The boys’ school was nearby. Whenever we went out to buy our lunch the boys might be there, getting their food from the stalls. When they caught sight of us they would whistle or catcall. We’d pretend to be angry, but deep inside it was thrilling to get such attention from handsome boys in their smart uniforms. Our teachers would get angry, but what could we do about it? Boys would be boys, and we weren’t exactly provoking them.
With the completion of year one our lessons became more varied. From Miss Aisha, the English teacher, we learned about weddings wherein the bride would be dressed all in white. I found it odd that the she would wear such a dull color: Red was dramatic and drew attention to her. Perhaps because English girls had white skin the men believed white was the most beautiful color? I asked Miss Aisha if this was so, but she explained that white was believed to be the color of purity, and that was why they were married in white.
We learned about Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, and that England was the birthplace of democracy. We saw pictures of London with huge tower blocks going high into the sky. We read about the great works of English literature. But at the same time our history teacher taught us how the British colonized Africa. They came to Sudan bringing education and hospitals, but they took our gold, our oil, and our agricultural exports in return. If we understood the British then we would know how to fight them, our teacher explained, just in case they ever tried to colonize Sudan again!
Our second year drew to a close with proper, end-of-year exams. I had been at the top of the class in most subjects, but there were three classes in our year, and I wondered how I had done overall. The day of the exam results each class went to sit outside. My heart thumped fiercely when the headmistress read out the names of the top ten pupils in our year. I heard my name—Halima Bashir. The other girls jumped to their feet. But was the dreaded headmistress really going to congratulate me, her least favorite pupil?
I felt someone at my side. “Go on, Halima,” my tutor, Miss Shadhia, urged me. “Go on. You’re top of the year.”
I walked forward, the other girls making way for me. I saw the headmistress force a smile, as she bent to shake my hand. She passed me my certificate and hung a golden medal around my neck. Then she turned me around to face the crowd. As she did so, the girls broke into a deafening round of applause. I felt as if I were in a dream.
“Well done, Halima,” I heard her murmur, as she rested her hands on my shoulders. “Well done. Top of the year. I’m so glad our little . . . problems are all behind us now.”
When my father arrived to take me back to the village he couldn’t believe the news. I saw how happy I had made him, and I knew it was as much a victory for our tribe as it was a personal triumph for our family. I felt tears of joy at his happiness. I couldn’t believe that I, his little daughter, could have made him so fulfilled. My father announced that he was going to buy me a special treat. Within reason, I could have anything I wanted. I chose a fine gold chain, and I wore it with joy in my heart as we drove back home to the village.
As soon as we arrived my father announced the news—that I had beaten all the Arab city girls to be top of the year. My mother was amazed, and even Grandma seemed suitably impressed. But as for Mo and Omer they reacted badly, especially when they caught sight of my shiny new gold chain. Why did I get all the attention, they demanded? Why did I get all my father’s gifts? Why couldn’t they go to the big school?
Mo had just started at the village school. My father had promised to send him to the big school if he did well, but his early results were hardly impressive. He had been coming in tenth or lower in his class.
“You should learn a lesson from Halima,” my father declared. “You are tenth because all you wanted was for me to buy you some toys. You have to want to learn, to burn for it. You have to hunger for it, like Halima. She studies because she loves to . . .”
Mo and Omer stomped off, ignoring the last of my father’s words. Later, I found out that they had scribbled in my exercise books, and drawn rude pictures. My mum called Mo and Omer and asked who was responsible. They both denied it, each blaming the other. Eventually my mum lost her temper and started to beat them both—but that just meant that my brothers resented me all the more for it.
Unbeknownst to me, Omer had decided that I had an unfair advantage at school: my white eyelash. It was this that gave me my brains. And so he hatched a plan to get rid of it. He told Mo that he, Omer, would hold me down while Mo had to cut it off. But Mo asked why he had to be the one to cut it. Omer told him that it was because he was the oldest, but Mo refused. Omer scoffed at him, and declared that he would do it then.
The day after my return from school they came for me. I was carrying a basket of laundry out to the back of the house, when Omer called me over. “Come, Rathebe, come! I’ve got something to show you!” As I went to look he stuck out his foot and tripped me. The instant I hit the ground he was on my chest, while Mo pinned my arms and legs down. As Omer bounced on my stomach and tried to squeeze the breath out of me, I screamed, presuming that this was just a particularly nasty episode of play-fighting.
But then my cries froze in my throat, as I spotted a big, sharp carving knife glinting in the sunlight. I stared up at Omer as he forced the knife closer and closer, a fierce madness burning in his eyes. Omer was only four years old, but he was fearless and strong. I tried to push his knife hand back, but Mo kept dragging at my arms. As I weakened Omer’s free hand shot forward, grabbed my eyelid, and he thrust the knife downward.
“Help!” I screamed. “Help! He’s going to kill me!”
“I’m going to cut it!” Omer yelled. “Then we’ll all be the same! We’ll all be equal!”
He slashed with the knife, the blade flashing past with a horrible tug at my eye socket. I felt a bolt of pain, as Omer let out a yell of triumph and thrust something aloft.
“The white eyelash!” he cried. “I’ve cut it! I’ve cut it!”
He threw the tiny piece of white aside, and turned back to me.
“Now to finish it!” he yelled. “Dig it out! Slice it! Finish it!”
He reached forward with the knife again, and I felt a wave of fear wash over me. But all of a sudden I caught a blur of gray to one side of him, followed by a deafening crack, as Grandma’s big stick made contact with the side of his head. An instant later Omer was lying in a dazed heap on the ground. Grandma whipped her hand down and scooped up the fallen knife. As Mo tried to make a run for it she grabbed him by the hair and hauled him backward.
“What in Allah’s name is going on?” she cried. She brandished the big carving knife. “You think this is a toy? Do you? You want to play the knife game with Grandma!”
Mo burst into a flood of tears. Seconds later my mother and father arrived on the scene. At the sight of the carving knife they were horrified. Each of them started to quiz a blubbering Mohammed on why his younger brother was trying to kill me. As for Omer he was sitting where he had fallen, dazed and confused. Grandma had hit him a fierce whack, and he was too far gone to answer anyone’s questions.
Omer had managed to slice off a good length of my white eyelash, but other than that it appeared to be intact. My father let out a deep sigh of relief, but the fallout from the attack was only just beginning. My mother had words with my father, telling him that in the future he had to bring a present for each of the children, not just for me. Otherwise, Omer was mad enough and jealous enough to really hurt me.
And my father had to stop making such a fuss about my white eyelash. It was true that he was forever going on about it—how it brought us such good fortune, and me such knowledge. Then my mother turned to me. I had to stop bragging about my presents, and teasing my brothers. It was true that I did taunt them. I’d dance in front of Mo and Omer, holding up a present and singing: “Look what I’ve got! Look what I’ve got!”
Well, it was all very good my mother playing the peacemaker, but what about the villain of the piece—Omer? Why wasn’t he getting a lecture?
He was the one who had taken a knife, set a trap for me, and stabbed me in the eye. Yet so far, not a word had been said. I pointed this out to my mother. Grandma’s blow with the stick was enough punishment for now, she declared. As for how my parents would deal with his hot temper, they didn’t know. Omer was like a wild animal, and it wasn’t the first time that they had despaired of him.
My mother and father were seriously worried. At times, their youngest child seemed overtaken by bouts of enraged madness, during which he seemed capable of almost anything. The only thing they could think of doing was to consult the village Fakir for help. Without breathing a word to Omer that is exactly what they did.
The Fakir fetched an egg, rolled it all over my mother’s body, and broke it into a glass. He studied the egg to discover if someone had put the Evil Eye on Omer. If the egg looked up at him with the appearance of an evil eye, then he would know that they had. He would break another egg, and try to discern the person’s name. Often, it would take three eggs to get it all sorted. Sure enough the eggs revealed that Omer was under the influence of an Evil Eye.
The Fakir prepared a special hijab for Omer to drink—called a mehiah. He wrote some verses from the Koran on a blackboard, and washed them off into a glass. The water he decanted into a small bottle, to which he added some extra potions. My parents thanked the Fakir and returned home. But as soon as Omer spotted the mehiah he knew what they’d been up to, and he refused to drink. No matter how they pleaded and threatened, he wouldn’t drink. Finally, Grandma lost patience and went to fetch her big stick.
“Drink it! It’s good for you! Drink!” she ordered. “What is it with you refusing to drink? You like being crazy, is that it? You think the rest of us like living with a mad boy?”
“Look at all these,” Omer countered, lifting up his robe to reveal several hijabs strung around his waist. “Have they done any good? No! So why will this drinking one be any different?”
“Ungrateful boy!” Grandma scolded. “Imagine how wild you’d be without wearing those ones! You’d be totally insane. Now drink, or do I have to . . .”
Suddenly Omer grabbed the bottle and flung the contents down his throat. “There!” he declared. “Not that it will make any difference . . .”
Shortly after the eyelash attack I started experiencing intense pains in my stomach. I was vomiting up my food and nothing would stay down. Grandma took me to see Halima, the traditional village medicine woman that I had been named after. Halima was as kindly and gentle as ever. She massaged my stomach, while mumbling some spells, and then she started to spit little puffs of air over me. With each puff she murmured; “Evil Eye—out! Evil Eye—out! Evil Eye—out!”
She took a china teacup and heated it over the fire. She placed the hot cup on my bare tummy, inverted, so that it formed a seal, and started to suck the badness out of me. As she did so, I felt a warm glow rippling through me. After that the vomiting eased, and I was soon better. To this day I still believe in the Evil Eye, and the power of hijabs, medicine women, and the Fakirs.
The Fakirs in our village were carefully chosen by the community as men of good character, and truly wise. They were blessed with the ability to wield the power of God. It was dangerous to do so, unless you understood how to use the holy Koran in conjunction with ancient spells and other traditional law. But for every good Fakir there was invariably a self-proclaimed bad one. These men used dangerous and dark powers—black magic and devilish arts—to achieve people’s worst desires.
I’d been home from school for a month or so when I witnessed the terrible harm such bad Fakirs caused. I had a cousin called Mousa in his early twenties, and like most young men he was impetuous. One day he went to consult a bad Fakir concerning a quarrel in the village. The Fakir prepared a spell to use against his adversary, but at the very moment of casting it the spell fell upon Mousa instead. For weeks on end Mousa locked himself away in his hut, and the only person he was able to speak to was his elder brother.
His parents took him to see a good Fakir, but he could do nothing. He needed to know the name of the bad Fakir who had cast the original curse, and of the intended victim, before he could undo the spell. Unfortunately, my cousin was too crazed to be able to tell him. Eventually, they flew Mousa all the way to Nigeria, where the Fakirs are renowned for their power in lifting curses. But even they were unable to do anything for him.
Whenever we visited their house Mousa would be all hunched up in his dark hut, his face twisted into a grimace of pain. He looked so unhappy and I felt so sorry for him. I even tried asking him who it was who had cast the bad spell, and who was the intended target, but Mousa just mumbled confusedly. Finally his family took him to the hospital. The doctors tried giving him all sorts of medication, but nothing worked—proof in itself that Mousa’s madness was caused by an evil Fakir’s spells.
Time passed quickly, both in the village and at school. I reached my eleventh birthday, and I felt more than ready to move on to the secondary school. But first I had to pass my exams, without which I couldn’t graduate to high school. Every pupil in the country had to take them, and the results would be compared across the country. I studied harder than ever, and once the exams were completed I waited with my friends to hear the results. If any one of us had failed it would break apart a friendship that had seen us triumph over such adversity.
The first I heard of the results was a pounding on the door of my uncle’s house, early one morning. It was Mona, and she had raced over to be the first to tell me. She had been watching TV with her parents, and my name had been announced as being one of the top five students for the whole of Darfur. She hugged me tight and we danced for joy. I couldn’t believe it. It was inconceivable. One of the top five. There were hundreds and hundreds of schools across the region.
We hurried in to school. I asked Mona if she knew how she had done. She shook her head and grinned. It didn’t matter—she was sure to have passed. What mattered was that I, a black Zaghawa girl from the bush, had beaten every single Arab girl in our school. Upon arrival at the school gates I was mobbed by teachers and pupils alike. Everyone had heard the news—all except for me, as my uncle couldn’t afford a TV.
We gathered for one of our last-ever assemblies. The headmistress stood out front, as I took the place of honor in the roll call of results. I was given a gold embossed Koran, and a prize of some money. But what mattered most to me was that I had beaten the system. I had proved to them all that race was no arbiter of talent or intelligence. I left that school which had caused me so much heartache being rewarded by the headmistress for being her star pupil.
That evening there was a party at my uncle’s house. Mona, Najat, Samirah, and Makboulah were there, as were many of my other friends. Some of the Arab girls even deigned to visit, although Sairah had left the year before to go to another school. But best of all was when my father turned up. He’d heard the news on his radio, jumped into the Land Rover, and driven all day to be with me. He was overjoyed that his name, his family name, had been on the news. And he was so very, very proud of me.
The party went on long into the night. When the last people had said their goodbyes, my father took me out onto the veranda. I was proud that I had come number five in the province, I told to him, but if the truth be told I regretted was that I wasn’t number one. Still, I had shown that a black African girl could beat those from rich, privileged families. My father took my hand in his and we sat there in silence, both of us struck with a blissful happiness.
It was then that my father told me about his dream for me—how he wanted me go to university to train to be a medical doctor. I had proven that I had the flair to make it, and if he worked hard then he could afford to fund my studies. I was the only one of his children with the talent to do so, he confided in me. Mo and Omer were a great help on the farm, but in truth neither cared much for school or studying.
A medical doctor. Could I really be a medical doctor, I wondered? Sometimes Mo, Omer, and I used to play a game
where we’d act out what we wanted to be when we grew up. Omer would be a tough soldier, yelling and making fierce thrusts with a sword. Mo would act as if he were a driver, holding the steering wheel and changing gear. As for me, I’d ask my brothers what was wrong with them, so I could make them better.
Then we’d have to argue who had the best job. “I’m the best because I’m going to kill people,” Omer would say. “Me—I’m driving people,” Mo would declare. “Without me no one can go anywhere.” “But the doctor is the best,” I’d argue. “When you get ill, I will help you get well again.” Whoever was declared the loser we’d make the loser the donkey, and they’d have to carry the winner around on their back.
My father went on to confess that he was disappointed in Mo and Omer, for neither had any interest in the wider world, the politics of our country, or even the struggle of the Zaghawa people. Outside of his family, these were my father’s consuming passions. Our present rulers had stolen power, my father told me, his voice laced with a quiet anger. The people should choose who to govern them, not a bunch of military men in plastic uniforms. Our military rulers were overshadowing the country’s bright future.
By the time we got back to the village a second party had been organized. Half of the village seemed to have watched the announcement of the exam results on my father’s TV set, and everyone was invited. By now, Mo and Omer seemed to have reconciled themselves to the fact that academia was not for them, and they seemed happy for me. It was a wonderful party, and I felt so proud to have achieved even this much for my village.
During my final term at junior school my mother had given birth to my baby sister, Asia. Baby Asia was quiet and gentle, just like Mohammed had been. She was still very much a bundle of rags, but it was clear that she was going to take after my mother. She had big eyes, just like her, and her hair was going to be long and lustrous. Of course, I felt a touch of jealousy, as I was no longer the only daughter. When I saw my father cooing to her, I felt a stab of envy. But the age difference was such that it soon passed: I was approaching my twelfth birthday, whereas Asia was just a little baby.
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