The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur (17 page)

Our case was being transferred from the military to the civilian court. What was extraordinary was that standing in the back of the courtroom were four U.S. soldiers in their uniforms: a Marine, two U.S. Army officers, and a U.S. Air Force officer. I had some idea that some wheels were turning to do something for us. But look at these guys. My God, you have no idea what they looked like to us. They came up to us, and Paul was very moved to see them. This made the officers very emotional and everyone was wiping their eyes.

Depending on your situation in the world, U.S. soldiers may not always be what you want to see, but for the first moment in all this time, I thought that I would probably not die today. I did not think the danger was over. I knew Paul might walk out with these officers, and Ali and I might be led through another door to the gallows. But maybe not. Certainly not today—not with those guys in the back of the room smiling and winking at us. The good America was in the room.

The charges against us were read. I agreed that I had been working with journalists and had entered the country illegally six times. Ali admitted to entering once with a journalist.

It was Paul’s turn. He walked to the front of the courtroom. An African Union soldier began to translate the charges against him, but Paul stopped the court.

“I have my own translator. Please bring Mr. Daoud Hari back,” he said.

The court was still for a moment, but this was done.

The charges against Paul were ridiculous. He had printed a map of Sudan from the Internet—from the popular CIA World Factbook public website. So he was clearly a spy for them. That sort of thing.

After Paul had rejected all these charges, we were returned to a prison, but a different, civil prison. It was much worse than the military prison, but we didn’t care about
any of that now. People knew we were there: big people. We were told that Congressman Christopher Shays had been in El Fasher the day before to inquire about our case to the governor of El Fasher. The American Embassy in Khartoum was in high gear for us. We were transferred to the civilian court, which was very good news. The miracle behind this news was Paul’s wife and a few others in America who together were making things happen. Paul’s many reporter friends were calling powerful people. Reporters I had worked with from the United States, Africa, France, Germany, Japan, and other places were adding pressure. And all of that was added to what the U.S. Embassy staffers were doing.

Paul seemed happy after the court appearance, but not happy with me. He was angry for reasons I did not understand. I couldn’t figure it out, so I decided to worry about this problem later.

I talked to the guards a lot. They said we were big news. They gave me a local newspaper with the headline “Three Big Spies Caught.” I asked the guards if they thought that was true, and they laughed. I negotiated the use of a cell phone so that Paul could call his wife. The cost of this was Paul’s wristwatch, which somehow he still possessed. This was a big moment. He found a corner of the cell for this call and it was very emotional for him. I used the phone later to call a cousin; I asked him to contact my mother and any of my brothers and sisters he could find alive. I asked him to tell them not to inform my father that I was in prison, he would walk through dangerous territory to come see me. He needed to stay hidden where he was.

I could not stop thinking about why Paul seemed cold and angry to me. So I asked him why.

“You have called me a spy to these people. You have done it over and over again when you are speaking in languages I don’t understand. I don’t know why you would do this—it could cost me years in this prison.”

I was amazed. I sat down on the floor of the cell to think. I stood up again and paced around, trying to figure this out. “What word is this? What word do I use to say spy?” I asked him.

“Hawalya,”
he said.

“My goodness, Paul, that just means ‘white guy,’” I tried to explain. But he thought otherwise in his mind. He was also perhaps still a little upset about the Israel and Egypt things in my background that I had not told him when we met.

The U.S. officers interrupted my investigation of this misunderstanding. They brought us blankets and sleeping bags, Cokes, and goat burgers. So this happiness overwhelmed our little problems.

Late in the evening, the attorney general of Sudan came to correct the charges against Paul. He also had us untied; someone had ordered our wrists tied like old times.

The attorney general told the guards to untie the hawalya.

Paul jumped up: “Why do you call me a spy? You know very well I am no spy.”

The attorney general corrected him with a smile:
“Hawalya? Sir, it means, well, it just means ‘white man.’ A white fellow. It’s a good word, almost affectionate.”

Paul looked like a man who sees a beloved brother come home after being a long time lost to him. He came over to me and apologized and we laughed.

“You are my brother,” I said to him. “I would never say things to harm you.” He shook my shoulders and closed his eyes and said he knew that.

He seemed more recovered in the next hour than in all the time since ending his fast.

It had been a pretty good day, considering that the three of us were looking at fifteen to twenty years in a very bad prison. But what, not counting family, is more important than friendship?

The attorney general told Paul that his case would be separated from ours. It would make things easier. Paul looked at Ali and me.

“Absolutely not. This will not happen, I assure you,” Paul told the man. “We will demand to be tried together. I will ask my country to insist on it.”

At this time, though we did not know it, letters from big stars such as Bono and from famous leaders such as Jimmy Carter and Jesse Jackson were piling up on this man’s desk—copies of letters sent to President Bashir. The Vatican had even written, and the government of France. When I heard about these things several days later, I hoped that Bashir was a stamp collector, because this would be a good time for him. The attorney general looked upset, but he agreed to this demand. In this way, I knew Paul was saving our lives if they
could be saved. He had made the same demand with the rebels and with the army, and saved us three times altogether.

It was good that Paul and I had faced and settled our argument. Nothing is more important than friendship in dangerous times. what I did not know until later was that the Sudanese were telling the American consul that Paul’s case was something they could talk about, but the two Sudanese men captured with him would be Sudan’s business only. It would have been natural for Ali and me to disappear at this point—if not for Paul’s demands.

Later that night I could not sleep and I imagined Ahmed came to visit me. He would know all the guards and they would be happy to see him, and they would open all the doors for us so we could take a walk through El Fasher as we had done when I was in school.

It felt very good to imagine walking with him in our old city. I think I had been living like a dead man since he was killed. But I looked around the cell and decided I had some more brothers now, and I should think in a happier way about things.

Perhaps prison was a place for me to think about things. It was in the Egyptian prison where I realized I needed to not be so cut off from my family. Now I was seeing the whole idea of family in a bigger way.

During all my years, Ahmed was always a long step ahead of me. It was still this way in my daydream.

When I saw the guards that morning, I thought,
Oh, yes, it is the part of me like Ahmed that helps me make friends so quickly
. Ahmed has saved my life several times just from that. And if I can find some joy after all I have seen, it will be something
of him, too, for you have to love life like Ahmed if you are to truly serve your people.

When I went back into Darfur with my first reporters, the African journalists, I was asked why I was taking the risk, and I told them, not trying to be too dramatic, that I was not safe because my people were not safe—and how can you be safe if your people are not safe? And so who are your people? Perhaps everyone is your people. I was wondering about that.

That next day we were to be moved to the vilest of prisons, where we would wait for trial. The U.S. officers said an American had been badly treated at that prison and a Slovenian journalist had been beaten. So they objected to the move. Arrangements were made for us to stay instead in quarters in the Justice Building. The U.S. officers brought us supplies to make the room very comfortable. They also slipped us some small cell phones in case we were secretly moved—these we were to keep hidden. They also brought us some books and a small DVD player with
Seinfeld
shows. I didn’t know about that kind of show, but it was very funny, especially the way Kramer comes through doors. Ali would not watch the shows. He was very certain that we would be taken away and hung or shot at any minute, and he looked at each new day as an opportunity for this. He would jump when any news came to us.

National Geographic
put three lawyers on the case and called every day, as did the American vice consul in El Fasher. This went on for two weeks, and still the case dragged on. How long had it been since we were taken at the roadblock? A month and a week or so.

Then some big news. Paul snapped closed his phone after a good call.

“Richardson!” he said.

I didn’t know who Richardson was.

“Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, which is my home state. He is the man the U.S. often sends to negotiate, and he is very good. He knows President Bashir. He is coming just to help us. Richardson is on his way to Khartoum.”

On the day when we expected Richardson might drop by to see us, Paul’s wife came instead. I will not tell you how wonderful that was for both of them, and for Ali and for me. That is a story for them to tell, but, really, it was beyond all telling. They walked together in the walled compound of the Justice Building.

That night, in the public area outside the building, where we had a very close view, a man was whipped for some infraction of sharia law. Nearby, a woman had earlier been badly whipped. Her crime was making a fermented beverage and selling it in jars so she could survive. They lashed her twenty-five times until she was unconscious.

We remembered where we were, and we remembered what we do.

“You are supposed to go somewhere now,” a guard told us on the thirty-fifth morning of our ordeal.

We were taken in a bright red Land Cruiser to a large mansion, the home of the governor of El Fasher, and escorted
inside. Another governor, Mr. Bill Richardson, shook our hands and hugged us. I thanked him for what he was doing. Photographers were flashing our pictures.

As it turned out, we were going home.

I hugged Ali, but he looked seriously into my eyes and said we were a long way from Chad and we should not let them use us for such pictures, since they would kill us after the Americans left. I kissed his cheeks anyway.

The military governor of El Fasher suggested to Richardson that maybe Ali and I could be his guests in this house for a week. I said, “Thank you very much but we think maybe we should be on our way.” Governor Richardson winked his eye a little as if to say “good answer.”

We flew in Richardson’s small jet to Khartoum. Ali was very upset to go to Khartoum, because that was where the government of Sudan could have a good last chance to take us away and shoot us. He threw up several times near Governor Richardson, who was fine with it.

A flight from Khartoum through Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, brought us finally to N’Djamena. I relaxed on this flight. But Ali was watching the position of the plane. Could not the Sudanese land the plane back in Khartoum, now that the Americans had left? What was to stop them? He would not be comforted. Even as the plane circled over N’Djamena he was tense, expecting a last-minute problem that would send us back. As the plane rolled to a stop, he could not get off fast enough. On the tarmac, he stopped to breathe the steamy air. He turned to me. “Humdallah. We are home,” he said, smiling. I had not seen him smile since he thought our helicopter might crash.

We were greeted by Chadian national security officials. “Come with us,” they said. After three hours of intense questions, they released Ali and told me I would have to stay in jail until my situation was cleared up. A friend in the government convinced them to let me go to my little room,
which was still waiting for me. It was so good to lie down on my own mattress. So amazing.

The mud wall of my room had always reminded me of the caves we explored as children in our mountain, the Village of God. The cracks in my mud wall seemed to be drawings. The caves of home have drawings, thousands of years old. There is an inner cave with a cool pool of water where children might swim on a hot day. The cave was explored many years ago by the Hungarian man who also explored the Cave of the Swimmers, just over the border from Darfur in Egypt. The book and the movie
The English Patient
were based on his life. He was the only outsider to come see our caves, as far as we know. The caves are still there, of course. Pictures of long-horned cattle and all the beasts of Africa, women and men, children. All the life. So many nights I spent in this room, looking at this mud wall, waking and making my stick pictures of scenes I needed to get out of my head. History. History. History. The people. The little girl. The woman. The child waving.

Over the next several months I would be watched closely by the Chad security officers; several times a week I had to turn myself in for questioning, during which the officers grew ever more angry at me. They were threatening to send me to Sudan in a prisoner exchange. Sudan was telling them I was a spy who was helping the rebels prepare for a new attack on N’Djamena. My jaw had swollen to twice its size from a beating. I told some of my friends that I had fallen, for if they knew I was under the eye of national security they would have kept their distance. A closer friend in the government told me that several groups
of prisoners were being exchanged over the next few weeks and I would probably be in the third group.