FEATURES
SPRING 2014
w ellesley m aga zine
THE CURRENT FILM THAT I’M WORKING ON IS FOR THE PBS FLAGSHIP STATION WGBH. WE’RE PRODUCING A SIX-HOUR SERIES ON PILGRIMAGE IN DIVERSE FAITH TRADITIONS: BUDDHISM, HINDUISM, THE YORÙBÁ RELIGION, AND THE ABRAHAMIC TRIAD.
sacred seasons: the Hajj and Ramadan, the month of fasting. There’s an Islamic museum with artifacts dating back 1,400 years, and a high-tech, virtual museum about the life, times, and teachings of the prophet. Lots of hotels; no bars. March through September can be very hot. Capturing the Hajj on Film
our search bearing no fruit. Until I surrendered. I utterly gave up, as in throwing my troubles aloft for a greater power to resolve, rather than casting hope downward, resigned. “Muslim,” after all, means someone who submits to the will of God. “God is most Merciful and Compassionate,” I said to my Saudi companion Khaled, quoting the Qur’anic verse Muslims use in every daily prayer. “So we will find fi her.” Within minutes, we were inside her tent. (The National Geographic film fi can be seen at bit.ly/1jMZvT2.)
The first time I covered the Hajj was in March of 1998, when I made a three-part series for public television’s Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly. Privileged to be the first American woman Gender Disrespect to report the Hajj for US broadThe current film that I’m cast, I found myself having working on is for the PBS flagto choose between 105+ F in ship station WGBH, the one the sun or 105+ F in the shade that brings you Downton Abbey and Sherlock. It preof buses that were idling everywhere. In every way, it was a mieres nationwide in December. trial by fi fire: I arrived with no We’re producing a six-hour permission, no crew, and no series on pilgrimage in diverse idea where to find the main faith traditions: Buddhism, character I’d seen off at JFK in Hinduism, the Yorùbá reliNew York just a week before. gion, and the Abrahamic triad. On that journey, this skeptic Teams went to Lourdes with experienced the power of wounded American veterans, prayer in real time. After pingto Jerusalem, and I took on ponging from one government Mecca and the Hajj once again. offi fice to another across the I got slammed from the congested city, pleading for a press pass, I get-go. In 2003, I was assigned a competent MEHDI WITH returned to my hotel room on the verge of defeat. and effective government official fi who accomTHE KA’ABA IN THE “Wellesley women would rather die than fail,” panied me on my National Geographic project. BACKGROUND I remembered my colleague Judy Towers This time, I was assigned just the opposite: a 20-something, let’s call him “Ahmad,” who knew nothing Reemtsma ’58 telling me when we were at CBS News together in the 1980s. So I prayed very hard, with my head about journalism, filmmaking, hard work, or manners. This to the floor; Muslim ritual prayer literally brings you to your young man’s tasks were simple: make sure the car and driver knees. The instant I said, “Amen,” the phone in my room were ready and waiting to take us from place to place, walk rang. “Your prayers have been answered.” It was a man’s with us where cars could not go, and show our papers to voice. Suddenly I was credentialed and began paving a offi ficials who inquired about our legitimacy. Instead, neither path toward success. (You can see the three-part series at: he nor the car showed up on time; when we were stopped, bit.ly/1oldpMm.) he did not show our permissions. Rather, he went for tea with whoever had halted our work. I’d never seen anything In 2003, I directed an hour-long documentary called Inside quite like Ahmad’s insolence and antagonism before. Mecca for National Geographic Specials. By now, I was a Meanwhile, we carried on as best we could, keeping up believer in miracles. So when one of my three main subjects, with our pilgrims, who were at prayer before dawn every an Irish-American woman, was nowhere to be found among tens of thousands of tents and 2 to 3 million people on the day and bedded down well past midnight. Sometimes, it vast Plain of Arafat on the most important day of the pilgrimseemed we were functioning on coffee and intention alone. age, I didn’t panic. For three hours, my Saudi government I’d negotiated permission to conduct interviews with associate and I wandered among the tents and lightly leafed Wellesley’s Muslim chaplain, Quraishi, and her husband neem trees, looking for the campsite where she was supposed inside a major hotel one day, and Ahmad showed up ostento be. Walking through that February afternoon, we saw sibly to vouch that we were in fact journalists sponsored by people weeping with sorrow for mistakes made in the past. the government (he had been hiding our press passes for We heard cries of joy. People gave out water. On we trekked, days). Instead, he argued with the hotel’s general manager
SHAKEB AHMED
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