The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur
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I am the translator who has taken journalists into dangerous Darfur. It is my intention now to take you there in this book, if you have the courage to come with me.The young life of Daoud Hari–his friends call him David–has been one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. He is a living witness to the brutal genocide under way in Darfur.The Translator is a suspenseful, harrowing, and deeply moving memoir of how one person has made a difference in the world–an on-the-ground account of one of the biggest stories of our time. Using his high school knowledge of languages as his weapon–while others around him were taking up arms–Daoud Hari has helped inform the world about Darfur.Hari, a Zaghawa tribesman, grew up in a village in the Darfur region of Sudan. As a child he saw colorful weddings, raced his camels across the desert, and played games in the moonlight after his work was done. In 2003, this traditional life was shattered when helicopter gunships appeared over Darfur’s villages, followed by Sudanese-government-backed militia groups attacking on horseback, raping and murdering citizens and burning villages. Ancient hatreds and greed for natural resources had collided, and the conflagration spread.Though Hari’s village was attacked and destroyedhis family decimated and dispersed, he himself escaped. Roaming the battlefield deserts on camels, he and a group of his friends helped survivors find food, water, and the way to safety. When international aid groups and reporters arrived, Hari offered his services as a translator and guide. In doing so, he risked his life again and again, for the government of Sudan had outlawed journalists in the region, and death was the punishment for those who aided the “foreign spies.” And then, inevitably, his luck ran out and he was captured. . . . The Translator tells the remarkable story of a man who came face-to-face with genocide– time and again risking his own life to fight injustice and save his people. The Washington Post - David Chanoff The Translator, by Daoud Hari, a native Darfurian, may be the biggest small book of this year, or any year. In roughly 200 pages of simple, lucid prose, it lays open the Darfur genocide more intimately and powerfully than do a dozen books by journalists or academic experts. Hari and his co-writers achieve this in a voice that is restrained, generous, gentle and—astonishingly—humorous. He is not an Elie Wiesel or a Simon Wiesenthal speaking the unspeakable in words so searing as to be practically unbearable. I, for one, am grateful for that. In these times, when news of carnage and atrocity comes at us so insistently, Hari's tone allows the vastness of Darfur's suffering to seep into the reader's consciousness in a way that a raw, more emotional telling might not.
Introduction ixA Call from the Road 3We Are Here 11The Dead Nile 21A Bad Time to Go Home 28My Sister's Village 38The End of the World 43Homecoming 48The Seven of Us 62The Translator 68Sticks for Shade 71Two and a Half Million Stories 77Connections 86Nicholas Kristof and Ann Curry Reporting 92Once More Home 99Waking Up in N'Djamena 106A Strange Forest 111The Sixth Trip 114What Can Change in Twenty-four Hours? 120Some Boys Up Ahead with a Kalashnikov 125Our Bad Situation Gets a Little Worse 131Blindfolds, Please 136We Came to Rescue You Guys 142We Can't Think of Anything to Say 146The Rules of Hospitality 151Open House at the Torture Center 161The Hawalya 168My One Percent Chance 176Acknowledgments 183A Darfur Primer 185The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 195
