The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur Read Online Free PDF

really—were my friends, my mother and my father, my sisters and my brothers, uncountable cousins, aunts, uncles, our camels, donkeys, our songbirds, our thousand years of stories. You can imagine this for yourself, friend, flying home and seeing your homeland below in points of fire. Whatever warrior blood comes to you from your ancestors would be working inside you.
    Yet, perhaps because I had already seen something of the larger world, it was not so simple as that; I was indeed observing from this altitude. I counted among my friends the people of many tribes and many races, and this makes adifference in our hearts. I counted also among my acquaintances Jane Eyre, Long John Silver, and Oliver Twist.
    Altitude itself is a powerful thing. When travelers are in space, looking at our small planet from a distance where borders and flags cannot be seen or imagined, this also, I am told, bends one toward a peaceful view. That is what I wanted, really, just peace. I was sad and anxious for my people but not angry. I didn’t want to kill any human person. I didn’t even hate the man who was organizing all these crimes, the president of Sudan, though I wished deeply to take him for a long walk through the villages of my childhood and perhaps change his way of thinking about how best to serve the people, which is surely his job.
    We floated in the predawn over the deserts of Chad, descending finally into the oasis of N’Djamena (you just say it “Jameena”). Here I had friends and cousins who would give me a place to sleep. With a few dollars from my cousins, I could cross Chad and slip into Darfur in a remote place unnoticed by the Sudan government.
    The stairway rolled up to the plane a little after 5 A.M. in N’Djamena. Last off, I paused for a moment atop the stairs; the moist smell of the river, the great starry sky of my freedom greeted me—
Humdallah, humdallah, the Africa of my friends and my family!
    From this small porch I could see, even at this early hour, Chadian military vehicles and aircraft moving around the base beside the small airport. The city, too, was already awake with its normal business and the added seasoning of war’s excitement.
    The body responds to this. The smells and sounds, the movements of soldiers and vehicles, are all taken in quickly with the keener perceptions that awaken in dangerous times.
    Some cousins were at the airport and I was soon eating a wonderful breakfast: kebab meats in rich, very spicy sauces. The news of the war in neighboring Sudan surrounded me: news from cousins here and there in North Darfur; news learned from cell phones and passing travelers; news about villages attacked here, of deaths in the family there, of cousins taking arms to defend their villages, of sisters missing and mothers killed or raped. There was a great sadness and also a great excitement everywhere: our great nest of bees had been swatted hard.
    After several days to recover my health, I told my eldest cousin that it was time for me to go to Darfur. He shook my hand and held my shoulder as if he would not see me again. I was given the money I would need for fares in the Land Cruisers that string together the villages of Africa. The women of the family wrapped some food for me to take. I went to a marketplace and found a ride in what looked like a good Land Cruiser with a good driver.
    Packed shoulder to shoulder with other travelers, I was soon heading across the rain-flooded wadis.
    The Darfur regions of Sudan are on Chad’s eastern border, about six hundred miles and two days away from N’Djamena on bad roads. We stopped in village marketplaces where some riders would leave and others would pile in. The newer riders bore the ceremonial scars of the Zaghawa, my own people. From these people I learned ofthe troubles ahead: the burned villages, the rush of people across the border into Chad from Darfur. My stomach hurt with fear for my family.
    Everyone knows the family of everyone else among the