Robert Fisk’s World: Now I've really lived. I've gone on a movie set and shouted 'Action!'

by Robert Fisk

from The Independent

The film is about an honour killing in an Afghan village. I am on the road to Hollywood

Not since the chariot race in Ben Hur has there been anything like it. Foreign correspondent Fisk is in the movie business. In the wilds of Tajikistan, no less, in a broken, half-deserted village called Azadi – look for Dushti on the map, go right along the Amu Darya river and stare north – I have made my first tentative steps into Hollywood as ... well, Head of Livestock, actually. Here's this poor old Afghan bloke called Hassan, returning to his native post-Taliban village after years as a refugee in Iran, only to find a large gentleman called Gulagha occupying his home. He bangs on the front door to demand his house back. And a herd of goats swarms past the camera. And yup, that's where Fisk comes in, hidden from the lens but driving the animals before him because the goatherd can't control them. Jump up and down and wave your arms menacingly at the quadrupeds and you get the general idea.

There were several shots of the same scene and, of course, the continuity lady got upset. She pointed out that I'd let the two white goats in the lead in the first shot fall back to the middle of the pack in the second shot. And we were one goat less. The owner had pulled one from the herd between shots one and two and killed it for food. Head of Livestock might not be my métier. So I was asked to help to design a refugee camp in a small desert valley. More later.

The film, I have to say, is a dramatic story of destitution and honour killing in an Afghan village, its working title Act of Dishonour and – here I admit my interest – its director is a dear friend. Into this crafty, sometimes frightening tale of love and family honour tramps a Canadian film crew, its "director" – a Canadian actor – anxious to make a film about the need to "liberate" women in Afghanistan. Their arrival detonates some Taliban-like hatred and a family tragedy when the betrothed daughter of an ex-guerrilla fighter is persuaded to play a minor role in the film – and thus destroys her family's "honour".

But I learned a lot. The crew was almost academically professional, the assistant director – David Antoniuk – a powerhouse of energy with a cinematic soft side. "Tell the man to bring on his donkey," he shouted. "And tell the man to stop beating his donkey!" Director of photography Paul Sarossy – the guy behind the camera – wore a straw hat, looked like the younger Van Gogh and defined images like Rembrandt. One of the actors in the Canadian "crew", Ben Campbell, even turned out to be the son of Sybil Thorndyke (yes, that's right, the Queen Dowager in The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe).

"Sound speeding," the sound man would shout. And they really do cry "Action" – they let me shout it once – and the camera rolls. The sound is digitalised but the "speeding" is a throwback to the days of tape (just as CC on our laptops is a throwback to "carbon copy"). All that's new was the thundering "KHAMOUSH!" before each scene. It means "Shut up" in Dari and was sometimes obeyed by the vast number of extras who had set up an entire frontage of shops in Azadi, just for the movie. Azadi was almost derelict when it was chosen for the film. The film people rebuilt much of the village from ruins, including a new mud-walled mosque and a series of equally mud-walled homes. Weapons came courtesy of the Tajik police who were eager to appear in the movie themselves. (They did.)

Then came the refugee camp. Hassan, the chap whose home has been taken over by Gulagha, ends up in the UN-run camp after appealing to the village mullah for the return of his house. His title deeds had been kept for safekeeping in the mosque. But the old mosque has been destroyed in the war and the previous mullah killed. Hassan had run away to Iran while the villagers died. So now he has no home, save for a tent in the sandy valley where I helped to design the camp.

The obliging local head of the UN lent me 62 UN tents and I tried to remember how the Palestinians first lived when they fled from Galilee in the land that would become Israel in 1948. Old photographs show that their first tents were in a straight line on each side of a road in Lebanon. So with an army of 18 men from Dushti, I designed two lines of tents. Then, remembering how the Palestinian camps would spread outwards, disorderly and without UN supervision, I started putting more tents at right-angles and then without any order, up the sides of cliffs, along a dried-up river-bed. Some I put on the heights above the valley. Refugees who arrive late always live on hills – so they can watch for the food handouts and send the children to the UN hospital to collect free soup and rice.

And after several hours of this, I realised I was "writing" the story of refugees in the architecture of the tent city that I was helping to create. First come, first served. Then the later refugees turned up too late to register and became permanent outsiders, already separated from their original neighbours by UN laws. I was telling the story of the Palestinians. And, of course, the Afghans. The UN man even played himself in the movie. I was a correspondent again, but writing with tents and ropes and washing lines.

And sure enough, the director did acknowledge this. For on a washing line, between two drying shirts, was hanging a piece of paper whereon was written – in Arabic script – "Fiskabad". The town of Fisk. Maybe it's not Hollywood. And Bollywood was named after Bombay. So Follywood here I come!