Ali's Story, Part II: "With Help, an Escape and a New Life"

"I just wanted to get out from Sudan, but where I didn’t care, [you] don’t know how bad it is to have your freedom captured.”

On June 30th, 2001, Ali and a group of fellow inmates were taken out of the prison and ordered to clean the streets of El-Geneina in anticipation of Revolution for National Salvation Day, a festival in honor of President al-Bashir’s assumption of office in 1989. Now outside the prison walls Ali and his fellow inmates were in the density of the city. Free from chains, he knew that this was his only opportunity to escape. He was aware that if the guards caught him they would kill him, as they had with other prisoners who had tried to escape. But if he stayed, he would never see his wife and family again.

Ali waited until the right moment when the guards were not paying attention, and without hesitation broke from his work line and jumped over the closest wall. He landed in a narrow network of streets and alleys and did not stop running until he reached the western outskirts of town. Ali took advantage of the dark of night and followed local routes, staying away from the main road, and hiding from cars and anyone in sight. He reached the border five hours later, which he passed through undetected and continued on to Adre, the first town in Chad.

Ali went directly to a family he knew in Adre. They took him in and fed and clothed him, an incriminating act under a Chadian-Sudanese security agreement. He stayed there for a month and then kept moving. Ali knew that his father had a business associate in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. Ali borrowed funds from his hosts and rode in the back of a lorry to that city, a seven-hundred kilometer journey.

Upon arriving in N’Djamena, Ali had no plan outside of his own survival. “I just wanted to get out from Sudan, but where I didn’t care, [you] don’t know how bad it is to have your freedom captured.” He continues on to say that he was not really free in Chad. Ali stayed with the merchant’s family for three months and did not leave the house for fear of endangering them and risking his own re-arrest. He learned that Marriba was caring for his first child, Massima, born the month he was imprisoned. This news was communicated to him by word of mouth from people returning from Sudan. Phone contact had been shut down in many areas of Darfur. In the meantime his father’s friend had advised him that it was in the United States where Ali could find freedom and a better way of life. So with his help Ali began the process of obtaining an illegal Chadian passport.

The passport materialized quite easily, as only cash and his photo were necessary to obtain an authentic article. Chadian passport in hand, Ali went to the U.S Embassy and applied for a visa. He did not reveal anything contrary to his newly forged nationality. His friends informed him that recounting his escape would harm his chances of obtaining the visa. Ali at this point had contacted his wife and family, and informed them of his plans. He told them that he was going to America to the state of Indiana, where he knew people from his university. Once arriving in the U.S he would then work on passage for his wife and daughter. In November 2001, Ali was finally granted a visa from the U.S embassy in Chad, and with further assistance from his father’s friend, he was on a flight to America.

South Bend, Indiana could not be culturally and climatically further from Darfur, but as so many immigrants do, Ali went where he knew people and it was in the Hoosier state where Ali decided to become an American. If Ali faced any challenges in his adjustment to his new home, a state not known for its diversity and hospitable winters, he doesn’t let on. “I felt very lucky. The people in South Bend, Indiana were very welcoming. I did not feel that I was in a different country.” This easy transition was in a large part due to the community of his college friends from Khartoum who had settled in South Bend.

During the years between 2001 and 2005 Ali worked hard to prepare for when his wife and daughter would join him. He had found a job selling clothes and shoes from an outdoor stand. Ali was also petitioning the State Department for political asylum. He was granted this in March of 2005. Despite this newfound stability in America, Ali received news of the desperate conditions at home. He learned that his family fled from El-Geneina to a refugee camp in the city of El-Fasher. The city has been under the control of the United Nations and the African Union and has been one of the few relatively stable areas in the region despite the violence in December 2006 between opposition groups and the central government. Marriba and Massima also fled from El Geneina to Marriba’s home village of Umm Badr. In order to receive direct news, Ali was forced to call cousins in the United Kingdom, who were able maintain better contact with his family. “It is so hard with your family, friends and your neighbors spread out. I am sad for this”, he says. To date Ali knows that his parents and his remaining brother are still in the refugee camp. His mother’s kidney is failing and she has no access to proper medical care. It has been nearly a year since he has spoken to them.

In January 2005, Ali succeeded in obtaining funds and visas to bring Marriba and Massima from Sudan. They escaped to Khartoum and then to Cairo, where they stayed for several months until receiving their visas. Marriba and Massima both joined Ali in Indiana in April of 2005. It had been four and half years since he had seen his wife. It was reunion that included meeting Massima for the first time.

Massima is now seven years old and in the first grade. She now has a year and half old sister, Amina. It is with great joy that Ali describes the moment Massima greeted the school bus for her first day. Like so many other past milestones, Ali was not there to see that moment. He learns of this his daughters’ progress in New York City where he lives five months a year in a sublet room in Queens. Unable to make enough for his families in the United States and in Sudan, he left his job selling clothes in South Bend last year. Ali drives a yellow cab in the city and has done so for the past 11 months. He came to New York to increase his income on the suggestion from a fellow Darfourian. Once again he is separated from his wife and daughters, but it is O.K he says, “they are safe, and I am free.”

Back in my apartment, Ali tells me it is time for him to leave and go rest before he begins his next shift. He says he doesn’t plan on driving a cab forever. He wishes to return to law, to go back to school and earn his JD. It is with this degree, he tells me, that he will help fight for those, who like him, have had their rights stripped away. Ali believes strongly that America is a caring society and still a sanctuary and symbol for freedom and equality. His view of this country remains without cynicism despite the conspicuous lack of U.S involvement in Darfur. “The thing which I found in my country, as a citizen of Sudan, was that all my rights were destroyed. This country gives you the same rights as any other citizen. It is a great thing.”

What if the World Boycotted the Olympics?

"More so than any other Olympics since Berlin 1936, both viewers and participants will be asked to strenuously ignore the politics of the host country."

Imagine this. It’s August 8th, 2008, opening day of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and you are standing in the Beijing National Stadium, known as the “Bird’s Nest”, and it’s empty. The athlete’s village is empty, and almost as devastating, NBC’s press suites, and thousands of hotels rooms, are all empty. The city has been stood-up by all of its out-of-town guests. A new bad luck number: 8.8.08.

I take the Olympics seriously and hold on to what some might see as a sentimental or naïve view of the game’s ethos of peace and unity. This optimism was first cultivated as a kid when I watched Western and Soviet block teams compete at the end of the Cold War. My family and I shared Dan Jansen’s repeated heartbreaks, celebrated the showboating and early dynamo of Alberto Tomba, and cherished the doomed attempts of the near sighted and loveable Eddie “The Eagle”. The games to me were a soft-focused, feel good montage of character, accomplishment and comeback. I still feel this way.

In fact the Olympics at its core is about the belief that the world together for two weeks can recognize the common virtues of humanity. The encapsulated nature of the games, that focused energy and attention on a stage of international players who are judged by athletic achievement, not politics or economy, is what allows for optimism and unity to flourish above fear and cynicism. This stage is vulnerable, and as we have seen in past games, bribery, drug use, and conspiracy, having made their way up the mountain. Unfortunately, this summer’s games are tainted before they begin. More so than any other Olympics since Berlin 1936, both viewers and participants will be asked to strenuously ignore the politics of the host country. The Olympics after all, are not just a celebration of the athletes, but of the host city, and because it’s Beijing, the new China. And despite all that is new and hopeful showcased for the foreign Press, there are few inconveniences hanging around not approved for primetime, namely Tibet.

Last week’s protests in Lhasa, and in turn, the government’s immediate suppression of international media coverage reminded the world that China is having a difficult time handling the global scrutiny tied to hosting the Olympics. The world has for a long time recognized that there is a human rights crisis in Tibet, and for various reasons has done little. But what if we did do something about?

What if that morning, instead of athletes exiting planes, a single letter was handed to the head of the Chinese Olympic Committee waiting at the gate?

That letter was in fact a proclamation from all participating nations stating that because of “various state supported abuses, ethic marginalization, suppression of the press, alliances with Khartoum, Sudan, and bad dog food, we in good conscious will not participate in your games. Sorry for the late notice.” Needless to say this would be an unprecedented show of principle and balls, and we can assume that it will not happen. But if it did, would the embarrassment force Beijing to respect Tibetan autonomy? Dismantle the enabling oil deals with Khartoum? Allow freedom of the Press? I imagine no to all of these.

So what then can we hope for as the wattage of opening day intensifies, and the protests become louder and more frequent? Can we count on the Olympics becoming that unexpected Trojan horse of new reform from within the Bird’s Nest? Ideally, we can hope that the Olympics will do what it does best; focus the world’s attention to a stage that honors the far reach of human potential over adversity. That potent display of possibility is generally unscripted, which Beijing may not be prepared for. And because of this, I will be watching come August.

Ali's Story, Part I: "to be disappeared"

This is the first part of my profile on Ali, a cab driver here in New York. He escaped a jail in Darfur, Sudan and made his way to safety by foot and later, through an alias. According to Ali, his story is not unique among many Darfourians, but it is his, and he wants the world to know what happened.

I.

El-Geneina is the capital of West Darfur, Sudan and is thirty kilometers from the border of Chad, a five-hour journey, by foot. On June 30th, 2001, Ali ran that distance under the cover of darkness. He was thirty-three years old and he was leaving behind his elderly parents, his two brothers and his pregnant wife. If Ali had stayed in the jail from which he just escaped, he might have spent the rest of his life missing from his family and imprisoned without charge. If his captors had apprehended Ali before he reached the border, he would have been killed. He tells me that he resolved his fate to two choices that day, “freedom or let myself be shot.”

Ali sits across from me in my apartment in Brooklyn, nearly six years since his escape. He just finished a twelve-hour graveyard shift driving a taxi. He says that he is happy to finally tell his story, an act that few Sudanese have done after disappearing into government custody. Ali begins by prefacing that, “This is my story but there are hundreds of thousands like it in Darfur.” [Per Ali’s request he is referred to by his first name only and the names of his family members and some of the locations in the U.S have been changed]


Before the acts of genocide in 2003, Ali’s family experienced the ruthlessness of the Janjaweed firsthand. In May 1995, as part of larger campaign orchestrated by the central government against tribes affiliated with the opposition groups, Ali’s father and uncle, commercial leaders in the community, became victims of an Arab offensive that targeted their tribe, the Massaleet. Soldiers from the Janjaweed, then called the Arab Militia, came to Ali’s hometown of Tabarek and tortured and beat his uncle and father. His uncle was killed and his father was left permanently crippled. The militia left Tabarek in flames, forcing the family to flee to nearby El-Geneina. Against his father’s pleading, Ali’s older brother Aziz, an attorney, challenged the government to hold the militia accountable. Shortly after Aziz petitioned authorities, he was warned by the secret police not to pursue the case. Aziz refused and he has been missing for twelve years. Ali was finishing up his law degree in Khartoum during these events. Five years later the secret police visited Ali’s home again, and this time they were looking for him.

Ali was born January 1st, 1968 in the small village of Tabarak, in West Darfur. His father was a merchant and sold produce to support his wife and three sons. Ali went on to the University of Khartoum and received degree in law. Upon graduating in October 1995, he set out to use his degree at the Department of Justice in Khartoum, but because Ali refused to enlist in the army to fight in the war in the south, he found it difficult to secure a job. Ali like many of his generation and background joined the Sudanese Democratic Federal Alliance Party, an opposition group to President al-Bashir’s National Congress Party. Ali’s party affiliation and his ethnicity as a dark skinned Massaleet, made finding employment in Arab dominated Khartoum additionally challenging. Ali eventually returned to his home in Darfur and volunteered at a local school. He married his sweetheart Marriba in 1999 and she and Ali moved into his father’s compound.

One evening in September 2000, Ali’s father heard a knock on their door. He opened it and was greeted by a party of five masked men with guns. The men asked for Ali. His father knowing what this request meant, offered himself.

It is at this point Ali cuts short his retelling to me. He becomes very still and begins to cry. He is caught off guard by verbalizing what his father had tried to do that day. There are other pauses like this as he tells his story. It is clear that Ali’s warm disposition and optimism belie the grief and trauma that still haunt him. We sit quietly for a few minutes and then he continues.

The masked men announced that Ali was under arrest for distributing propaganda against the government, an illegal offense. The men overtook Ali in the house, bound his wrists, blindfolded him and threw him into a truck. It would be over nine months before Ali’s father would learn that his son was still alive.

“I am about to be killed or tortured and left crippled like my father”, Ali remembers thinking as he was trucked off.

He was taken to a clandestine facility in El-Geneina confined to a small cell. Ali’s kidnappers remained masked, and he never truly discovered their identities, but the pointed questioning he faced, indicated that these men were from the central government. The officers demanded the names of the leaders of the Sudanese Democratic Federal Alliance Party, and the source of its funding. Despite having joined the SFDA in college, Ali was not an active participant in their agenda and knew none of the information the interrogators asked, nor had he spread anti-government propaganda, the original charge laid against him. Incredulous, the police initiated a regimen of physical and psychological torture. They stripped Ali of his clothes, hanged him upside down by his ankles and beat him. This type of torture went on and off for two weeks straight. Food and water were also withheld for days on end. The officers augmented the physical torture with psychological measures like listing the names of members of his family and threatening their lives. Ali imagined the worst ever since his brother disappeared five years before. He relates what he experienced during his interrogation to other government programs in Darfur:

“During interrogation if they don’t like your answers they torture you, they don’t care. They kill people with anything. In order to get information they just kill people, hundreds. You see [in the Sudan] instead of the government protecting people, they just kill [to get information], that’s the difference between there and a democracy.”

Faced with no results and the realization that they had captured a person of no strategic value, the officers hid their mistake by integrating Ali into another prison with common criminals. Ali describes being forced into hard labor building bricks. Ali knew that his captors were never going to provide him access to a lawyer or allow him to communicate with his family. Months went by and he worked in the yards cutting stone and shoveling gravel. Ali remained in this jail for another 8 months without ever being officially charged or allowed contact with the outside world. Ali realized the new nightmare upon him, even after surviving torture he might die anonymously in prison.

Embracing the Conflict, Owning the Situation

Today in Philadelphia Senator Barack Obama delivered a speech on race and politics called, "A More Perfect Union". We may not know if this speech arrived on time or not soon enough in order to neutralize the negativity and criticism associated with the controversial comments of the senator's former pastor Reverend Wright. That said, we knew that the senator would need to deliver a critical speech on race, and this was it.

It is expansive, it is emotional, it is erudite and it is unifying, and yes Hillary camp, it is seamlessly tactical and potent. It is Barack Obama at his quintessential best.


Click Here for the speech

Winter Surfing From the End: a Radio Transmission

Last month I went surfing out at Montauk, NY during a big swell event. I recorded that experience for the debut of Lodge Porch's Radio Transmissions.