THE TRANSLATOR, PART 3

"But for now it was ashes and graves. This had been a good village."
—page 60, The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari

The Translator traverses familiar terrain. True, we may not have visited Darfur before. True, Daoud Hari was certainly not our guide. But, we have visited similar places. We have visited the killing fields of Rwanda in Philip Gourevitch's We Wish To Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, we have heard tales of terror, rescue, and redemption from Valentino Achak Deng in Southern Sudan in Dave Egger's What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, and we have experienced firsthand the roles of victim and perpetrator of violence in Liberia in Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.

Yet, this is new territory as well. The Translator is a slender and sparse volume. It lacks much of the research, historical detail, and knowledge of local and international politics that fill the other three books. Its primary strength, however, lies in the oral history of its storyteller, Daoud Hari. His words, as related to Dennis Burke and Megan McKenna, relate his story in a humble manner, which focuses on family, village, and community. His heart truly grieves for his people.

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"We walked through a strange world of occasionally falling human limbs and heads. A leg fell near me. A head thumped to the ground farther away. Horrible smells filled the grove like poison gas that even hurts the eyes. And yet this was but the welcome to what we would eventually see: eighty-one men and boys fallen across one another, hacked and stabbed to death in that same attack."
—page 112, The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari

Another strength of Hari's memoir is that he presents us with the violence, horror, and carnage of Darfur without resorting to cinematic violence. The above passage is as graphic as it gets. It would have filled pages in the books by Gourevitch, Eggers, and Beah. Instead, Hari brings us to the violence and laments and mourns. He is asking us to do the same.

He is part of a group of Zaghawa survivors who interview their fellow survivors under the auspices of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations in the refugee camps of N'Djamena, Chad. He only presents a few of the 1,134 stories that his group collected during their interviews. He only needs to present a few because the rape, torture, slaughter, and decimation of those few are representative of the whole.

After this, he places his own life in jeopardy, once again highlighting the community over the individual, by acting as a translator and guide for foreign journalists who are trying to make the international community aware of the genocide. After reading the final chapters of his story, it is amazing that he cares about anyone at all. His spirit shines through in the final paragraphs, in the final sentences. It is still vibrant and strong, even amidst its experienced brokenness and loss. He asks, "What can one person do?" The answer—if we can use his own life, his own story, as example—is that there is plenty that one person can do: live life fully, love those around you, and act in justice and mercy.

[Part 1] [Part 2]