I first met Kadidja on a September afternoon in midtown Manhattan. I was walking towards Grand Central Station and saw her sitting on a milk crate selling newspapers - The Daily News. She had on a pink hajib and sat on a plastic milk crate with incredible grace, her little feet clad in flip-flops even though the air had started to get chilly. Her image stunned me, glowing almost radioactively against a dreary white sky and the midtown rat race.
I walked past, about to enter Grand Central, but then stopped and gathered up the courage to go back and talk to her. As I approached her I told her that I was a filmmaker and thought that she might be a great subject for a video. I asked her about herself, and she told me she was 20-years-old, a refuge from Chad and studying business at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. She told me she worked on this street corner selling newspapers for her uncle every day after school. She said her uncle would never allow her to be in the video, that he was extremely strict, not allowing her to do anything other than go to school and work for him. I told her it must be very difficult for her to be a student in New York City, living the life of a modern American girl, and yet be treated with this kind of control and patriarchy. Her eyes lit up with response to this, as if to say, "yes, yes". I told her that I understood what she was going through, even though we were so different. I told her that she wasn't alone. I think she was very happy to hear this. We talked some more, and she told me more about her life.
I didn't want to put Kadidja in a difficult situation - with her uncle, or with her religious restrictions. So I said goodbye and wished her luck with everything. I thought I would have to abandon the idea for a video about her, since I had nothing to shoot, no one to work with. But I decided that it was her story that was important, and I had that. So I found an actress to play Kadidja, and a separate girl from the Ivory Coast to do the voice-over. I found a hajib on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, scouted a corner in mid-town, and shot the actress playing Kadidja perched atop a milk crate on a muted afternoon in October. And even though I couldn't shoot Kadidja, I was able to tell her story, and to have her voice be heard.
Tara Milutis