Through your usual simplistic words, Galleh, you succeeded
in sending people crying again. It is an emotional review, a story to tell, a
book to write about a man that lived it real and died a resounding martyr. Perhaps
all hope is not lost. A typical one, Steve Biko of South
  Africa was similarly murdered and justice
came to fruition only 27 years after his demise. While thanking the authors of
the book for an honest history about a man that stood firm for press freedom,
it remains high hope that some day, a government will emerge in our country
that will not give a deaf ear to Deyda’s demise. Until such a time, the book
will go a long way inspiring million others in the field of journalism and
fight for freedom.
 

“A Living Mirror: The
Life of Deyda Hydara,” by Aloa Ahmed Alota
and Demba Ali Jawo, remains a book to pocket like a little dictionary for
reference at anytime.  Deyda, though
gone, his shadows and monumental Point Newspaper remains what the Prophet
Muhammad (saw) described as “sadakatul jariya,” a continuous good deed.

Sincerely & humbly submitted to Galleh & all readers,Yero.
 






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Subject: [>-<] Book Review - A Living Mirror: The Life of Deyda Hydara
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:56:05 +0000








Dear All, 
 
Please find attached, and below in plain text, a brief review I have just written on Demba Jawo and Aloa Alota's biography of Deyda Hydara. Thanks all.
 
Baba


Book Review
 
A Living Mirror: The Life of Deyda Hydara, by Aloa Ahmed Alota and Demba Ali Jawo
 
Reviewed by Baba Galleh Jallow
 
When Deyda Hydara was shot dead by unknown assailants on the night of Thursday, December 16, 2004, many who knew the soft-spoken, stammering Founder Editor of The Point newspaper in Banjul wondered why? The why question was repeatedly asked not only because of the unnatural act of murder so foul inflicted upon Deyda, but because many who knew him thought he was not outspoken enough, hard-hitting enough, critical enough of the government of President Yahya Jammeh to be targeted for murder. Well, reading this new biography of Deyda Hydara cures one of any illusion as to just how outspoken, how brave, how hard-hitting, and how critical of the Jammeh regime Deyda was. He was indeed, in a very real sense, a big sharp thorn in the side of the regime, and particularly in the side of President Jammeh himself. 
Deyda’s opinions as expressed in the two columns he ran for The Point – Good Morning Mr. President and The Bite – were extremely hard-hitting and troubling for the President and the regime precisely because they addressed the simple, non-complex, everyday concerns of the ordinary Gambian. He constantly hammered away at the urgent need for the president to do something to stop the rampant abuses and the violations of the human rights of Gambians; he constantly hammered away at the need for the president, who was sworn to uphold and protect the provisions of the Constitution of The Gambia, to remember those provisions and to do something about their habitual violation through acts of arbitrary arrests and prolonged detentions without trial, habitual attacks against journalists and media houses critical of the regime, habitual nocturnal arson attacks against media houses, habitual draconian legislations designed to stifle Gambians’ right to freedom of expression and of the press, and in particular, the president’s habitual and total disregard for the rights and dignities of all who disagreed with his views. Deyda took particular issue with Jammeh’s uncouth tendency to insult his opponents. This uncompromising stance was in addition to the fact that Deyda constantly led the Gambia Press Union and private media’s legal battle against draconian and unjust legislations designed to control what journalists could write or say through the threat of unjustified incarceration or long prison sentences as enshrined in the Media Commission Bill. He was absolutely convinced that Gambians had the right to freedom of expression and of the press, and no amount of threats and intimidation was going to stop him from asserting and enjoying those God-given rights.
I found it almost miraculous that Deyda Hydara almost comes literally to life in this book. Without burdening the reader with undue and potential boring detail, Alota and Jawo trace Deyda’s life back to his very childhood days, when as an innocent eight-year-old, he played soccer with his friends on Hagan Street in Banjul. The light-hearted and immensely readable narrative takes us on a walk across life with the vibrant, ever-optimistic, and often irresistibly funny Deyda from his childhood days, to his enrolment at the Foyer - the French elementary school in Banjul - to his days at the Lycee Gaston Berger in Kaolack, Senegal, where he was a star student, to his two-year stint at the Universite de Dakar, now Cheikh Anta Diop University where his studies were cut short after two years because his aunt could not afford to continue paying his college fees. Deyda accepts his fate stoically and returns to Banjul where he joined the staff of the newly established Radio Syd as a DJ, rising up to the position of station manager by the time he resigned from that post in 1988, to start working on his initial plans for The Point with Pap Saine and Baboucarr Gaye. The first issue of The Point came out on December 16, 1991, coinciding with the birthday of his wife Maria Hydara. We follow the narrative to the very last few minutes of his life when, as he drove home after celebrating The Point’s 13th anniversary, his car was overtaken by an unmarked Mercedes Benz car from which a gunman pumped three bullets into his body, killing him instantly. One of the most shocking details in the book is a revelation by the authors that when in the course of their research for this book they approached some people they knew to be close friends of Deyda, those people flatly denied knowing him. Other’s warned them to desist from writing this book because they could get killed for doing so. The authors’ answer was this: death will come when it will.
Through all these pages, the reader sees Deyda Hydara talking, laughing, dancing, writing, and debating as if in real life. As our eyes run through the pages of this small but revealing narrative, we see Deyda the lover of his work, Deyda the loving husband and father, Deyda the uncompromising champion of the right to freedom of expression and of the press, Deyda the fearless, self-sacrificing speaker of truth to power, and ultimately, Deyda the human being, with some of the weaknesses of being human coming through to us at various points in the story. But these weaknesses had nothing to do with the fact that Deyda Hydara was an extremely brave man who knew that he could, indeed, that he would be killed in the line of executing his duty as a journalist advocate for truth and justice. In one scene, we are told that after a good meal of benachin at his house, Deyda had removed his shirt, pointed to his ribs and his left temple, and told his wife, “This is where they will shoot me.” Did he foresee his assassination? If his wife’s testimony is anything to go by, the answer is yes, he did. And he did not in any way try to avert or escape it because he repeatedly refuses to follow his family’s advice to quit journalism, and repeatedly tells us in the book that he believed that the power to kill belongs only to God. He would die when God decreed that he was to die, not when his enemies wanted him dead.
In a very real sense, Deyda Hydara continues to live on in the pages of this book. Indeed, the book’s title, A Living Mirror, is real in a sense that cannot be described by words, but that can be felt only by reading the book itself. A rich sampling of Deyda’s columns represent Appendix One of the book and gives the reader a good sense of just how brave, and how persistently critical of the Jammeh dictatorship and the dictator himself Deyda Hydara was. Aloa Alota and Demba Jawo must be heartily commended for their bravery, their painstaking research and their excellent portrayal of one of The Gambia’s and world journalism’s most illustrious sons. A Living Mirror: The Life of Deyda Hydara is a national document of great significance that should find its way into the minds and shelves of every Gambian. It is a national treasure that must be preserved for future generations of Gambians and fair-minded journalists everywhere. 

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