I use Angelina’s notebook purely due to the fact that I am ignorant to this newfound subject and seeing her movie Beyond Borders is my only reference. I shall investigate other aid workers and enthusiasts as well.

A Time for Grieving

Quote: In his memoir, translator Daoud Hari recounts the pain of his native Darfur.

It was not the homecoming I had longed for after these years away, working in restaurants in Libya and Egypt. I was not returning to my village in Darfur with gifts and money for everyone. “Daoud is returned,” I heard some men say as I walked by. I nodded to them, but it did not seem time for smiles and joyful greetings.

I walked into the family enclosure where a donkey, several goats and some chickens watched my arrival. I saw my mother under the shade roof attached to the cooking hut; she was with my sister Aysha and with several other women of the village; they were all in mourning. Mother looked very old now. Her hair was matted with the earth of grieving. She wore dark clothing, a dark shawl over her old head. She saw me and wept into her hands, as if it were even sadder for her to think that my homecoming had to be at such a time.

“Fatah,” she managed to say, which is what you say when you greet someone in a time of grieving.

We had lost perhaps 20 cousins in the previous days, and each was like a son or daughter to her. In this tiny village three children and their mother were killed when the white Antonov bomber came. Six of the 50 houses were burned. This news, which I already knew, was told to me again by the women as I stood with my head bowed a little to my mother.

I heard running and then saw my brother Ahmed come into the enclosure. He was, against the mourning custom and his own intentions, smiling somewhat as he grasped my arm in a great handshake.

“Daoud,” he said. “Fatah. So it’s all true—you have come back.”

“Fatah,” I replied, trying not to smile.

“It’s very, very good to see you, Daoud,” he said several times. I told him that the sheik had sent his regards and had warned of an attack soon. “Yes, an attack I think will come in a few days,” Ahmed said. “Not tomorrow, but maybe soon after that.” Ahmed told me that some of the old people were refusing to leave. They were intent on dying where they had always lived. Some would point and say, “We have our great-grandfathers buried over here, and our children buried over there, and so why would this not be a good place for us to die also?” You could not argue with that.

Unquote :

All these different worlds we live in, these different times, it makes me sad to read these stories of grief and despair. I fear I have lived in a castle like a princess compared to these stories i read. Where bombings, suicide bombings and attacks are only in the movie world to my mind and heart. But to so many people out there it is their everyday life. Their everyday story. Normal to them is abnormal to me, totally unthinkable. And my life, if these people from Darfur had to read my story they would think I was a queen living in her palace with a rich kingdom shorting nothing.

I can only hope that with these blog entries I can create my own awareness of this blind eye of ours. And maybe in my own small futile way, make a difference.

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