“We want to find out what your working conditions are, anything that we can do to help you,” Otwell tells the young women at the factory. He speaks in English slowly, for the benefit of an Arabic translator, who then turns to an Arabic-speaking sign-language translator to sign Otwell’s questions to the seamstresses. | The girls’ hands start flying as they tell Otwell about their hated boss. —Tara Copp —Iraq behind the cameras: a different reality (Knox Studio/Scripps Howard)
The angle of this story is that TV cameras cover the bombings and the protests, but don’t cover the everyday progress that shows that parts of Iraq are improving, with the help of the U.S. forces. Regardless of the political context, I found this linguistic viginette oddly touching.