A? few years ago, a remarkable, Egyptian American filmmaker was offered a wish on winning the famous TED prize in California. The wish of Jehane Noujaim was for world peace. On Saturday night by the pyramids by Cairo, and in hundreds of other venues across the world, the vision of Jehane started to take shape.
In a world long driven by war, hatred, despots, anger, division, and lack of forgiveness, it is easy for the cynical to hold the upper hand and difficult to forge true relationships of value and to see how we can really help and work with each other. Emotions can easily turn people away from what the right path of action should be.
My experience of a cold and windy Saturday night was that the medium of short films helped to hold the attention in a variety of ways, helped to open our eyes to see the hope that people have in the most desperate of situations, helped to show that love for each other across the divides and the forgiveness of violence bridge the gaps of misunderstanding which we all have for each other.
As a response to the article of Sarah Carr (“Panacea Day, published May13 on page 8), I would like to offer my own view of the event. The whole staging of Egypt’s Pangea Day event took place in only three weeks, in what was a superhuman effort, with many people involved from many backgrounds.
While I sympathize with Sarah over the seating (this was compounded by the cold wind), it did not detract from the event itself, and the side screens were well positioned for everyone to see, since the main screen was behind the stage.
I think that Sarah missed the key point, too, and focused on a lack of comfort, as if the review was of the event as entertainment, which really seemed to eclipse the true value of the evening. My own view of the night was that it was the start of something both interesting and powerful.
To highlight the meaning of love, we saw a man explain that after over 20 years of marriage, his wife and he fell in love only two years ago. And from an older woman that the death of her husband had dimmed her world. Several inspiring films delighted in what the child within most of us really wants to see. The samba dancing fingers of one film were seen to be those of a wheelchair-bound young woman, while another had children in Mozambique playing football with anything they can find, while a cartoon story showed a man who changes the world around him, and himself, with origami.
There were truly humbling moments. Christiane Ammanpour of CNN interviewed two former Lebanese civil war fighters who had once hated each other’s sides but had found, later, that this was based on ignorance and they found that they had very much in common. The Palestinian man jailed in an Israeli prison embracing an Israeli woman whose son had been in the Peace Now movement, but who had been killed in a suicide bombing, was touching in the extreme. The meetings of ordinary men and women from the Palestinian and Israeli communities who had lost family and loved ones in the violence to come together to work for peace, having forgiven the other side, was also, for me, incredibly moving to see.
I am the grandson of someone killed in that conflict, in 1947, and my family forgave a long time ago, those who killed him. My family knew the horror of violence and suffered from its consequences, but learned that forgiveness is an essential element in living. To see it in others is recognition that forgiveness of the violence inflicted by others has to happen before true healing. And then, hopefully, love can start when the communication and dialogue begins, as we saw in Europe after the massive violence and Holocaust of the Second World War.
I am not in the same camp as Sarah who noted “this type of hope-and-love peddling is not everyone’s cup of tea and “this writer and her companions were also not touched by the feelings of world unity expressed. When violence touches one, there is no room for the complacent cynic.
What Jehane’s wish says is that if we see each other, and then communicate with each other, through the media of short films and live events, then the process of understanding can help to forge a real change. That message did come across on Saturday, and I look forward to more Pangea Days.
Angus BlairCairo
