“ ‘A man’s name means nothing to the lion’ – what the actual hell is that supposed to mean?”
Sensenbrink looks around the room. Some of his colleagues rapidly tap the phrase into their phones. Sensenbrink sighs.
“Can’t he just keep his trap shut? Finally we get someone who looks like he might be the real goods and then he starts talking bollocks.”
“. . . the ideal first name for those born under the sign of Leo . . .” one assistant says quietly.
“. . . for more than ninety years the name LOEWE has stood for quality in consumer electronics . . .” a man’s voice reads out.
“It’s got to be some African proverb. There must be a www.africanproverbs.com.,” Sensenbrink says.
“Already tried that.”
“Doesn’t matter. The question is: what does he mean by it?” Beate Karstleiter remarks. Sensenbrink gives her a friendly nod. Karstleiter may be a bootlicker, but at least she can guess what he’s thinking. There are enough people in this company who rush to show their obedience, but then their obedience rushes off in directions that aren’t helpful to anyone.
“He’s saying that our questions aren’t important.”
“Or that we’re not lions.”
“Of course we’re not lions. But is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Bad. Surely everyone wants to be a lion. Lions are proud and strong.”
“Maybe not in Africa. There, lions could just as easily be dangerous and wicked.”
“Which would make us harmless and good. Because we’re not lions.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake . . .” Sensenbrink looks around. Discussions like this ought to be shut down at once; they produce nothing but crap.
“Well, the lion doesn’t actually do anything. It’s the lioness who does all the work. She hunts.”
Exactly. All this gender crap. But what can you do? People want to talk, talk, talk so they can put themselves in the picture. You can’t forbid them from speaking. If you did, they’d stop working altogether.
“He did say ‘lion’, in English. Not ‘lioness’.”
“I thought it was lionelle . . .”
“Like Mrs Messi?”
Now it’s getting too silly. Sensenbrink applies the brakes. “Let’s have the next one!”
The assistant says something into a mobile. The lion man goes out and another man comes into the room, wearing shorts, sliders and mirrored sunglasses. There is something visibly uncertain about him; he walks into the room as if fearing an ambush. A voice from the still-open door seems to tell him that a camera is transmitting his picture. He immediately stands up straight. The voice says something else, and he pushes his sunglasses up onto his head.
“Christ alive! Where did they drag this pimp up from?”
“Look at the trousers!”
“What the . . .?”
“Are they taking the piss?” Karstleiter says. “Ask them what the hell’s going on.”
The assistant mutters something into her headset, then says, “Apparently he was quite different in their preliminary chat.”
“Quite different . . . quite different. Are they blind? What’s that on his wrist?”
“That can’t be real, can it?”
“Is that a Rolex?”
“Yeah, but it’s a fake.”
Sensenbrink bends over to his microphone. “Tell me, are you doing any kind of checks before you shove them in front of the camera? It’s bad enough that he shows up at your end looking like that, but imagine what we’re thinking when we see him preened like a pimp? Why did no-one tell him to take that fucking alarm clock off his wrist before we got a glimpse of him? Do you know how much this whole session is costing? Dedicated line, equipment, half of management sitting around here. Yes, sorry. I’m sorry too. Sorry, my arse! Just do your job. Next!”
They see the pimp turn towards the door and hurriedly take off his watch.
“What’s going on? What’s he doing? Fuck his stupid watch! He ought to have thought about that earlier . . .”
Now an elderly lady appears on the screen, angling the microphone on her headset closer to her mouth. “He says it’s not his watch,” she says, trying to appease Sensenbrink. “He says he just borrowed it to—”
“Yeah, yeah, too bad! Tough shit! We’re a private T.V. company, not the Salvation fucking Army. No brain, no gain!”
All of a sudden the pimp drops to his knees and starts to cry. He blubs a few words into the camera: “angel” and “I can aider” – it becomes less and less intelligible. Inside that small room a bear, a mountain, a brick shithouse of a man collapses into a heap. He rips off his shirt to reveal a disconcertingly scarred chest.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Now he’s a victim too.”
“But we can’t take him just because he’s a victim.”
“Fuck-a-doodle-do.”
“Woah, that’s pretty major.”
“I can’t see.”
The pimp clasps his hands in front of the camera, he says “famille”, and looks imploringly at the elderly woman and into what, on him, looks like a little camera bag.
“Oh no!”
“We weren’t looking for a cry-baby.”
Sensenbrink can see the mood shifting. Now it’s time to make a decision.
“Guys, nobody wants to punch the puppy, but we’re still in the business of making entertainment. I specifically asked for a tough guy. Not someone from an aid organisation, but a real refugee. A sensitive type who’s witnessed a whole heap of suffering, but it hasn’t broken him.”
“Nor robbed him of his humanity,” Karstleiter adds.
“Precisely. Hard, but with a heart. And I’m afraid me no see no ‘hard’ here.”
“And no English either.”
“Huh?”
“We asked for English,” Beate Karstleiter reminds him. “But I thought I heard French there.”
“Oh, right. Yes, exactly! Why’s the cry-baby blubbing in French?”
The elderly lady tries to help the sobbing giant to his feet. She asks him something, to which he yells “English” several times, but unfortunately more often “anglais”.
“Fuck me, get rid of him! Get him out! Out! Out! We haven’t got all fucking day. Jesus, Hackenbusch’s English is bad enough. She can only speak French when she . . .” Sensenbrink struggles to find a way to finish his sentence.
Two production staff haul the crumpled hulk out of the room. He appears to resist briefly, but at the same time tries to look good for the camera. They can hear a faint yelling, a sad yelling, as if someone or something wonderful had died. For a moment the room on the screen is empty. An uncomfortable silence fills the office back in Germany too. Sensenbrink puts his arm over the backrest, turns around in his chair and addresses his team.
“That was a bit harsh, but I can’t help that. This is where the rubber hits the road. We’re making a programme about refugees, not stand-up comedy. This kind of stuff is going to happen all the time. So, if anyone here thinks it’s not quite their cup of tea, they have my sympathy. But they need to stand up now and say they can’t nut up. I hear there’s a job going at that new show, “Pet Swap”, or whatever it’s called. But let me tell you, this is a blue-ocean opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime thing, there’s never been anything like it. You’ll be talking about this to your grandchildren!”
Nobody gets up. Eyes drift around the tale. “I’m not leaving,” someone says quietly to another, “how about you?” Nobody drops out. Satisfied, Sensenbrink turns around.
“Well, I just can’t bloody wait to see who they’ve got for us next . . .”
A man in a skullcap steps in. He seems a little older. His shirt hangs down over his trousers – it’s not a kaftan, but it looks a bit like one. Sensenbrink leaps to his feet.
“For fuck’s sake, what’s that?” Grabbing the microphone again, he talks to Africa directly.
“WHAT. IS. THAT? What’s that on his face?”
Meaningful glances around the table.
“Exactly,” Sensenbrink bellows, incensed. “And why is there a beard? I can’t have someone with a beard. How would that look? You don’t need to be fucking Albert Einstein to work that one out. As soon as your average housewife switches on, she’ll be saying, “Hey, look at Nadeche Hackenbusch! Is she casting terrorists now?”
An embarrassed silence hangs in the room. Further glances are exchanged, heads are shaken, but this time in disappointment, disgust and incomprehension. “Those idiots from the on-site production team,” their looks now say, or, “If you want something done properly . . .” Everyone in the room realises that they’ve sent the biggest failures in the company down there.
“I even said that. I said no terrorists . . . This is really beginning to rub my rhubarb! The beard thing is oh-so-fucking obvious! No terrorists means no terrorists and also nobody that looks like a terrorist! No fucking caps and no fucking beards . . . What? Why another one?” Sensenbrink takes a deep breath and, straining to control his temper, says, “Yes, you’ve understood me perfectly. Lose the beardies. Right now. Including those hipsters with suicide vests. And now send me in the next one who looks half-way normal.”
Sensenbrink yanks out his headphones and tosses them onto the table.
“Coffee?” an assistant asks.
“Please.” He starts massaging his temples. “How much longer is Suzanne on maternity leave?”
“Nine months.”
Sensenbrink wearily scratches behind his ear, even though there’s no itch.
“I’ll pay for her babysitter and nanny and whatever else if she jumps on a plane and sorts out those cockwombles.”
“We’ve already been there. She wants to be a good mother to her child.”
“The kid’ll turn out shite anyway. They all do these days, what with smartphones and the Internet. The last kids who didn’t become total ignoranuses grew up in the eighties. Give her a bell and tell her she can name her salary.”
“What, now? Really?”
“No, of course not. Ask them what the hell’s going on down there. Are they having to give birth to the bloody candidates first?”
A slim black man enters the room. Probably in his early twenties, he gives a friendly smile.
“Hello?” he says with a wave at the camera. Then he says his name and starts talking about his family, his homeland, life in the camp, his friends, and Sensenbrink looks around the room to see if anyone else has stopped listening. He signals to an assistant to end this performance and bring in the next candidate. She mutters something into her mobile, upon which the man stops mid-flow, waves again at the camera and leaves the room. He’s replaced by another young black man wearing a T-shirt so tight it could have been borrowed from a child. He’s in good spirits and gives the camera a friendly wave, before starting to talk in a relaxed manner. Sensenbrink mutes the volume.
“Something’s not right.”
“The T-shirt’s too small,” Beate Karstleiter says. “But we can change that.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt,” the assistant says hurriedly. “They told me they’re sorry, he would have come in with no shirt at all. They told him to get one quickly and he came straight back in that one, they’re really sorry, they’re gutted, but—”
“No, it’s not the T-shirt,” Sensenbrink says. “The guy’s too cheerful. Just like the one before. What’s going on down there? Are they handing out drugs or what?” Sensenbrink turns back to the screen. The young man is talking to the camera without pause.
“They say they’re all like that,” the assistant explains. “They’re happy because there’s an opportunity. Of a job, even just of something happening.”
“Think about it! I can’t sell this to the viewers. The show’s called “Angel in Adversity”, not “Angel at the Comedy Club”. If anyone’s going to bring light into the darkness here, it’s Nadeche Hackenbusch. And that means it’s got to be dark, get it? Christ on a fucking bike. And at Nadeche’s side we’ve got to have someone who sees that it’s dark too. Not some light entertainer. What about the first guy?”
“Lion man?”
“Get him back. I don’t give a fuck what he meant. At least he meant something. It sounded sort of wise. What was it again?”
“Even the lion doesn’t know what his name is.”
“The man doesn’t know what the lion’s name is.”
“No, it was bleaker than that. Slightly menacing. The man doesn’t have to know what the lion’s name is.”
“Play it back!”
On the screen the man reappears in front of the camera.
“Is this now live? Is he back?”
“No, this is the recording.”
“A man’s name means nothing to the lion,” the man says again.
“Yes, that was it!” Sensenbrink says, clenching his fist. “Now that is bleak.”
“It’s like . . . like a nameless grave. It’s kind of spooky too.”
“But not frightening. He says it very soberly.”
The image changes. The young man must be back in the room with the camera. “At least he’s got a decent pair of trousers on,” Sensenbrink says. “We ought to get him a pair of jeans too, but they mustn’t be too new. And not top of the range either. Let Grande sort it out! Get them to tell him that we liked what he did. But he needs to unpack that thing with the lion.”
They watch the man being given instructions. He moves calmly and nonchalantly; for a fleeting moment Sensenbrink fancies he knows him from somewhere.
“I think he’s great,” Sensenbrink hears from behind him, a female voice with a hint of a Swabian accent – Engerle. “He totally reminds me of Boateng when he was still playing. Lighter skin, of course. And without the daft glasses.” Sensenbrink likes the comparison. Some positive associations, at last.
The lighter-skinned Boateng looks at the camera and says in English, “What lion?”
“You know, with the name of the man and that stuff!”
For a brief moment the man looks as if he doesn’t have a clue what Sensenbrink’s going on about. Then he smiles and says, “It’s good. It’s good you want to understand Africa. Let me help you understand Africa. It’s a very great task.” He pauses, then says with a smile, “Africa is like a woman . . .”
Sensenbrink raises his eyebrows. Africa is like a woman? That sounds suspiciously trite. Is this Boateng character taking the piss?
“. . . and like a zebra.”
A few people in the room are now laughing sympathetically, women included. Sensenbrink laughs too. “Well, bugger me! He knows my wife! Do you know my wife?”
Boateng stares at the camera lens in confusion. “I don’t know your wife, Sir,” he hastily assures him.
“Sweet!” Engerle sighs, and someone else raises this to “Übersweet”.
“O.K., let’s park that, thank you,” Sensenbrink says. “We’ll take him. If we have just one of these wise sayings per programme, it’ll be more than enough.”
“He could get a cult following,” Beate Karstleiter adds for all of those who haven’t yet understood. “He’ll be like that bimbo from ‘Wife Swap’ with her ‘strawberry cheese’ – but a clever version. We should get him under contract right away.”
“Including book rights,” Sensenbrink insists. “Will you make a note of that?”
The assistant passes on the message, chairs are pushed back, people gather up their belongings. The lighter-skinned Boateng has turned to leave the room when Sensenbrink says, “Wait! Wait! Could you angle the camera down for a moment?”
The instruction is relayed. The lighter-skinned Boateng comes back. The camera moves downwards.
“There we go!” Sensenbrink says, satisfied. “Finally, someone with decent pair of shoes.”
Hope for Africa
This is a first: Nadeche Hackenbusch and EVANGELINE are giving refugee women a future. And never has the “Angel in Adversity” looked more beautiful than today
By Astrid von Roëll
It’s like a fairy tale from the 1,001 Nights. The little girl, rejected and scorned, who’s forced to sell sulphur matches all day long, who’s unfairly treated at home, kept hidden by her stepmother and never allowed to meet the prince. But this girl is living a dream. She will become the best match-seller of all time to help other girls. And she is in Africa, the Dark Continent, between poverty and hope, between war and nature reserve. Nadeche Hackenbusch has allowed her very personal dream to come true. The dream of a strong woman who has set out to change this world of ours for the better. The dream of a woman who nobody believed capable of anything.
“I come from a humble background,” she says in her exclusive interview with EVANGELINE, “and I know what these people here are going through.” She’s wearing a plain white blouse with her distressed Hallhuber jeans. “Nothing special,” she smiles modestly. “It just needs to be practical. I’m also wearing sturdy shoes because of the scorpions and snakes. But here it’s not about fashion, it’s about people.” Nadeche Hackenbusch has now been in Africa for twenty-four hours and just by looking at this woman one can see how much she has already been affected. Her emotions are ensnared, in flux, as if in a large vortex. Stirred up. Peering out of the window of the small hut we have retired to, she tells me, “I mean, I’m a woman too.”
But what an admirable woman. A woman looking straight ahead like a captain, right at the front at the wheel of the great locomotive of life. But of course it’s about fashion too.
Together with EVANGELINE, Nadeche Hackenbusch is going to give young refugee women back their self-esteem. There are well over half a million women here, many of them young mothers, some still children of mothers. They are alone in a hostile environment. “This is a world none of us know anymore,” Nadeche Hackenbusch tells us. “A world of civil war and Boko Haram. And yet people live in this world too. I want to remind these women that they’re still enchanting creatures, they can still be beautiful.”
“Here it’s not about fashion, it’s about people”
She will choose thirty of these young woman to showcase German fashion alongside her. To make a statement against violence, misfortune and poverty. Young fashion for a new world, bolstering courage for a new future that is building a bridge towards us, in distant Germany. Courageous fashion for courageous women, from Hallhuber to the top designer Doris zu Wagenbach, who told EVANGELINE in Munich, “The suffering of these women moves me profoundly.”
On the hunt for her “mannequins”, Nadeche Hackenbusch roams the entire vast, endless camp. And she witnesses scenes for which words will never prove adequate. When flies settle on a hungry child she doesn’t hesitate to swat these pests away with her own hand. With tears in her eyes she tells me, “Yes, these children need food. They need a home. But when they have these, what then? People are more than just food and a roof over their heads. People need their dignity too. Our world has stripped these people of their dignity and in some way I’m giving them a little of it back. That’s the least any of us can do.”
In spite of her ample heart, however, the “Angel in Adversity” knows that choosing her models is both tough and challenging. “I’d love to be able to take them all,” she says amidst the forest of outstretched hands. “But I’m afraid that’s just not possible. And it wouldn’t be good for these women either. They don’t just want to be taken, these women are proud and don’t want my pity. They want to show that they’re good and are capable of achieving things.” Something confirmed by her latest discovery, beautiful Ashanti, 17: “I want to achieve something so I can live in Europe,” she says.
“That’s so brave,” Nadeche Hackenbusch tells her, visibly impressed. “These women are such great role models and refuse to give up, even though unfortunately Europe can’t take anyone in at the moment.” And yet Nadeche Hackenbusch cannot just wave goodbye to those candidates who don’t make it through the tough selection process. Many women, she has realised, lack the essentials here.
“It’s not just make-up, soap, shampoo – such everyday items for us in one of the richest countries on this earth. Lots of women here don’t even have a bra, and though I can’t help in every way, at least in this respect I can.” She has brought along more than 2,000 of her exclusive HackenPush-ups, which she gives away without great fuss. “It’s not much,” Nadeche Hackenbusch says, her feet firmly on the ground. “A bra might not be able to solve all the world’s problems. But it’s a small step, just like those waving lucky cats back home, powered by solar energy. A small step, but one that still needs to be taken by someone. I’d never want a lucky cat that runs on petrol.”
It’s another Nadeche Hackenbusch we are getting to see here. Motherhood has already turned her into a more thoughtful woman, with both feet firmly planted in real life. She laughs just as much as before, but her eyes are alert and take in the world in all its beauty. Her experiences here have matured her further, supplementing her sensuality with a sensitivity she never had before. Is there a new love behind all this?
“And yet people live in this world too”
It shouldn’t come as a surprise. For Nadeche Hackenbusch would not be the first woman to be enchanted by this mysterious continent. Africa – the very name has a thousand meanings which not even our smartest boffins will ever be able to explain. Ancient legends, stirring lives, tales of love and death and the most irresistible emotions from the darkest depths of human history. That is why this country is also known as the Dark Continent! In Africa, Meryl Streep found her Robert Redford, here the ravishing Juliette Binoche fell victim to the charms of the Hungarian Count Almásy, Sigourney Weaver sacrificed her life in the mist-shrouded rainforest for the poorest and most endangered apes in the world. And now – is it the turn of Nadeche Hackenbusch?
Who knows what the future holds? Some times it feels as if she’s laughing differently here than at home, despite the bitter poverty, the horrific stories, all the snakes and scorpions. Not more loudly nor more often, but more joyfully. Can this be true? And who would deserve it more than this admirable woman?
“People are more than just food and a roof over their heads”
Dusk gradually creeps up on the camp, which shines in the glow of its fires in the simple beauty of poverty. Night is overtaken by the sounds of Africa; from somewhere in the distance comes the roar of a predator. Is it a tiger? Perhaps hunting a young elephant? Africa is merciless, but hope shines through and here love warms the hearts of both rich and poor in equal measure.