Leila Haddad

Leila Haddad

No established alias

Archivist; careful listener

person

Human

she/her

34 at the collection baseline; birthday intentionally unspecified

Freelance audio editor and volunteer archive coordinator

English; family Arabic

An audio archivist can hear a splice everyone else misses, but struggles to accept that a faithful recording can still tell an unfair story.

Leila is a Lebanese American woman with olive skin, a long dark braid and round wire glasses. She tends to look toward a speaker rather than directly into their eyes while listening. The design is original fiction.

Navy wool coat, rust scarf, practical ankle boots and headphones around her neck. Carries a small recorder in a padded case rather than loose in a pocket.

Still during interviews; checks a room’s background hum before choosing a seat. Gently turns a microphone rather than interrupting.

Wool dampened by fog and paper storage boxes

lightly clicks a pen while comparing takes, then notices and stops.

Preserve neighbourhood voices with consent and make Bay Ear useful beyond a small circle of enthusiasts. She wants a missing attribution corrected before a public listening night.

She trusts preserved evidence more readily than living explanations. Her exactness can become a way to avoid asking painful questions. A technically clean edit may erase hesitation that mattered to the speaker.

Measured questions with space after them; technical vocabulary only when it helps. Sample: “The words are clear. I am not sure we have kept the meaning.” Her anger appears as unexpectedly direct sentences.

Makes duplicate backups, records room tone, asks how a name should be pronounced and dislikes people treating consent as paperwork. Enjoys imperfect amateur recordings that preserve a room’s life.

Leila learned audio editing through community radio and later paid documentary work. A family recording labelled with the wrong year made her interested in how catalogues acquire false certainty. Bay Ear began as a small volunteer effort; it has neither comprehensive coverage nor authority over the city’s history. She sometimes overcommits to unpaid preservation because it feels more meaningful than client work.

Contemporary fictional San Francisco, baseline 2026. Ages remain fixed to the baseline when reused; no real personal biography is asserted.

WABF original fictional character. Evelyn helps identify neighbourhood context but is not an infallible witness. Jonah joins outdoor recording walks. Daniel offers space and food for occasional events.

San Francisco, contemporary, ensemble, original character, archivist; careful listener