the_taliban_shuffle_-_kim_barker

I could do, and I had to work. This became a coping tactic I would
master.
Luckily my attention was soon distracted. Another ominous force
landed in Kabul, determined to shake up the country—Al Jazeera
English, a sister station to the Arabic version of CNN. I had heard that
they were setting up a bureau in Kabul, and that they had a lot of
money. But I didn’t know they were hunting for an Afghan
correspondent. Farouq found out. He had never been in front of a TV
camera before, so he sat at home and practiced talking like a TV
correspondent to a video camera on a chair. His wife heard him from
behind the door, finally asking if Farouq was crazy, talking to himself.
Farouq was nervous about the audition. So he called Sean, back in
town from Helmand, sporting a giant cast on his left index nger from
a bullet that had ricocheted o a British .50-caliber machine gun while
his convoy was under fire from the Taliban.
“Farouq, I know you’re nervous, but when you stand in front of the
camera, think of the cameraman and the anchor as the most stupid
people you can imagine,” Sean told him. “Or that the cameraman is
standing in front of you naked.”
Farouq told Sean not to tell me about the audition, so Sean
immediately called. I could hardly blame Farouq for applying. The job
didn’t pan out—an Afghan correspondent wasn’t hired—but Farouq was
soon oered a producer position that paid more than twice what I did.
Ever since Nasir disappeared for Tajikistan months earlier, drawn by
the promise of easy money in the used-car business, Farouq had
charged me only $75 a day to drive and translate when I was in the
country, less than any other fixer was making.
“I don’t want to leave the Chicago Tribune, and I’ve told Al Jazeera I
want to keep working with you, whenever you’re in town,” Farouq
said. “You are my friend, and I won’t leave you. But they just pay so
much money. I have to think of my family.”
Afghanistan without Farouq would be like English without vowels—
it wouldn’t make sense. So I said I would try to increase his pay, to
$125 a day, and said Farouq could work with Al Jazeera when I wasn’t
in Afghanistan. Then I sold this to my bosses, tough considering the
money crunch the newspaper was facing. It would not be the last time
that money was an issue, for any of us.