# FK Pre-discovery Notes — AAA

**Session date:** 2026-04-26  
**Email date:** 2026-05-03  
**From:** Olivier Bourgeois  
**Participants referenced:** Fares Kallas, Reme Sakr, Maroun Najm, Olivier Bourgeois  
**Archived thread:** `../../email-threads/olivier/2026-05-03-fk-pre-discovery.txt`

## Category

Interview / pre-discovery notes.

## Working direction

> She was dreaming of transforming the system but the system transformed her.

## Core material

The email contains Olivier's detailed notes from the April 26 session, centred on Fares Kallas's first meeting with AAA on 2005-12-31.

Key story material includes:

- Fares's earlier work on a First Lady project in 2004.
- His return from the UK and work at MTN in 2005.
- The post-Hariri assassination context and Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon.
- The unexpected private summons to meet the First Lady.
- Anxiety around protocol, security, and uncertainty before the meeting.
- AAA's personal questions about Fares's family, mother, wife, daughter, and London experience.
- Transition into professional discussion around protocol, press, public sector limitations, and communications.
- Discussion of `Follow the Women`, `Women for Peace`, FIRDOS, the Syria Trust, and projecting Syria's image abroad.
- AAA's stated desire to change prototypes and bring private-sector middle-class actors into reform initiatives.
- Fares giving AAA his thesis on the image of the country and communication failure.

## Research value

This is currently one of the central narrative/interview resources for the project. It gives scene-level material and a framing arc for AAA's transformation from reformist image-builder to actor shaped by the system.

## Follow-ups

- Ask Olivier/Reme to validate factual details and spellings.
- Mark which details are firsthand testimony versus later interpretation.
- Cross-reference with public chronology around Hariri, Syria Trust, FIRDOS, Bell Pottinger, and Follow the Women.