Kefah Allush had to adjust his strategy in the Middle East while creating the human story program Oasis in the Orient. If he had been a white blond man, he would get away with asking stupid questions out of the blue, the program maker said on Wednesday with The Telegraph.
“They constantly think I know how it should be,” said Allush, who is of Palestinian descent and speaks Arabic, about his interviews with people in the Middle East. “I can’t just enter a Bedouin camp and say,” Where are the women? “(Bedouin women live separate from men, ed.)
“If I had been a blond, blue-eyed man, I could have asked any silly question,” said the 50-year-old Sonja Barend Award winner in 2019 for best television interview. “That’s why I have to choose a strategy.”
Allush says he took it easy to gain trust from the people he spoke to for the program. According to the program maker, it is unusual for them to have a conversation with someone from Europe who looks Arabic and speaks the language.
Oasis in the Orient can be seen on NPO2 on Wednesday from 8.30 pm.
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