A fixer goes to America

Jeremy Gerard provides an update on the fixer known only as Ahmed Ali. A few months ago things weren’t looking good for Ali and his new life in America. However, things are picking up for the man who helped Oliver Poole work as a journalist in Iraq and who features in his Red Zone book,

“My daughter just passed from first grade to second, and my wife just got her driver’s permit,” Ali told me in a telephone interview. “And last week they were talking about giving me a full-time job.”
Ali, 35, spent most of the early years of this decade as a “fixer” for British and American journalists covering the Iraq war, first in Baghdad and then, after his brother-in-law was murdered by Shia militiamen, in Damascus. He worked as a translator, putting himself in grave danger by setting up interviews for reporters and helping to get the words of Iraqis into the newspapers and magazines. link