The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur (12 page)

After covering the story in N’Djamena, the British TV crew wanted to go to the camps and then cross into Darfur.

They had come with huge cameras and more boxes of equipment than I thought necessary for any one nation. They would fly to Abéché and I would take their gear by road. I worried that bandits, who roamed in small groups, might rob all these very expensive cameras, lenses, recording machines, and microphones. So I was careful to keep secret my travel times and routes. I asked the passengers on a truck leaving N’Djamena to please put the boxes under their seats as if it were their own luggage, which they were happy to do for a few dollars each.

After we interviewed people in the ever-expanding camps and I made my usual inquiries to the military commanders, we crossed the border. You might think that most of the people of Darfur would either be in the Chad camps or dead, but you must remember how large Darfur is, and
how many villages are tucked into every part of it. There were still many villages to destroy and people to kill, as there are even still today. We met crowds of people fleeing everywhere.

At the edge of one village, in a thickly forested place, the village defenders had made their last stand by wedging themselves high in the trees with their rifles. They were all shot and killed. It had been three days or more since the men in the trees had died, and on this steamy spring afternoon, their bodies were coming to earth. 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.

Reporters are so very human, wonderfully so, and they weep sometimes as they walk through hard areas. There is no hiding their crying after a time. They sometimes kneel and put their heads in their hands near the ground. They pray aloud and will often find a handful of soil to lay on the body of a child, or they may find some cloth to cover the dead faces of a young family—faces frozen in terror with their eyes and mouths still open too wide. They will help bury bodies; we buried many on the British TV journey. But these eighty-one boys and men were too much for everyone.

People vomit when they get close to any long-dead body. You have no control of this, it just happens. And
again at the next body. You will soon have nothing in your stomach, but still your body will retch at the sight and smell and of course the tragedy of a life so monstrously wasted. But these eighty-one…

Some of the TV people had to return to Chad, where they recovered for three days in a UN facility and were given some medicine. They needed to recover from what they saw, and smelled, and learned about the nature of what simply must be called evil.

I was settling into the rhythm of this work: reporters would call, I would check with commanders in the field, we would go. My next reporter had called months earlier from New Mexico in the United States and was now waiting to meet me.

Paul Salopek is a thin man, about forty-three. For my first meeting with him, I walked into the expensive Le Meridien Hotel in N’Djamena. Its grand lobby has deep armchairs, thick carpets, and African art on the walls. The river that separates Chad from Cameroon runs beautifully behind the hotel, and can be seen through large windows.

In the busy lobby, Paul heard me ask for him at the front desk. He came up and introduced himself and we sat in a quiet corner to plan the coming journey. He had only a few days to visit the refugee camps for an assignment for
National Geographic.
We decided to fly to Abéché where Paul would meet with NGO people and I would go to the main market to find a vehicle and driver.

The central market of Abéché contains thousands of market stalls, their tin roofs overlapping to make one great cover over the middle of town. On the south end of this great tin maze you will find about thirty yellow taxicabs waiting. There will sometimes be white Land Cruisers offering rides in different directions, or available for charter. I walked among these vehicles to find a good one, with a good, intelligent-looking driver. I negotiated a fair price and, after stopping for supplies, we picked up Paul at the NGO office. We headed to the camps in heavy rain, and were not making good time because of the deep water in the wadis.

Most Land Cruisers have added to them a snorkel tube running up beside the windshield to allow air to get to the engine when the vehicle is deep in the water. When these vehicles cross a stream, sometimes you can only see the snorkels and a little bit of roof or radio antenna above the water. If you are inside, you must roll up the windows tightly. If you do not know how to swim, you will not be at all bored when the water reaches the tops of the windows. The Land Cruisers used in Africa are larger and heavier than you will see in other places, and some are quite old. This one was old but well cared for. Paul was not worried by the high waters. As someone who does not swim, I am good at rolling up the windows snugly and reminding others to do so.

It is not good to be on these roads after dark, mostly because there are no roads, but also because of bandits and lions and other animals that hunt at night. So I told Paul we needed to find a village soon. We stopped at a Zaghawa village where the sheikh was a friend of mine. After a meal of goat meat and bread, we went outside to the enclosure. The rain had stopped, and the sheikh’s people had set up our mattresses and blankets on dry plastic. I fell asleep looking at the stars. This is always the best way to sleep.

I dreamed I was with my eldest brother, who was, in reality, twenty years older than me and now dead—drowned in the Nile, perhaps from a crocodile. In my dream I had somehow fallen into a big wadi and was struggling to get across and keep my head above the water. The thick, muddy current wrapped tightly around me like rope, pulling me away from the shore and from my brother, who was yelling my name and reaching out his long brown arms. I fought the water as hard as I could but my brother’s hands were farther and farther away. I woke in the middle of the night clutching the plastic ground cover beside my mattress. It took a long time watching the stars before I got back to sleep.

I woke at dawn to the usual crazy chorus of hungry donkeys, roosters, goats, and sheep, all excited for another long day. I told Paul over a breakfast of green tea that I was worried about yesterday’s heavy rains on the road, and suggested we go back to Abéché to let the wadis dry out. He reminded me that he only had a few days, and
that we had a job to do. I said okay, and we thanked the sheikh and his family and went on our way in the chirping dawn.

Not far ahead, we had to stop as a red torrent of muddy water filled the wadi crossing our only path. This was the normal place to cross, but it seemed too deep and fast even to trust the heavy vehicle and its snorkel. Chad Army men were on the other side; they had tied a plastic rope between trees on each side of the water, about fifty yards across. The tight line was bouncing on the top of the flood. The soldiers on the other side motioned us across; we were being invited to go hand-over-hand along the rope. “Let’s do it,” Paul said without hesitation. I wanted to see others do it first.

Other people, with and without vehicles, were stopped on both sides. Women and men with bundles of all sizes wrapped in colorful cloth or plastic were trying to decide if it was worth the risk to cross. Some had no choice. We watched some struggle across. It seemed to take great strength, their bodies flapping on the rope like flags as they grabbed the next handhold and the next, and pulled forward as if drawing themselves out of quicksand.

In fact, many people die each year at rain time trying to cross flooded wadis.

What to do with our vehicle and our driver? The driver could go back to Abéché, of course, and we, once on the other side, could take advantage of the shuttle trips into the next town, Tine, that were being provided by the soldiers. Paul liked this idea.

I remembered that I had some friends who spoke a little English in Tine, and suggested to Paul that I call them. They could meet him on the other side, and I would go back to Abéché with the driver. This was my fear of water talking, of course. Paul just looked at me. “Suleyman, we have a job,” is all he had to say. I was Suleyman.

He said he would go first to show me. He stripped down to his shorts and was soon in the water. We found young, strong men who would take his satellite phone wrapped in plastic, and also his camera and cell phone. I could see from his arms as he struggled across that he was very strong. Even so, it was hard for him to make it, and he fell to rest on the other side. He waved me over. Okay. Yes. I would have to think about this one more time.

“You can do it, Suleyman! Hold tight! Keep going!” he yelled over the loud rushing of the flood.

Well, this work was my fate. It was all in God’s hands. I could not find someone to carry my phone or little camera, so I wrapped them in my clothes around my neck. This only made the water pull me harder away from the rope. It was very cold; I thought it would be warm. Just holding on to the rope was very hard. That I had to let one hand go so I could move along was a hard idea. I slipped my hands along, inches at time, feeling the rope cutting my hands. My body was stretched out in the fury of the red water. I let my brother help me. I thought of my dream but I let his arms reach impossibly across the water to give me more strength. My phone and camera were already soaked. Paul stood and was cheering my every small bit of progress.
“Come on, man, you have it. You have it. That’s it. Keep going.”

I made it, of course. My hands were bleeding. I had moved beyond the bad luck that had taken my first brother. I could imagine him floating away into the distance now, his long arms waving goodbye.

When our clothes dried, we boarded one of the army vehicles heading into Tine and went straight to the sultan’s house there. I knew him from many previous trips with reporters.

We stayed with him a short time for tea and to wash up; the sultan then drove us to the market where we could rent a car and a driver to take us to the Oure Cassoni refugee camp near Bahai, about an hour away. Reporters call it Oleg Cassini, but not because of its appearance.

We arrived after high winds had beaten down the thousands of shelters and the people. Paul asked the refugees what they thought about a new peace agreement signed several months earlier by the government of Sudan and one of the rebel groups. Most people thought it would only create more violence. This was the government’s intention, of course, and the people understood. If the government
of Sudan wants truly to make peace, they have to provide security for the people. As long as they attack the villages or provoke others to do so, people will resist and join new groups. This is obvious to everyone.

We sat cross-legged under a large tree with ten thoughtful refugees. They described how, since the peace agreement, more villages than ever were being burned, more people killed, more women and girls being raped. It was worse now because there was less protection for the villagers in certain areas. Some refugees wisely suggested that Paul talk to rebels who had signed, and to those who had not signed. But this was a problem, since those who had signed would be following the government’s orders now, which included not allowing journalists into Sudan and arresting or shooting whomever was bringing them— like myself. But there were some rebels nearby who had not signed, and we were told how to drive over to where they were.

We called over to them and they agreed to be interviewed by Paul. By the time he finished with his interviews, it was too dark to return, so we slept in their camp.

Back in nearby Bahai the next morning, Paul ran into reporter colleagues while I went to find some spicy kebab in the market and visit with people I might know.

A few hours later, in late morning, Paul was excited to see me return. He had talked by satellite phone to journalist colleagues who had just come back from Furawiya. He learned that a few families, sick of life in the camps, were risking their lives to return to the area. This was a good
story, a new twist, certainly. He said we had to interview them immediately. He was running out of time, and the same might be said of those families.

People in the market had just been telling me how dangerous the whole area had become in the last few days. Sudan government troops, Chadian rebels, Darfur rebels, Darfur rebels working for the government, Janjaweed—everyone was fighting everybody in the area just over the border, and sometimes on both sides of the border. No single group held the territory. There was no one to call for permission to come through. This is when it is most dangerous to travel.

But it would be a very short trip. Two hours to Furawiya, two hours of interviews, and two hours back. With luck, we could be back in time for dinner.

The reporters Paul talked to had been able to make the trip. Paul is a very careful reporter; he was getting encouraging information from journalists and the NGO people in town. He had carefully met with these people and even with rebel leaders back in N’Djamena to help him understand the present security situation along the border. What can change in twenty-four hours? Everything, of course. But I remembered my chosen fate. My brother Ahmed certainly did not walk away when things got dangerous.

I called the rebels we had met the night before. They said things were bad now. Nevertheless, I went back to the market to find someone to drive us over there.

A Chadian man named Ali, the son of the local omda, had a new Toyota Hilux crew cab pickup truck with air-conditioning. Ali was a little older than me, very quiet,
wearing the traditional white cotton shirt to his feet and a turban around his head.

I looked over his vehicle, which was parked next to other vehicles for hire.

“Salaam malekum,”
I greeted him.