TV debut - coming soon!

last sunday I was roused from slumber by a phone call from a friend (Iraqi whose father was something high up in government and so his family is high on the list for kidnappings and ransoms. This being the case they all live outside of Iraq...) who told me to hurry to meet him for, er, filming. Now, this being a sunday I was due for a Farsi class which made me even quicker to take him up on his offer, despite extreme heat. That and the fact that he promised payment. a couple of hours and five russians later (four guys who were muslim converts and a girl from st petersburg who spoke english like madame kleb out of 'from russia with love') we arrived in a very run down district of southern damascus. i briefly wandered whether my friend had taken a leaf out of his fellow citizens' book and started rounding up foreigners for the purpose of ransoming them. We were bundled into a house and given khaki overalls to wear and navy blue or grey leather aprons and then directed into a warehouse nearby where everyone was busy filming. It turns out we were supposed to be playing the parts of workers in a sweet factory that produced some very suspect nougat nutty thing which was proudly though dubiously labelled "delises orientale" with shameless disregard of the french language. The warehouse, being full of cameras and lights and no air conditioning or even a semblance of a fan was unbearably hot which meant regular breaks had to be taken to re-apply the melted faces of the actors. Of course, being extras we could afford to look like sweaty disgusting workers, and to make matters worse to add authenticity to the scene we were told we had to wear rubber gloves. The only way to cool ourselves was to flatten some of the sweet boxes and use them as improvised crude fans. So this is progress. When we took a brief break i danced for joy and was promptly named shakira. This woeful nickname stuck for the rest of my time on set and the day after. The russians and my iraqi friend found it amusing. i found it ironic that someone as unlike shakira as myself could be considered worthy of such a title. There was slight compensation in the fact that one of the russians was named jackie chan because he apparently resembled the man himself. Thus it was that Shakira and Jackie Chan were found together handling slimy sugary nougat in a roasting hot sweet factory in a distant district of damascus.

As the day wore on I found out that the filming appeared to be for a series set in the 60s between France (hence the need for foreign looking workers) and Egypt. The director himself was apparently very revered and even I felt as if I recognised the principle actors. Later on during the day the director was getting frustrated that he couldn't find anyone who spoke french. One of the crew had heard me speaking french to one guy and enthusiastically volunteered me. With alacrity the director took me aside and gratefully spoke french and gave me the eternal and highly memorable lines, "je pense qu'il est dans la salle de huile." Somewhere, in some obscure egyptian soap there is a shot of me with a chunk of nougat in my hand beads of perspiration on my forehead delivering these lines in my best french accent. I hope one day to track it down and muse upon the insanity of the day.

Which ended with us at 11o'clock at night throwing wilted petals and holding baskets of tragically dead looking flowers stuck haphazardly into oasis in a pantomime of a wedding held in the sweet factory with a bright orange bride in a shiny white wedding dress standing in the middle flanked by two (a little too avidly) grinning women. what an ending.

Ending? Oh if only...they insisted i returned for filming the next day to play the part once again of the generic european. To ensure my return they didn't pay me, obviously wise to the fact that arab style filming is not always to the taste of foreigners for whom the novelty quickly wears thin. All the same the next afternoon at 4 o'clock i found myself in a servis with the russians that was blithely heading out of damascus in the direction of the lebanese border. Just as I thought I should tell someone that I hadn't brought my passport as I had not been aware that our next location was in the neighbouring country with whom my relationship has been somewhat strained, we turned down a dirt track and headed instead towards a large area that said 'military zone'.

Next to aforementioned zone was a bizarre citadel that resembled some fortress of the mamluk era. inside was a surreal hotchpotch of buildings that dated from various periods of middle eastern history and were in various states of disprepair. We entered through a portcullis and were welcomed into one of the areas and politely told there were apricot trees nearby but not to wander too far outside because there were lots of snakes about. Actually they warned us about this AFTER I had gone for a walk which I thought highly considerate but rather badly planned. Poisoned foreigners do not look too good in the background of any soap opera.

Shakira was welcomed to the set and then prompty ignored for about 4 hours during which time she met a french lighting technician who seemed as confused as she was that he was in the middle of the syrian countryside working for an arab muselsel. He commented on his hatred of arab style filming (lots of fast zooms to close ups, cut cut cut, overly dramatic music etc) and mused over his imminent return to london where he is based.

I shall return to the first person now. I spent my time wisely looking round various different areas including souqs, villages and machiculated city defences. I stumbled upon a whole load of horses being kept for period dramas and was offered a ride on one. it was great fun appreciating this odd and suprisingly green place from an even odder position atop of a horse.

Upon my return to the main area of filming after an absence of perhaps an hour (they had thought i had been bitten which is when i learned that there were actually snakes around) I was hurried into the most frightening place i have thusfar experienced - an arab film make-up room. I was treated to the full make-over - my face was turned a pale shade of orange, my eyebrows were made black and caterpillar like because they weren't plucked to within an inch of their life like arab women tend to do, my hair was sprayed and pinned, but thankfully not straightened, my lips were painted a shade of red worryingly close to the colour of the rind babybel. i was then herded into the set, given a glass of bright orange fizzy drink and told to pretend to be talking to my fellow russians. The bride from the previous day made a re-appearance, as did the other actors and the crew members who evidently enjoyed my discomfort at my transformation into a drag-queen doll. The decor led me to believe that Shakira, removed from the sweet factory, had been transported into a rural hunting lodge.

The filming only took an hour or so and then we were bundled back into the servis, paid, and farewelled. On the way back to town the servis was transformed into a disco with pimped up coloured flashing lights and very loud debke music. i was still in makeup when I arrived back home where my flatmates promptly laughed at me. Evidently arab makeup does not suit foreigners.