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Thanks, Natasha, for your leadership on this issue, and thanks for asking me to add a comment about the process of writing The Translator with Daoud Hari.

Daoud had not long been in the US when Random House asked Megan McKenna and me to help Daoud with his story, as his English is rudimentary.  He still seemed a little shell shocked when we first met him in Washington. He was one of only about three people allowed into the US as Darfur refugees under the Bush Administration.

We knew he had some difficult stories to tell, so we began gently by trying to get to know him.  We talked at length in a DC office, but he seemed to be having a hard time letting the stories flow.  I asked Megan, who met him first in a Darfur refugee camp in Chad, how people would have a long chat in his native land. She said they would probably go to an outdoor bar and sit under a tree with a few beers. Washington is a little short on that kind of venue, but we did find a great outdoor bar on the Potomac near the Watergate.  Under the sky, looking out at the river, he seemed to breathe a great sigh of calm and then he smiled and began to open up.

After several days of that, we took a break. We met up later, the three of us, in Asbury Park, New Jersey, where he was staying in the home of the former UN representative from the American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers).  We interviewed him at little restaurants on the boardwalk, and then retired to his kitchen or to my hotel room for the more difficult stories.  We watched how the telling of the stories drained him terribly, and so we worked back and forth from his good day memories to the hard times.

It may seem odd, but his cell phone sometimes rang from Africa.  He spoke his own language on these calls, but we could tell by his expressions that they were serious. He was getting calls about villages that had just been attacked and cousins who had just been killed or worse. A cousin is like a brother or sister in his culture.  He resisted telling us about the attack on his own village, so we kept allowing that story to be put aside. He told it to us finally on the last day of our several weeks together.

When the book came out, he of course went on the road for Save Darfur, which he continues to do.  The book has been published now in four or five languages. His European tour was particularly difficult for him emotionally. Telling the stories has never gotten easy.

Daoud is what you call a great guy. He used the book money to get some cousins out of harms way, just as he always gave away his translator stipends to people in the camps.  By reading the book, you pay him in the only currency he values–especially if you will let your Congresspeople know that you care about the issue. That’s all you really have to tell them. They just have to know that the people who elect them really care about Darfur and want some action.  It is heartbreaking to think that the people we wrote about in the camps and the villages are still there, still waiting–at least those who have survived.

The book itself was well received. Newsweek reviewed it twice with major layouts. Harpers compared it to a kind of Holy Communion.  The Washington Post said it was likely the best small book of the year, “or of any year.”  All that was satisfying, but they were really not talking about the writing at all. They were talking about Daoud.

Daoud is SO ready to go home. He misses his friends and his family. He misses camels terribly. You can help him get home just by making a few phone calls.

Very Sincerely,
Dennis Burke

THANK YOU DENNIS!!  Read the Maw Books review of The Translator here and visit the book’s website here.  Get involved in Reading & Blogging for Darfur.

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