 Great pleasure to introduce the president of Georgetown University, Jack DeGioia. Thank you very much Cynthia. I want to express my appreciation to both you and to Derek Goldman for your leadership as co-directors of the laboratory for global performance in politics and for extraordinary work that you've been engaged in to bring us all together tonight. Good evening everyone. It's a pleasure to be with all of you and to be here for this extraordinary moment. Voices unheard, Syria, the Trojan Women's Summit. I'm grateful for this opportunity to come together as a community and to celebrate the extraordinary women who make up the cast of this reinterpretation of Euripides' classic play through the lens of the contemporary conflict in Syria. I want to begin by thanking them and their translator, Sharim Zuma, who is joining us by a Skype from Jordan. It's now 2.30 in the morning in Amman. Now if they were here on campus that would be one thing, but they've left their homes in the middle of the night in order to speak with us to tell us about Syria, the Trojan Women's Project and more broadly about the Syrian conflict from their perspective as civilians and the impact of the war on their lives. We're grateful for their time, their courage, their willingness to connect with us and to share with us. I'd also like to thank the director of this production, Omar Abu Sada. There is a leading theater director who will be joining us tonight from Beirut. The women in Omar Abu Sada will speak later in the program and be available for engagement with our audience. We're here tonight as Euripides' 2,000-year-old play about the brutal treatment of the women of Troy following that proud city's defeat by Athens. Resonated profound with Syrian women suffering under the conflict in their country. This extraordinary project reminds us sadly of the timelessness of war but also of the strength of the human spirit, of human dignity. We all have much to learn from the cast and crew of Syria, the Trojan Women. We're honored by their presence and by their stories. This is the third time that I've had the privilege to introduce a performance brought to Georgetown by the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics. The first was for artist Anna Devere Smith's residency in March of 2013 that launched the laboratory. Last April, I was privileged to introduce you to watch Derek Goldman's moving tribute to Jan Karstin who came to life in Gaston Hall through the artistry of David Stratham. Leveraging Georgetown's dual strengths in performance and international affairs, the lab enjoyed program between the college and the school of foreign service as enriched our university and local communities. We're grateful for the way in which it has allowed Georgetown to more deeply contribute to the work being done at the intersection of art and policy, of culture and social change. Tonight the lab launches a new effort, Married Voices Across Cultural Performance Festival which is a two-year series of performances from leading artists, from Muslim-majority communities around the world that will be accompanied by convenience, public forum, interdisciplinary courses in the creation of new work. I look forward to the ways in which it will enrich our community. And now it's my pleasure to welcome to the podium Derek Goldman, Professor of Performance and Theater Studies, artistic director of the Davis Center for Performing Arts co-directed by the laboratory for global performance in politics. Thank you so much, President DeGioia, not only for that generous introduction, but for making this event a priority in the midst of many other important commitments this weekend. It is not an overstatement to say that the existence and the impact of our laboratory for global performance in politics itself and this project in particular would not be possible without the support you have provided and a substantive affirmation of the importance of this work for George's county. To all of you here in Uganda Theater and watching on live stream around the world, thank you for joining us. It's particularly moving that our voices are being heard right now via Skype by a couple of dozen cast members of Syria the Trojan Women gathering them on and in Beirut by the brilliant director of this project, Omar Al-Assad. We have been so deeply moved by his courage, vision and grace in collaborating with us through this complex and often heartlanding process and of course by the courage and grace of the cast who you'll get to know some tonight. The outpouring of support for these women and the project from the Georgetown community, as you can see in this room, as well as folks from around D.C. the nation and the world has been amazing to witness. Tonight's event is not the event we envisioned. These benches were built for the ensemble of Syria the Trojan Women to use in the production. We hoped you would see fully in bodies here tonight and some day before long we hope they will be used for this purpose. In the meantime, our Georgetown students sit at a time of great chorus for tonight's event. Citizens waiting, witnessing, participating. We learned just weeks ago that despite nine months of constant efforts and extraordinary advocacy on behalf of the women and the project from a wide range of top officials and vassalers, legal experts, the U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs in Amman denied the visa applications of the performers under section 214B of the Immigrant and Nationality Act failure to demonstrate non-immigrant intent. The voices on her summit is above all an act of solidarity with the women. It is an attempt to share all we are able to of this project that has so moved us and that strikes us as such a timely and urgent antidote to the picture of Syria created by the current ISIS-dominated news cycle. This event is born out of a conviction that we needed to do something all we could, given the circumstances, to try to share this project and its implications with you. We're incredibly grateful to the wide range of panelists and speakers who've come together to participate tonight and to Charlotte Eager and Georgina Padgett of Refuge Productions who you will meet soon, who conceived this extraordinary project and have been wonderful partners in every way. I hope you will indulge a few extra special thank yous. Institutions like Georgetown are not known for their nimbleness and adaptability to change on the fly. We decided a couple of weeks ago that it was essential to move forward with the summit. It took a whole village of people to rise up to make this complicated global event even possible. So quickly I want to thank from the bottom of my heart our amazing associate directors of the lab Rob Jansen and Jojo Roof who among other things have devoted hundreds of hours to the visa process in recent months under the brilliant and generous volunteer guidance of leading attorney Jonathan Ginsburg who was here with us tonight. Our amazing staff at the Davis Performing Arts Center has risen gloriously and generously to the unique challenges this project has raised. Time prevents me from adequately recounting all that you've done but I need to say a huge thank you to our wonderful new technical director and production manager Michael Redman for fearlessly, calmly and expertly helping us figure out a very complicated technical dimensions of this event along with Laura Mertens, Ellen Bateman, Toby Clark, Ronnie Lancaster, Ron McNally, Debsavigny, among others as well as our amazing chair of the Department of Performing Arts Professor Maya Roth for all that you've done. This work is providing inspirational fodder for students in numerous disciplines on campus as evidence I think by who's here tonight. I also wish to thank the Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, the Program in Culture and Politics in SFS, the Institute for Women, Peace and Security, the Syrian Emergency Task Force, the United States Institute of Peace and in particular our partners on this event Bridges of Understanding. It truly takes a village to pull an event like this together so I thank you all. The Syria Trojan Women project speaks deeply to us both because of its extraordinary artistry and because we feel that the voices of these women and by extension the voices of three million Syrian refugees are almost entirely unknown and unheard by US audiences. The lab was founded to bring the world of performing arts and international policy together and it's hard to imagine a project that better reflects both the immediacy and importance of this convergence and the complexity of this interaction. This process has surfaced for us the biggest fundamental questions about the role of artists and storytellers in crossing literal and figurative borders. I want to close by just saying as we conceived tonight's event we wanted it to reflect our idea of myriad voices. Above all our hope is to share the women and the project with you but we also have gathered a wide range of perspectives. As a result it will be impossible to hear from every voice or to cover in depth all of the issues that will surface. The material is not only emotionally charged but politically complicated. It's also true that we have tried our very best to rehearse and test all of the technical dimensions of what you will see tonight but this is an extremely live event with some elements that we cannot predict and that's really the case and it's part of I think the excitement and the significance of importance. So we ask that you forgive us in advance that we will be fairly relentless about the time and effort to honor the schedule and to cover around and we ask you to sort of bear with us and to participate. And we invite you at the end to join us for a celebration just as the women are making this evening a celebration in Amon that this is as close for now as we can come to being all together celebrating. With that it's my pleasure to introduce my colleague and partner in the lab and that person. Thank you. The sandwiched in between emails from J.Crew and political candidates came this message from the director Syrian Trojan woman Omar Abbasada. Very simple just I'll be in Damascus for the rest of the week if you need to reach me. And I sat there and I thought in Damascus what does that mean? What can that be like? I have no earthly idea and I wrote Omar back who you know I have not yet had the pleasure to meet saying this what I'm just sitting here thinking what can that be like and he wrote me back and I'd like to read to you what he said he said it's really so strange it makes feelings these days huge emotions you can't understand it's much more like the short moments before saying goodbye to someone we really love end of quote. We hope tonight to give you a window into Syria and its people particularly those people who've been forced to leave their beloved homes and country to give you some understanding of what they have been through and others have been through these last three terrible years but let me tell you this story tonight is not a tragedy it's not like Euripides is playing it's a story of incredible resilience courage personal strength friendship love humor and joy I hope that at the end of it you will take away with you a deeper understanding of the incredible complexities of the Syrian conflict today and its impact on all who suffered from it I hope you'll also have a deeper understanding of the role that arts and culture can play in times of conflict and I hope also maybe you'll leave with some ideas of different ways that we might be approaching foreign policy challenges let me tell you give you a sense of the flow of the evening tonight we're going to begin by introducing the project really in the best way we can without the women being physically present to perform and that is through some extraordinary footage from the documentary and please watch for this when it comes out the documentary Queens of Syria which Georgie Padgett is producing about the whole project so we'll first see that and then we're so privileged to have one of the most renowned radio broadcasters from Syria, Hani al-Qaeda to America as a political refugee and we're very happy to claim her and she will interview the women and so she will have a conversation with them and then we'll invite you to ask them some questions as well and then we'll broaden the discussion and bring on a couple of policy experts in Syria as well as keeping everyone there on the stage as you can see and hopefully by then it will be at the edge of your seats you may have laughed, you may have cried and in the final discussion we'll try to put it all together for you and give you a sense of how what you've seen tonight relates to the relentless from the media about Syria which is mostly on ISIS so hopefully you can leave with really a deeper broader understanding and now my great pleasure to get things started to introduce our colleague and after this experience lifelong friends, Charlotte Eager and Georgie Padgett please come up, Charlotte and Georgie together with Charlotte's husband Willie Sterling these three people conceived of this project as drum therapy and ushered it into the extraordinary production that it became and now they'll share with us some of that experience, thank you you used to live in your own house you didn't want me to be the owner of your property and we were the owners the goal of this project is to give all of us a sense of what we're going to achieve and even if we don't have the time to forget we don't want people in Syria to do what we want to do we want to ask that question to Zeno to tell us what you think about them my wife was very close to me and we all remember her and we weren't able to talk to her and we didn't know what to do we didn't know what to do and before that I wanted to talk to you My name is Charlotte Bieda and I am the co-founder of the Syria Trojan Women Project. With me is Georgie Padgett, the co-founder and producer. As you now know, last autumn we put on a production of Europe's great anti-war play with the Trojan Women, with an all-female amateur cast of Syrian refugees in Jordan. There was very concisely a vision to bring that play there tonight, but sadly our cast couldn't get their US visas. That play was a vanguard of the Syria Trojan Women Project, where a multi-platform project aimed at helping individual refugees overcome their depression and trauma, providing some paid employment to Syrian professionals who've had to leave their country, and also raising international awareness of the growing Syrian refugee crisis, which I think tonight brings work, and over 9 million Syrians have now fed their homes according to the UNHCR. That's approximately 40% of the population, and nearly 3 million of those outside Syria. The Trojan Women is a play about refugees. Euripides wrote this play in 450 BC as a protest at his home state Athens barbarity after Athens took the neutral island of Nelos, killed all the men, and sold the women and children to slave raiders. Apparently, according to Cynthia, many people in Georgetown today study the million diodes, the moment which is the great speeches that Athens made of their ultimatum to Nelos, justifying their behavior. For the Trojan Women is set up before Troy, Euripides chose a myth into people knew well. He said it about the men were all dead and the women are in a camp, awaiting their fate at the hands of the Greeks. For this time, and for the Euripides Greek audience, this must be very difficult, very confusing. The Greeks are not the heroes. They're the baddies. They violate and slaughter their way through the play. And there is a moral to this play, which is beware of how you wage your war. Because if you behave with brutality, the gods will punish you. It's a very modern message being played out today in the courts of the international war crime in the Hague, thanks to the generosity of our donors and the dedication of our Syrian cast and production team, that original project was an enormous success, both from a humanitarian point of view and an artistic one. And the idea for this project was dreamed up 18 months ago in April in a conversation with Oxfam, where its origins lie back in the past and the Bosnian refugee camps of 1992 and the slums of Nairobi in 2013. I'm a journalist. I'm a contributing editorial newspaper. And in the course of my 25-year career, I've spent a lot of time doing refugees in many countries. And I noticed that they are often very depressed. Their old lives have vanished. They are now living in some sort of limbo. They still have that old vision of themselves, yet they aren't able to come to terms with what their life is to come. If they live in refugee camps, where they're fed from house, but unable to live normal lives or have normal jobs, then they are often also extremely bored. If they're living in towns, desperate to try and proclaim something of who they once were, then they are often terrified. They're money running out, forbidden to work legally, vulnerable to exploitation. Back in 1992, my husband, the filmmaker, William Sterling and I, were both working in Bosnia, where I was the Balkans correspondent of the Observer of British Newspaper. I spent all that summer talking to refugees. Then, when I got home, I was a classics major, fresh out of Oxford. I'd tell Mother Radio, and I listened to a production of Approach of Women on the BBC. I realised the stories I was hearing on the radio were exactly the same in this two-and-a-half-thousand-year play, the one I'd heard or sung. They were a violation of murder, exile and loss. The tragedies of war are a talent. Only the weapons change. Twenty years later, in the spring of 2013, William and I were hired by the UK Department Store, Marks & Stencers, to shoot a series of training films, leadership to hope, for their Kenyan vegetable packers in Nairobi. The workforce all lived in Dandor, a slum built around rubbish dumps in Africa, the largest rubbish dump in Africa, the size of Central Park. We made a rom-com a few years beforehand for Scooterman, which had gotten to can and won prizes in America, but strange enough, we weren't living in Hollywood Nairobi and NMS seemed pretty good news to us. But we thought the training films were quite boring, so we thought we'd all make more interesting, we'll turn them into a mini soap opera, each episode to have a different message. And we went over to Africa, and we'd workshop the script for a week with the slum kids who we were being provided by Marks & Stencers to work with and with a family for their vegetable packers. And then we shot the slate on location in Dandor, using these kids as the cast over four days. For our cast, it was both hard work and good fun, and they also got a bit of money. And over that time, we saw the transformation in England, their pride in their achievement, their realisation that life could offer them opportunities, and that they had the skills to take advantage of them, and the enjoyment and fulfilment they got with the project. Essentially, we saw the power of drama therapy. The cast also, possibly because they were playing themselves, or characters close to themselves, but on very strong performances. When we got back to the UK, I ran Oxfam, who I do a lot of professional journals for, and said, do you have any similar projects we could do with you in drama therapy? And the applied kids, we wish you could do something for our Syrian refugees. Now, my husband, like me, is a classicist, and we both immediately thought of the Trojan Moon. It was a plane we thought which would not only allow our refugee cast to explore their own experiences, but if they did die as we worked with the Nigerian, they could potentially produce something very powerful, or could they be playing something close to themselves? Originally, we were going to do it very cheaply. We were going to go to the Bethel Valley for six metres of our cover film, do a play, shoot it as a film, and the ruins of the Bethel Valley. We were going to make a documentary about it, which essentially hedged the project and the documentary's thrive on conflict and problems. So the more points we had, the more we were going to repeat. But we had a stroke of luck. We went to Cannes, and we put this idea up in a competition in the UK Film Centre, which we came second, and we always come second in the competition. And it was totally there in one, with a completely different project. And then she came on board as our producer, and she's another Oxford classicist. She immediately understood the power and the relevance of the Trojan Moon and what we were trying to do. So things went out of gear. We'd hide the playoff from the film, and the producer, Isabel Azar, she found a brilliant theatrical director, Omar. Omar brought in his fantastic Syrian team, Nandan Basad, and also we brought in a wonderful documentary director, Yasmin Feder. So that put up that for a job director of documentary. And everyone was better with her. Our original intention was to work in a refugee camp, but we could not get permission to go into D'Arthur, the vast Syrian camp in Jordan. Now, of course, I beg you to do that. They wouldn't let us in the plastic. Anyway, I had a friend who was in the UNHCR in Amman. And he suggested that we work with urban refugees. He said that families dotted around the city in lodgings were often more isolated and more depressed than people in the refugee camps who at least lived in a community. People in London were very generous helping us get some money to do this, because this is all privately funded, but they were skeptical that we would make the project work. They said, aren't Muslims conservative? Would they want to be in a play? And I thought, well, how many Muslims are conservative in misconception? And also, amongst the half a million refugees in Jordan, I'd likely be 525, but still to make a question. Others said that Syrian refugees were not part of Troy, that we were being costly imperialists in posing a Western myth. Our Syrian producer, Itab, snorted with a division. If they know where Troy was, we'd be born in Turkey. The refugees' plays were performed for centuries in the Greco-Roman theaters with ruins docked in the Middle East. And more importantly, for over a thousand years, those plays were kept alive in the libraries of Damascus, Istanbul, and Baghdad, while our Western assessors were grunting their way for the dark ages. And indeed, all our women had had a Troy. The educated ones knew the Greek myth, but the elder born people went, he wrap it! Itab can't be here today because she's currently a favorite working on a similar production. But she found many of the women by going around Amman's refugee and community centers. She went to the UNXU of our food queues. She went to Syrian refugee organizations, going up to table strangers and saying, hey, if you want to be in a play. So on the first day of our workshops, we were sitting in this community center we rented in a rather dodgy part of Daimon Amman, waiting to see if anybody would turn up. And we sat there, and we sat there, and nobody came. It was like giving a very unsuccessful party. Itab said, I can't bear this anymore. I need to get out of the stairs and see if there's anybody there. And I sat there, terrified, thinking what am I going to do with money that we need given help. Then she came up, with this enormous smile, like a piper leaving for 12, rather nervous looking women behind her. And we had 18 that first day, we could put the plan with 18 people on. And the next day we had 25, the next day 35, and then we had over 100 trying to join us, and we had to turn them away. We didn't have the space for the budget. We also had to run a day care center for our cast children. We had 50 traumatized toddlers. We even had a six week old baby, or sham. That was almost the most challenging part of the project, actually. We collected toys from our friends in London for children. Our parents' children would have too many toys. My most scary moment of the entire thing was when we had a suspected measled epidemic, but luckily it was unfounded. And we also brought a Syrian refugee psychologist on board, and he gave the women and children counselling. And his practice continued to work with the women for a bono for some time after the play was over. And Omar, the director, worked the women's own stories into the play, for which the women told us they found very red cathartic. They said they had finally been given the chance to tell their stories to the world. But because when you're a refugee, something terrible happened to you. Every single refugee has suffered a dramatic event in their life that would make a Hollywood movie, but nobody says anything, nobody wants to hear. And this is what our women were able to do in the play. Then we put the people what's on in a man's national set for cultural arts in two pieces of snow. This was our final challenge. We've been working for over 100 years. The theater's also got a hill, there's no sense of heating, and the buses couldn't reach the theater anyway. We thought we might have to postpone the play, but the women said, no, wait. They've all had a Syria. They weren't going to be put off by a few pieces of snow. So, just as we've seen in Nairobi, but in a much more prolonged way, during those seven weeks of the workshops, we saw the women we were working with change. On that first day, they were nervous and stressed, and they had to imagine their children, which was virtually all they left Syria can. But by the end, they were busy, self-confident for real. And it was the same with the children. On the first day, we've got all these toys for the look of Barbies and cars and things. And the children were not used to playing with other children, and many of them had just spent, they were young and tiny, but they were very traumatized, and they'd just been in a mood of missing some of Barbies' heads and their hands lying out to the everywhere. And it did them up to find a terrible plastic wall zone. But by the end of six, seven weeks, they were happy at playing with each other, and apart from nearly mugging my husband when he became Barber Christmas and had about a domain of toys at the end. And as for the women, we realized that by the time the play was over, instead of being alone and frightened in a foreign land, they had created a new community for themselves. Many of the women described the other cast members as a new family. And the performers they put on was electrifying. It's a tragedy they can't be here today. It was quite quite extraordinary. And it became apparent that the performers helped not only the people of cast and the production team, but many people of the audience told us, Georgian, Syrians, and others, that it had helped them have a much greater understanding of what it was like to be a refugee. But they themselves have found it cathartic and helpful. The UNHCR is very keen for us to film our productions so they can take the film on tour of refugee camps. They wanted to tour the whole play, but it is impractically expensive to take 25 Syrian actors with their children for 10 weeks on tour around the refugee camps in the Middle East. The revised plan is to do a new production in one of the H.S. Rowman Theatre in Jordan and film that on the committee. And then the UNHCR can take the DVD on tour to be a lot easier. The play has also achieved our other aim and frankly beyond our wildest dreams it has helped generate publicity for the refugee press. The play was covered by everyone from the BBC World Service to Al Jazeera, Newsweek, Voters, The FT, Prosta, The Guardian, Correia, La Stara, Al Jazeera, Al Arabia, the author through this that Syrian refugee has a terrible time is not a surprising thing. But Syrian refugee puts on a great tragedy by that, that news. As you know we shall document for the project. You've seen the trailer of the document before I started to speak. George is going to show you some more clips. And now of course I'm standing in front of you today pleading the case for Syrian refugees at the Centre in Berwick. And the good news is that our Syrian cast have now got their Jordanian refugee permits. So with any luck they will be able to come to Georgetown after all. They also got visas to perform in Switzerland in front of CERN in October. As for our project, we're expanding but currently producing educational soap opera for refugees supported by the UNHCR. It deals with the issues facing refugees in Jordan and to be written by Syrian and Jordanian too. We've been asked by UN Women to do a new play in Zafriq Camp and by a private owner to design a drama therapy musical project for refugee children in Amman. We're going to do Joseph's amazing Technicolor Dream Code and then we hope we're called Melbourne. If you can't take the quiet Syrian refugee children I close my eyes and hold back a curtain for number one, what can you do? And the money raised can go to help refugees. And actually, one little yesterday I got an email from our paymasters and I read them. They had inspiration on the films with shot last year being they now can see by over three-quarters of a million people and they've asked us to do another program with them. As for the film version of the Trotement which is where we began with our hope of a little video camera we've updated it. It's got much bigger. It's set in a modern unnamed Middle Eastern war with all the panoply of a contemporary conflict. With God's members of the United Nations we have Admiral Poseidon head of the military mission in Troid sparring with the Russian UN head of civil affairs Palatinova. We have journalists live from the fall of Troid and the anchor TV debate. The script is a third in English but the grim drama at the heart of the film between the Greeks and the Trojans we've got an award winning British director Victor Nehruppen, an amazing cast and we're due to shoot in March on location in Jordan in the Greco-Roman ruins of Jash and a refugee camp. And we very much hope that women who were in our play will play the chorus. We also hope that as many of the extras as possible will be Syrian refugees continuing this idea of the project providing a great paid employment. We hope that the film will create waves of publicity for the Syrian refugee crisis as a whole because 9 billion people who have lost their homes cannot be forgotten. If not just for humanitarian reasons then they're the pragmatic. They will bring conflict for generations to come. The conflict in the Middle East cannot be amended to signal. They must be looked at holistically. We cannot allow ISIS to recruit either vulnerable and abandoning young people on these camps. But tonight with about our rich old Trojan women our amazing cast and the daily profile. Then I've been handed to Georgie to show you some of the film was shot and then you'll get the chance to meet the women themselves on Skype. To Echo, Charlotte, thanks to Derek, Cynthia and their truly amazing team here at the lab who've worked incredibly hard to put tonight's event together. It really is a great shame that our wonderful cast can't be here to join us but I can't say how excited I am at the prospect of the moment seeing them on the screen here behind me. So you all know you won't be watching the play tonight but what we do have for you are some extracts from the documentary that Yasmin Fada shot in Amman last year. As Charlotte said, the documentary documents the process from the creation of this unique performance right the way through to actually having it performed on stage in Amman. We follow the group from the workshops at the rehearsals right the way to the opening night. And we'll be able to hear a bit more about that from the cast themselves a little bit later. But what we hope that this documentary also does is to provide another platform another medium for this inspirational group of women to tell their stories on a wider international stage. The perspective of ordinary Syrian women affected by this conflict and the refugee crisis is so often markedly absent from media coverage. But Yasmin had the great privilege as the rest of us did to get to know these women over the course of seven weeks. She was there for all the rehearsals all the workshops and she even actually went home with some of the women home to their families, got to know them and the conversations continued even after the workshops were done for the day. I'm not going to say too much more than that because the point of this documentary is to hear from them. If anyone hasn't quite taken it on board yet none of our cast have acted before this project. In fact only a couple of them have ever been inside 30 before so it's in that context as well but you can view their remarkable achievement. So I'm going to begin by showing you a clip from very early on in the workshop process where Omar is asking for volunteers from the group to make a tableau of a moment in their lives back in Syria where they felt they had experienced injustice and our first contribution is from Fatima and her group. I'm going to go back to the beginning just to show you the process but I'm going to say a little bit about the technology and the technology. Why am I here? How do you take care of your family? Oh you don't know What do you say if you have a child and you don't know? I don't know. The stand leads to a number of her who worked with Omar do an exercise with the group where she asks each of them they're all given a large A3 piece of paper and each of them writes, draws and then explains to the group their journey from Syria right to that very room in Dantana and as you'll see towards the end of the clip it's some of those stories that were woven into play as part of the performance and the new text. Thank you so much. In just a moment we'll be able to hear from some of the cast themselves about why they got involved with the project and their experience of it but just to tee that up a little bit and give you a flavour of what that was like and then hear from one of them Suad as she tells her husband when she goes back home how her day has been I've noticed that was actually a different clip because I have to wrap up pretty quickly so to see Suad I'll have to wait until the documentary comes out I mean did she over 80 hours of footage so there's a lot of stuff the documentary's not going to be that long don't worry but I think that's given me a little flavour of the insight and the great privilege we had of getting that perspective on the life of our remarkable cast thank you for watching I want to introduce the next part of the program I have to add one very important thank you someone always forgets one thank you but this was a kind of bad one to forget we want to thank the Doris Duke Foundation and the association for performing arts presenters for making myriad voices possible through their very generous grant so thank you and now it is my great pleasure to bring to the podium Honey Alsayed a very well-known radio broadcaster from Syria now here in America co-founder of Radio Suriali which will be familiar to many Syrians and also a master's student at the Plutcher School of Diplomacy and honey that you're going to be talking with the audience that made this possible today everybody that's joining us here I would like to say which means back home welcome and hello can anyone say perfect because when you have the conversation that's the first thing you want to tell that means of Syria but before we go on with the conversation I just want to say one thing that there's a Syrian proverb that says a little spark can kindle a great fire and the interplay of media and the arts is like oxygen to fire it is that very spark one that can function as a peace building tool it allows women and men young old all life to express themselves and help them heal accordingly it humanizes the other and more often than not it impacts people empowering them to create change within themselves their community and the world so I can get the chance to see now but we'll see in the documentary and as you see written in your pamphlets as well I have a screen I want the whole world to hear but I wonder if it will resonate so I hope tonight will resonate for everyone after the conversation there will be some time I have left for a few questions from the audience also to the queens of Syria so with that being said please join me in a warm welcome the queens of Syria and director all of whom represent the true meaning of nothing is impossible so I was just greeting them and we'll go ahead and start with the questions which I would say Arabic and English the first question of course from Syria and Omar how did you feel when you came to the United States and how did you feel when you came to talk to the press I'm asking the ladies and Omar how did you feel when you received the invitation to perform in the United States again, how did you feel when the visa rejected the visa on the question On the issue I was I was talking to the press I asked the news on the American press I'm talking to the press to the press and have a look at the US and in the press We were so happy when we received the application of suffering. I'm sorry, but there's a technical problem in the wiki, we're hearing our echo, so it's time for us to speak and translate, I don't know if you could put some of it, but we're trying our best here, should I translate what I said now? Okay, I'll try my best to translate and please do correct me if I miscommunicate anything to the audience. Is that okay, Sheree? Yes, it's good. I can also barely hear the answer, but I'll do my best. So let's go ahead. Please honey, complete. Okay, okay. Some of us were saying that they really wanted to come to the United States, they had a message to everybody here, and to the West in particular, they wanted everybody to know how much they had suffered the dire situation they were in, why they were forced to leave and what they had to go through, and the fear that's in their hearts that they carry with them all the time, and they feel really sad and brokenhearted that their visas were rejected just because they are refugees, it is not their fault, they were somebody back home and today they feel there are nobody and this incident made them feel that even more, and all they want is really to relay the message to you and to humanize themselves as well. Sheree, I missed on anything, please let me know. No, perfect. I think Fatma would like to speak now. Sorry, I think Fatma would like to speak now answering this question if she can. Yes, please, and then we'll go to the next question for time. I'm Fatmi, I'm one of the Syrian refugees. Do you like to answer Fatmi on the question? Yes, I like that when we came to America to travel, we were happy that we will visit a big and great country like America, so we will be able to relay the message as quickly as possible to the world, so that we can all feel that our suffering is standing next to us and giving us something greater than support. We were very proud of our rights, and of course we were just afraid that we wouldn't be able to be able to go back to the country. Okay, so Fatma was wanting to also answer the first question that I had asked in regards to the rejected visas to the United States, and she said that really it was a dream for them to come and visit such a great country, an inspiring country like the United States, and they felt that it would have been a way to relay their message even faster by being physically here in front of the audience today, and to have everybody feel how much they're suffering and how much support they really need, not just financial but moral support, and there's so much injustice that has been upon them that they feel that it's even more injustice to have their visas rejected, and from here I'm going to go on to the next question, I want to ask the question to Omar, I don't know if Omar is with us. Omar, why did you choose this Christian, and why did you think that it would be a challenge, and how did it affect you personally, and I will answer the question in English. I was just asking the director, Omar, why he chose to do this play, and if he ever thought that one day it could even be produced, and how it has affected him personally. Okay, okay, I will speak in English. Perfect. I want to add something to answer the first question that the woman was answering now. I just want to say that for me, I didn't really expect that the woman would take their visas from the first, I didn't feel they would take the visas, because I think now the situation in the whole world is really so complicated, and this will affect people somehow, so I really didn't think they would take the visas, I know it's so hard, and now I think, now when I am here now and speaking with you by SkyBee, and also woman speaking by SkyBee, and I cannot see audience, cannot talk to them, I think that all of us, the women who are the actress of this play, and the audience lose very important opportunity to be together in one space, that is theatre, and interact in a live way directly, which is I think this is the essential part of the theatre to this human live interactive, so I think it was like a lose for all of us. If you can continue and if you may answer to the second question. Actually I didn't choose this play, I think it's the last year Charlotte and Georgina, William also, all of them called me and they emailed me that they have this idea of a project to make Trojan woman, the text by Robertis, and try to perform this using a non-professional actor, they want to use women who really have this war problems and ask me to direct the play, and I think in that time I thought it's really very good, it's really brilliant idea, so I start to work on it, so the whole idea comes from them. And how did it affect you personally? At the first I want to say that it directly affected me in some way, but this one was really very special, really so special work, because it happened in very intense moment of my life and intense moment for my country Syria, so it was some important experience for me, it was hard sometimes, it was very sad sometimes, but it also was always fun and happiness sometimes. And I think that me and the cast work with me, and the woman, all of us, at the end succeeded to create the faith of freedom and art for two months, which was really so important for us. My question was to the queens of Syria, before we continue talking about the play, the Syrian Trojan women, please share with us your courageous journey from Syria to Jordan, and why you were forced to leave Syria, that and what was your life like in Jordan before the play and now after the play? Amar, my Amar, I didn't hear you Amar, I was from the Syrian women in the Masrahiyeh, Torwadah, we are from Syria, we left Syria because of the events, and the conflict and the war, the armed forces, and the war, and it was a lot of problems, and we were without the reason, we were exposed to a lot of things, we were the victims of the conflict, we decided to leave our children, the children, and we left our homes, our homes, our homes, our homes, and we were safe for our children and our lives, we didn't find a way to stay with us, because we were married, because I don't know, it was the land. And when you arrived in Jordan, how was your life, how, what did you do for a living? Yes, first of all, of course, in my answer, I was in the army, but the most important thing was that it wasn't the army, it was a lot of torture on the road, but it was a lot of torture, and we were forced to go inside the Jordan, it was a lot of torture on the road, and in Afghur, in Syria and in Jordan. Can you tell us something more about your life? My life, when I arrived, I went up the road, came here, reached the Jordan border, I didn't want to go in, I came to him, and I came back and left the road to Syria, to Lebanon, and I left Lebanon in the plane, but I came with my children, I was forced to go, the Syrian way, by the air, the way, it was a lot of torture, I was forced to go, I was forced to go, I was forced to go, I was forced to go, I was forced to go, I was not with anyone, I was born 14 years old, and my daughter is 6 years old, I stayed up until 6 am until 10 am, until I was able to get up, and I was able to go back to the last thing, I was forced to go, when someone was typing, it was a lot of torture, I felt that it was difficult and painful, that my son is from my country, and my son is from my country. Is this a limit? Yes, it is. I just wanted to ask Amar. Can you hear me? He's cutting off. Amar was just answering to the question, saying that they were forced to leave Syria, as civilians, they were caught in the middle of the fights between the Free Syrian Army, and of course the regime's army, the Syrian army, and they had to leave, they just fled with nothing but their children of course, and their families, they faced a lot of obstacles and challenges on the way, which made them feel very fearful of course, and especially at the borders, they were insulted, although Amar, in her case, she feels lucky that she had a passport on her, there are many other refugees who had to flee without their passports, and they had to face even more trouble. Amar had to split with her husband, so in moments like that, you never know if you're going to see each other again. They didn't let him in at the borders, he had to flee again to Lebanon, and go in from there, and when she reached the border, she couldn't get into the borders due to the Syrian army, and they were insulting her, and she was begging them from 6am to 10pm in the evening with her kids on her lap, just trying to get into the border, until they kind of physically threw her in and told her to go. So that was Amar's answer. My question was, how did this play change their lives, and what did it feel for them for the first time to actually be on stage? It's not an Amar. Would you like to ask someone else? Someone else would be, so we can get to meet all of them, please. Anybody there, if possible. This is Reem. But the sound is cutting off. I'm sorry. No, I was in that question, it's not a problem. Yes, of course. Okay. In reality, no, I'm not the second person to represent him, with me, in the exhibition, to represent him before now. So this was a new experience and a new kind of experience. The first time we did something like this, and we were convinced that we would reach our voice. The voice of people who didn't reach their voice. Those who are poor, those who don't speak their names, neither in the news, nor in the media, nor anywhere else. So I felt that the exhibition, and this exhibition itself, and we ourselves, were able to reach this voice. So Reem was just answering the question, saying that truly, none of us have ever acted before, this is a new and very unique experience for us. It has changed a lot for us, and it gave us hope that, perhaps, we can change the way people perceive us, and perceive Syria, and especially change for women, because women's voices are so marginalized, especially during conflict. And maybe through this theater play and through the media, we can deliver that message and help empower women. I have a question that I want to ask you, if I have a last question. So we have time for all of you. If I want that, I have time. I also have a question that I want to ask, and if I can, I will ask you a question, and the last thing I want to ask the other women. Okay, of course. Omar wants to ask a question, and if I can answer as quickly as possible, I am asking Omar, the Syrian theater director, that this has been a sensitive project politically. Would you share with us the challenges you have faced, especially external and internal political pressure? Omar, tell us. So, as you said, it's a very sensitive project, and a very sensitive time, really. And all of us as Syrians, or as individual artists, we have a lot of time, when we start to work on any political issues, which reflect our lives right now. I think that we have too many problems, too many challenges, too many problems, too many problems, too many problems, too many problems, too many problems, too many problems, too many challenges during this war. And I could say, as an example, was one experience, maybe the people now in Washington DC remember. In one point, when we were working, I think the producer, we have liked the pressures from, I think from NGOs who are specialized to work with refugees, just to... I think they asked them not to mention Bashar al-Assad in this play. They want us to do it without mentioning. And so they came to me and said that we are asked not to mention Bashar al-Assad in this play in any way. And I think it was a hard situation for all of us because I didn't want to make any censorship on the Roma because from the first time we entered this space, we promised them that this will be two months of freedom and they could express themselves, they could say whatever they want. So I think this was one of the hard experiences. At the end, the producer was really understanding and he kept going in the same way. I didn't change anything. And the women didn't change any stories, we didn't make any cuts and we make it really in three ways. But I think we had some like three, four days which was too much pressure until I... Until they figured it out. Omar, I just, can you tell me what were the internal political pressures that you were talking about? Yes, yes. This is also so important because, you know, the women come from different backgrounds and they have different experiences, they are not the same. And they didn't... each of them have different political views of what happened in Syria now, of what happened in Lebanon in Syria. They are really different. So, you know, it wasn't so easy to us, especially, I mean, about two weeks, I think before opening night, I mean, it wasn't easy for us to be, I mean, that all of us agreed on one message of this war and some of them want to cut from this story, some of them want to cut something else. I mean, it was really not easy. So, at the end, I remember that we said, this play is like... like, I mean, it's like a metaphor to let this play happen. All of you have to be agreed. All of you have to be agreed on one thing. And it works really as India because I think now, because the woman was really very responsible and really very brave. Thank you very much. And to all the ladies, obviously this has created a space for freedom of expression and dialogue and to help all Syrians unite. They are united. But to be able to make it on stage, and unfortunately, you're not here today in Washington, D.C., but you will be soon, I hope. We have a space, I guess, for two questions from the audience. If anybody would like to ask that from the audience. Yeah, please. There's a mic broken, so raise your hand. It's right down there, don't it? You will turn to it. I want to go to the women. Yeah, sure. So, I guess I'm looking to do this. You can wear me one, but yeah, go ahead, don't worry. No, I just wanted to ask a further point about the human eye. And so, the questions for one of the women, if they could just tell us about themselves, our kids, what they like to do. So their daily lives. I'm not sure they had one before. It happens to them, and we love to hear about that. I would love to hear about that. So, if anyone would like to ask a question about the life of your daily life in Syria, how did you change your daily life in order to live your daily life in the world? How did you change your daily life? So, if anyone could just tell you about themselves, what their family likes to do, what they like to see the human more than anything else. I'm Khaloud. Khaloud, some of you may say your voice is so beautiful. I'm Khaloud. I'm Khaloud. I'm Khaloud. Thank you. I'm Khaloud. Can you hear the question? Yeah. The first thing is that you have to relax and I was very happy, I had a very beautiful life. Until I started to go out to the public, my life was very beautiful. I had a new husband, I had a new wife, I was born, I separated him from my parents, he was very happy. We have many, many people who have supported us in many ways from Syria even from the beginning, just a little bit more, from Syria. Hello, my dear. I want to ask you, Khuloud, to answer your question. Her life was a very comfortable life. Her husband had his own store, they had just bought a new home. She has beautiful furniture in her house until the rockets came falling and until a massacre took place in her area and they had to flee walking over dismembered bodies. And it was very painful for them to see this and experience this. And they went, of course, they suffered until they reached the borders to Jordan. They had no compassion whatsoever from the Syrian security at the border that they would not want to let them in until they did let them in and she's saying that the security of the Jordanian border were even nicer than those on the Syrian border but they went through hell and back by the time they made it and these were people who were just living it all every day. I'm so sorry, I'm changing it. I think we're going to bring the rest of the panel up. Please come to your places at the table. We'll continue taking questions from the audience for the women. So hold on to your questions. We're just going to bring some other people in. So what do you think? Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. We're lucky now to be joined by several other panelists and you have all of their bios in your programs. I'd like to tell you to my immediate left from the Refugee Career Center at the Atlantic Council next to Kim from the United States Institute of Peace and Faisal Alhubri, the Executive Director of Bridges of Understanding. I'm going to begin with a question to Kim and I'm going to try to bring what we've talked back here together back into the lives of the more contemporary news. Kim, it's a little confusing hearing this because all we hear about on the news is ISIS and how important it is to go after ISIS and I'm not denying it but how then do we understand the importance of the humanitarian situation of the citizens of Syria? How do we understand how important that is in dealing with this humanitarian catastrophe relative to fighting ISIS? Hello everybody. I think you have to speak up a little bit. Yeah, hello everybody. The question of ISIS, every time lately somebody would mention Syria, they would think it's ISIS and I'm glad that you see and you witness that we have a big humanitarian problem and if we want to solve the problem of ISIS we cannot, it's hand in hand with the humanitarian issues. I've been going regularly to the refugee camps and I met this little boy called Mustafa in Atme camp. Mustafa has nothing to do. He's 16 years old, he has no school, he got no home. Easily in my other trip to Atme I couldn't find Mustafa. Mustafa has been recruited by ISIS because he has nothing to do. We've been calling the big organization, UNICEF United Nations, we need to get education for this. ISIS is recruiting our children, our Syrian children and we need to stop this. I'm glad that everybody knows now how dangerous is ISIS but we cannot neglecting the problem on the ground. Those women, every single woman I met in my trips, I was three weeks ago in Italy every single woman, they want to go back home. They want to go back home. This is a simple question. They don't want to have bad advance or sharing. They want to save their kids. So how to solve the ISIS problems is also to solve the humanitarian problem in Syria. Let's not forget the dictator who is the cause of all these problems. We need to think about it every package. We cannot just destroy our ISIS because we cannot leave the ground empty. We need to give those people hope. We need to give these youths hope that they will be more for them if they cannot and they want to go back home. So much. I think it's something very interesting that you've told us. We hear a lot about the ideology of ISIS but if I understand correctly you're telling us that very often it's simply filling a vacuum as people need money. We need something to do, we need to be able to support their family and they come along with the money. Finally, Tani, I'm going to ask you very similar questions but ask you to step back from a broader policy perspective. We've seen in the last two weeks a rather dramatic shift both in the American public and in the US policy. A shift from what previously kind of unfazed by 3 million refugees, nearly 200,000 people killed, 6 million internally displaced Syrians kind of unfazed by any of that with a humanitarian response to be sure but not a desire to actually go in and try and do something to change the situation on the ground. Now 70% of the American public is in favor of taking action in Syria and the president yesterday with the Congress is now speaking that action. How do you see the situation evolving and how do you weigh the two demands of the Syrian population of the humanitarian crisis and the ISIS situation? Thank you Cynthia and thank you all for your attendance. You know the past couple of years me and my colleagues have been working on the Syria issue in the Washington policy world and we've been streaming our lives out about the fact that this is important and not only is it causing a great deal of human suffering but it's laying the groundwork for political security deterioration that's very important to you. And over the past month we've gotten a lot more attention than we anticipated but that's it but all the conversation is about ISIS. Once a week I shut off my email which is not an hour or two of footage from Syria of things that are actually happening to day-to-day people and it's not just the refugees but just the sheer unfairness and unpredictability and injustice of people's lives there just to remember really that this is about this place and these people in it not only about their current suffering but the different directions that their lives could take now for us and all the world. Now, ISIS and the regime are things that happen to these people they're not them themselves or things of their but they're creation of things they have any say in shaping and there are two possible answers for ISIS and Assad for where we can go from here for the Syrian population but there's a whole broad range of a lot more complex answers in the middle of attention. There is a robust active portion of the Syrian society that has now been mobilized enough to play a role in shaping their future but us helping to shape that is going to be much more involved in the process than me dropping bombs and dropping some relief supplies and hopefully at best this ISIS situation can start a dialogue it's not a great or more honest dialogue about what kind of relationship we have in the conflict and what we can do for it in the way it's heading. Thank you so much for taking a really complex situation giving us a good clear answer Derek, I'm going to turn to you for another question. Yeah, and then we'll open it up in a moment. As I'm sitting here I'm struck again by the question of art and what these women have made the director of this space and have hoped to bring the art itself, the stories itself what art does, the work that art does not just that these stories are there but how they're told and Omar and the women's work this production is extraordinary in how it weaves the ancient Euripides tale and the personal narratives of the women of chorus of community and of course we can't we can just talk about that and show you glimpses of that so I'm going to turn to a friend and colleague Faisal of the Caljuburi with this remarkable organization Bridges of Understanding we are thrilled to collaborate with in an ongoing way and you guys traffic and culture and education personal diplomacy with intent to foster strong relationships between the U.S. and the Arab world and in that work it's so much about narrative and story I know and I just wonder given that commitment in that work if you could talk from your perspective a little bit about why you see this as such an injustice that these stories this is an artistic and a narrative question that these stories aren't able to make it to the stage we're sitting on right here Sure, thank you and first and foremost I just sort of want to thank you and Cynthia for one having us and the partners as Bridges of Understanding is partners on this Miriam Voices Festival I think it's important work and also to Charlotte and Georgie for really looking at taking this amazing opportunity to showcase art as a social movement but also theater as art therapy really looking at how this is significantly impacted these women that cannot be discounted in this conversation on a deeply emotional personal level I think I'll speak first and foremost as an Arab American myself and I think what's really disturbing to me especially in the western media is that we're being we're being defined by our own sort of hitlers and Mussolini's that's what our image is that's being put out there into the universe it's those personal narratives that are so significant and really shaping that whole story you really need I always say this it's that with any major atrocity you really need those anthrax that are on the ground those voices that really show what's happening and help to sort of define the humanity of it all and what allows those sort of atrocities to resonate on a grand or more global scale there are so many fantastic organizations out there doing great public policy work human rights work civil rights work so many statistics coming out there but those statistics do not resonate until you have a human face to put towards it and that's what we've seen today with theater theater is especially so profound because it's the one art form where the humanity of it all can't actually be denied in front of you you are having a visceral exchange with the audience with the actors on that stage especially in a format like this that interweaves the personal stories of these women that's why this in particular was so important and why it was so important in my opinion to have a home on an American stage in front of an American audience you know and then I think you know I think I don't want to use censorship as the word is maybe I do and I sort of pick it up from Ongar as well it's a really dangerous message to send out there if this type of art isn't given a home globally and isn't championed as a right and a necessity in the movement for global citizenship and because as the British director Richard Ayer says it's the best theater the best art really the art for the ages only comes out of times of complete social upheaval and crisis that's what you can cling on to that's it's you know when the soul is in crisis that you have great arts to share to share that common that common humanity and that's really that's why this was so important and why we need to make an active effort beyond the film beyond the documentary that's coming out there to make sure that these women are able to have a voice here on the stage thank you thank you so much I think now we're going to turn back to the audience and honey would you be nice enough to explain to the women in Ongar that we're going to take questions from the audience now we're welcome your questions to the women, to anyone on the panel I see two questions there please hang on just one quick second so you can explain to them go ahead please just as you can make a question and kind of as quickly as you can would be great to get as many in as we can can you hear me? yes, go right ahead I just wanted to say that my name is Lynn and I photograph the women and work with Charlotte and Georgie and I would like to say hello and you look beautiful I miss you and we're with you also mention, sorry as we're moving the mic around that we are joined and we appreciate it very much by some special guests from the State Department David Donahue Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary from the Council gave us so much of his time John and Ginzburg if people have questions about the visa issues I'm going to turn to all of you but now we're happy to take another question and we're really welcome the questions for the women too can we have the mic? warm hello to all the women and my question for you would be if you would give us in a nutshell a sentence of hope you would write in our hearts as a result of the theatrical work you did after all you suffered what would that be? thanks a sentence of hope is that what you asked? to make sure I understood a sentence of hope? a sound of the theatrical work with all the healing that comes along thank you would you like to add something? and answer your question also I believe that sometimes a few words can say everything and I would like to thank you all for your support and you can see now that our voice is here and I hope that the voice of peace will be heard around the world come back to my voice also may I ask a question perfect I would like to ask a question would you like to ask a question? otherwise we will go while they are thinking soon there will be a baby hi Shaan hi Shaan hello I know you are here I hope that the voice of peace will be heard around the world she is asking for some shoes introducing her beautiful baby daughter which is Anascus and she is asking what did you think what was your impression about what you saw today actually I would have wished that you saw the play itself but what is your impression have their voice does it reach on you? has the message been denied? any questions from the audience and honey you might just add I think the questions asking them what their life is like shows how hungry people are for their struggles hi Shaan it is just around two days to go from Damascus welcome this is here to represent the women of Syria she is here with the organization of peace initiative and for peace and democracy the queens of Syria and telling them what a great job we have been doing in how this truly helps to empower other women as well and express ourselves so, check I am Rasha I am from Syria I am Rasha I am from Syria I have a question why did you ask me why did you ask me why did you ask me why did you ask me why did you ask me okay Rasha is asking why why did the state department reject their visa anyone from the state department ever gets an invitation would our guests be gracious enough to answer recognizing that these are not the individuals who made the decision they are brave enough to come and answer that question so thank you thank you, first of all I want to recognize this is tonight about the ladies from Syria who are speaking to us from Amman and how wonderful it is to have them here on the screen and how wonderful it is to be here together discussing these issues that are so important to us these are real human issues and on the particular question first of all it's really important to understand as our friend here has shown we are a very welcome welcoming and open country we welcomed 70,000 refugees last year more than everybody else in the world every country in the world we have a million people get green cards in America every year that's a huge number every year and another 780,000 or so become American citizens every year and every year about 70 million people visit the United States many people here are part of the School of Foreign Service and I hope that you'll join the Foreign Service but part of the Foreign Service is that many many times you get to welcome people to the United States sometimes by law by lack of funds because a country finds itself in the midst of of chaos you can't do the things you want to do you may spend years building a democracy in a country working for democracy and have something happen as we are seeing now happening in South Sudan and it's all your work of a decade maybe and you hope that you can bring it back again in the case of Syria we had people who love Syria who were working in Damascus at our embassy with the people sending many many Syrian students who are still studying in the United States so we have a long long warm history but if you want to join the Foreign Service many many times you'll do a wonderful wonderful thing but you'll face some very tough decisions too and those are tough decisions that you're under bound by the law to follow and so in this case I don't want to talk about any particular issues or because of the privacy laws but I can tell you that the decision was made appropriately for this particular time in this particular day that they walked into the embassy a decision was made in accordance with US laws and that is part of being a part of the Foreign Service is to act in accordance with US laws but we certainly are very proud of this presentation and again I say on that particular day that they did not meet through accordance with law so thank you Thank you very much I think we have time for one more question and then we're going to conclude by showing one final clip here's a question right here by showing a clip of the documentary that would be great Thank you I just want to say I don't have a question I just have a comment about what we thought after we saw the video Okay, you can make a clip please So My name is Hager and I'm a Israeli from Georgetown University and I want to say that we are very, very much and we are very proud of you very, very much I mean unfortunately I don't want to I'm sorry I just want to say I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry but I just want to say that I feel that I feel that we are alumni that we do have one or two people here who speak English but if you and my translator for the rest of us thank you so much you were saying that she feels with them she feels for them and she's praying for them is that correct and may God be with them thank you wonderful note to conclude the discussion period and if we are ready I think it would be great to end all together with one more glimpse of the performance itself and then after that and if you can let the women know after that I think we can all stand and say goodbye and just so all of you remember we'll have a reception afterwards in the lobby and those of us who are here are happy to continue the conversation further although we've clearly had a lot of experts in the audience you should seek out also I'm standing I'm standing I'm standing I'm standing I'm standing I'm standing We're with you We're with you may God be with you give you the power to keep going in doing what you're doing is what I'm saying and if you don't mind if we just tell them one more thing and you can just repeat after me the Hajar try to tell you something if we can try in Arabic okay Arabic one more First word will be which means we are Makon means we are with you We are Makon Thank you