In June 2009, I sat in an auditorium in Cairo, Egypt, and watched President Obama deliver

a speech.

We'd spent weeks writing together.

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.

It was a high-wire act.

Five years after the U.S. invaded Iraq and basically broke the Middle East, he was a U.S.

President trying to reset relations in the region.

We called the speech a new beginning.

You must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political

process above your party.

Without these ingredients, elections alone did not make true democracy.

Thank you.

We got a lot of praise for that speech.

But it wasn't until years later that I learned its biggest impact, didn't really have much

to do with the words I've written and had a lot to do with the identity of the guy speaking.

Roola Jabriel is a writer and foreign policy analyst.

She was a TV reporter in Cairo at the time.

I remember my assistant, Muhammad, who was 25.

So he was helping in studios, bringing us coffee and other things.

And he kept listening to President Obama's speech and I didn't understand why he kept

repeating it.

He kept repeating it.

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