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The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur

[photo: Book Jacket]

Daoud Hari


Random House
Cloth 9781400067442
$23
March 2008

The Translator is a suspenseful, harrowing, and deeply moving memoir of how one person can make a difference in the world--an on-the-ground account of one of the biggest stories of our time. Because he chose his high school knowledge of languages as his weapon--while others around him were taking up arms--the world came to know about Darfur. Hari grew up as a Zaghawa tribesman in a traditional village in the Darfur region of Sudan. In 2003, helicopter gunships and bombers began flying over Darfur’s villages in a killing spree. Sudanese government-backed militia groups, attacking on horseback, indiscriminately killed, raped and burned. Why? Daoud Hari will explain the ancient struggles and the new pressure for resources that have come together to create this violent moment in world history. It is not about old hatreds: it is about oil and water and metals. Hari’s village was attacked and destroyed, his family decimated and dispersed. Hari and a group of his friends roamed the battlefield deserts on camels to help survivors find food, water, and the way to safety in Chad. When international groups and reporters arrived, Hari became the translator and guide of choice. Hari took up his work at grave personal risk--the government of Sudan had outlawed journalists in the region, and a quick firing squad was the likely fate of locals who assisted these "foreign spies." Hari would become a vital link to the outside world, called on regularly by the U.S. Embassy, the UN and major news organizations. Using courage, clever strategies and an uncanny ability to make new friends in tight situations--even among members of a firing squad--he brought the world’s eyes and ears to the horror story of Darfur--including some of the biggest names in journalism, including NBC’s Ann Curry and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. Sometimes what Hari learned was too horrible for even him to translate. Then, suddenly, Hari became the story himself. Captured in Darfur and accused of spying with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek, he was brutally tortured and faced near certain death. His incredible luck, he decided, had perhaps run out. "So many people have died in Darfur. Now it is my turn," he thought. The many reporters he had helped so courageously now tried to come to his rescue. Hari gave them a one percent chance of helping in time. "But for me, that is good," he writes.

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