Letter XV: First screening

23 November 2009

Today opened the big conference for the Higher Council for the Affairs of Persons with Disabilities (HCD). Le Royal Hotel is shaped like the chimney tower of a submarine emerging from the sea. It is huge! Everything looked ready to go. I’d gone yesterday to check video and audio levels. We checked them again this morning.

The folks running the HCD (http://www.hcd.gov.jo/englishmain.htm) are talented and determined. Prince Ra’ad, who has championed the rights of the disabled for decades, is stalwart, steadfast, and virally optimistic. He is related to the royal family here by dint of the heritage of 20^th century Hashemite cousins plucked from the Hijaz (western Arabia) and plunked down in Iraq and Jordan as monarchs by our friends the British (1921). The Iraqi coup d’etat of 1958, known as the 14 July Revolution established the Republic of Iraq and ended any dreams of regal life in Iraq. Prince Ra’ad came to Jordan as has lived an impassioned and inspiring life devoted to the rights of people with disabiliites. Dr. Amal Nahas, executive director, is fluent in Arabic, English, sign language, and probably French. She’s a graceful intellect and hard working. It is a joy to be with both of them in the editorial process of filmmaking.

But in our last meeting – the one to show them the “finished product,” so many new ideas came flowing that I began a quiet deep breathing and inward prayer for serenity. No way were we going to go back into the field to add a section on the need for access to public buildings; we were not going to add a still frame photo of a person in a wheelchair looking longingly up a steep flight of stairs; nor were were going to get footage of a blind person tapping along the street with a white cane. Access was not, in fact, part of the initial brief, I pointed out. And we are already out of time and budget. But how to diplomatically disappoint a prince and a client?

Audio, audio was the answer. We came up with the notion of an audio montage calling for hope and a better future. Bring a few young people into the studio and record them saying “’amal,” (hope), add some echo, and weave it into the audio-over-black introduction. Of course now there’s a sound studio involved and … and … and …

… And at the sound studio I was on my own with a roomful of Jordanian technicians looking at me sideways. I decided to establish dominance immediately and pretended a bit of a hissy fit when no one stopped talking about what they were going to do for me without bothering to listen to me tell them what I wanted. They shut up. Then one, Hani, emerged, as an English-speaker. As he began to translate my concept to the team they murmured in Arabic together about how they could do this and how quickly, given my time and budget deadlines. Voices got louder. There was a complication.

“And how old is your daughter?” I asked Nasser, a shaved-head, somewhat overweight and grumpy looking guy. He looked up at me, astonished. “I didn’t say anything in English about my daughter!”

“I know. But I understood you in Arabic.” (This I said in Arabic, and continued.) “You have to be with her tomorrow morning? I have two daughters, one with me here in Amman, the other in college in the USA. How about you?”

Nasser broke into a grin. A father and his daughters. As sure a way to a man’s heart as through his stomach.

From that moment I had a team. Hani, Nasser and I created a beautiful “Amal … for a better future” audio montage.

Meanwhile back at Moon, sign language was taped and added to the lower left of the screen. Nermeen and I finished the English subtitles. And this morning, Showtime.

The JTV news crew there paid no attention to the remarkable sight of chains of blind individuals, holding on one another’s sleeves, making their way into the conference; they didn’t notice the folks coming through in wheelchairs. They taped the speeches from the front, ignoring the sign language interpreter. But at least, bless them, got plenty of cutaways of the seated audience!

So comes this morning and I’m at the over-the-top Le Royal at 8am as Prince Ra’ad instructed (didn’t want to be late due to security in place for the arriving dignitaries including the Minister of the Interior.

We checked audio and video. We talked with the lighting director. Make it dark. Don’t let it be too loud.

Preliminary speeches are done. It’s announced there will be a short documentary on disabilities. (Not the intro I would have written.) The lights come down – not far enough. And there’s no audio. Not even black on the screen – which is how we started: ten seconds of audio only including our masterwork with Hani and Nasser. The very audio “pow” that the prince himself requested.

And nothing.

Finally Dr. Kalabani fades up from black with the first sound bite – inaudible. Ghadeer, too, inaudible. Wala’s father, nothing. We begin to hear the baby cry and the first whispers of Kalabani saying, “Patients get upset when they first meet me and find out that I can’t hear them well. But when they see that I do understand and can serve them, everything is fine.” And everything was fine from there.

Suffering. Doing all you can and it not being enough to make a flawless performance. End of suffering. Knowing you’ve done all you can and at least it’s over.