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A few days later I was walking through the village to see how everyone was doing. The birds were singing, which I took to mean we were safe at least another hour. But then there was a strange sound and I stopped walking in order to listen. It was a thumping like a great drum, then more and very rapid thumps of this drum. Then I saw two large, green helicopters through the trees, turning sharply into our narrow wadi. The thumping was their engines as they turned—then the thumping of their guns shook the air. I did not know which way to run so I stood there crazy for a moment and watched the dirt of the village spraying up from the bullets.

I ran to my mother's hut. She and my sister and her children were already leaving, quickly moving between the huts to the safety of the rocky wadi west of the village. Let's go let's go, she called to her grandbabies as they ran. I quickly found myself carrying a child here, boosting some children onto donkeys, urging donkeys along let's go let's go, finding children and sometimes their mothers standing and crying hysterically and pleading with them to move along. The helicopters were mostly shooting at the defenders at the east end of the village and not at the people escaping to the west. They would all surely come after us when the defenders were dead, so we knew we had to keep moving.

The surviving village defenders caught up with us toward dark. My brother Juma was among them, but I did not see Ahmed. Juma looked at me sadly when he came closer. This was enough.

"Fatah," he said. "Our brother Ahmed is killed. Maybe we will see him soon."

On the third day we came to a water point where some of our people were waiting for us. Fifteen of us, the younger men, decided to ride camels back to the village. We needed to bury the dead before the wild dogs and jackals destroyed them.

The village was mostly gone—60 or so scorched black spots where a whole world once celebrated life. The huts were still smoking, which we smelled long before we entered the wadi. I found Ahmed. The effects of large-caliber weapons and perhaps an RPG round were such that I barely recognized his body, but it was Ahmed. I dug a grave as we do, so that he would rest on his right side with his face to the east. "Goodbye, Ahmed," I said to him. And I knelt down there for a long time.

Excerpted from “The Translator” by Daoud Hari. © 2008 by Daoud Hari. Reprinted by arrangement with The Random House Publishing Group.

© 2008

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  • Posted By: getzel @ 03/18/2008 9:03:36 AM

    It is the same thing in India, Thailand, Darfur, Kosovo, Chechnya: wherever Islam meets another culture: Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, African tribal villages, secular, religious; Islamic terror is the only response the Mohammedans use: convert or die. If Israel goes America will be on the Mohammedans front line of attack: your wife and daughter in burqas or dead

    Mohammedan governments are all apartheid governments. No Christians, Sikhs, Buddha, or any other allowed to live there as citizens or prey there or anything else.

    Just as in Kosovo 1997-2008 where Moslem hordes kill rape and murder Christians and run them out of town and now few Christians live there.

    So the Moslems rape and pillage and murder, and it is all legal under Sharia law to do that to non-Moslems, and after murdering and expelling the Christians, the Moslems then come say: look today, we have a majority of the population!

    Sharia people are at war with The West because Arabs, Persians, & Sharia people believe Islam can not survive against a free market, free speech, republic with: womens rights & no honor killing: murdering women is legal in Sharia. No more dhimmi: second class citizens, non-Muslims, that have no rights and may be killed, raped, & plundered & under Sharia it is legal: a Moslem can not be punished for this offensive behavior.

    Yes, Sharia people believe Islam is doomed to the trash heap unless freedom of speech and democracy are eliminated. That is why they send suicide murderers and attack the West. Propaganda, the big lie, murder: that is the practice of Islam today.

    Arab, if only Israel: is only an excuse, propaganda, for Islamic terror; as we see that wherever the Mohammedans bump against another culture the Mohammedans say the same thing they say about Israel. In India: same thing, in Kosovo: same thing, In Israel: same thing. In Darfur: same thing. In Thailand: same thing, the Philippines: same thing. Wherever the Moslems are contiguous with another people: The Moslems say the same thing they say about Israel: If only: Sharia and no freedom of speech to criticize Islam???

    Intelligence analyst: Getzel

    Which part of their statements: we only want an Islamic terror state dedicated to the destruction of the West do you not understand?

  • Posted By: getzel @ 03/18/2008 8:50:07 AM

    It is the same thing in India, Thailand, Darfur, Kosovo, Chechnya: wherever Islam meets another culture: Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Jew, African tribal villages, secular, religious; Islamic terror is the only response the Mohammedans use: convert or die. If Israel goes America will be on the Mohammedans front line of attack: your wife and daughter in burqas or dead

    Mohammedan governments are all apartheid governments. No Christians, Sikhs, Buddha, or any other allowed to live there as citizens or prey there or anything else.

    Just as in Kosovo 1997-2008 where Moslem hordes kill rape and murder Christians and run them out of town and now few Christians live there.

    So the Moslems rape and pillage and murder, and it is all legal under Sharia law to do that to non-Moslems, and after murdering and expelling Moslems then come say: look today, we have a majority of the population!

    Sharia people are at war with The West because Arabs and Persian Sharia people believe Islam can not survive against a free market, free speech, republic with women???s rights & no honor killing: murdering women is legal in Sharia. No more dhimmi: second class citizens, non-muslims, that have no rights and may be killed, raped, plundered under Sharia and it is legal: a Moslem can not be punished for this offensive behavior. Yes, Arabs and Persian Sharia people believe Islam is doomed to the trash heap unless freedom and democracy are eliminated. That is why they send suicide murderers and attack the West. Propaganda, the big lie, murder: that is the practice of Islam today.

    Arab, if only Israel???is only an excuse, propaganda, for Islamic terror; as we see that wherever the Mohammedans bump against another culture the Mohammedans say the same thing they say about Israel. In India: same thing???in Kosovo: same thing???In Israel: same thing. In Darfur: same thing. In Thailand: same thing, the Philippines: same thing. Wherever the Moslems are contiguous with another people: The Moslems say the same thing they say about Israel: If only???Sharia???and no freedom of speech to criticize Islam???

    Intelligence analyst: Getzel

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