The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur (16 page)

“You should worry more about yourself now,” he replied. “Here is what I need to know: When you were talking to the rebels near the Chad border—not the ones who stopped you—you must have seen how many men they had and the kinds of weapons they had. I am going to show you pictures of different kinds of vehicles and different kinds of weapons, and you are going to tell me what you saw.”

“I told you I was no spy, but look, you are trying to make me a spy.”

“Just talk please. Help me with these pictures. It will be very easy.”

I told him that the rebels wouldn’t let us drive through their camp, and the only vehicles I saw were some old Land Cruisers, and the only weapons I saw were some old M-14s and very old Kalashnikovs. For most of the pictures they showed me of weapons, I said I didn’t think I saw that.

The commander didn’t believe me. He gestured to the guard, who started beating me with a thick stick, about a yard and a half long. He then beat me with his fists. I said that they could kill me, but I still would not know about weapons. This beating went on for what seemed like a very long time. I was dragged back to the cell, and Ali was taken for his turn.

He looked at my messed-up face as they took him away. He asked me if it was going to be very bad. I gestured to say it was nothing. He rolled his eyes.

They soon came for me again, because they needed a translator. They knew that Ali had been in the Chad Army, but they were trying to learn if he had been in the intelligence arm. Maybe he had come as a spy. Why would the son of an omda take a job as a lowly driver? They had already beaten him severely before I came. I translated their questions and Ali told them that it was just his business to drive people, and that he had only been a simple soldier in the army. They beat him with the sticks, mostly on his arms and legs and his back and the soles of his feet. Finally I said I would not translate if they were going to beat him. I stopped talking and they kicked and pushed me back to the cell.

They brought me back later when Ali was lying very hurt on the floor, beaten everywhere very seriously.

They told me that I would need to translate some more. I told them that I was finished doing that. I said that I would translate if they would not beat him. They said they would beat him if I did not translate.

“You have just about killed him. You can go ahead and kill him now, but I will not translate unless you stop all your beating of him.”

With that, they took me away again. Ali was soon dumped back in our cell—the poor man was only half conscious. He groaned through the night.

We awoke the next morning to nothing. We thought the beatings had stopped, but then we saw Paul coming and going from his cell. This day was Paul’s turn. But, thankfully, they would treat him better than they treated us. When we talked in the hall, I did not tell him we had been beaten, as I did not want to add our troubles to his own.

They took Ali and me outside and tied us under a tree. We were almost too sore to move. Paul was later brought out, moving very slowly. He looked very weak, and could only look down. His eyes were sunken. He had refused all food for seven days, demanding that the three of us be reunited. He knew very well that our situation would be hopeless without him. Even though we were now together, he was not going to eat until they released us. I thought this plan would kill him.

That evening, I tried talking to the guards standing outside our barred doorway. I asked them how Paul was doing. One of them seemed willing to talk, so I decided to try to make friends with him. He seemed like he was probably
a good man. He gave me a smoke after a while and told me that Paul was in very bad shape.

“Your hawalya is maybe going to die,” he said. “Unless you can make him decide to start eating.” He put the problem on me.

For several hours I thought about this. When the same guard returned after his dinner, I told him that I could probably get Paul to eat, but they must help me. Soon, a commander came and took me from the cell. We talked on the way to Paul’s cell. Paul was on a mattress on an actual bed, not on the floor. It was not a filthy room, just windowless and very old like our cell. The names of prisoners from colonial times were scratched on the walls. Paul looked terrible.

Why did the Sudanese not want him to die? That is a good question. It may be true that they wanted to avoid the trouble that would come with the death of a noted American journalist. But I’m not sure if these people thought like that. I think it was because you only had to look at Paul to know he was a good person, and this brought some human feelings to them.

I had decided to tell Paul something that was not true, only because he is very stubborn and because it was the only thing I could think of to save his life. I told him that if he would accept some food, they would let him make a call to his wife in the United States. He sat halfway up and looked at me.

“Is this true?”

It broke my heart to do so, but I looked at him and said
that it was so. The commander behind me said that it was so. Paul agreed to eat some food.

The commander ordered a soldier to go get him some food, but I said that he must not eat our kind of food, that someone must go into town and get him an American-style sandwich that a white man could eat, and a Coke or Pepsi. There was an argument about the cost of this, but I assured the commander that our food would kill this man, and I truly believed that he was not strong enough for anything but his own food. So two large baguette sandwiches, lamb burgers, were obtained. Even so, Paul would not eat. He instead gave the food to me and to Ali and the two mechanics. Paul would break his fast on his own terms, a day later, after they threatened to force-feed him with a tube. I realized later that Paul had seen through the trick but went along with it to get food for me, Ali, and the mechanics. A good man.

From that night things got easier for us. It was possible for us to talk to one another without punishment.

I told the guards about life in El Fasher. My experiences there as a high school boy were not unlike their experiences as young soldiers in a strange place. We agreed that the war and the killing was a terrible time. Some of the soldiers were from the Nuba Mountains, where they had endured their own horrors at the hands of the government they now worked for.
It was foolish for the government to kill our people,
they said. “Good point,” I agreed. They were scared young men, with horrible stories to tell. I listened. They would bring me cigarettes, and I suggested that it would be so much easier for us to talk like friends if we prisoners were not tied. So they untied us and let us outside so we could enjoy the cool of the evening. I told them as much as I could about my family so they might think in a new way if they were ever sent to destroy a village.

A great joy came to us when we were allowed to shower and wash our clothes. I cannot tell you the smell we presented to one another after so many days, and the itchy discomfort of our clothes. After about six days you cannot smell yourself, but you can smell the others very well. This shower was a great thing. Paul, too, was recovering, and this helped him. Some nights they let us sleep out in the sand, so much cooler than roasting in the cells.

At around 9 P.M. on the tenth evening in El Fasher, a large, muscular colonel in his late forties arrived at the prison and I was taken into his office. He removed his name badge and covered the nameplate on his desk when I was brought in, probably because he did not want his family to have to answer angry questions someday from my family—this is always on people’s minds. That he was thinking I would live to tell about him was a good sign that I might not be killed that day, but it did not occur to me then. I still woke up every morning prepared to die that day; some order would come down and overwhelm whatever little friendships I had made to make our lives easier. We would then be taken out and shot, and our friendly guards would swallow the hurt of this and keep going. They had swallowed far more hurt than this. I saw every arriving vehicle as perhaps bringing that order.

This colonel was the head of intelligence for the western regions of Sudan.

I looked at a bowl of wrapped hard candies on his desk.

“Have one,” he said, and I did.

“Listen, Daoud. You hold the key to what will happen to you and your friends. You will be busy with us for maybe
three hours, maybe six. We will see. If you tell us the truth, you and your friends will live. If you lie to us, you will all die. So it is in your hands.” This, of course, is what they say to everyone. “Before I ask you any questions, I want to show some hospitality to you. This guard is going to show you around so you feel at home here.”

With that, I was taken by the arm and led down several long hallways I had not traveled before.

In one room was a large chair with electric wires fixed to it. In another room, a chair with restraints was surrounded by medical posters on the wall, helpful torture guides to the eyes, the genitals, the nose, the muscles and nerves of hands, feet, arms, legs. Pictures of eyes, ears, and arms were painted on the walls to remind visitors how easily they could be removed from the body. Trays of steel tools were everywhere.

No person was being tortured; it was all reserved for me and perhaps my friends today. The tour was long and slow and complete, and then I was returned to the chair in the colonel’s office. He was smoking a cigarette and taking snuff at the same time.

“So, Daoud, what did you see?”

“I saw the way you torture people and kill them.”

“Yes, you did. Would you like to just talk like friends, and we’ll stay in this room?”

Under my circumstances, I told him that I thought that was a very good idea.

“Would you like to swear on the Koran regarding what you are going to tell me?”

I told him that would not be necessary, that he could be
assured that I would tell the truth, and that I had always told the truth to them. But I told him I would not talk unless he could agree to something.

He seemed surprised. “And what is that?”

I told him I would need a cigarette. He laughed and pushed one across to me, with a book of matches. He called to the guard to get some hot tea for me.

For the next hour and a half I told the colonel the long story again of how I met Paul, of our arrest on the road, everything. I told him of my other trips with other reporters. Everything I could think of that was true. I knew none of this would be of use to his murdering army.

When I stopped talking, he looked at me strangely.

“This is all the story you have?”

“Everything.”

“Daoud, I told you what would happen to everyone if you lied. And you are a liar.”

I told him that I didn’t know what he meant, that I had told him everything I could remember.

He tossed three pictures across the desk. They were photos of me standing with rebel soldiers and rebel commanders.

“We know all about you. We know your mother’s name. We know your cousins. So why would we not know that you were with these rebels?”

I explained that these were trips with Philip Cox, and the other British TV people, and all of that.

“Well, you didn’t tell me all of that, did you? That you met with these rebel commanders?”

“We met with everybody. It was for the news stories. The reporters want to talk to everybody on all sides.”

“You didn’t talk to me. You didn’t talk to government of Sudan commanders, did you?”

“They would kill us, so we didn’t. But we wanted to do that.”

He started asking me where this rebel group was based, and what another rebel group had for weapons. None of this mattered, as things change so quickly. I told him the same useless things I had told the other interrogators. Land Cruisers. Kalashnikovs. M-14s. I didn’t know where they had their bases. We called to see if we could go here or there, I told the colonel, but we didn’t ask where they had their bases.

“And it seems the government of Israel asked that you not be sent to Sudan when you were in Egypt. So why do you have such friends in Israel, spy?”

I explained my attempt to find a good job and that it had gone badly.

He was not happy with me, but he had an idea that Paul would contradict me. He had me taken to a nearby room and replaced me with Paul. It was now very late at night. I could hear him interrogating Paul for a long time.

I was brought back in.

The colonel was angry but controlled.

“Daoud, your friend does not want to tell us anything until he sees that you are alive and okay. So we are letting him see you. Now he wants to see Ali. Tell your hawalya that Ali is sleeping and is okay.” I told that to Paul.

“So tell Paul he has to talk now”

I told Paul he should not talk unless they gave me another cigarette.

“Yes. Tell them that.” Paul made a smoking gesture and pointed to me to assure the colonel that I was not mistranslating in my favor.

“You are both in a very dangerous situation. You are in my office. Many commanders come here and are so nervous they can’t eat or drink. And you just demand cigarettes like all this is nothing to you. It is very surprising to me.” With that, he handed his entire pack of cigarettes to Paul, who gave the pack to me.

“Get some tea for Daoud,” he said to his guards, who ran for it. “And sugar,” I called after them.

When the tea and sugar arrived I stood up with the tray and said that, if he didn’t mind, I was going to go outside and smoke and drink this tea. Paul stayed to answer more questions, which were of no use to the colonel. I had the guard take me back to my cell after I had drunk all the tea, maybe ten or more cups, it was so good. It was clear to me from almost the beginning of this meeting that the colonel had no power to torture or kill us, or he would have done so. This seemed like a last effort to get us to talk before losing custody of us. So we could make our demands and watch what he would do. I think he was a little glad to see some human beings he could talk to.

In the morning, Paul and Ali and I were taken from our cells. The mechanics were taken in another direction. I would never see them or hear about them again until they showed up later to testify against us, and accuse us of spying, no doubt under unimaginable pressure to do so. We
were driven to a civilian court in town, our wrists tied behind us.