Akram Khalifa, fixer and reporter, Tunisia:

I found myself writing for newspapers and magazines against my will. I have been translator/interpreter, then fixer and a reporter for the past six years. Since the Revolution of January 14 broke out, such activities have become my daily bread. On Jan. 8, 2011, I received a phone call to accompany a French TV to the regions of Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine to cover the protests and confrontations between the population and the law enforcement officers (including the snipers) there for their 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. news shows. This allowed me to be at the heart of action, for the first time in my life, and be a witness of such atrocious events completely new to Tunisia and to me. That's how I became interested in reporting. I was taking notes for my own record in an effort to immortalize the moment.

Journalists followed in their wake. After the French, more French, then Danish, Americans, Canadians, Japanese, Australians, British, and the list goes on and on. Some were reporting for television and other for newspapers and magazines. Journalists from the US called me on the phone and I was reporting for them, live from Tunisia.

The crisis in Libya and the refugee camps in the border region gave me more work. There, I met with journalists from all over the world. We stayed in the same hotel that was transformed into a reporting base and spent long hours at the crossing station hoping we could cross the border into Libya. On March 3, 2011, I went back to my hotel room late in the evening and losing hope, and wrote my first piece that I abandoned half way. It starts:

"The Tunisian southeastern border region witnessed not only the arrival of hordes of refugees who have been evacuated from the fighting since the beginning of the uprising in Libya but also the many groups of journalists from different countries waiting on the Tunisian-Libyan border to be allowed in, but in vain. Like many of the humanitarian organizations trying to get food and medicines to the victims of the confrontations between Gadhafi's military troops and mercenaries on one side and the rebel forces on the other; those journalists from BBC, France 2, ITN/ITV, TV2 Denmark, TV2 Norway, NRK, SVT and others, could have neither their pens nor their cameras traverse into the battlefield."

The experience on the Tunisian-Libyan border marked me and made yearn for reporting. Until, one day, I was requested to contribute to articles that were published in papers such as USA Today and The Washington Times.

What marked me especially in my "fixing" experience is that most of the journalists who came to cover events in Tunisia had covered war in Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia and so on. Many of them wanted to make Tunisia resemble a battlefield. I could see that in their eyes, their gestures and their restlessness. They could not hide their frustration and even disappointment when an event didn't not rise up to their expectations of "violence." One Danish TV reporter said to me once while we were covering confrontations between protestors and the police on Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the central strip of downtown Tunis few days after the revolution in January 2011: "This is not enough! We need more action otherwise the story will not be in the news! It has to sell itself!"

Putting reality into words is one of the greatest pleasures you could ever have. The first time I saw my byline on an article, I was the happiest man on earth.