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Start hiring professionals like a professional.

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Post your free job

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on linkedin.com/spoken today. As

1:35

many of the jobs are sent

1:38

overseas, leaving many workers with an

1:40

uncertain future. The

1:42

drive to decolonize museums and

1:44

monuments has spread across the

1:46

Western world. We hear

1:48

how one institution in Brussels has

1:50

approached the issue. And

1:53

one correspondent recounts his relationship

1:55

with words and how they

1:58

became roadblocks in his report. until

2:00

very recently. But first,

2:03

the flight of more than 100,000 Armenians from

2:05

Nagorno-Karabakh seven

2:09

months ago after a rapid

2:11

offensive by Azerbaijan quickly faded

2:14

from the global news headlines as

2:16

events in the Middle East unfolded. But

2:19

the land conflict between Armenia

2:22

and Azerbaijan also has a

2:24

complex, lengthy history. In

2:26

the late 1980s, Nagorno-Karabakh's

2:29

parliament, then part of

2:31

Azerbaijan, voted to become

2:33

part of Armenia. Since then,

2:36

bloody battles have been fought

2:38

over the enclave, with Armenia

2:40

maintaining control until the seemingly

2:43

decisive Azeri offensive last

2:45

September. Tim

2:47

Heul remembers how the self-declared

2:50

republic first emerged, as

2:52

the Soviet Union was in its last

2:54

throes and reflects on

2:56

how nations are born and

2:58

reburied. In my

3:00

first job at the BBC in the

3:03

late 1980s, I sat in a tiny

3:05

office bashing out talks, a

3:07

happily long-forgotten radio genre, five

3:10

minutes of instant impartial analysis

3:12

on a Flintstone-style word processor.

3:15

Often it was my scary responsibility

3:18

to tell the world about a

3:20

corner of the Soviet Union I

3:22

myself had never heard of before.

3:24

Nagorno-Karabakh, a tantalisingly mysterious chunk of

3:27

Azerbaijan, bigger than Somerset, smaller

3:29

than Northumberland. Soviet

3:31

leader Mikhail Gopachev's hallucinating of the

3:34

communist system was just beginning to

3:36

allow free protests. But the first

3:38

serious ones weren't in Moscow as

3:40

I'd expected. They were on the

3:42

periphery of the country, and some of the biggest

3:44

were in Armenia. First, it was

3:47

about the environment. Armenia was so

3:49

polluted, people couldn't breathe properly. But

3:51

the demand at the rallies rapidly changed.

3:54

What Armenians really wanted, more than clean

3:56

air, was the right of their nation

3:59

to breathe freely. and

4:01

for that they shouted, Nagorno-Karabakh,

4:03

with its majority ethnic Armenian

4:05

population, must be taken away

4:07

from Azerbaijan and given to

4:09

Armenia. I was

4:11

astonished that after decades of stifling

4:13

dictatorship it was nationalism, not a

4:16

more universal hunger for democracy that

4:18

first brought hundreds of thousands of

4:20

people onto Soviet streets. And

4:23

I was very naive. Just

4:26

forward four decades, and I'm in

4:28

Armenia, flicking through black and white

4:30

photos in an official Soviet album

4:32

of life in Nagorno-Karabakh before it

4:34

all kicked off. The

4:36

only demonstrations then were of beaming

4:38

after weeks in white singlets parading

4:40

on May Day. The

4:42

album is one of the few

4:44

remaining treasured possessions of Sergei Shakhtherdian.

4:47

In his youth he was a leader of

4:49

the Karabakh movement that I wrote my talks

4:51

about. After a

4:53

newly independent Armenia won a

4:56

war against Azerbaijan, he became

4:58

Minister of Culture of the

5:00

unrecognized Republic of Atsar, as

5:02

Armenians renamed Karabakh. It

5:04

lasted for 29 years. Then

5:07

last September, Azerbaijani forces re-cook

5:09

it. And its entire

5:12

population, a hundred thousand people, fled

5:14

to Armenia. From

5:16

his former life, Sergei Shakhtherdian

5:18

preserved that album, a clay

5:20

model of his beautiful old

5:22

stone house, and the frame

5:25

of an ornamental mirror inlaid with

5:27

the silver dragons that guard the Garden

5:29

of Eden. They left the

5:31

glass behind. The Shakhtherdians,

5:33

Sergei, his wife Liana, and their

5:35

four children, are a family for

5:37

whom the word intelligentsia might have

5:39

been coined. Charming,

5:42

educated, confident, the

5:44

eldest daughter Nina, with her challenging

5:46

gaze and torrents of raven hair,

5:48

taught English in Karabakh's remote villages,

5:51

took her pupils hiking so they

5:53

would know and love their native

5:55

land. Now in

5:57

exile in Armenia, she works tirelessly.

6:00

to keep the dream of

6:02

Armenian Karabakh alive. She hosts

6:04

podcasts for refugees, organised

6:06

camps and days out for Karabakh

6:08

children. But today, patriots like

6:10

her aren't just back to where they started

6:12

in the late 1980s. They've

6:15

been thrown back at least to the

6:17

second century BC. Then

6:19

there were already Armenians in Karabakh.

6:22

Now there are almost none. The

6:25

last years of the Soviet Union were a

6:27

festival of history, the rediscovery of

6:29

long-suppressed ideas and processes.

6:32

Karabakh was the first ethnic conflict

6:34

to be reborn. But

6:36

soon after came many more that I also wrote

6:38

about. Could this now be

6:40

a talk? Sorry we don't

6:42

use that word anymore. About Karabakh

6:44

as the first conflict that might

6:46

be re-buried? That's what

6:49

Armenia's Prime Minister, Nicole Pashinyan, seems to

6:51

want. He's trying to negotiate

6:53

a new relationship with Azerbaijan. And

6:56

others I met also want to overcome

6:58

history. There's even a small

7:00

group called Bright Garden Voices, a play

7:03

on the name Karabakh, which means

7:05

Black Garden, uniting Armenians and Azerbaijanis

7:07

who want to talk to one

7:09

another to make peace. But

7:12

that's still so shocking an idea to

7:14

most people in both places. They can

7:16

only meet online or in third countries.

7:19

History takes much longer to be

7:21

re-buried than to be reborn. But

7:24

what will stick in my head

7:26

longest is the quarantined sound of

7:28

Armenia's flute-like national instrument, the duduk.

7:31

One craftsman who fashions them out

7:33

of deep, reddish apricot wood is

7:36

Varyzdat Havanasyan. He spent

7:38

years in Karabakh, where some say

7:40

the reeds to make the mouthpiece

7:42

produced an unusually mellow sound. Falling

7:45

in love with Karabakh, as he did,

7:48

was like being sucked into quicksand, he

7:50

says. And maybe one day,

7:52

he says, we'll go back. But

7:54

in the meantime, he adds, perhaps

7:57

you can also find beautiful sounding

7:59

reeds within our own borders and

8:01

he's going to start looking. Tim

8:03

Huel and you can hear more

8:06

on that story on the Crossing

8:08

Continents podcast. Indians

8:10

are heading to the polls over

8:12

the next six weeks to vote in

8:14

the world's biggest ever general election. All

8:17

of them will be using electronic

8:20

voting machines, just one sign

8:22

of how far India has embraced

8:24

digital technology. When he

8:26

came into office 10 years ago, Prime

8:29

Minister Narendra Modi said he

8:31

dreamed of a fully digital

8:33

India. But to what

8:35

extent are the less developed parts of

8:37

the country on board and online?

8:40

During a recent visit to the

8:42

southern states of Karnataka, James

8:45

Kumar Sami stopped off in a village

8:47

that was meant to point the way

8:49

to a rural digital future. Turn

8:52

off the busy Bengaluru to Mysore

8:55

Highway about 60 kilometers from the

8:57

Silicon Valley of the East and

8:59

you'll find the silk-producing village of

9:01

Vandara Gupay. It is

9:03

a quiet place with neat houses,

9:05

some of them fronted by verandas

9:08

painted with traditional cooling red-iron oxide.

9:11

Indian beach trees with pink blossoms line

9:13

the main street and piles

9:15

of coconut husks lie around waiting

9:17

to be collected so that their coir

9:19

fiber can be turned into matting or

9:23

And it was for sweeping away one

9:25

very specific commodity, cash, that the village

9:27

became famous a few years ago. Shortly

9:31

after Narendra Modi's government unexpectedly

9:33

removed large denomination notes from

9:35

circulation overnight in an effort

9:38

to squeeze India's black economy,

9:40

Vandara Gupay became the region's

9:43

first cashless village. Local

9:45

people were given bank cards and

9:47

eventually had banking apps installed on

9:49

their phones as part

9:51

of a national drive to

9:53

harness India's IT boom and

9:55

inject energy into grassroots economic

9:57

activity. In its own way the

9:59

village became a poster child

10:01

for Modi's dream of making

10:03

India's digital economy accessible for

10:06

all. Today, as Mr Modi

10:08

stands on the cusp of a third

10:10

term in office, a trip

10:12

to the village suggests that India's

10:14

digital revolution is still a work

10:17

in progress. The sign,

10:19

which proudly proclaimed its cashless

10:21

credentials, has been taken down,

10:23

and village store owner Pratima, who

10:26

sells everything from bananas and garlic

10:28

to small sachets of hair products

10:30

which hang like multicoloured tresses from

10:33

the shop's ceiling, told

10:35

me there are parallel payment systems.

10:37

Students from the local college

10:39

buy her products with a sophisticated

10:42

phone-based digital payment system, but

10:44

the local farm labourers haven't taken

10:46

to the new arrangements. For

10:49

them, cash is still king. Further

10:51

down the road, we met one 66-year-old farmer who has

10:56

three acres of land where he

10:58

grows coconuts, rice and mulberry trees,

11:00

whose leaves are used to feed

11:02

silkworms. Sitting in the shade

11:05

next to a machine that dispenses distilled

11:07

water, if you have the

11:09

right change in coins, he told me

11:11

that his children worked in the tech

11:14

industry, his daughter for IBM, but

11:16

he wasn't buying into the cashless

11:18

philosophy. The reason was simple. He

11:21

doesn't trust the banking apps. He'd

11:23

heard that fraudsters could access his

11:25

data and skim money from his

11:27

account. The irony being, of

11:29

course, that a measure brought in to

11:31

stop illicit cash flows had, in his

11:34

mind at least, simply shifted the problem

11:36

into the digital domain. Ratnakara,

11:38

smiling auto rickshaw driver who stopped

11:40

to speak to us, was on

11:42

message, though. He's given

11:44

his three-wheel taxier modern look,

11:47

covering it in shiny black

11:49

sheeting and adding the design

11:51

of a flower-covered, psychedelic-looking guitar.

11:54

Phone-based QR code payments are a

11:56

lot easier, he said, because it

11:58

saves him from scrambling. about looking

12:00

for change, although he does still

12:02

accept cash as well. Most

12:05

people there only speak the local Kannada

12:07

language, but as we wandered through the

12:09

village we heard a voice calling out

12:11

to us in English. It belonged to

12:13

an inquisitive teenage girl on a balcony

12:15

who spotted us and wanted to know

12:17

why we were there. When we

12:19

told her she bounded down

12:22

and introduced herself as Zanwe,

12:24

a 16-year-old with two big

12:26

ambitions, to become an engineer

12:28

and a top 400-metre runner.

12:31

But in another sign that the

12:33

race to create a completely digital

12:35

India may still have a few

12:37

more laps to go, she pointed

12:39

to a different problem facing the

12:41

villagers. Clutching her smartphone in her

12:43

hand, Zanwe told us that internet

12:46

access in Vandragupe is pretty patchy.

12:48

Even the most tech-savvy locals often

12:50

can't get access to their digital

12:53

payment system. So, like

12:55

her ambitions, she is hedging her

12:57

bets when it comes to making

12:59

purchases. She says you need your

13:01

phone and your cash. As

13:04

we left the village with its

13:06

coconuts, paddy fields and silkworms, and

13:08

headed back to India's bustling Silicon

13:10

Valley, we witnessed a

13:12

different sort of cashless purchase at

13:15

Pratima's store. A little girl

13:17

ran up to the counter and asked for some

13:19

sweets. Pratima handed them over

13:21

and the girl cheerfully told her, my

13:23

uncle will pay before skipping

13:26

away. James

13:28

Kumara-Sami. In recent

13:30

weeks, China has had cause

13:32

for optimism about its growth

13:35

story after a prolonged slump,

13:37

partly compounded by woes in

13:39

its property sector. Industrial

13:41

production is up, and

13:43

there's better-than-expected year-on-year growth,

13:45

too. The Chinese government

13:48

is particularly focused on

13:50

developing green technologies, providing

13:53

subsidies for solar power, electric

13:55

vehicles and batteries. Yet,

13:57

in some cities, workers

14:00

have been left behind in the

14:02

switch to high-tech industries. Laura

14:05

Bicker reports from the once

14:07

bustling manufacturing city of Dongguan.

14:11

Driving through Dongguan is like

14:13

taking a tour of China's

14:16

once unstoppable economic rise. Today

14:19

many factories are hollowed out

14:21

concrete skeletons, monuments through a

14:24

recent thriving past. The

14:26

millions of workers who've travelled here from the countryside

14:28

in the last 30 years desperately

14:31

seeking jobs still live here

14:33

but they are once again seeking

14:36

jobs, a sign of the city's

14:38

uncertain present and the

14:40

shiny modern buildings housing new

14:42

high-tech companies till of

14:45

government plans for its future. So

14:47

much is made in Dongguan that it

14:49

was once dubbed the factory of the

14:52

world. From around the mid-1980s the city

14:55

became China's leading export and

14:58

manufacturing base. In

15:00

the 90s tens of thousands of workers would

15:02

have queued at that pretty gate to

15:04

start their shift turning out

15:06

to cheap toys, clothes and

15:08

shoes to export to countries like

15:10

the United States. Today

15:13

there are whole blocks of

15:15

empty low-rise buildings which look

15:17

like ghost factories. The

15:19

only visible inhabitant is a

15:22

solitary security guard waving away

15:24

any curious onlookers. The

15:26

constant hum of sewing machines

15:28

has been replaced by a

15:30

chorus of birdsong. The

15:33

stubborn roots of the banyan trees have worked

15:35

their way under the brick shells of buildings.

15:38

The warm and often humid southern

15:40

climate is helping nature take over

15:42

what man has left behind. So

15:45

how has this decline come about? In

15:48

the late 1990s the cost of labour

15:50

started to rise as workers

15:52

demanded higher wages. Companies

15:54

desperate to compete for contracts cut

15:57

their prices which meant profit margins

15:59

were squeezed. The

16:01

former US President Donald Trump

16:03

also slapped tariffs on Chinese

16:06

goods, including shoes. Some

16:08

Chinese and foreign-owned firms made the

16:10

decision to move their business elsewhere

16:13

to Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia

16:15

and Vietnam, where running costs are

16:17

cheaper and where they can hide

16:19

from the crossfire of US-China trade

16:22

wars. It means the

16:24

old Made in China brand that used

16:26

to be etched, sewn or printed on

16:29

t-shirts, tables and TVs in so many

16:31

homes around the world is

16:33

found elsewhere. You're now

16:35

more likely to find those words

16:37

stamped on a solar panel or

16:39

an electric car, as Beijing has

16:41

ramped up spending on renewable energy.

16:43

80% of

16:46

the world's solar panels are now made in

16:48

China, most of them going to Europe. This

16:51

mass manufacturing has driven costs down and

16:53

the cost of a solar panel is

16:55

now half of what it was last

16:58

year. Bongwan is also trying

17:00

to transform itself as a high-tech

17:02

hub. On the edge of

17:04

Songshan Lake, the technology giant Huawei

17:06

has been building a campus to

17:08

house 25,000 employees. There's

17:11

a new science park and a

17:13

string of fancy hotels. This

17:15

does not help the city's workforce

17:18

and the tens of millions of workers

17:20

who rely on more traditional trades for

17:22

their income. We met

17:24

55-year-old Ren Wing-Din, who

17:27

lost his job as a labourer at a

17:29

furniture factory. He has

17:31

dedicated his life to the old

17:33

Made in China brand, but

17:35

can't find a job in the new high-tech

17:37

firms popping up around the city. He

17:40

doesn't have the digital skills

17:42

for the next generation of manufacturers. He

17:44

left his family farm in Henan as

17:47

a teenager and moved to Dongwanford Wark.

17:49

He couldn't afford to go home and see

17:52

his two children for more than 11 years.

17:54

Ren now lives in a room that can fit

17:56

only a bed and a side table as he

17:58

scrolls through the city. his phone looking

18:01

through job ads after the

18:03

owner of the furniture firm moved

18:05

production to Vietnam. He

18:07

says the workers are heartbroken. Often

18:10

what he tells his children about why their

18:12

father stayed away, I just wanted

18:15

them to have a better life and

18:17

a better education so that

18:19

they don't need to work as hard as I did.

18:22

President Xi Jinping has bet his

18:24

fortunes and what he

18:26

has described as new

18:28

productive forces, an emphasis

18:31

on technology and science

18:33

and high-end, eco-friendly manufacturing.

18:35

For former factory workers like Ren for

18:38

so long the engine of this country,

18:41

this vision has left a

18:43

once dedicated workforce wondering where

18:45

they fit into China's future.

18:48

Gora Bicca. The Royal

18:50

Museum for Central Africa in

18:53

Belgium was originally built to

18:55

showcase King Leopold II's Congo

18:57

Free State and was

18:59

filled with artefacts shipped from its

19:01

former colony for the International Exposition

19:03

of 1897. But

19:07

by the end of the 20th century Brussels

19:09

began to debate the possibility of paying

19:12

reparations for its past

19:14

actions, a demand that has

19:16

gathered pace in recent years. Now

19:19

visitors to the museum are encouraged

19:21

to reflect on the impact

19:23

of Belgium's colonisation today.

19:26

Beth Timmins went to see how

19:28

the museum is dealing with its

19:30

legacy. Oaken beech

19:33

trees line the entrance to a palatial

19:35

museum on the outskirts of Brussels. There's

19:37

a lake where coots feed their chicks

19:39

and the nearest site of stone is

19:41

the Grand Embassies in the distance. It's

19:43

hard to imagine that this is the same

19:46

place where 267 Congolese men, women and children

19:50

were once exhibited in a human

19:52

zoo. Seven died in King

19:54

Leopold II's 1897

19:57

exhibition here at Tvurren which now

19:59

has houses the Africa Museum. At

20:02

its centre is a marble wall

20:04

dome, its floor lavishly decorated with

20:06

the star of the Congo Free State.

20:09

During the reign of Leopold II, as

20:11

many as 10 million Africans died or

20:14

were killed here. King Leopold's

20:16

name lines a ceiling and an

20:18

inscription plaque reads in French, Belgium

20:21

brought civilisation to Congo. 16

20:24

statues circle the Grand Rotunda,

20:27

each depicting racist stereotypes. One

20:30

portrays African children clinging to a

20:32

missionary and another shows a

20:34

topless woman dancing. They remain in

20:36

place because the Flanders Heritage Agency

20:38

says they're an integral part of

20:40

the building. Today, the Museum is

20:42

on a mission to decolonise and

20:44

openly acknowledges it was founded as

20:46

a colonial propaganda tool. As

20:49

a counterweight, the Museum commissioned Congolese

20:51

artist, Éime Mpane, to create new

20:54

sculptures which he said remember the

20:56

violence of colonisation. Two wooden

20:59

statues face each other. One

21:01

portrays the skull of Chief Lasinga Iwa

21:03

Nogombe symbolising the horrors of the past

21:05

and the other the face of a

21:08

Congolese man looking to the promise of

21:10

what its sculptor described to me as

21:12

a constructive future. Chief

21:14

Lasinga Iwa Nogombe, a Congolese chief

21:16

from the Tabwa region, was robbed

21:19

and decapitated by Belgian soldiers under

21:21

the command of Lieutenant General Emil

21:23

Storms. A father of 60

21:25

villagers were also killed. Lieutenant

21:28

General Storms was sent to conquer territories

21:30

for King Leopold along with the British

21:32

explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. To keep

21:36

the region under control, he'd been given

21:38

permission to suppress African leaders by fall.

21:41

His journal from the 4th of December 1884 reads, The

21:45

first shot was aimed at Lasinga,

21:47

who fell, fatally struck. As

21:49

soon as he had uttered his last word,

21:52

his head was cut off, speared on a

21:54

lance, and carried around. Meanwhile, the attack on

21:56

the village continued. By midday,

21:58

nothing remained of Lasinga's power other

22:00

than four heaps of ashes. The

22:03

general took Chief Lasinga's severed head

22:05

back to Brussels and his skull

22:07

was used to promote racist pseudoscience

22:09

and eugenicist policies. Chief

22:11

Lasinga's remains are now in the Royal

22:14

Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences with some

22:17

500 human remains. When I asked

22:19

the museum why Chief Lasinga's remains hadn't

22:21

been returned to the Democratic Republic of

22:23

Congo, the Africa Museum's director,

22:26

Bart Uvery, told me it

22:28

has guidelines on the way it treats skulls,

22:30

but not yet a legal framework for their

22:32

return. The head of the

22:34

Institute of Natural Sciences said Congolese

22:36

authorities hadn't made an official request,

22:38

but said both museums would work

22:40

with authorities to go further. Aime

22:42

Mpane told me he wants his artwork

22:44

to be a cry of warning against

22:46

violence. Earlier I'd seen

22:48

a chilling object called a chicot, a

22:51

whip for prisoners made from hippopotamus leather

22:53

for its strength. For

22:55

many Congolese it remains a striking

22:57

symbol of colonisation. It was

22:59

only last year, more than 60 years

23:02

after his murder by Belgian-backed secessionists, that

23:04

the gold-capped tooth of Congo's independence leader

23:06

and first Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was

23:09

returned to his family. It was all

23:11

that was left of him after a

23:13

Belgian police commissioner dissolved his body in

23:15

acid and took the tooth back with

23:18

him to Brussels as what

23:20

he called a hunting trophy. Stopping

23:23

short of a formal apology, King

23:25

Philippe of Belgium expressed his deepest

23:27

regret for colonial rule on his

23:29

first visit to Congo in 2022.

23:31

Aime told me decolonisation is still

23:33

a complex project that no one really

23:35

dares to address in any depth, yet

23:38

it's talked about everywhere. We're going

23:40

in circles, he said, and failing to

23:43

put the materials in place to really

23:45

make changes. But, explaining

23:47

why he named his artwork Restore,

23:49

another way of repairing, he said,

23:52

let's give them some time, we have to

23:54

start somewhere. some

24:00

kind of baggage with them when they

24:02

head off to cover a story, whether

24:05

it's the tools of their trade, a

24:07

camera or a microphone, or something less

24:09

tangible, such as memories of a past

24:12

encounter or story. It

24:14

was on a recent deployment

24:16

that the BBC's Middle East

24:19

analyst, Sebastian Usher, suddenly noticed

24:21

that the often unwanted companion

24:23

that seemingly always accompanied him

24:25

on trips abroad had

24:27

suddenly gone missing. I

24:30

just got back from a reporting trip to

24:32

Jerusalem with all the usual highs and lows,

24:34

with the backdrop of one of the world's

24:36

most utterly enthralling cities. And

24:39

I realised on my return that something

24:41

that habitually accompanies me on such trips

24:43

had been missing, something that

24:45

I've always somewhat resented, yet also jealously guarded

24:48

as an essential part of who I am,

24:50

my sister. Even after

24:53

all these years, it's almost always

24:55

there, just giving a little wave as I

24:57

prepare to do the umpteenth live interview. It's

25:00

mostly very well behaved these days, unsurprisingly

25:02

flexible, even generous. At one

25:04

time it would let me know that a certain word,

25:06

say, Syria, was a no-go. That was fair

25:08

and mostly allowed me a way around it. It

25:11

had no objections, for instance, to Syrian

25:13

territory or the Syrian region. But

25:15

having to find fresh phrases can be an

25:18

asset for a reporter, so it was perfectly

25:20

liveable with, and, to be honest, after a

25:22

lifetime of listening to that little voice, quite

25:25

companionable. But high up

25:27

on the windswept bureau balcony in Jerusalem, the

25:30

voice was silent. There'd been

25:32

times like this before, and it's always

25:34

returned. But who knows, this time

25:36

it might be for good. And it

25:38

makes me feel a little bereft. When

25:41

I look back, I can't really remember how it

25:43

started, but I do know that it was, to

25:46

me at least, a relatively unobtrusive part of

25:48

my childhood. I was lucky

25:50

to have a relatively sheltered, privileged upbringing where, if

25:52

it was noted at all, it was

25:54

seen as a vaguely charming mark of distinction.

25:57

A musty old classics teacher would tell me about the greatest

25:59

of the world. Athenian rhetorician Demosthenes,

26:02

standing on the beach with stones in his

26:04

mouth to cure his stutter. It

26:07

didn't really appeal. Any

26:09

time there was some distance that needed to

26:11

be bridged, like speaking on a phone or

26:14

asking for a bus ticket, it could be

26:16

a problem. Anything too formal, too. And

26:19

I found early on that it was

26:21

really a stammer, not a stutter. Words

26:23

didn't fracture and become staccato. They

26:26

simply sat in the path like

26:28

great unblinking toads, slyly

26:30

preventing anything from getting past.

26:33

But a stutter always sounded classier to me, so I've

26:35

stuck with that. It's been

26:37

everywhere with me at school, university, work.

26:39

It's been quite remarkably even-handed in showing

26:42

up in formal or casual situations, and

26:45

utterly capricious, suddenly coming up with an

26:47

entirely new syllable or continent to place

26:49

out of bounds. People

26:52

would ask, is it nerves? Are you very

26:54

anxious? Which would, of course, give me anxiety,

26:56

so I never mentioned it, which meant that

26:58

if suddenly halfway through a sentence I

27:00

was struck dumb, people would react as if it was

27:02

some biblical curse. Once in

27:05

Jordan, after a twelve-hour bus journey through the

27:07

endless scrubland from Riyadh, I was

27:09

suddenly unable to sound out a single

27:11

word, a great imaginary boulder having materialised

27:13

on my tongue through the night. Across

27:16

the Middle East, beyond the endless strife

27:18

and complication, certain things were at

27:20

least clear to me. Lebanon was

27:22

no problem. Iraq and Iran were easy,

27:24

Israel too. Egypt a doddle. But

27:27

Tunisia, Tel Aviv, and Turkey were

27:30

temperamental, withdrawing access at a moment's

27:32

notice. I would try

27:34

to avoid listening to a fellow correspondent on

27:36

the same story before going on air, in

27:38

case my inner voice should triumphantly extricate the

27:40

key word from their report and place it

27:43

in quarantine. That voice has,

27:45

however, become ever more forgiving and forbearing down

27:47

the years. Now it's mostly a

27:49

whisper of itself, but it's never gone

27:51

away, or so I thought. Maybe

27:54

I was just holding on to it as

27:56

a precious fragment of a long-lost self, a sense

27:58

of self- that there was

28:01

always something latent and untapped that lay

28:03

beyond the surface, a connection, semi-secret, to

28:05

entire worlds of people that were gone.

28:09

As she sank ever deeper into Alzheimer's, my

28:11

mother, who'd helped me make it so that

28:13

I never felt it a burden or a

28:15

hindrance, simply denied outright that my starter had

28:17

ever existed, a last link

28:19

broken with the past. Perhaps

28:21

it's her gentleness and elegant humour

28:24

that the trace of sudden silence on my

28:26

tongue still keeps alive, or did.

28:30

So the next time I'm lost for words, it

28:32

may simply be because there are none left to

28:34

convey what's happening in Gaza, Israel

28:38

and beyond. Sebastian

28:40

Asher. And that's all

28:42

for today, but you can hear more

28:44

stories on the From Our Own Correspondent

28:46

podcast, including Lee's two

28:48

sets, Reflections on the Relationship

28:51

Between Iran's Supreme Leader the

28:53

Ayatollah and Israel. We'll

28:56

be back again next Saturday morning. Go

28:58

join us. Ellen

29:04

Lewis I'm Ellen Lewis, and I have a question. What

29:07

looks family WhatsApp dramas? I

29:09

flounced off after someone made

29:11

a particularly ignorant comment. Russian

29:13

state propaganda. It's very good

29:15

platform for spreading of this

29:17

proportion position. And a woman who

29:19

married an AI. 100% I would never

29:21

go back to humans ever, ever again.

29:24

No idea? Well, they're all examples

29:26

of how instant messaging has changed

29:29

the world. Find out more by

29:31

joining me for my new BBC Radio 4 series,

29:33

Ellen Lewis Has Left the Chat. Subscribe

29:36

to Ellen Lewis Has Left the Chat on BBC

29:38

News. Tired

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