The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari

Author:Daoud Hari [Hari, Daoud]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General
ISBN: 1400067448
Google: yVDfKAbhkXcC
Amazon: B0015KGX8W
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2008-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

14.

Once More Home

You have met broadcast news filmmaker Philip Cox, who saved my dear head from being shot by calling a commander on the phone. Philip had been in Darfur before and knew the dangers well.

He knew exactly what he wanted: this kind of vehicle, this kind of driver, these kinds of foods to take and bottles of whiskey—some for us and some for the soldiers he would interview.

Philip wanted to see where I had grown up and where my village had been destroyed and where Ahmed was buried. So we went there despite the dangers.

After he saved me from being shot, we went to a place inside Darfur where I told him I needed to stop. It was one of the ruined villages of my dreams, the village where the man had been tied to the tree, and his little girl had been killed by the Janjaweed with his bayonet. I found what I thought must have been the tree, the place. It was just something I wanted to do, to say a prayer there for her; after so many dreams, I felt I knew her a little and needed to pay my respects. I wanted to make sure there were not small bones there needing burial, but there were not. I would come to visit this place other times whenever I was near it.

Then we went north through Chad and crossed back into the far north of Darfur. It was a long way to my village. We watched the sky all day, hoping not to see a helicopter or a plume of smoke that would mean a village attack or a battle. When we saw dust from some trucks in the distance, we stopped and let them disappear into a mirage. I made some calls to rebel groups and was told to keep our eyes open because there could be trouble in the area.

We went through the once-beautiful town of Furawiya. Some thirteen thousand people had lived here and in the surrounding villages before everything was attacked and destroyed. This was the picture-book town of North Darfur, with huge trees along its river, and mountains on each side of the sandy bottom that held the town. The destruction had been most cruel. Villagers escaping up a hillside were machine-gunned from helicopters. Philip and I saw the hill still littered with at least thirty-five bodies—many of them children.

We slowed down while driving in the sand along the wadi that had once held the larger market town near my home village. Forgive me for not using the names of some of these villages, but it is to avoid causing further trouble for those still hiding in these areas.

In the wadi there were no bird sounds—so unlike the place I remembered. The silence was deeply spooky. We arrived at the site of the old village, and there we saw some passing rebels resting under trees and others who had always lived in the area whom I recognized.

I showed Philip where the sheikh’s home had been, now a black spot in the sand with the remains of some mud-walled rooms.

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