Geez Louise! ANOTHER book!

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

I’ve been following the genocide in Darfur for several years now, and I read everything I can get my hands on that’s written about what’s happening there. Most of what I’ve read has been histories of the region, books about the long-running wars in and around Sudan, and about a half dozen solid non-fiction texts specifically about Darfur. A couple have been published as books specifically for activists, and a couple have been tie-ins to documentary films. What I was waiting for was a memoir from an actual, real, live Darfuran. Someone who has been through the hell that is now Darfur and who can now tell the tale, from a personal perspective.

This might be that first great book.

Daoud Hari escaped death at the hands of the janjaweed (the Arab militias being used as proxies by the Khartoum regime to commit the mass slaughter in Darfur), but chooses to use his education and his skill with language to help his people, as opposed to picking up an AK-47 and joining one of the handful of rebel groups fighting the Sudanese government. He ends up working as a translator for foreign journalists, aid workers, and NGO representatives who are trying to document the genocide.

Which, of course, is a job that could get him killed. And nearly does. Repeatedly.

Much of this slim book focuses on two harrowing nightmare journeys into Darfur with journalists, both of which nearly resulting in the deaths of both Hari and his partner in each case, and which bookmark Hari’s personal story as a survivor of the horror that is Sudan and then as a refugee. This is an example of the millions of eye-opening, heart-wrenching stories of the refugees from so many places around the world, but especially from Africa, which we as Americans simply never hear, unless we make the effort.

Make the effort. Hari’s voice is at turns warm, ironic, angry, wistful, and deeply sad. But it is always beautiful. So have your eyes opened, and your heart wrenched. Read this book.

(Cross-posted at The Spring Reading Challenge.)