ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
NPR reporters don't do all the work overseas, especially in war zones. And the same could be said of reporters for newspapers and television networks. We all rely, and rely heavily, on people called fixers. They are locals with good English who drive our reporters around, interpret for them, set up interviews, sometimes even do the interviews. And they assume an immense amount of risk in exchange for little recognition but a decent paycheck.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
A documentary airing tonight on HBO tells the story of one of these locals in Afghanistan. It's called "Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi."
NPR's Graham Smith has seen the film and talked with its director.
GRAHAM SMITH: "Fixer" opens with grainy television footage shot by the Taliban.
(Soundbite of documentary, "Fixer")
It's spring 2007, an Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo is on-screen, a hostage.
(Soundbite of documentary, "Fixers")
He's pleading for help from the Italian government. And then the tape stops, rewinds, and you notice this voice off-camera in English asking, do you have any message for your wife and mother?
(Soundbite of documentary, "Fixers")
Mr. AJMAL NAQSHBANDI (Fixer): Do you have any message for your wife and mother?
SMITH: The text on the screen informs us that it's the voice of Mastrogiacomo's fixer, Ajmal Naqshbandi. It also says he will be murdered.
Mr. IAN OLDS (Filmmaker, "Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi"): I basically found out for the first time that Ajmal was in fact kidnapped through that footage.
SMITH: That's Ian Olds, the filmmaker who shot and directed "Fixer."
Mr. OLDS: Very quickly, that footage that starts the film appeared online, and I heard that voice off-camera, and I knew right away that it was Ajmal.
SMITH: Olds had been in Afghanistan six months before, researching a feature film about the relationships between journalists, fixers, and Afghans. He joined Christian Parenti, a reporter for The Nation, and Ajmal Naqshbandi, his longtime fixer, for interviews and chats over lunch.
Mr. CHRISTIAN PARENTI (Reporter, The Nation): So we can do it in three days?
Mr. NAQSHBANDI: Yeah, yeah, in three days. We just need to…
SMITH: Much of the footage is shot as they drive from place to place, strategizing.
Mr. PARENTI: …and instability. Okay.
Mr. NAQSHBANDI: (Unintelligible) and they come by.
Mr. PARENTI: And you can call ahead and have your friend to fix some of that stuff for us?
Mr. NAQSHBANDI: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Mr. PARENTI: Do you think that's possible?
Mr. NAQSHBANDI: Yeah, it's possible.
SMITH: Naqshbandi also worked with other journalists, developing a reputation as a risk-taker. Mastrogiacomo hired him to get a big-name insurgent for an article, but something went wrong. Director Olds dropped his idea of a fiction film and made this documentary instead.
Mr. OLDS: What it's seeking to do is take this off-screen presence, this hidden class of labor, the fixer on the edge of the frame, put them into the center. You always see the journalist, you know, as the one who people focus on who was kidnapped. But to stop there and go back and say this story is not about this journalist you see, it's about the unseen voice on the edge of the frame.
SMITH: The images in "Fixer" come largely from Olds' camera, footage shot before the kidnapping and interviews with Ajmal's family and friends after his murder. But he also incorporates video shot by the Taliban for propaganda purposes. It's some of the most compelling footage in the documentary. This is where Ajmal Naqshbandi's round, kind face is most clearly in the center of the frame.
Mr. NAQSHBANDI: (Foreign language spoken)
SMITH: Accused of spying for the West, he looks into the camera. His sparkling sad eyes implore.
Mr. NAQSHBANDI: (Foreign language spoken)
SMITH: He tries to reassure his family, God willing, there is not any problem. These are all our countrymen.
Mr. NAQSHBANDI: (Foreign language spoken)
SMITH: NPR's longtime Kabul fixer, Najib Sharifi, spent hours on the phone with his Taliban contacts, trying to convince them to release Ajmal, a close friend. Sharifi was my fixer when I was in Afghanistan this spring. I watched this film with him here in D.C., where he's visiting on a journalism fellowship. He remembers how the Afghan government secured the Italian's release via prisoner exchange, but not Ajmal's.
Mr. NAJIB SHARIFI: We saw that neither the Afghan government nor the foreigners did anything to help him. So that's quite demoralizing and quite disappointing to view.
SMITH: Sharifi found the film painful to watch but he appreciates that his friend's story, and in a way, his story is being told. He also says that since the killing, fixers in Afghanistan have been much more cautious.
Mr. SHARIFI: Their life is always at risk. The Western journalists go there and they spend some time there, and they come back. And they run the risk the whole time because they live there. And if the Taliban want, you know, they can always find them.
SMITH: In its best moments, this documentary reveals, humorously and tragically, the delicate task of a fixer: what gets translated, what gets softened, how money and friendship, journalism and pragmatism are balanced.
Director Ian Olds says he hopes viewers take away new insight about how news is gathered and about this war that's so often an abstraction here in America. But he's also gratified to hear that fixers like Najib Sharifi connect with the film.
Mr. OLDS: That's really, really great for me to hear, because you're in this editing room and you're trying to construct or reconstruct some version of the truth, some experience and try to do justice to these human beings. And so to hear those kind of response from people who feel how difficult it is to watch, but feel that it somehow got something right, makes me feel like I at least did a part of the job I wanted to do.
SMITH: In appreciation of all the fixers who help NPR News do its job, I'm Graham Smith.
SIEGEL: "Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi" airs tonight on HBO.
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