nor benililil ya mun yoma ainilila na yaro.

Speaker 411:31

Me bad min ki le kum khila ole le badi zunar benililil ya muni ya mon ainil na ya ru.

Speaker 411:45

Yeah.

Presenter11:48

Ya tala iyan el jabal, going up the mountain, roller azhar. Shireen Kurrihak, you've described your father as very inspirational. How did he encourage you when you were growing up?

Shirine Khoury-Haq12:00

Sometimes people who stereotype, they think that Middle Eastern men think about women in a certain way. Never the case with my father. He would always say, you can be whatever you want, you can do whatever you want. I remember calling him and saying, when I finished my master's degree, and I called him and I said, dad, I've done it. I've finished my master's degree, you know. And his first thing to me, the first thing he said to me was, congratulations, when are you getting your PhD?

Shirine Khoury-Haq12:29

So it was always what's next? What are you going to do next? And I truly think that if it wasn't for him and my mom as well, I might have given up on so much rather than push through and get to the next place.

Presenter12:42

Your mother, Ingi, is Turkish. Now she met your father while at university in Ankara. Okay. Yeah. So she became a homemaker once your parents married. How would you describe your relationship with her while you were growing up?

Shirine Khoury-Haq12:56

When I was growing up, we would get along, but we also had our moments when we didn't. And what was the dynamic there? What was going on? My mother came from a much more well to do family. She had parents that were very tough on her. And there were times when I was growing up where my mother

Presenter13:02

And what was the

Shirine Khoury-Haq13:15

Thought I shouldn't do things. You know, no one's ever done this before. So maybe you can. She's changed, by the way. She's very different now, but it was when I was growing up.

Presenter13:19

Maybe

Presenter13:23

But it was when I was growing up. I think when you when you get older and you look back at that, you can see that that's from a sense of concern for the child. But when you're the child who's being told they can't do something.

Shirine Khoury-Haq13:28

For the child, but when you're

Presenter13:33

It doesn't feel like that.

Shirine Khoury-Haq13:34

It doesn't. I did have my father on the other side, though, going, go for it.

Presenter13:38

Uh Uh

Shirine Khoury-Haq13:38

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter13:38

Uh

Shirine Khoury-Haq13:38

Yeah.

Presenter13:38

Do it. So, what would she be nervous about you doing when your dad was encouraging you to push yourself, but she was more.

Shirine Khoury-Haq13:39

Sorry.

Presenter13:46

Unchaire.

Shirine Khoury-Haq13:46

It could have been the degree that I chose. So I come from a Middle Eastern family where you really only have two degrees that you should go into, either medicine or engineering. And when I decided to pick accounting, she actually said, well, that's a bullshit degree.

Shirine Khoury-Haq14:05

You need a real degree. Wow. That is tough. Even accountancy's not okay. No. She's lucky it wasn't performing arts.

Speaker 414:06

Wow.

Presenter14:07

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq14:14

But I don't want to sound like she wasn't encouraging of me. She had to be. She was the one who would go into the principal's office. She was the one who would push me to the next level. But it was just slightly more difficult with my mom. It is very different now. She's, you know, she's my best friend. We talk all the time. She's an incredibly intelligent, funny person as well. But I think maybe those were just growing years.

Presenter14:23

Do you

Speaker 114:23

It was

Shirine Khoury-Haq14:44

You're fine.

Presenter14:44

Your father was Christian when you were growing up. Your mother was Muslim. What part did faith play in family life?

Shirine Khoury-Haq14:50

No part at all. What they said to us was you choose your own path and you choose the religion that you want to be. And we celebrated Christmas, Eids, or the Baitams in Turkish. So we celebrated everything. But when it came to religion, they just let us do what we needed to do. And what impact did you?

Presenter15:09

Did that have on you? Did were you curious about those stories, those cultures and religions?

Shirine Khoury-Haq15:15

I was very curious. So I have read the whole Bible end to end. I've read the Koran end to end to be able to find my own way through. And

Speaker 115:27

Hmm.

Shirine Khoury-Haq15:28

It was interesting with my parents because my father was raised as a Christian and they went to church every Sunday. His brothers and sisters sang in the choir. My grandfather played the organ. You know, they were very, very faithful.

Speaker 115:41

Mm-hmm.

Shirine Khoury-Haq15:43

And my mother's family were Muslim and my mother was Muslim. My Christian father then became Muslim. My mother became later in life. Later in life, he got remarried and then became a Muslim then. It wasn't just in words. He meant it and he practiced the religion and he took it seriously. My Muslim mother became an atheist and a raging atheist at that. So if I was going to tag religion or faith onto my parents, it would have been a very rocky trip. You have to make your own way. I had to make my own way.

Presenter16:15

Yeah.

Presenter16:16

What place does religion have in your life today, and where have you landed after all of that?

Shirine Khoury-Haq16:23

Very strong belief in God. I understand the roles that the various prophets have performed in terms of communicating about God and what we are expected to do, which is good. And I've also seen that religion causes a lot of division as well. So I don't really subscribe to religion. But you have a strong faith yourself. I have a very strong faith, but I'd rather not sign up to any religion.

Shirine Khoury-Haq16:50

Let's have some more music, Shireen. Your third choice today. What have you gone for? So I've gone for Better Together by Jack Johnson. I have spent a lot of my years in work transforming things, working on big changes. And the best way that I've found to make that happen is by working with people to create a common vision. And you can achieve so much more when you all work together.

Speaker 417:20

I'll tell you one thing is always better when we're together

Speaker 417:25

It's always better when we're together

Speaker 417:29

Yeah, well look at them stars and we're together

Speaker 417:33

Well, it's always better when we're together

Speaker 417:38

Yeah, it's always better when we're together

Presenter17:50

Better Together by Jack Johnson. Shireen Currie Hack, every few years your family was on the move. You went to the UK, then Algeria when you were six, Australia followed, then Brazil and for a while you lived in the Amazon jungle, then Houston in the US. These moves often happened in the middle of a school year and you had to adjust to not just a different curriculum, but sometimes a different language. How did you cope with all that upheaval and such contrasting and

Shirine Khoury-Haq18:17

Environments I often found myself in a world where I didn't quite understand what was going on. We arrived in Brazil on a Friday. On the Monday, I was in school in the middle of the next grade up, and half my classes were being taught in Portuguese. Which you didn't speak at the time. No, I didn't. Well, I'd only arrived the Friday before, but I learned very fast by necessity. But Lauren, what choice does one have?

Speaker 118:36

No, I didn't.

Shirine Khoury-Haq18:44

What you land there, you've got to make the best of it. That moving from Belay in Brazil.

Shirine Khoury-Haq18:51

Where it was a missionary school and literally cut out of the Amazon to Houston, Texas, where I was two years younger than everyone else. The girls were wearing high heels and makeup, and I just emerged from the jungle. The strategy is to lay low for a bit, figure out what's going on, and then determine how you're going to survive. And for me, the important thing was very early on in my life to have a set of values, to know who I was, where I came from, and then to take that on the inside to wherever I went. And then, if I had to put on a bit of makeup and figure out how to walk in high heels or shoes that weren't sneakers, then I would go off and do that as well. But if you don't have that solid inner core, you can.

Presenter19:25

Mm-hmm.

Presenter19:40

But

Presenter19:44

Be broken. And sometimes, Shireen, your teachers weren't supportive. You once had a difficult confrontation with one of your maths teachers in Australia. What happened?

Shirine Khoury-Haq19:55

Uh

Presenter19:55

Uh

Shirine Khoury-Haq19:55

I moved to Australia again in the middle of a school year. And when I went to the school, the teacher said to me, Do you have a calculator in the most

Shirine Khoury-Haq20:07

Disparaging way, assuming that because I'd come from America, because I have the accent that I do, that I really didn't know much, which actually turned out to be true. I didn't know much because while I was at the top of my class in the US, we were doing algebra and geometry, they were doing trigonometry and calculus. But I said to this teacher, I want to do the higher-level maths, and he said, You will never make it. And I said, I want to do it anyway. And I did end up doing it, and I worked my way up from being 26th out of 26 students to the number two out of 26. What about dealing with bullies? Because you know, they do they can often pick on the new kids, they can, and that wasn't something that I liked. I made sure, and I learned very early on that when you're new and you're different, people will try to bully you. So, you went through that? I went through that lots of times, but my strategy was to stop it immediately, whatever it took. Well, I learned how to fight and I learned how to diffuse as well. So, it was especially when I moved to Australia. I had grown up in such an international environment previously, but when I landed in Australia, I suddenly faced racism coming my way. And was that a new experience? Brand new for me. I hadn't seen it before, and I wasn't there very long before someone called me a wog, and I didn't know what that meant. I actually went home and said, What's a wog?

Presenter20:45

Yeah, but

Presenter20:58

So you

Presenter21:24

Yeah.

Speaker 121:26

Yeah.

Presenter21:26

Uh

Speaker 121:26

Brand brand new for me.

Speaker 121:37

I actually

Shirine Khoury-Haq21:40

But I I learned quickly in Australia and where I lived in Australia. So this is just south of Sydney, I think. So we were living in Kyama.

Presenter21:47

This was a good idea.

Presenter21:49

Stop.

Shirine Khoury-Haq21:52

And I learned very early on that people of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean backgrounds were called this name. And sometimes it was shouted at me from across the street. Sometimes people were physically violent. So if you let people do that to you, they will think that they can keep on doing it. So I learned how to fight back. And none of that lasted very long for me at all.

Presenter22:18

Output transcript.

Presenter22:18

Process the fact that that was happening, especially as you were dropped into this new environment and just suddenly face.

Shirine Khoury-Haq22:25

But there's something new everywhere. It was high heels in one place and makeup, God help us. I wasn't very good at either. But here it was racism, so I just had to deal with it.

Presenter22:36

It's time for your next disc, Shireen.

Shirine Khoury-Haq22:38

What are we going to do?

Presenter22:39

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq22:39

So I chose Fight the Power by Public Enemy because throughout my life the power has been telling me what I can and can't do. You can't do this level of maths or you can't survive in this class. My childhood and actually part of my adulthood is filled with the power. So the reason I chose Fight the Power by Public Enemy is A because it talks about fighting the power, not listening to what the power tells you you can or can't do. But it also has a really anti-racist, strong message that I very, very strongly believe in.

Speaker 423:21

Nine and number, another sonnet. Sound of the fucking drummer. Music hitting your heart, cause I know you got soul. Listen if you're missing y'all. Swing it while I'm singing.

Speaker 123:34

Hey! Giving what you're getting, knowing what I know in. While the black man's sweating, in the river mom rollin', gotta give us what we want. Gotta give us what we need. Hey! Our freedom of speech is freedom of death. We gotta fight the powers that be.

Speaker 123:49

Fight the power!

Presenter23:50

Public enemy and fight the power.

Presenter23:55

Shireen Curriehack, you were living in Australia because your father had lost his job in the States after the price of oil crashed. He couldn't get work as a geophysicist, so he took over a petrol station just outside of Sydney. You all lived in a small flat next door. What did that mean for the family?

Shirine Khoury-Haq24:12

Yeah.

Presenter24:12

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq24:13

When we lived in Brazil, we lived in a big house. It had a swimming pool. This in Australia, again, was very different. My bed was in the kitchen. We were studying, trying to learn at the same time. Trying to figure out trigonometry and calculus, which I'd never seen before. But then my parents were trying to run a business. And so you can imagine the pressure cooker that was our family life trying to cope with all of that.

Presenter24:21

Against

Speaker 124:27

which had no

Presenter24:38

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq24:38

I

Presenter24:38

Working in the evening and during school holidays to help out financially, Shireen. What were you doing?

Shirine Khoury-Haq24:44

What

Presenter24:45

Uh

Shirine Khoury-Haq24:45

What I started doing was working in my father's petrol station. I worked from 6 till noon at someone else's petrol station. I was studying accounting, so I worked for free at an accounting firm to try to get some experience. And then I worked in a pub from 6 until midnight. What was driving you?

Shirine Khoury-Haq25:07

I knew I had to make something of my life. I knew I needed to get to university and I needed to graduate, but there was no backup plan. I couldn't count on my parents to be able to afford to send me to university. So I had to fend them up for myself. And for me, financial stability was one way of doing that.

Presenter25:29

Life was pretty tough, but then your father went through a terrifying experience while he was working at the petrol station. What happened to him exactly?

Shirine Khoury-Haq25:39

It was both of my parents, actually. Someone bought petrol and then came into the store and picked up a few things and then said that they weren't going to pay for it. It was a very large man. I don't remember precisely what he said to my father, but were you there when it was? I was there. Then my father tried to stop him and then he just started punching my father. And it was awful. It was awful. My mother grabbed, do you remember those credit card machines that used to

Speaker 125:58

Were you there when it happened?

Shirine Khoury-Haq26:15

Do you remember that we'd swiped the car? So she picked up one of those and hit him on the head with it, which made him even angrier. And then my sister, who was probably only about seven or eight at the time, threw herself between the man's fist and my father. Oh my God. And that's when he stopped. And then he just went in his car and drove off. How badly injured was your dad? He was bleeding. He had a black eye. It was awful.

Presenter26:15

Do you remember the way swipe the car?

Presenter26:35

And then

Presenter26:43

What was the fallout from that incident? I mean, that's so terrifying. Well, what can you do? You have to.

Shirine Khoury-Haq26:50

Keep going.

Presenter26:51

Did he talk?

Shirine Khoury-Haq26:51

About it? Was he affected by it? I think he was. My father didn't talk about much. So I think he just again buried that somewhere like he did so many things.

Presenter26:59

Put it away somewhere.

Presenter27:03

So Shireen, like other retailers, your business is grappling with a huge increase in shoplifting. It's an endemic problem. And some people have argued that it's a victimless or relatively victimless crime. What's your perspective on that?

Shirine Khoury-Haq27:16

Yeah.

Presenter27:18

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq27:18

It's absolutely not victimless. My deep concern about this is not around the products. It's around what happens to our colleagues, both emotionally and physically. Retail violence, sadly, is an everyday thing. We have a thousand incidents of violence against our colleagues in our stores every day. And we have had campaigns, and we're delighted actually that the law has changed, that the government has listened to us and other retailers. They've made violence against shop workers a standalone offence that could be punished with imprisonment. That comes for me from a place of doing the right thing because I'm responsible for all of our colleagues. But you've also been through it. I've been through it as well. And I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of someone who comes into a store who's racist or who's violent. And I don't want any one of my colleagues to go through that.

Speaker 128:10

And

Shirine Khoury-Haq28:20

Shireen, I want to hear your next disc. The next uh song is Nothing But a G Fang by Doctor Dre and Snoop Dogg. This is a song that reminds me of when I met my husband Izzar.

Shirine Khoury-Haq28:34

In all of this moving around, in all of the upheaval of my life, when I met him.

Shirine Khoury-Haq28:40

It felt like I was coming home. I met someone that I just not only loved, but he was someone that I just connected with. And I thought,

Shirine Khoury-Haq28:54

What did you mean?

Presenter28:54

What did you mean?

Shirine Khoury-Haq28:55

We met when I was visiting London, I was visiting some friends, and we met at a get-together. And one of the first things that he asked me was, you know, what's your favorite album? And I said, What's your favorite album? And we both said The Chronic by Doctor Dre. So this was one song that we love. When did you get married? How long have you been married? We got married in two thousand.

Shirine Khoury-Haq29:21

at the end of December because it was good for taxes.

Shirine Khoury-Haq29:25

I'm an accountant and I'm practical and he was a student at the time. And in the US, if you married someone who was a student and not earning very much, no matter when in the taxi year you did it, you could count them as an exemption. So he was my wonderful exemption and my husband now of almost 24 years.

Speaker 129:43

One, two, three into the fore Snoop Doggy Doggin, Dr. Drake is at the dope. Ready to make an entrance, so whack on the Before I have to pull the shit about to cut. Give me the microphone first so I can bust like a bubble. Compton and Lone Beach together, now you know you in trouble. Cause ain't nothing but a G, bang, bang, bang. Two low death G, so it's crazy. Death row is the label that pays back. Unfateable, so please don't try to fake this. Back to the lecture at hand.

Shirine Khoury-Haq29:50

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq30:08

It's for the

Speaker 130:11

Perfection is perfected, so I'm a lad I'm understanding.

Presenter30:13

Doctor Dre and Snoop Dogg with nothing but a G Thing. Shireen Kurihak, in 2007 you very sadly went through a miscarriage and you experienced medical complications after that. You and Izar started fertility treatment. You got pregnant but you went into labor very early, at just six months. What do you remember about

Shirine Khoury-Haq30:34

Yeah.

Presenter30:34

Pink.

Shirine Khoury-Haq30:35

as any person who's gone through IVF knows about. It's a grueling process. And then in two thousand nine, we found out that we were pregnant with our daughter, Sophie.

Presenter30:39

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq30:47

However, a new complication came up and I went into labor early.

Shirine Khoury-Haq30:53

And when our daughter was born, she died.

Shirine Khoury-Haq30:58

She died eleven minutes after she was born.

Presenter31:03

The labor was traumatic for you separately. You almost died during the delivery.

Shirine Khoury-Haq31:06

I didn't. I hemorrhaged. I was rushed into surgery. I came out and then had to deal with losing our daughter. Now, it's actually easier not to talk about it. And I've chosen to talk about it because when I did eventually come back to work and I decided to be very open about my experience, it was incredible to learn how many people had gone through miscarriages, people that I had known for years had lost babies. And in the talking about it, it's important to be able to provide people with that support. And I found that talking about it and knowing that other people also went through it really helped me and survived it. Because there are times where you think, goodness, it's too big. Can I survive it?

Speaker 131:55

And really helped me.

Shirine Khoury-Haq32:03

And that's

Presenter32:03

At the time, you know, you had a very senior role in insurance at that point. You must have thought, like, God, how am I going to function in my life?

Shirine Khoury-Haq32:07

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq32:11

I ended up taking five weeks off, which I don't remember. I was in a very black, dark space. So you just lost that time? I lost it. And then my boss at the time called me, and I'm so glad he did because he said, Look, we miss you. We want you back. But you decide the terms on which you return. And

Shirine Khoury-Haq32:36

Even in the years when I was doing IVF, I had a choice. I could quit everything and sit on the couch and do IVF and ponder what was going to happen, or I could find things that I was very good at and successful at and focus on those with IVF on the side. I chose to focus on things that I was good at, and I happened to be very good at my work. So when he made that phone call, I thought, well, goodness, why don't I go back to something that I feel comfortable with? To regain a sense of control, presumably. Exactly, because the rest of it, how I felt, none of that. I just couldn't control it. And the way that I described it was that something as big as grief.

Presenter33:07

Exactly.

Shirine Khoury-Haq33:20

It it's like a big mountain. You can't really see past it.

Shirine Khoury-Haq33:26

So you have a choice as to whether you set up camp in the shadow of that mountain.

Speaker 433:32

Mm.

Shirine Khoury-Haq33:33

Or if you find a way of getting over that mountain. And I thought of it as actually consuming the mountain, making it part of me. And I decided from day one I was going to make it part of me and get to the other side. And so what does that look like? Uh it looks like surviving.

Shirine Khoury-Haq33:52

It looks like

Shirine Khoury-Haq33:54

Fifteen years down the road almost, still crying about it?

Shirine Khoury-Haq34:00

But I think it also looks like coming out of it a different person.

Shirine Khoury-Haq34:05

with a different level of empathy.

Presenter34:07

Uh

Shirine Khoury-Haq34:08

Yeah.

Presenter34:08

Shireen, Isara's Muslim, and I know that you wanted an Islamic funeral service for Sophie. And we talked about the way that you are a spiritual person, a person of faith, but not necessarily of religion. How were you able to say goodbye to her in the way that felt appropriate for you?

Shirine Khoury-Haq34:25

It wasn't so much wanting a Muslim service because I'm actually religion agnostic. I believe in all of them.

Shirine Khoury-Haq34:35

But it was which one was easiest to tap into, to plug into, because the great thing about religion is it does provide mechanisms and rituals to deal with things like marriages and deaths. So Izzar called our local mosque and we had Sophie service with them. It was beautiful. The burial was a bit of a.

Presenter34:45

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq34:59

was a bit of an experience.

Shirine Khoury-Haq35:01

In that, again, going back to the rituals of religion, we had initially been informed by the mosque that women did not go to the grave site. There was no chance that my child was going to be buried without me there. So I insisted on it. And then my husband and his brother spoke to the Imam and said, look, she's not going to take no for an answer. And so I was there when she was being buried. And then my mother-in-law, who was, how old was she at the time? She would have been in her late 80s. She's a very traditional Pakistani woman. And she said, well, if Shireen's going to be there, I'm going to be there to support her. She's passed away now, but I was very, very close to my mother-in-law. And she was there. So she came with me. And we both did it together.

Presenter35:49

And she's got a lot of money.

Presenter35:50

And we

Presenter35:53

Shireen, let's take a minute for some more music. Your sixth choice.

Shirine Khoury-Haq35:57

So my next choice is Supermassive Black Hole by Muse. It's for two reasons. First of all, when I did lose Sophie, I felt that I went into a supermassive black hole. But also secondly, it gave me comfort at the time. I listened to it over and over again. And when I think about losing Sophie, that song is always tied to that experience. But it gives me a happy feeling.

Presenter36:24

Actually. What was it about the music? I mean, it's it's an enormous track. I'm wondering if it's the intensity of this sound and something about the catharsis of listening to it was. I always felt.

Shirine Khoury-Haq36:34

I always felt that we were listening to it together and that we were dancing to it together.

Speaker 436:42

Baby, don't you know I suffer? Of hurry, baby, can you heal me wrong? And here you caught me under false pretenses.

Speaker 437:01

When you said myself and I

Presenter37:10

Muse, and supermassive black hole.

Presenter37:13

Shireen Kurihag, how did your experience of loss change?

Shirine Khoury-Haq37:18

Change you as a leader, do you think? First of all, I don't want to take credit for having implemented it by myself or having come up with the idea of any of it by myself. One thing that I have done is open conversations with people and make it okay to talk about things like grief, fertility treatment, menopause, all kinds of topics. I've found that if I, as a leader, can talk about them, then it makes it okay for everyone else. So, in terms of policies, we offer unlimited time off for fertility treatment. That applies whether you are a colleague or whether you are a colleague whose spouse is going through it, whether you're going through surrogacy. It doesn't matter what gender you are, because the fact is, people are going to go through fertility treatment.

Speaker 437:57

Collie.

Shirine Khoury-Haq38:09

It's whether they talk about it openly and whether they can feel calm and supported at work. I can also put it in very selfish business terms in that I think people work better when they're completely comfortable with who they are and they're able to balance their home and their lives.

Presenter38:26

You have dealt with a bit of pushback from the industry and media commentators on policies like those ones that you described. What did they say and how did you answer those criticisms?

Shirine Khoury-Haq38:36

woke, which is fine. I think it's the right thing to do. The most important people to me are my colleagues at work, and the feedback from them has been positive on this, so we'll keep going.

Presenter38:47

Shireen, you've talked about experiencing racism throughout your life, but as you've talked about experiencing it as recently as twenty eighteen. And that was at an industry event, an industry dinner in London. What happened exactly?

Shirine Khoury-Haq38:58

In London.

Shirine Khoury-Haq39:01

So I was sitting across from someone. I don't drink, not due to any religious or moral thing. I just don't like the taste of it at all. So I'm usually alert to know what's going on when other people may have been drinking too much. And there was a man who was sitting across from me who had drunk quite a lot at that point. And we had name tags in front of us. And he looked at my last name and he said, ah, Corey.

Shirine Khoury-Haq39:29

He said, Are you from the Lebanon? And I said to him, My father's Palestinian, my mother's Turkish. And he said, Ah, you Arabs, you're a bunch of lazy, shifty people, aren't you?

Speaker 439:36

Uh

Shirine Khoury-Haq39:43

And I had been invited there by the CEO of an insurance firm. I was the chief operating officer of Lloyd's. And then there was a moment of silence, and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know whether to stay quiet or say something. We know that you were quite committed to saying things previously. How did you handle it? I don't stay quiet, and I couldn't then. I said, Well, it's better to be a lazy and shifty Arab than a racist drunk. And we left it at that.

Presenter40:04

How do you handle it?

Presenter40:18

It's time for your penultimate discs, Shireen. What have you chosen and why?

Shirine Khoury-Haq40:22

So we're shifting gears now. This is How Great Thou Art by Susan Boyle for my beloved Aunt Sawad, who had moved from Palestine to Beirut in Lebanon and then to Holland. We didn't have any family there. My family's mostly in the U.S. and I was the closest to her. So I would go back and forth. And in her final days, when she was dying of Parkinson's disease, The one song that I knew comforted her was How Great Thou Art because they used to sing that song in the choir in Bethlehem in church. So one night when she was in a really bad state, I turned that song on and I said to her, I'd been in the nursing home for about 17 hours at that point and she'd gotten her medication and I just said to her, Aunt Sawad, I'm going to just get some sleep now. I'll be back in a few hours. The night nurse had come. I'd made sure that she was taken care of. And I put the song on and left. But as I was leaving, something told me to just turn around and come back. So I did a U-turn. I came back. I saw her take her last couple of breaths and then she passed away while this song was playing. So for me, this is a song that talks to my family, that talks to immense faith. I chose the version by Susan Boyle because I remember that first night I heard her sing on TV. And she was so underestimated. And people didn't expect much from her. And I think that what came out of Susan Boyle was incredible. And it's a lesson for all of us that you should never judge a book by its cover.

Speaker 442:06

Then sings my song.

Speaker 442:11

My save you go to thee.

Speaker 442:20

How great the world

Speaker 442:27

How great love

Speaker 442:34

Then sing this voice

Presenter42:36

Susan Boyle and How Great Thou Art. Shireen Kurihak, I'm delighted to say that in twenty sixteen you and Izzar became parents to twin girls. They were born through surrogacy. Was it a big decision to try that route to motherhood?

Shirine Khoury-Haq42:51

I always felt that there were two souls out there floating around that were destined for us, but I didn't know how we were going to get our hands on them. Whether it was through me having them, which eventually we found out after I lost our eldest daughter, Sophie, I couldn't have any more children. Whether it was through surrogacy or adoption, but those two souls were out there. So it wasn't a big decision. It was just the next step.

Presenter43:15

So

Presenter43:19

Yeah. So they arrived after everything that you've been through. I mean, surrogacy is not.

Presenter43:25

Easy at the best of times. And I know that in your case, it wasn't straightforward. We had a wonderful

Shirine Khoury-Haq43:30

Surrogate, and we're still in touch with her today. But it wasn't straightforward. She had a number of miscarriages. We lost another set of twins before we had ours, and it was more loss in that arena for us. We had these last two embryos. We kind of chucked them in, hoped for the best, and then we actually applied with an adoption agency. But those twins stuck, and now they're here. So, what did it feel like to hold them in your arms?

Speaker 143:41

And

Speaker 143:44

In that array.

Speaker 143:45

Uh

Presenter43:46

So

Speaker 143:46

Uh

Shirine Khoury-Haq44:01

It was wonderful to hold them in our arms and to have them finally here.

Presenter44:05

You talked about grief as a mountain and and that idea of the mountain becoming part of you.

Presenter44:12

So Sophie's part of family life.

Shirine Khoury-Haq44:14

For you now. Absolutely. I mean, my my daughters now who are who are seven, they know they have a big sister in heaven and they've known that from day one and will always grow up with that.

Presenter44:28

Well, I'm very sad to say that I've got to ask you to leave your girls now and contemplate how life might be on the desert island. How do you think you'll get on?

Shirine Khoury-Haq44:37

Uh

Presenter44:38

Oh, I

Shirine Khoury-Haq44:39

I like being around people. I'm not sure I'd get along very well at all. So they're not. Hopefully, some old.

Presenter44:43

Hopefully, someone will rescue me quickly. The isolation is going to be a challenge. I think so. Will you try and escape? Of course. One more track before we cast you away, Shireen Kurihak.

Shirine Khoury-Haq44:54

It's your final choice. What's it going to be? It is stuck in a moment you can't get out of by you two because in my life there have been moments where you can just give up or you can just pick yourself up and stop feeling sorry for yourself and keep going. There have been times in recent years where I have been in a difficult place and playing this song has really helped.

Speaker 445:22

I'm afraid.

Speaker 445:24

Of anything in this world.

Speaker 445:27

There's nothing you can throw at me

Speaker 445:30

That I haven't already heard

Speaker 445:34

I'm just trying to find

Speaker 445:36

A decent melody

Speaker 445:39

A song that I can sing

Speaker 445:42

My own company

Speaker 445:47

I never thought you were

Presenter45:52

You two, stuck in a moment you can't get out of. So, Shireen Kurihak, I'm going to send you away to the desert island. I'll give you the books, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book of your choice. What would you like?

Shirine Khoury-Haq46:06

I think of the scriptures of the Abrahamic religions as a trilogy. So you kindly gave me the Torah and the rest of the Bible. I'd like to take the Koran, please. It's yours. You can also have a luxury item. What will that be?

Shirine Khoury-Haq46:23

Well, as a Trekkie, I initially suggested that I wanted a solar-powered replicator.

Presenter46:30

Oh well. That would invite chaos to the island. That's a device that would allow you to create anything

Shirine Khoury-Haq46:36

That you wanted, isn't it? Well, exactly. But you wouldn't let me. I did try, though, didn't I? I fought the power and I lost against the power of phrase one.

Presenter46:43

That's the power of phrase in this case you did not prevail.

Shirine Khoury-Haq46:45

Yes.

Presenter46:47

Absolutely not.

Shirine Khoury-Haq46:48

So I was tossing up between two things. I always call my family when I'm driving home to let them know that I'm on my way home. And I just love how my daughters pick up the phone and say, Mommy

Shirine Khoury-Haq47:03

And so I was thinking about a recording of them saying that, but I think I'd prefer a photo of them and Isar and Teddy the dog.

Presenter47:13

Yeah.

Shirine Khoury-Haq47:13

So keep with me.

Presenter47:13

I'm sure we can get one of those photo frames that also makes a noise. We can get the two together. Can you do that? Then we've got a deal. Finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today, Shireen, would you rush to save from the waves first?

Shirine Khoury-Haq47:18

Can you do that?

Shirine Khoury-Haq47:28

It would be how great thou art. Because of the memories that it brings of my family, it means a lot.

Shirine Khoury-Haq47:35

Sure.

Presenter47:35

Green Kurihak, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Presenter47:40

Thank you.

Shirine Khoury-Haq47:41

So much for having. Okay.

Presenter48:11

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Shireen, and I'm very glad she's forgiven me for not letting her take the replicator. These are choices, honestly. We've cast away many people from the worlds of business and retail, including Sir Malcolm Walker, Mary Porter, and Sir Stuart Rose. You can find their episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the production coordinator was Susie Roylands, and the producer was Paula McGidney. The series editor is John Gowdy. Next time, my guest will be the journalist and broadcaster Clive Myrie. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 449:00

This is a story about one of Britain's most revered institutions.

Speaker 449:07

And the theft of ancient treasures that were sold around the world. It felt like a real punch to the stomach. My God, things are being stolen from our museum.

Speaker 449:15

I'm Katie Razzell and from BBC Radio 4, this is Thief at the British Museum.

Speaker 449:24

At the heart of our tale is an antiquities dealer turned amateur detective thrown into the center of a global scandal. I was shocked. I remember that distinctly my hair stood on end.

Speaker 449:37

Search for Shadow World Thief at the British Museum on BBC Sounds.