Dunia Al-Muse sat nervously in the padded office chair in the 5 City TV recording studio, staring down at a foot-long, black and fuzzy microphone protruding into her face.

She steadied the script clutched in her hands.

As she glanced around the room, she absorbed its layout of multiple mini-TV screens, yards of cable strung across the floor and computer equipment flashing strange symbols across its screen.

“I’ve never talked into a microphone before,” said the 18 year old. “It’s the first time I’ve heard the sound of my own voice on tape. I sound awful.”

Director William “Bill” Luxford encouraged her to try again, saying that was the typical reaction of most people the first time they hear themselves do a recording. He knew the project could take a couple of hours and he wanted her to feel comfortable.

A refugee from Iraq who immigrated with her family to the Midwest seven years ago, Al-Muse struggles between two cultures where listening to music is considered a sin against God and speaking to boys outside school hours could get her months of detention at home. But as with any teenager, she longs for adventure, to set the world straight, and to help her own people in a foreign land.

Referred to the Lincoln-Lancaster Women’s Commission by Faces of the Middle East, Al-Muse volunteered hours outside and inside the studio to record a six-minute health message on an audio cassette. Aimed at encouraging non-English speaking Arabic women to seek health care, she spoke in her native language about how important it was to keep medical records, build good patient-doctor relationships and not be afraid to reach out to the medical community.

“A woman must have her husband’s permission to go to a doctor when she’s ill in Iraq. He must be there with her and the male doctor,” she added. “It’s important to say on the tape that it’s okay in America to see a doctor without your husband there, and it’s okay to pick a woman doctor.”

Al-Muse was instrumental in bridging the communication and cultural gap between Arabic women and American lifestyles as she edited the script to fit the message LLWC Commissioners wanted to impart in the Health Care Project.

The Arabic cassette is the last component in a health care project targeted to reach out to immigrant women. Four brochures printed in Vietnamese, Spanish, Russian and English editions have been mass produced for future distribution to community centers, grocery stores and other located frequented by non-English speaking women.