Name Daoud Hari Role Journalist | Books The Translator | |
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Field of Vision - Captured in Sudan
Daoud Hari (aka Suleyman Abakar Moussa) is a Sudanese tribesman from the Darfur region of Sudan. He has worked as a language interpreter and guide for NGOs and the press on fact-finding trips into the war-torn and dangerous Darfur area. Hari was captured and detained by the government of Sudan as a spy in August 2006 along with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Paul Salopek and their Chadian driver Abdulraham Anu (aka "Ali"). During their months-long ordeal all three men were severely beaten and deprived. The American journalist knew that the Sudanese government did not want to risk more bad publicity on his death and so eventually all three were released. Upon their successful release - after an international outcry from US diplomats, the US military, Bono and even the Pope - Hari moved to the US where he began work on his memoirs to help bring further world attention to the plight of his people and country. In 2008 he published his memoirs under the title The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur.
Contents
Alongside his humanitarian work, The Translator is what Dauod Hari is best known for. In the introduction, Hari wrote that his purpose for this work was to elicit the aid of the rest of the world's community. He stated that he knew that this would elicit this aid as when "they [humans] understand the situation, they will do what they can to steer the world back to kindness." He also personally dedicated this work to the displaced Darfurians who he states, "need to go home", as well as the women and girls of Darfur.
Throughout this work, Hari works to align the lives of the people of Darfur alongside those of the rest of the world. He highlights that his childhood was "full of happy adventures, such as yours was". He compares the young girls of Darfur to the young girls of the rest of the world. Daoud stated in an interview with his publisher, Random House, that he hopes that through his work, "that Americans will learn that the people of Darfur are in many ways are just like them." His efforts to relate the lives of the victims of the genocide aids in humanizing them in the eyes of the foreign world.
Daoud Hari is also known as Suleyman Abakar Moussa. As he explains in his memoir, this is a false identity he created to appear as a citizen of Chad in order that he might work in the Sudanese refugee camps in Chad as an interpreter (by Chad law, only Chadian citizens are allowed to work).
