After the storm
Angelina Jolie sits at a desk, back straight as a rule and rather regal. Her features are cartoonishly beautiful – straight black hair, vertiginous cheekbones, huge blue eyes and lips like a plumped red sofa. She is talking on Zoom to four young activists. It is a horribly apt day to be discussing human rights – the Taliban have just captured Ghazni city on the approach to Kabul.
If this were a movie, you might suspect Jolie was playing a divine leader addressing the fortunate few. Yet it soon becomes apparent that things aren’t quite as they seem. The actor and film director is the one in awe, not the activists. The young people talk about the work they have done raising awareness of the carnage in Syria, the environmental crisis, trans rights and food poverty. Jolie hangs on their every word. She tells them they have inspired her children who follow their work, warns them against burnout, apologises for the failings of her generation and says how honoured she is to meet them.
The next evening it is just Jolie and I Zooming. In the background, I can hear kids playing. It’s been an even more depressing day for human rights – the Taliban have entered Kabul and toppled the Afghan government. Jolie says the only thing giving her hope is the young people we met last night. “They speak about these issues with more urgency and awareness of what is morally right and decent than any politician, any diplomat, any NGOs I’ve worked with.”
She says she can’t stop thinking about Muhammad Najem, a 19-year-old who literally shouted from the rooftops about the Syrian regime’s siege of his home village, Eastern Ghouta. After his father was killed four years ago in an airstrike on the mosque where he was praying, Muhammad and his brother would wait for the daily bombing to stop, film the carnage from their roof and document the suffering of survivors. He and his family soon became government targets and fled to Turkey, from where he spoke to us. It wasn’t just his bravery that was notable; it was the warmth of his smile, his zest for life, despite all he has seen. Since we last spoke, Jolie has Zoomed again with Muhammad and a girl who is campaigning against period poverty. “His relationship to that teenage girl and her activism was more in tune than almost any man I’ve met,” Jolie says. We agree that cloning Muhammad may be the answer to world peace. “He is that evolved man!” Jolie says.
Jolie has spent 20 years campaigning for human rights, first as a goodwill ambassador and then special envoy for the UN high commissioner for refugees. She
