What I'm reading

The Translator, a Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur
Daoud Hari

If you haven't picked up this book yet, and you can stomach the sometimes blunt passages of war and suffering, it's time to find The Translator at your local library. Beautifully written, with a flowing style that mixes tales of joy and heartache in the same breath, much like the life the author lived. The Translator tells the tale of a Sudanese Zaghawa tribesman, who through a series of events (which seemed unfortunate at the time) managed to get some amount of education as a child, even learning English. His experiences as a child and his love of English literature (reading Bronte, Dickens and Alan Paton as a young village teenager!) caused him to travel throughout much of Northern Africa and gave him a broader view of the world than many of his fellow tribesmen, so that he gained some understanding of all sides in the War of Darfur. On returning home in the midst of destruction, he took the dangerous job as a translator for UN inspectors and media reporters. The book covers many of the familiar places of my teenage years in Chad, and is written in a way that brings the Chadian and Sudanese people more alive than I even felt it when living there. This is not only an inside look at the strife in Sudan, but an even deeper look into the culture and lives of the people themselves.



On N'Djamena:
Though it is the capital of Chad, N'Djamena, a city of about three quarters of a million souls, is located exactly on the country's border with Cameroon, as if it were waiting for the right moment to cross the river and escape its own poverty. The heat wakes you up in N'Djamena. The children outside your door also wake you. I had taken a small room in a low, mud-walled building of eight families, so I can tesitfy to this. Men and boys on camels, riding along the dirt streets to market, shouting from camel to camel, wake you up too -- though it is not unpleasant to hear this as you wake, for the French and Arabic of N'Djamena blend together very musically. Little scrappy motorcycles also wake you up and you can smell their smoke. The old diesel engines of yellow Peugeot taxicabs begin their daily prowl down the mud streets, and their rumble and smoke also come into your room... French fighter jets from their base by the airport fly low and fast over the city on a usual morning. This is a courtesy in case you are still lazy and need to wake up.

On interviews with refugees:
Often, then, the stories came pouring out, and often they were set before us slowly and quietly like tea. These slow stories were told with understatement that made my eyes and voice fill as I translated; for when people seem to have no emotion remaining for such stories, your own heart must supply it.