Debates without the words

You see the darndest things on TV … especially when all you do is see it. Hit the mute button, and suddenly you’re attentive to a whole range of nonverbal communication: body posture, facial expression, hand gestures, clothing. Modern psychologists tell us what fortune tellers and card sharps have always known: that these signals, more authentically than words, reveal a speaker’s true mood and mind.

Now switch the audio back on, but (difficult to do) listen only to the tone, pitch and pace. Ignore the meaning of words. Concentrate merely on how the voices sound.

Reprogrammed and set to go? Let’s re-run two important confrontations 10 years apart: a presidential election debate in October 1992 and last Thursday’s head-to-head U.N. speeches by the secretary-general and the American president. The first led to a hilarious set of observations. Where will the second lead?

The 1992 TV debate was between a president (Bush One), a governor (Bill Clinton), and a billionaire (Ross Perot). But the real star was my Afghan houseguest, Hajji Ahmad Ali. His story serves as prologue.

“Hajji” (the honorific accorded those who’ve made the Mecca pilgrimage) was recuperating from a double hip transplant, the first ever performed in Princeton, N.J. Cause of problem? When suspected (correctly) of aiding the anti-Soviet Afghan Resistance, Hajji was seized by the communist secret police. They knew of his incipient arthritis and customized his torture accordingly.

Hajji spent that winter waist-deep in the freezing water of an irrigation ditch. His hips and legs froze so that, instead of walking, he scuttled like a crab. He was led to periodic interrogations by a rope tied to his wrists. Its other end was tied to a jeep which dragged Hajji over rocky ground, waited outside the third-degree chamber, and dragged what was left of him back to the ditch. They let Hajji go in the spring. With his family he scuttled to exile in Iran, then Pakistan.

I learned of his case, some favors were returned, and Hajji was flown to the United States by our government – free. Princeton Hospital admitted him – free. Dr. Richard Fleming performed the operation. Fleming, on first seeing Hajji’s appalling X-rays sent from Pakistan, had exclaimed, “My God! I’d like to get my hands on that guy.” He got his wish, did the difficult procedure, and made repeated house calls afterward – all free. God bless you, fellow Americans.

Hajji, speaking no English, convalesced at my house. We’d chatter in Persian when I was home. When I wasn’t, he split his time between reading the Koran and watching TV. Unable to understand the televised words, he listened for intonations and commented to me afterward on the character of people thus observed.

Come the debate, I listened closely to what was said, to the verbal text. Hajji couldn’t understand a word but watched politely anyway. After all, here was an election (something new and miraculous) in the country (likewise miraculous and altogether magnificent) that had enabled him to walk again. Afterward, to make small talk, I asked his opinion.

“How can I say,” he began modestly, “not understanding the words?” I reminded him of earlier TV observations. “Well,” he said, “in that case let me say that we are thankful to the old one, Boosh, who with the great Reagan gave us Stingers to shoot Russian planes. But I don’t think he has many new ideas. Maybe, like me, he’s too old.” (Hajji was a lean, leathery 63. He had astounded his hospital nurses by doing chin-ups on a bar above his bed one day after the operation. “Doesn’t it hurt,” one asked. Hajji just grimaced and kept doing chin-ups.)

“What of the other two?” I asked.

“The funny-looking one with big ears [Perot] has more energy, but I’d be careful. What that man really wants is power.”

Then came a prophetic punch line: “The young one [Clinton] has lots of energy and also intelligence, but I’d be careful of him as well. I wouldn’t trust him.”

Hajji returned to his exiled family in Quetta, Pakistan. A year later he was back in Afghanistan, walking much of the way. One son has earned three universities degrees in the United States, works in a prominent Baltimore law firm, and – as this piece is written – is in Kabul helping the Karzai government. Another son taught school in Quetta and then, at 17, started a school of his own … for girls. This month he begins junior year at the University of Chicago. Hajji’s daughter is a doctor serving her people on both sides of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Hajji Ahmad Ali died in August 2000, full of years and pride. As Muslims, Christians and Jews all say, may he rest in peace.

And thank you again, fellow Americans. This instance of your generosity in health care and education has given new hope to one family and is helping to reconstruct Afghanistan. Directly and indirectly, it will also benefit America.

Now for the other videotape, recorded last week as the United Nations opened its 57th General Assembly. World leaders were wall-to-wall on East River Drive, but attention focused on U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.S. President George W. Bush. Their speeches, while not billed as a debate, clearly had that feel and implication.

Did you see or hear the speeches live on TV? Or read the texts afterward? Either way, as English speakers, you and I probably concentrated on the words and their meanings. That’s fine.

Convinced that we’re at a crossroads and remembering Hajji Ahmad Ali, I also taped both speeches. And, later, re-played them without the audio: a wordless universe full of non-verbal signals. What do they tell us? What would Hajji say?

Fact is, I’m not sure. Hence let me simply list some descriptive observations … and wish that Hajji were here to interpret them.

Things began with a soundless photo-op: Annan and Bush together in front of the U.N. and U.S. flags. Annan (consummate diplomat) greeted Bush (powerful visitor) and – did you catch it? – invited the American, in effect, to trade flags. “You stand in front of the U.N. flag,” Kofi’s outstreched arm implied, “while I stand in front of the American flag.” Off guard, W had the grace to comply … but leaned away from the global image and toward the Stars and Stripes. (Any comments, Hajji, on the symbols of multilateralism and unilateralism and who’s afraid of association with which?) The two men shook hands, again for the camera, and then came the long-awaited speeches.

Kofi Annan, scion of African aristocracy, went first. Dress: medium-gray suit and plain black tie. Posture: erect. Gestures: almost none. Facial expression(s): really only one – a calm, unchanging, unthreatening, but entirely serious gaze directly at the camera and the world.

George W. Bush is likewise the product of aristocratic genes, even if his life has not also epitomized noblesse oblige. Dress: a suit so dark I couldn’t tell blue from charcoal, and a plain red tie. Posture: erect and mobile, turning this way and that for dramatic effect. Frequent lean-in. Occasional back arch. Gestures: not many but more than the secretary-general’s and with more animation overall. Facial expressions: various including furrowed brow, raised eyebrows, and a mouth whose angles altered considerably but never smiled.

(Invitation to Bangor readers: You be Hajji Ahmad Ali. Going by these non-verbal signals – and checking your own videotape to make sure I’ve described them fairly – what have you got so far? Any indication of the inner person behind the veil of words? What’s that? You want to hear their voices – tone, pace, pitch – as if, like Hajji, you can’t understand the words and won’t be distracted by them? Hard to do, but let’s try.)

Annan’s voice is like his visual appearance: calm, serious, diaphragm-produced, and essentially the same from sentence to fully structured sentence. Bush’s voice is likewise serious but more in the throat, more varied in pitch, and more given to staccato phrasing. (Any help in terms of temperament and character?)

Given the above, let’s end with questions: Does this exercise speak to personality types? If so, which of these men would you prefer as head of the United Nations? Which would you prefer as head of your own country?

Don’t feel limited. You’re allowed, at least in wishful thinking, to prefer the same man for both.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. He was last in Afghanistan in May on a U.S. government contract.