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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.
Hari's harrowing and stunning memoir recounts life in the Sudan during one of the most widely neglected and horrifying events in human history. Mirron Willis brings a subtle reality to the touching story through his simple yet incredibly understated performance. Read with a just-right Sudanese dialect, Willis becomes Hari from the very beginning, bringing listeners into the story slowly by relating the beauties of his former home before the helicopters arrive late one night in 2003. The result is a story of survival in the midst of an intense genocide, heartbreaking yet stunningly uplifting. Willis speaks directly and captivatingly to his listener. This is an important story that speaks to everyone. Simultaneous release with the Random House hardcover (reviewed online). (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.A Call from the Road
I am sure you know how important it can be to get a good phone signal. We were speeding through the hot African desert in a scratched and muddy Land Cruiser that had been much whiter a week earlier. Our driver, a Darfur tribesman like me, was swerving through thorny acacia bushes, working the gears expertly in the deep sands of another and always another ravine, which we call a wadi, and sailing over the bumps in the land–there are no roads to speak of. In the backseat, a young news filmmaker from Britain, Philip Cox, was holding on as we bounced and as our supplies thumped and clanked and sloshed around. A veteran of these deserts, he was in good humor–even after a long week of dusty travel and so many emotionally difficult interviews. Survivors told us of villages surrounded at night by men with torches and machine guns, the killing of men, women, and children, the burning of people alive in the grass huts of Darfur. They told us of the rape and mutilation of young girls, of execution by machete of young men–sometimes eighty at a time in long lines.
You cannot be a human being and remain unmoved, yet if it is your job to get these stories out to the world, you keep going. So we did that.
I was Philip’s translator and guide, and it was my job tokeep us alive. Several times each hour I was calling militarycommanders from rebel groups or from the Chad National Army to ask if we should go this way or that way to avoid battles or other trouble.My great collection of phone numbers was the reason many reporters trusted me to take them intoDarfur. I don’t know how Philip got my cell number in the first place–maybe from the U.S. Embassy, or the U.S. State Department, or the British Embassy, or from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or from one of the aid organizations or a resistance group. It seemed that everyone had my cell phone number now. He certainly did not get my number from the government of Sudan, whose soldiers would kill me if they caught me bringing in a reporter.
These satellite phone calls–and often just cell phonecalls–frequently were to commanders who said, No, you will die if you come here, because we are fighting so-and-so today. We would then find another way.
If one rebel group hears that you have been calling another group, they might think you are a spy, even though you are only doing this for the journalist and for the story–you give the rebels nothing in return. I had to be careful about such things if I wanted to get my reporters out of Darfur alive, and so more stories could go out to the world. Since the attack on my own village, that had become my reason, and really my only reason, for living. I was feeling mostly dead inside and wanted only to make my remaining days count for something. You have perhaps felt this way at some time. Most of the young men I had grown up with were now dead or fighting in the resistance; I, too, had chosen to risk myself, but was using my English instead of a gun.
We needed to arrive at our destination before sundown or risk attack by the Sudanese Army, or by Darfur rebels aligned with government, or by other rebels who didn’t know who we were and who might kill us just to be safe. So we didn’t like what happened next.
Our Land Cruiser was suddenly blocked by six trucks that emerged from a maze of desert bushes. These were Land Cruisers, too, but with their roofs cut off completely so men could pile in and out instantly, as when they have to escape a losing battle or get out before a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) reaches them. Dusty men with Kalashnikov rifles piled out. On the order of their commander, they pointed their guns at us. When so many guns are pulled ready at the same time, the crunching sound is memorable. We moved slowly out of our vehicle with our hands raised.
These men were clearly rebel troops: their uniforms were but dirty jeans; ammunition belts hung across their chests; their loosely wrapped turbans, or shals–head scarves, really–were caked with the dust of many days’fighting. No doctors travel with these troops, who fight almost every day and leave their friends in shallow graves. Emotionally, they are walking dead men who count their future in hours. This makes them often ruthless, as if they think everyone might as well go to the next life with them. Many of them have seen their families murdered and their villages burned. You can imagine how you would feel if your hometown were wiped away and all your family killed by an enemy whom you now roam the land to find and kill so you can die in peace.
Among the rebels are the Sudan Liberation Movement, the Sudan Liberation Army, the Justice and Equality Movement, and several others. There are other groups in Chad, and they travel across the borders as they please. Where they get their guns and money is often a mystery, but Darfur has been filled with automatic weapons from the time when Libya attacked Chad and used Darfur as a staging area. Also, it must be understood that Sudan is aligned with radical Islamic groups and is, as a separate matter, letting China get most of its oil. So some Western interests and some surrounding countries are thought to be involved in supporting the rebel groups. It is sad how ordinary people suffer when these chess games are played.
Nearly half of Africa is covered by the pastoral lands of herding villages, and much of this land has great wealth below and poor people above. They are among the three hundred million Africans who earn less than a dollar a day, and who are often pushed out of the way or killed for such things as oil, water, metal ore, and diamonds. This makes the rise of rebel groups very easy. The men who stopped us probably needed no persuasion to join this group.
The men’s weary-looking young commander walked to me and said in the Zaghawa language,
“Daoud Ibarahaem Hari, we know all about you. You are a spy. I know you are Zaghawa like us, not Arab, but unfortunately we have some orders, and we have to kill you now.”
It was easy for him to know I was a Zaghawa from the small scars that look like quotation marks and were cut into my temples by my grandmother when I was an infant. I told him yes, I am Zaghawa, but I am no spy.
The commander breathed in a sad way and then put the muzzle of his M-14 rifle to one of these scars on my head. He asked me to hold still and told Philip to stand away. He paused to tell Philip in broken English not to worry, that they would send him back to Chad after they killed me.
“Yes, fine, but just a sec,” Philip replied, holding his hand up to stop the necessary business for a moment while he consulted me.
“What is going on?”
“They think I am a spy, and they are going to shoot the gun and it will make my head explode, so you should stand away.”
“Who are they?” he asked.
I told him the name of the group, nodding carefully in the direction of a vehicle that had their initials handpainted on the side.
He looked at the vehicle and lowered his hands to his hips. He looked the way the British look when they are upset by some unnecessary inconvenience. Philip wore a well-wrapped turban; his skin was tanned and a littlecracked from his many adventures in these deserts. He was not going to stand by and lose a perfectly good translator.
“Wait just a moment!” he said to the rebel commander. “Do . . . not . . . shoot . . . this . . . man. This man is not a spy. This man is my translator and his name is Suleyman Abakar Moussa of Chad. He has his papers.” Philip thought that was my name. I had been using that name to avoid being deported from Chad to a certain death in Sudan, where I was wanted, and to avoid being otherwise forced to stay in a Chad refugee camp, where I could be of little service.
“I hired this man to come here; he is not a spy. We are doing a film for British television. Do you understand this? It’s absolutely essential that you understand this.” He asked me to translate, just to be sure, which, under my circumstance, I was happy to do.
More than his words, Philip’s manner made the commander hesitate. I watched the commander’s finger pet the trigger. The gun muzzle was hot against my temple. Had he fired it recently, or was it just hot from the sun? I decided that if these were about to be my last thoughts, I should try some better ones instead. So I thought about my family and how I loved them and how I might see my brothers soon.
“I am going to make a telephone call,” Philip explained, slowly withdrawing his satellite phone from his khaki pants pocket. “You will not shoot this man, because your commander will talk to you on this telephone momentarily– you understand?” He looked up a number from his pocket notebook. It was the personal number of the rebel group’s top commander. He had interviewed him the previous year.
“Your top man,” he said to all the gunmen standing like a firing squad around us as he waited for the call to go through. “Top man. Calling his personal number now. It’s ringing. Ringing and ringing.”
God is good. The satellite phone had a strong signal. The number still worked. The distant commander answered his own phone. He remembered Philip warmly. Miracle after miracle.
Philip talked on the phone in a rapid English that I quietly translated for the man holding the gun.
Philip held one finger up as he spoke, begging with that finger and with his eyes for one more moment, one more moment. He laughed to show that he and the man on the phone were old friends.
“They are old friends,” I translated.
Philip then held out the satellite phone to the commander, who pressed the muzzle even harder against my head.
“Please talk to him now. Please. He says it’s an order for you to talk to him.”
The commander hesitated as if it were some trick, but finally reached over and took the phone.
The two commanders talked at length. I watched his trigger finger rise and fall like a cobra and then finally slither away. We were told to leave the country immediately.
To not get killed is a very good thing. It makes you smile again and again, foolishly, helplessly, for several hours. Amazing. I was not shot–humdallah.My brothers, you will have to wait for me a little longer.
Our driver had been wide-eyed through all this, since drivers often do not fare well in this kind of situation. There was joy and some laughter in the Land Cruiser as we sped back toward the village of Tine–which you say “Tina”–on the Chad-Sudan border.
“That was amazing what you did,” I said to Philip. We drove a few trees farther before he replied.
“Amazing, yes. Actually, I’ve been trying to get through to him for weeks,” he said. “Lucky thing, really.”
The driver, who spoke almost no English, asked me what Philip had said. I told him that he had said God is good, which, indeed, is what I believe he was saying.
Anonymous
Posted February 26, 2008
The complete title is as follows: The Translator: A Tribesman¿s Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari, as told to Dennis Burke and Megan M. McKenna, 2008, Random House. If this book only reported firsthand on the situation in Sudan, it would already be an excellent, highly recommended book, but Daoud Hari¿s uniquely penetrating, concise eyewitness account puts this book in a higher category: this is a necessary book. If you read no other book this year, at least read this one if you read 100 other books, read this one first. The descriptions of horror can make you weep or wretch, yet the book is infused with humanity, dignity, and even humor--a testimony to the worst and best humanity has to offer. Daoud Hari has witnessed utmost cruelties and survived unspeakable crimes which struck down his family, his village, the region of Darfur, and which continue to corrupt and cripple the nation of Sudan, as its tribal citizens are wiped off the face of the earth or turned into unwelcome refugees. Overwhelmed by the senseless loss of his brother, the escape of his aged mother into the wilderness to hide, the dangerous roaming of his aged, noble father, the author sought to do something meaningful in the wake of madness which engulfed everyone and everything he knew. Armed with his ability to speak Zaghawa, Arabic, and English, and with intimate knowledge of Darfur¿s geography, Hari became useful to aid organizations and journalists. He became determined to help bring to the outside world the stories of those who died, who killed them, how, and why. The courage and humanity of journalists and other individuals who gathered eyewitness accounts of the genocide in Sudan comprise an essential part of his story. He also supplies significant explanations into the historic and cultural contexts of the strife in his country. His frankness makes this catastrophe very real for us.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 20, 2011
Very inspiring. This man took great risks in order to protect his beautiful country and reveal the atrocities going on within. Courage like this is hard to find. Beautiful story.
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Posted December 4, 2010
This book was phenomenal! Very informative, heart felt account of what is occurring in the Darfur region today.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I picked this book up by chance while browsing at the bookstore. I have wanted to know more about the situation in Sudan and this book was quite helpful. Hari's writing style is simple, but gentle and genuine. Of course, the book depicts many of the horrific situations that Hari was witness to while serving as a translator for journalists writing about the refugee camps in Chad. Also, I appreciated the extra appendix chapter at the end of the book that more fully explained the history of the conflict in this region. Very helpful! Of course, reading this book makes me no expert on the situation, but at least now I am more informed about what's going on and am more aware that the Sudanese people need help!
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Posted August 22, 2009
very interesting, first hand information, current experiences, describes different curcumstances in Darfur and Sudan. Excellent for a study. Is topic for United Methodist Women study for this year
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Posted July 8, 2008
sooo good
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Posted April 6, 2008
Such a down-to-earth, human, and real account of the capacity for evil that is present in humanity, and the undying capacity for kindness...ying/yang...you gain an incredible respect for these people who are suffering such unfathomable indignity and injustice. You realize that saving Darfur is not about charity....it is about self-preservation of our own humanity. If we allow the thirst for oil to let us accept this kind of atrocity, who, and what have we become???????
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Posted February 18, 2008
Daoud Hari does and excellent job of telling the horrifing accounts of millions of refugees forced from thier homes by the Sundanese goverment. Dauod helps by being a translator and assisting reporters to getting in and out of Dafur most dangerous areas. The story that sticks so much in my mind is the one where this man tells Dauod of watching his daughter being murdered and being unable to answer her cries for help. I would recommend this book to anyone who, like myself, knows only what we hear on the news. Dauod Hari puts you right there.
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Posted April 1, 2008
This is a noble effort on the part of a first-time author. The language is a bit rough and unpolished at times, although one can understand it as coming in first-hand narrative format, much like a conversation, and devoid of embellishments. It is because of this amateurish approach that I believe this will make for a better movie than a book, since it is clear that the author lacks the necessary training to fully develop the scenery, but as an evil travel digest, it is very satisfactory in depicting the current situation in Chad and Sudan. Best of all: It has convinced me to make an effort to help as best I can.
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Posted March 18, 2008
You may have read about Darfur, seen it on the news and even sent a check to aid in the humanitarian crisis, but you will never really grasp the situation until you open the pages of this book and read this memoir. Translating Darfur¿s stories of human pain and suffering into English words reporters could understand and later share with the rest of the world was the work of Daoud Hari a local tribesman. One of the most poignant reflections in this wrenching memoir is his notation that sometimes it was just the telling of a story, the sharing of an experience and knowing that someone was recording it that brought some small measure of relief to victims who verbalized their anguish. At once candid, graphic and yet philosophical this book reminds us that the genocide in the region continues and also helps first time readers understand some of the intricacies of the Sudan and conflict. Hari is a Zaghawan, a tribe that distinguishes itself with scars on the facial temple. It's easy to see that the scars to Hari run much deeper than traditional markings. During his travels with journalists such as Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, stories of loss, painful, senseless deaths, parents forced to watch their children suffer at the end of bayonets, scores of young men dispatched with machetes 'so horrifying in fact that reporters who saw the carnage had to be hospitalized from the visual trauma' Hari persisted in helping document the inhumanity. Day after day, Hari went back into the field, risking his life to tell these stories and help Darfur¿s voices be heard all the way to Europe and the Americas. Woven into the rich fabric of the book we also learn about Hari¿s family, their lives prior to and during this genocide. We learn about the ravages of fear, the accumulating toll of savagery on the psyche of youngsters and adults who have seen so much terror and heartbreak. We see Hari try to make his way amidst the chaos of life in a disintegrating country where the only law is who has the bigger guns, machetes and soldiers. We also hear Hari¿s own story about his high school English, his camel, his trek to foreign lands 'and a stay in an Egyptian prison when he is caught without legal work permit papers', his love of classic novels such as Robert Louis Stevenson¿s TREASURE ISLAND and KIDNAPPED and Charles Dickens¿, OLIVER TWIST. But most of all we hear his voice and his storytelling almost as if we were sitting together sharing our thoughts. This is one book to buy and share with a friend. Everyone can relate to it because it¿s easy to place yourself in Hari¿s shoes. His gentle storytelling draws the reader in, captures attention and then often asks 'isn¿t this what you want too,¿ such as food for your children, safe shelter, and freedom from fear? If you only buy one book about Darfur, choose this one, especially if you have little knowledge about the situation and want a human perspective and background information. Hari will draw you into his tale, touch your heart and make you wonder why this situation continues to exist.
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Posted February 10, 2008
The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur, is a story that grabs the reader and hangs on tight it doesn't let go even after the last page is read. It is the story of Daoud Hari, a native of Darfur who uses his English and Arabic fluency to translate for reporters who have come to cover the story of the Darfur genocide. Daoud is compelling as he shares the realities of the genocide his style of writing makes the reader feel they're having a conversation with an old friend. He deftly puts a human face on the atrocities occurring in Darfur. Some of the graphic details are horrifying to the point that it physically hurts to read about them a reader of these stories is easily brought to tears. It is this type of reaction that is needed to inspire people to take action, and here Daoud accomplishes his goal of getting the story of Darfur out to the world. It would have been easy for Daoud to focus only on the individual tragedies rampant in the horror of Darfur however, the book also reveals the incredible strength, generosity, and humanity of the people of Darfur and even contains unexpected moments of humor. It is this sense of human connection, of seeing the close-knit bond shared by people within a village and their everyday lives together, that makes the book such a strong voice. The reader comes to care about these people in such a way that they are not faceless news stories, but beloved mothers, brothers, fathers, who are killed in the most brutal of ways. It would be impossible not to read this book without feeling rage, sorrow, and, through it all, a sense of hope that if there are people like Daoud out there, goodness and human kindness can eventually overcome evil. An amazing book written by an amazing person.
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Posted February 10, 2008
Simple words and a country torn apart from within. Who would ever believe that they would combine to weave a story of such huge dimensions. Of a people who though torn from their homes, some tortured or killed by their own countrymen hold love within themselves for their brothers. Like so many others I have heard some stories and seem pictures of Darfur. I knew that I had no idea of the truth of what is happening in that corner of the world. Daoud Hari uses the stories of individual or of families to bring us the true depth of the horror that occurs there every day. This young man felt compelled to bring this story to the world in any way that he was able. First by being a translator and guide to reporters from other nations. Reporters that he counted on to bring their accounts to people that he counted on to help. The help did come, but all too often it was and is only the help given by organizations and individuals, not governments. The story is being told in whispers, when it should be shouted from the rooftops. It is the not being acknowledged by those with the power to bring the suffering to an end. Hari is continuing his journey, his quest, in the hope that his people will be able to return to the life and families that they so cherish. This is most of all a story filled with hope, and optimism. We all have something to learn here.
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Posted February 8, 2008
Franz Kafka once wrote, 'I believe, one should read only such books, which bite and sting. If the book, which we read, does not wake us with a blow on the head,as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? We need the books, which affect affect us like a disaster, a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must the axe be for the frozen sea in us.' The Translator by Daoud Hari is definitely one of those books that Kafka describes. The words that Hari use are simple, but the message is powerful. The story that he tells is filled with horror and tragedy. But underneath all that there is hope. Hope for a better future for his people struggling to survive in the war torn area of the Sudan known as Darfur. A place that has often been in the news of late stories told by reporters in short sound bites before the anchors move on to another story and the reporters return to their comfortable lives. To me those new stories always make the conflict seem so far away, so impersonal and often doesn't stay with me. The exact opposite can be said when reading Hari's memoir. There is nothing more personal than to read the first hand account of an event through the eyes of someone who lived it. They weren't there because some new organization paid them to be, they were there because they didn't have a choice. Daoud Hari survived the attack that destroyed his village and made it safely to a refuge camp in Chad. Once there he could have meeked out a life for himself and perhaps emigrated to another country that wasn't affected by the war. Instead he chose to return to Darfur again and again. Using his language skills to guide reporters and aid workers through the war ravaged countryside so that they could get the story of what was happening out to the rest of the world. He thought nothing about the risk that he was taking, knowing that if he was caught by the government militia or even by any of the Darfurian fighters that he could be killed. Hari's story is very moving and it sucked me in right from the start. When you read it you feel as though he is sitting across from you telling his story. There is a deeply personal connection between him as an author and you as the reader that it doesn't feel as though you are separated by pages. As with any conversations among people he sometimes goes off on a tangent letting the story pull him (and us along with him) to where it needs to go. Hari holds nothing back. He doesn't sugar coat the horrors and he is able to evoke strong emotions from the reader. There were times that I was almost brought to tears. It has been a long time since I've read something that made me feel as much as Hari's The Translator. His words have power and they stay with you long after you are done reading them.
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Overview
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 ...