Chapter One
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 to keep us alive. Several
times each hour I was calling military commanders 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 into Darfur. 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 little cracked 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.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from The Translator
by Daoud Hari
Copyright © 2008 by Daoud Hari.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Random House
Copyright © 2008
Daoud Hari
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6744-2
