Buy now from Random House
- The Translator
- Written by Daoud Hari
- Format: Trade Paperback | ISBN: 9780812979176
- Our Price: $13.00
...Or Choose Another Retailer
Buy now from Random House
- The Translator
- Written by Daoud Hari
- Format: eBook | ISBN: 9781588367372
- Our Price: $9.99
...Or Choose Another Retailer
Buy now from Random House
- The Translator
- Written by Daoud Hari
Read by Mirron Willis - Format: Unabridged Audiobook Download | ISBN: 9780739368596
- Our Price: $15.00
...Or Choose Another Retailer
The Translator
A Memoir
Written by Daoud Hari
Print Editions
What's this?
See larger cover
eBook
Pages: | ISBN: 978-1-58836-737-2
Published by : Random House Random House Group
See larger cover
See larger cover
See large reader
Synopsis
The young life of Daoud Hari–his friends call him David–has been one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. 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: the brutal genocide under way in Darfur.In 2003, Daoud Hari, a Zaghawa tribesman, was among the hundreds of thousands of villagers attacked and driven from their homes by Sudanese-government-backed militia groups. Though Hari’s village was burned to the ground, his family decimated and dispersed, he himself escaped, eventually finding safety across the border. With his high school knowledge of languages, Hari offered his services as a translator and guide. In doing so, however, he had to return to the heart of darkness–and he has risked his life again and again to help ensure that the story of his people is told while there is still time to save them.
Excerpt
Chapter OneA 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpted from The Translator by Daoud Hari. Copyright © 2008 by Daoud Hari. Excerpted by permission of Random House Trade Paperbacks, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
About Daoud Hari
Photo © Megan M. McKenna
Author Q&A
A Conversation with Daoud Hari
What do you hope Americans will learn about Darfur from your memoir?
I hope that Americans will learn that the people of Darfur are in many ways are just like them. They are real people with families and communities who led full lives before the violence started to become very bad in 2003. Darfuris want to live in peace like everyone else and to be able to go home and restart their lives. They are not just victims, but real people like my brothers, sisters, mother and father, who have suffered so much only because of who they are and where they are from. It is a complicated story and I hope that people will understand the conflict better after reading my book and it will inspire them to act to end the violence in Darfur.
In your memoir you write about being sent to prison in Darfur. Describe your experience.
The experience was difficult and is hard for me to talk about. I was not treated well in prison, as I say in the book. I felt very scared for Paul and for Ali, our driver, but not so much for myself. I felt sure that I would die and I did not care too much because I felt mostly dead anyway after the attack on my village and the death of many friends and family. But I felt responsible for Paul and Ali and I did not know what would happen to them. I had been in prisons before and I felt that if I died, it would be because I was doing something to help my people, and that was ok. But even in the prisons, I made friends with the guards because I know that everyone has some good in them and sometimes you just have help them get it out. I learned that, even in such places, people are people and there are opportunities for kindness and understanding.
How did the conflict start?
We, the people of Darfur, lived mostly peacefully with the Arab nomads who came through our lands for many years to graze their herds of cattle and goats. The sheikhs and kings would work out agreements every season that would allow the nomads to use our lands for a time. Sometimes, agreements could not be worked out and there would be fighting, but this fighting would take place away from the villages.
As I got older things began to change. It started to rain less and less and the land for our crops became more scarce. It was also true for the Arabs — they could find less land for their animals to graze. So, it was harder to come to peace agreements on the land. Around the same time, a new government had taken control in Sudan. This new pro-Arab government began to arm the Arab nomads and encourage them to settle arguments more violently and drive the non-Arabs from the land. Not all the Arab nomads agreed to this, of course, but many did, some just to survive. The violence continued to get worse, as did the land problems, until in 2003 a new rebel group made up of Darfuris attacked the Sudan government to try to stop these attacks. This is when you started to hear about Darfur. The Government of Sudan responded by sending out thousands of Janjaweed and government troops to destroy our villages and our people. The conflict has now become even more complicated.
Describe what life was like in your village in Darfur before the crisis erupted.
We had a very good village. All the families knew each other for a very long time. When we were very young, we children would go together to herd the small goats and cattle in the wadis and small mountains outside the village. In the night, we played outside games together — it was too hot during the day to play. We played a game called anashel where you try to find a bone that someone has thrown into the air when your eyes were closed. I had a camel called Kelgi that I loved like a member of my family. In a way it was like growing up anywhere, except our families had camels instead of SUVs and the children rode donkeys instead of bicycles. Otherwise, it was chores and games and worrying about growing up and being respected, as it is everywhere.
In Darfur, you decided to use your knowledge of English and the area to become a translator and guide to journalists. How has Darfur changed since you began working as a translator?
Much of Darfur as I knew it is gone now. My village is gone and so are most of the villages in my area in Darfur. 2.5 million people are displaced in Darfur and more than 240,000 are in refugee camps in Chad. Many areas have been cleared of Darfuris. The rebels that once were fighting the government and Janjaweed have split into many groups and you don’t know who is on what side anymore. Bandits have taken advantage of this to rob, kill, rape and destroy, too. So, it is a much more dangerous place today than when I started working as a translator. Also, aid groups are having a very hard time getting access to people in need. In fact, many places where aid workers used to work are now too dangerous to enter. The people in these places have no help and no one knows what is happening to them. This chaos is not a natural thing: it is carefully crafted by the Sudan government as a way to clear the land for exploitation.
Things are also becoming difficult in Chad. Villages along the border with Sudan are being attacked and Sudan would like to see the Chad government fall so it can be replaced with a government that is good friends with Sudan.
You have watched countless friends and relatives die or flee Darfur, you have received death threats, and you have been sent to prison but, despite these immense pressures, you remain resolute. Now, with the publication of your memoir, there is a chance that the government of Sudan will go after these friends and relatives. Given the consequences, why is it so important to you to publish this book?
I have to tell my story and the story of the people of Darfur. It is what I risked my life to do in Chad and in Darfur and I cannot stop now that I am safe for a time here in the U.S. I fear for my family every day and every night. There are many times that I cannot sleep because I am so afraid for them. But I have to do this. Many in my family have already died but for those still alive they understand that I need to do this. I hope and pray to my god that the government of Sudan or the Janjaweed or some other group will not hurt them when they hear about this book, but I don't know what will happen. It is a very hard thing.
Where do you get your own courage? After everything you have seen and been through, do you fear death?
I don’t feel that it is courage. I just did what I felt I had to do. I am sure you have all felt the same way at some time or another. Life sometimes hands you hard jobs to do. You just have to do them and, inshall’ah, it will be ok. Maybe you need to die doing it. Maybe not. I was lucky that my god kept me safe. Death to me is very natural, like life. I know many good people who I can see again when I die.
You listened to countless stories from refugees and translated them for the journalists you brought to the camps. Tell me one or two of these stories.
This is from the time I was riding on camels in the desert between Chad and Darfur helping people, who had fled the Janjaweed and their destroyed villages, to find refugee camps or to give them a little food and water. We met a woman who was carrying a dead baby in her arms. The baby was very small and had been dead for a few days. People had been trying to get her to let go of the baby so they could bury it, but she wouldn’t let anyone touch it. I went up to her and talked to her for a little bit and she finally let me take the dead baby out of her arms. She cried a lot but didn’t make any noise as the tears came down her face. When we were burying the baby, the mother walked away into the desert. I never saw her again.
During this same time period, I was riding on my camel with my friends and we saw a big tree. A woman was hanging from it. Three small children were on the sand below her wrapped in colorful shawls. Only one was alive, a small boy, but it was almost like he was not alive. We took her down. I found out later what had happened. Her village in Darfur had been attacked and she ran with her three young children to escape. She was caught by the Janjaweed who held her and her children for week, raping her many times. They then let her go in the desert between Sudan and Chad with nothing --- no food, no water. She walked every day for about four days to get to the Chad border but her children were getting very sick. There was nothing she could do for them. She was becoming a little bit crazy while watching them die so she put them under the shade of this big tree, hoping someone would find them, and hung herself from it.
What should the international community be doing?
Before anything, the killing must stop. The full 26,000 member UN-AU force must be allowed into Darfur. The international community must force Sudan’s President Bashir to do this now. China buys most of Sudan’s oil and so has a lot of influence on the government. Maybe the most influence in the world. The international community must pressure China to urge the Khartoum government to allow all the peacekeepers in. It must make sure that the UN-AU force is fully funded and supported so it can do its work. The international community could also push for targeted sanctions in the UN Security Council against Bashir and his government. Keeping peace in South Sudan is also very important. There can be no peace in Darfur if the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with South Sudan is not kept. The international community should also pressure Bashir to keep his promises in South Sudan. Finally, the world should ensure that Darfuris can go back to their land.
What are you doing now? What do you hope to do in the future? Do you hope one day to return to Darfur?
When this tour is over I will start looking for a job. I also want to go to college and to take classes to get ready for that. I know American universities are very good and I am excited to go learn there. One day I hope to go home to Darfur and to help my people rebuild our communities once there is peace.
From the Hardcover edition.
Praise
“Pure, candid and deeply moving.”–New York Post
“[The Translator] may be the biggest small book of this year, or any year. In roughly two hundred 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.”
–The Washington Post Book World
“A book of unusually humane power and astounding moral clarity.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“This is a book every American should read. . . . In the spirit of courage and a desire to protect his people, [Hari] has written an emotional yet gentle memoir.”
–Deseret Morning News
“Heart-stopping . . . a life-changing read.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Discussion Guides
1. Daoud Hari manages to find the good in many people and makes friends easily. As he says, “I bring the stories to you because I know most people want others to have good lives and, when they understand the situation, they will do what they can to steer the world back to kindness.” How does he make these friends? How can we apply this to our own lives? Do you agree that most people want others to have good lives?
2. The conflict in Darfur is often described as being between black Africans and Arabs. The book shows that the conflict is more complicated than that. What are some of the root causes of the conflict in Darfur? How did the African farmers and Arab nomads live together before the conflict? What are the similarities to other conflicts around the world? How can these conflicts be prevented in the future, particularly in light of global warming?
3. What specific steps can the world take to help ensure that Darfuris are allowed to return home, and to send the message that genocide doesn’t work? Do you think genocide has worked so far in this conflict or in others? Can it be prevented in the future? If so, how?
4. Daoud describes the suffering of Darfuri refugees, particularly women and children. How are women and children refugees most vulnerable and what can be done to help them? What is the difference between refugees and internally displaced persons? Where else in the world do large numbers of refugees live? What do you know about them, and what is being done to help them survive and eventually return home?
5. When Daoud is in the small jail near Aswan, Egypt, with the old jailer, and he finds the Egyptian hundred-pound note in a pocket he had forgotten existed, he says that the note “was so folded and faded that I think it was waiting for me for a long time in that pocket, in the way that many things are waiting for us to be ready to receive them.” What does Daoud mean by this? Can you describe how this could apply to your own life?
6. Daoud says at the end of the book that it is likely people are still being killed in Darfur and suffering in the camps as you read the book. What were the most recent events in Darfur when you read the book? How can you act to promote peace in Darfur and to help ensure that the refugees are returned to their land? What actions should the international community take?
7. Daoud uses his language skills to help his people in the only way he knows how—as a translator. Why is this role so important? How does this work help the people of Darfur? Others he knows have chosen to use guns. What do you think of this choice?
8. Daoud writes about how he had known for a long time that he could not help his family in the way his brothers had or as his father and grandfathers had before him. What do you think this means for tradition-based cultures like the one in Darfur? How has change of this kind happened in your own area, and what effect has it had?
9. Paul Salopek and Daoud have a complex relationship. Describe how they work together to help each other and Ali. Both Daoud and Paul have the opportunity to separate themselves from each other in captivity, which would have bettered each of their chances for survival. What would you have done in such a situation?
10. How does Daoud’s concept of family change throughout the book? How is it redefined and enlarged? What role does his time in the various prisons play in this transformation?
11. Daoud is constantly breaking the rules for what he sees as a higher good. How does this relate to your life? How are you willing to break the rules and suffer the consequences in order to serve your higher values? How far would you go in order to pursue your ideals?
12. What are some of the ways in which Daoud deals with the emotional stress of Darfur’s horrors? How does this differ from the ways in which you would deal with such trauma? How does our culture tell us to deal with trauma?Is a horrific news story played over and over on TV—for example, the attack on the World Trade Center—therapeutic as a way for our nation to share and understand this horror, or is it hurtful rather than helpful?
Teacher's Guide
NOTE TO TEACHERS
Please click on the PDF link below to download the Teacher's Guide.
Download a PDF of the Teacher's Guide
- The Translator by Daoud Hari
- January 13, 2009
- Biography & Autobiography - Personal Memoirs; Biography & Autobiography - Political; Political Science - International Relations
- Random House Trade Paperbacks
- $13.00
- 9780812979176
- About Random House
- History
- Our Publishers
- Our Authors
- Contact Us
- Careers@Random House
- Manuscript Submissions
- Publicity & Press
- Random House Worldwide
- Website
- Advanced Search
- Author Events
- Newsletters & RSS
- Blogs & Podcasts
- Reading Groups
- Sitemap
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Use
- Services
- Randomhouse.biz
- Publisher Services
- Author Portal
- Educator Services
- Rights & Permissions
- Vendor Services
- Insight Web Service
- Technology Services
- Affiliate Program
- Random House Speakers Bureau
- Shopping
- View My Account
- View My Cart
- FAQs and Help
- Shipping Information
- Return Policy
- Children's Books
- Bestsellers
- Awards
- Signed Editions
- Personalized Books
- Ordering Info:
- U.S. Consumers
- International Consumers
- U.S. Booksellers
- International Booksellers
- Educators
- Libraries
- Corporations
Use of this site indicates your consent to the Terms of Use. Copyright © 1995-2013 Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
