Making Soapies in Kabul

by Trudi-Ann Tierney

  Hmmm . . . She wasn’t really interested in looking out for some silly, blonde, western woman, but she’d consider it if I let her carry me upstairs to my room. I declined the offer but, quite powerless to resist, I was scooped up and carted to my door anyway.

  Despite Amy’s misgivings, I felt genuinely safe with Zarhawar. He was a local lad who clearly knew his way around and I personally believed that trundling around town in a local vehicle and hanging with my large Afghan posse made me comfortably inconspicuous. Plus, through Raouf’s connections, we also had a small team of police officers who escorted us around each day, although most of them seemed to be permanently stoned. Because they would regularly desert us—to go and eat, to pray at the mosque or to do some real policing—Jose and I devised a game called ‘What Would You Do if the Taliban Turned Up?’ Our options were always limited, but we could be pretty creative.

  ‘I’d grab a bamboo stalk, jump into that river, hide underwater and use the stalk as a snorkel.’

  ‘I’d run over to those goats and crouch down in the middle of the herd.’

  ‘I’d jump into the lighting box and close the lid.’ (I had actually tested the lighting-box trick and found that I fitted inside quite nicely.)

  What began as a game became a little more serious as the shoot wore on. Over time our police grew weary of the novelty of making television and, despite their regular demands for ‘fuel money’ always being met, they would often abandon us in the wilds of Nangarhar after only an hour or two of filming. Thankfully, we never got a chance to test any of our strategies. I strongly suspect that, if the Taliban had ever shown up, I’d have been capable of little more than wetting myself before completely passing out.

  Our three weeks of shooting in Kabul had been manic and, at times, utterly shambolic. But Paul and Massood, the head of our production company, had ensured that we had all the resources and assistance needed to muddle our way through the last-minute change of tack. Khan came to the set each day, to coach the actors through their dialogue; if some piece of equipment or an important prop had been forgotten, members of staff back at the office would be hastily dispatched to bring it to us; a diligent, young producer, Merzad (who was already stretched thin overseeing a weekly soap opera) was delegated the task of arranging our transport to the set each day and making sure that all the crew arrived on time. But once we hit Jalalabad, our bare-bones team was on its own and I quickly realised that my various crew members worked strictly to rule.

  The sound guy just did sound. If the lighting guy wasn’t required to set up lights, he stayed in the van, snoozing away his hash hangover. Our cameraman had a rigid policy that he wouldn’t carry anything else besides his lightweight camera as we trekked up mountains or waded across streams; he refused to contemplate that his free hand might possibly accommodate a tripod or a part of the crane. But with such a small team, this way of working was simply not feasible.

  I initially thought I could lead by example. ‘Hey, look at your boss! Watch me as I lug a beach umbrella and a make-up kit up a hill in 40-degree heat!’ But, because I didn’t have a specific role on set, they all thought it entirely reasonable that the ‘boss’ should earn her keep as a packhorse. Fair cop.

  I coaxed, I wheedled, I joked, I jabbed . . . and finally, I yelled. I screamed my heart out—my throaty baritone reverberating around the Jalalabad basin. Fortunately, Zarhawar didn’t consider ‘bellowing like a fishwife’ to be a security issue but, after about a week of this, Aleem confided to me that the crew got very scared when my eyes grew big and my face turned red. I gleefully told him to pass the news on that ‘If they don’t like it, then they shouldn’t do anything to make me get like that.’

  But it wasn’t just the crew who copped it, I yelled at actors too. At times it was completely justified, even necessary.

  One particular scene called for our drug dealer to get angry with his henchman and to slap him hard across the face. In rehearsals, he delivered a freakishly solid hit to the poor man’s jaw and I quickly called a conference. I have never been a fan of method acting and I demonstrated how the slap could be realistically delivered on camera, while explaining that the crack could always be added later in post-production. But, with great artistic conviction and a liberal dose of derision, the actors explained through Aleem that this was the Afghan way—the drug dealer would be delivering a genuine slap, and the henchman was enormously happy to receive it.

  So we shot the scene. Nine times. The drug dealer kept fluffing his lines and, after ten takes of being savagely beaten around the head, the henchman not surprisingly lost his love of method. He grabbed the drug dealer by the shirt, and an aggressive push and shove ensued. The director just stood back and let them vent, while the crew were delighted by the unexpected argy-bargy. It was only Mother’s booming voice that settled the fracas down.

  But there were times when my yelling shamed me beyond belief.

  Another actor, Insurgent #1, stumbled through his very first scene for eighteen takes. It was thirty-seven degrees; we were surrounded by at least fifty noisy, excited spectators; and we were desperate to get the scene done before we lost light. I confess to also being pre-menstrual. So when, on the nineteenth take, he fumbled his words five seconds into the scene, I completely spat the dummy.

  ‘You’ve had the script for three weeks! How can you not know your dialogue? This is completely unacceptable!’

  He didn’t speak a lick of English, but he totally got the gist. With his head bowed, he mumbled to Aleem and explained that he couldn’t read. My bad. Our ingenious improvisational casting process hadn’t factored in that eighty-six per cent of Afghans are illiterate. He was a major character, who we couldn’t simply replace, so the incredibly dedicated Aleem volunteered to spend his nights coaching him for the rest of the shoot.

  But my most mortifying moment was something that still makes me cringe and that Tiggy vowed she would never allow me to forget. Another stinking hot day, another huge scene, this time involving a boy being rescued from a well. Apart from Well Boy (a patient, sweet little fellow, who spent most of the shoot sitting at the bottom of a stinking, muddy, two-metre hole), we had fifteen child extras; it seemed that everyone in the village had come out to watch their son, brother, nephew or cousin perform for the camera. The well rescue also included a donkey, which was skittish and stubborn and was constantly trotting out of shot. Between the mental donkey, the noisy crowd and every second take being marred by some starry-eyed child looking directly at the camera, we were doing it tough.

  Then at 1pm, as we were setting up for only our third shot of the day, all our child actors started drifting away. I frantically called to Aleem to find out what the story was and he returned to tell me that they were all going to study. There was a UNICEF school just over the hill—a huge white tent that I had noticed in passing. It was time for their lessons and they had to go. As I watched the last of the children ambling out of the village square, I yelled as I had never yelled before: ‘NOBODY IS GOING TO SCHOOL TODAY!’

  I wish I could say I was pre-menstrual, or that my immediate recall of the child labour laws in Australia softened my resolve. But I was a deranged woman, blinded by the rigours of production, and all integrity just simply vanished.

  I can honestly say that I instantly regretted my demand, but am embarrassed to admit that I did not retract it. No children went to school that day and when, at the end of the shoot, I tried to get a photo of myself riding the donkey, it bucked me off. Instant karma.

  Once everyone had grasped the ‘all-for-one-and-one-for-all’ ethos, our little team really hit its stride, and I was constantly amazed by just how innovative and adaptable they could be. A motorcycle chase saw our lead cameraman lie spread-eagled on the bonnet of a car to film it, while two other crew members hung out the windows, holding him down by his ankles. When he decided he needed some height for a shot in another scene, our lighting guy held him up against a wall for a solid twenty minutes. A gunshot wound, complete with b
lood splatter, was created using a small plastic bag filled with red dye and attached to a tiny firecracker, which was then fitted underneath our actor’s shirt. A piece of cardboard was taped to the poor man’s chest, offering him some protection against the small explosion that would dramatically disperse the ‘blood’, and I was exceedingly impressed by how authentic it looked.

  The shoot was far from easy-going. My crew stood waist deep in streams to get the best camera angles, trudged up mountains at 4am to film sunrises, climbed into sewerage drains, hung out of trees and off the sides of cliffs, and would work late into the night to get a scene right despite knowing that they had an 8am start the following day. There was no overtime, no bonuses and clearly little regard for occupational health and safety practices. But it was Sidique and Aleem, in particular, who did the hardest yards.

  Tiggy prepared meticulous call sheets for our shooting days, setting out all the scenes we would be filming, but things rarely ever went to plan. Actors would simply fail to show up, or call Aleem on the night before the shoot claiming illness or some family crisis. An important prop car would suddenly have been sold to a cousin in Mazar, or a location that we’d been using just the previous day would mysteriously be no longer available (or available at four times the agreed daily rate). One week our actresses couldn’t make it back into Afghanistan because the border with Pakistan had been closed, and security threats were constantly shutting down various parts of the city.

  Aleem would phone us up at 6.30am each day to discuss our shooting plan and to advise us of any late-night or early-morning developments that would necessitate revising it. More often than not, the schedule would need some serious rejigging. Tiggy and I would then scramble through scripts, trying to cobble together a feasible, full day of filming before handing it over to Aleem and Sidique to make it all happen. While the rest of the crew showered, ate breakfast and smoked their morning cigarettes, Aleem and Sidique would be frantically trying to lock in actors, find new locations and gather together essential props.

  At night, after the rest of the team had retired to their rooms to play cards or watch TV, Aleem would trudge back to our guest house, where we’d sit together and go over the budget. Finance would only release our money in dribs and drabs, and we needed to give them three days’ notice to have funds transferred from Kabul to Jalalabad. So, along with providing them with daily expenditure reports, we would also have to devise some kind of estimate regarding upcoming expenses. It was a time-consuming, brain-wilting exercise, but at least I could have a wine or two to take the edge off it, and it was always a great relief to finally hit ‘Send’ on our accounting emails to Kabul.

  I think back now to October 2009 and the last day with my crew in Jalalabad. Tiggy and Jose had long gone by then, both headed off on overdue leave, and our already minuscule production team was down to just three. We were filming a huge party scene with around twenty-five actors—it was a flashback to our main character, Salam, as a teenage boy and meeting his future wife for the very first time. Our casting had failed to uncover a ‘Young Salam’, so Aleem had stepped up to take on the role.

  We arrived at the location at 5am to dress the set. I clambered over roofs and Aleem and Sidique climbed trees as we struggled to hang huge tarpaulins over the yard. We swept and cleaned, moved furniture and placed props, and by the time the rest of the team lobbed in at 8am, demanding to know where their Red Bulls were, we already felt as if we’d done a full day’s work. We were all tired by then, sick of living and working together and eager to get home. The day dragged on into infinity.

  The last shot was of Young Salam laying eyes on his ladylove for the very first time. Aleem, who had never acted before in his life, needed to smile, look suitably coy and generally enamoured of her, but by that stage of the game he was barely able to stand up. It didn’t help that the actress playing his love interest was already on her way back to Pakistan and, with nobody to play off, he was struggling to summon up any real passion. Finally our director, Sayed, suggested that I stand behind the camera to give Aleem someone to interact with and provide him with an eye-line.

  Sure, I was the only woman on set, but the thought of flirting with a boy who called me ‘Mum’ was a trifle off-putting. I couldn’t hold eye contact with him; I fidgeted and laughed and exasperated the bejesus out of everyone. Finally, when we took a short break so our cameraman could change his battery, Aleem approached me.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I’ll be good, I’ll do better,’ I quickly offered.

  But he just hit me with a stern, solemn look. ‘Mum, do you know that you are shaming yourself in front of us all?’

  Whoa. I was mortified and I finally got the whole shame thing—I was a disgrace to my team and unworthy of my tribe. It was an absolute killer! The wink and smile Aleem threw me before heading back to his mark only marginally tempered my acute embarrassment. I immediately transformed into a coquettish fifteen-year-old girl, and we scored the shot in the very next take.

  That night I shouted what remained of the team to dinner at an open-air restaurant on the river and thanked them all for their overwhelming awesomeness. They, in turn, each made short, shy speeches declaring their fondness for me, their hopes that they would have the opportunity to work with me again when I returned from Australia and their regrets over any mistakes they might have made.

  Sidique had to translate most of it, so I’m guessing there may have been a fair bit of gilding by the time it reached my ears but I cried like a baby anyway. Their obvious discomfort over my copious tears alerted me to the fact that I was probably shaming myself for the second time that day. But, whatever—I had a good six weeks back in Australia before I would see them again to live that one down.

  It was my first ever chopper ride. I hitched a lift home from a shoot in Jalalabad on an ageing, Afghan army helicopter that rattled and wheezed its way through the mountainous vista, and I copped hell for it that night from one of my expat mates. Over dinner he cited numerous examples of mechanical failure, pilot error and inevitable crashes, his diatribe punctuated by the words ‘silly’ and ‘reckless’. But after a few bottles of wine and a couple of rounds of single malt whisky, my irresponsible exploits had seamlessly morphed into some hilarious caper and I was being celebrated as ‘crazy’ rather than just plain old dumb.

  To be honest, the chopper ride was a glorious ending to a month of production hell, which began soon after I arrived back in Afghanistan in late December 2009. My chief purpose for returning at that time was to supervise post-production on Salam. Mum had fully recovered from her surgery and the broadcast of the series was looming, so I left a perfect Sydney summer to return to the biting cold of a Kabul winter. Then mid-January, I was hauled into an emergency meeting with business development and management and advised that I would be executive-producing a series of nine thirty-second TV and radio spots intended to counter the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs; basically home-made bombs). The strategy around the campaign was to promote security, good governance and development. It was a huge contract with an important external client; every element of the project needed to be produced and broadcast by the end of February.

  It was at the conclusion of this same meeting that I learnt that my future with Moby would almost exclusively be based around this type of work. Ostensibly, I was the head of drama; but in truth, I was nothing more than a propaganda merchant, paid to oversee production of TV and radio content that contained messaging for Afghans. The majority of Moby’s programming was self-devised, original and funded through advertising revenue, but there were particular projects fully financed by interested outsiders.

  The official term for what I was facilitating was ‘Psychological Operations’, better known as PSYOPS, which basically equated to identifying target audiences and influencing their values and behaviour to suit the objectives of, in the case of Afghanistan, NATO and its allies. I must confess that, up until a month before I started this role, I had been completely ignorant of the whol
e PSYOPS scene. I know now that Psychological Operations have been extensively utilised throughout the history of modern warfare and that it encompasses a whole raft of initiatives that fall into three types of propaganda—White, Grey and Black.

  White PSYOPS is where the source of the propaganda is fully acknowledged—think leaflet drops and loudspeaker missions over Viet Cong territory during the Vietnam War. With Grey PSYOPS, the source of the propaganda is not acknowledged and it can actually appear to originate from a non-hostile or indigenous source.

  Black PSYOPS is freaky business. It’s unashamedly deceitful and the propaganda is actively ascribed to a source that is not at all responsible for it. It’s generally used to stir things up. When I was still working at The Den, there was a rumour doing the rounds that a prominent and well-respected mullah in Kabul was, in fact, a Jew. All the Afghan staff had been talking about it, but nobody could really tell me where the information had come from. In hindsight, I’m guessing this was some clever Black propaganda.

  Salam was an exercise in Grey PSYOPS and most of my work would fall into that area, with a bit of White here and there.

  The PSYOPS media industry was big business and we operated in a highly competitive market. Although there was no television at all under the Taliban, there were now forty-seven TV channels and one hundred and fifty radio stations in Afghanistan, along with an abundance of small local production houses. So the bidding process on the various projects on offer could be fierce. We had an entire arm of the company dedicated to sniffing out requests for proposals and potential grants, and writing up and submitting the formal applications. They effectively managed the project in terms of client liaison, while my team did all the creative and production work.