The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari Read Free Book Online Page A

troops or Janjaweed or helicopters, many would not survive the hundred-mile trip through the scorching desert. The rain time would be over in a few days, after which thedesert would dry very quickly. But there were not many other choices. Some said they would hide in local wadis and wait for peace. And there are caves in the mountains, as I well knew. But most people were intent on finding safety in Chad, where Zaghawa relatives would take care of them until they could return. Below all these adult conversations gazed the worried eyes of silent children. And in every adult eye was the dullness of a fatal understanding: whatever we do, our world is now ending and we commend ourselves into God’s rough or gentle Hands.
    “Your home village will soon be attacked,” the sheikh told me as we stood together after tea, watching his people go. He kept track of where the refugees were coming from; he knew where the lines of attack were spreading. So I bid him goodbye and thanked him for his lifetime of courtesies to my family and to me. He said that he had always been honored to serve us; he bid me give his greetings to my father and my mother and to Ahmed and my sister, all of whom he respected greatly.
    I climbed aboard a Land Cruiser loaded with guns and men headed in the direction of my own small village. There was not much conversation as we bounced quickly through the wadis. There ahead, in a lovely nest of green, was my home village. I stepped off within sight of my family’s huts and said goodbye for the last time to these fellows in the vehicle.
    “See you soon, Daoud,” said an old school friend with a serious smile, meaning
not in this lifetime
.

7.
Homecoming
    It was not the homecoming I had longed for after these years away. I was not returning with gifts and money for everyone.
    “Daoud is returned,” I heard some men say as I walked by groups that were gathered here and there. I nodded to them but it did not seem to be a time for smiles and joyful greetings.
    I walked into the family enclosure where a donkey, several goats, and some chickens watched my arrival. My father was on the far side of the village with some other men, as were my brothers. I saw my mother under the shade roof attached to the cooking hut; she was with my sister Aysha and with several other women of the village; they were all in mourning. Mother looked very old now. Her hair was matted with the earth of grieving. She wore dark clothing, a dark shawl over her old head. She saw me and wept intoher hands, as if it were even sadder for her to think that my homecoming had to be at such a time.
    “
Fatah
,” she managed to say, which is what you say when you greet someone in a time of grieving.
    “Fatah,” I replied. I stood a distance away from her. We did not touch or embrace, following the custom. She would try to say something, but then begin to cry again into her hands and her shawl. We had lost perhaps twenty cousins in the previous days, and each was like a son or daughter to her. In tribal life, cousins are as close as brothers and sisters and, in such times of loss, it physically hurts. In this tiny village, three children and their mother were killed when the white Antonov bomber came. Six of the fifty houses were burned. This news, which I already knew, was told to me again by the women as I stood with my head bowed a little to my mother.
    They recounted the deaths of each person: how it happened, what was happening to that family, and good things to remember about each person. It is good to remember the dead at such times, for soon, after the period of mourning, any photo and reminder of that person will be removed. The person’s clothes will be given away to a distant village. The past is past. There is too much death in the land of no doctors for it to be any other way.
    I heard running and then saw Ahmed come through the enclosure. He was, against the mourning custom and his own intentions, smiling somewhat as he grasped my