Tears of the Desert

by Halima Bashir

  Soldiers had been ordered onto the streets of Khartoum and all the major cities, as the National Islamic Front feared a nationwide uprising. Security men were posted at every university to ensure that the trouble didn’t spread. The parents of the city girls were urging them to return home as soon as they could. But with all students locked in their dorms, there was clearly no way that any of us were going anywhere just yet.

  “The Africans, the Darfuris—they’re trying to crush the Arabs!” Dahlia whispered. “They killed lots of soldiers. They’re saying it’s a big defeat for the government. . . . Can you believe it? This isn’t the south. It’s Darfur. It’s that close to Khartoum!”

  “You know something—I can believe it,” I replied. “And I am a Darfuri, or had you forgotten? I’m also a black African.”

  “But this isn’t people like you,” Dahlia hissed. “I mean, you’re a model student. You don’t support what they’re doing.”

  “Listen, if you keep the black people down under your boot for so long, what d’you expect? In their own country! D’you expect them to be happy? D’you expect them to do nothing?”

  Dahlia was gazing at me in amazement. Some of the other Arab city girls had gathered around. They were equally astonished. I was the goody-goody from the library. I was the perfect student. How could I be saying such things? I guess I was emboldened by the news that my people were fighting back; maybe that was why.

  “Look, this is war,” I told them. “And it’s a war that may come right to Khartoum. To Khartoum. And if it does, d’you think I won’t be supporting my tribe, my people, my fellow black Africans?”

  “But we’re all friends,” Dahlia objected. “There’s no trouble between us. There never has been. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “There’s one thing you have to understand,” I replied. “You have trodden us down for too long. You can try to ignore it, but it’s true. You treat people worse than animals, and eventually they will turn and bite you.”

  Dahlia and the others stared at me. Their astonishment had turned to apprehension. Perhaps they had never heard such fighting talk. Perhaps in their privileged lives, in their plush houses with their black servants, they really did have no idea what was going on. But that was no excuse. Did they never talk to those servants? Ask them why they were so hopelessly poor? Ask them what had destroyed their happy lives and forced them to flee as refugees to Khartoum? Ask them how they had ended up as fourth-class citizens, barely any better than animals?

  By midafternoon the security men had relented. Students were being allowed out to get food and to wash. Many took the opportunity to return home. In no time, the campus was empty. All that remained were the village girls like Rania and myself. The people of Darfur had finally shown their hand, and proven how strong they could be. How far would this go, I wondered? Would they fight their way to Khartoum and topple those who had stolen power? Would they return this suffering nation to an open, civilized, and democratic one?

  Two weeks after the attack on El Fasher airport life at the university had returned pretty much to normal. The Arab students trickled back and we resumed our studies. There were barely four months to go until our final exams, so there was little time to dwell on what had happened. But the attitude of Dahlia and the other Arab girls had changed. They were distant toward me now, and in a way I wasn’t surprised. I had shown my teeth, revealed my claws. I was no longer the quiet little goody-goody in the library. I was the enemy within.

  Further reports of fighting filtered in from Darfur, but the news was worrying. The army was counterattacking, burning and destroying whole villages. The fear of an imminent takeover of the country was receding. There was little being reported in the media, but rumors came via word of mouth and there were scores of horror stories. We heard of whole villages being massacred. Innocent men, women, and children were being gunned down. Increasingly, I was worried for the fate of my own village and my own family.

  There was a great deal of tension between the black African and Arab students now. The trust and friendship that had once existed had almost completely broken down. Occasionally, Dahlia would ask me if I had news of my family, or if everything was all right in my village. But there were others who breathed not a word of concern.

  Just prior to our final examinations I managed to get a call through using a public phone box to Uncle Ahmed, in Hashma. The fighting was far away from our area, he reassured me, and my family wasn’t in any immediate danger. I tried to put my worries to the back of my mind, as I readied myself for my exams. But even as I did so, I knew that my dream of becoming a doctor had somehow turned sour. At a stroke, war seemed to have overridden everything, making the years of study seem somehow so irrelevant.

  My final-year tutor, an Arab academic, tried to encourage me. He told me that I was on course for a top degree mark. I had attended each and every one of my lectures, and he knew that I stood to do well. Those students who skipped lectures used to rely on me to copy their lecture notes from. The three weeks of back-to-back final examinations were hell. At the end I was completely exhausted, but I felt confident that I had done well. All that now remained was for me to pass my oral exam—my viva.

  The viva is a one-on-one interview, and I knew it could make all the difference in getting a top mark. As I stood before my tutor and the external examiner, I felt confident that they would back me with a strong recommendation. The external examiner asked me a few questions, all of which I answered easily. Then he turned to my tutor and asked how my attendance had been at lectures. Just for an instant I saw my tutor hesitate, his eyes flickering in my direction, and then he gave his answer.

  “I’m afraid that’s the one area wherein this pupil has failed to excel,” he remarked. “If the truth be told, there were many times when she failed to attend. As her tutor I have looked into this, and I understand that she had a similarly poor record with all lectures.”

  I stood there in shock, refusing to believe what I had just heard. Barely a month ago my tutor had been congratulating me on my attendance record, and urging me to do my very best. Yet here he was telling the external examiner a pack of lies. The external examiner fixed me with a severe eye, but I figured I could detect just the hint of an amused sneer.

  “Being a medical doctor is a huge responsibility,” he remarked. “In fact, I cannot think of another degree qualification that carries such onerous responsibility. Your studies are about saving human life. You must ensure you know your subject inside out. Failure to attend lectures is a serious matter.”

  “But I . . . I did attend,” I replied. I glanced at my tutor in confusion. “I did attend. I attended everything . . . All of my studies. In fact, I can’t think of a single lecture that I missed . . .”

  I saw the examiner bend to his desk and scribble a note onto my viva. “Your duty as a doctor is not only to uphold life,” he remarked, without glancing up at me. “It is also to be truthful. . . . Thank you, Miss Bashir, your viva is over. You may go now.”

  I turned to leave the room. As I reached for the door handle I felt hot tears of rage pricking my eyes. Just as soon as I stepped out of the room my friends were around me, asking me what had happened. Rania wiped the tears away from my face, as she tried to comfort me. Her viva was coming next. At least now she knew what to expect.

  “The tutor’s a coward,” Rania told me, as she gave me a reassuring hug. “A coward and a liar. No one has a better attendance rate that you. Everyone knows that. You know what this is all about? It’s their way to make sure you don’t get a top mark. That examiner’s been put there by the government, and your tutor’s scared of him, that’s all.”

  Several of the other students agreed. With Darfuris rebelling across the country, how could they let me, a Darfuri, come in at or near the top of my year? I had been marked down as a shirker and a liar in my viva—that’s how they had got me. In due course I did graduate, but it was with a middling mark. I wasn’t surprised: It was what I had expected. Yet
I still felt cheated and betrayed, as if the system and the country were against me.

  In contrast to how I had so often dreamed of receiving my medical degree—in a blaze of happy glory—it was a sad, empty affair. My parents didn’t even attend my graduation, and neither did I. The very day that I heard my result I set off for home. There were few goodbyes that I felt like saying. I had an emotional parting with Rania, and I said as warm a farewell as I could to Dahlia. But all I really wanted to do was to reach home and see that everything was all right. That was what was foremost in my mind.

  Together with a dozen other students from Darfur—Zaghawa, Fur, and others—I set off on the train journey back to Hashma. Ahmed, the Darfuri student and political activist, came with me. Our conversation was forever about our fears for our village and our families. Fear was like a corrosive acid eating away at us. We talked continuously about the war and the fighting and who was going to win. Each of us prayed that our own village had remained untouched by the killing.

  We all hoped for the best, while secretly fearing the very worst. I prayed to God to protect my family, and to keep the war away from them. As I retraced the journey that I’d first taken with my father, some six years earlier, I reflected on how things had changed. Then my heart had been full of bright hope and dreams for the future. Now it was full of a dark apprehension and dread.

  Upon arrival at Hashma I searched the crowded platform for my father. I’d phoned through to Uncle Ahmed, asking my father to meet me. Suddenly I spotted his distinctive figure easing through the crowd. I broke into a run, leaving my green metal trunk abandoned on the platform, and flung myself into his arms. Thank God! Thank God! At least my father was all right. And by the looks of him all was well in the village.

  We hugged for what seemed like an age, and then my father held me at arm’s length, gazing into my face. I had worked so hard to achieve the dream that he had shared with me when I was a little girl. And now, sixteen years later, I had done it—I had achieved the impossible. I had returned to him as Halima Bashir, MD. But did it mean anything anymore? Did it matter? Was it even worthwhile?

  I searched my father’s face for something—for a sign, perhaps, that it was all still valid, still worth something in this crazed country that was tearing itself apart. And what I saw there made me blush, as a warm rush of happiness surged through me. My father had tears in his eyes. Tears of happiness and pride. He seemed completely lost for words. But it didn’t matter. Words weren’t needed anymore. His look had said it all.

  My father slung my trunk over his shoulder and beckoned for me to follow him to the car. We stepped out of the station and I glanced around me. The town seemed different somehow. What was it? There were no obvious signs of the war—no soldiers on the street, no tanks rumbling past, no aircraft overhead. Then I realized what it was: It was so quiet, and so tense. People hurried past, their heads bent and eyes furtive and distrustful.

  As soon as we were in the privacy of the Land Rover, I asked my father if everyone was all right.

  He smiled briefly, keeping his eyes on the busy road. “Don’t worry, Rathebe, everyone’s fine. Mo and crazy Omer are helping me with the livestock. Your mum’s looking after the house. Grandma’s been ill, but she’s recovering. And little Asia’s at secondary school now, but she’s nowhere near as gifted as you.”

  “So there’s been no trouble?”

  “No. None. None whatsoever in our area.”

  “But we heard all these terrible things—villages being bombed, houses burned, people killed.”

  “Not in our area. In fact, you’d hardly know there was a war on . . .”

  I felt overwhelmed with relief. The dreaded war hadn’t so much as touched our village. I was returning home a proper medical doctor, and perhaps it was going to be a happy homecoming. I glanced out the window as we rattled though the bush, and there were no signs of the horrors that we had heard of. There were no plumes of smoke in the distance, no burning villages, no long lines of fleeing refugees, no bodies rotting in the sun.

  I told myself to relax, to put my fears behind me. For a while my father and I talked about my degree. I told him about my cowardly tutor and how I had been cheated in the viva. A pass was still a pass, he smiled. But the conversation kept getting dragged back to the war. It overshadowed everything. At present the fighting was concentrated around Al Fasher and West Darfur, my father said. It had yet to touch our part of the province.

  “When our people attacked the Arab forces they did very well,” my father said. “But the tables have been turned. Our people are being hit hard now.”

  For a moment I was shocked to hear my father refer to the Darfuri rebels as “our people.” This was more than I had ever said at university. But these were the people who had taken up arms to fight for our rights, so why shouldn’t we refer to them as “our people”? I listened hard as my father continued talking.

  “At first we outsmarted them. The rebels came out of the mountains, attacked, and melted away again. They stuck to the hills and valleys where the soldiers couldn’t use their tanks and helicopters. So you know how they responded? They attacked the villages instead.”

  “We heard rumors,” I said. “It sounds so horrible. So horrible. That’s why I was so worried . . .”

  “It is a living nightmare, Rathebe.” My father turned to me, his face dark with anger. “Imagine—they refuse to fight us fairly, face-to-face as men. Instead they attack the innocent women and children. The murderous cowards. People run and try to escape, for if you stay they just kill you. Villages are burned and looted, even the livestock stolen.”

  “But what can we do to stop them?”

  “How can you stop them? It’s only now that people are waking up to the danger. People are trying to band together, to find weapons, to join the rebels. But of course you need money, especially for weapons. And it takes time. . . . So far the fighting has been in the west, but we fear it will spread to our area. We fear that it is coming.”

  My father paused, leaned forward, and tapped the fuel gauge. The needle wobbled, then dropped to indicate the tank was a quarter full. It was forever getting stuck, and if you forgot it was easy to run out of gas.

  He glanced at me, pain etched in his eyes. “You know how bad it’s got, Rathebe? In some places whole villages have gone to live in the hills. They’re living in the mountains to try to avoid the killers. . . . A few weeks ago we talked about whether we should do the same. But the old people, your Grandma included, refused to abandon the village. They opted to stay and fight. Better to be brave than to run, they said. So, we’re staying—at least for now we are.”

  “What did you want to do? What did you say?”

  “I said it was fine to talk of bravery, but it was guns that we needed. I said that if we waited for the fighting to reach us it would be too late. But I understand why people want to stay. It’s our land, our houses, our farms. It’s our community. I don’t blame them.”

  “So what now? What do we do next? It’s all so horrible . . .”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Rathebe,” my father cut in. “We need to shake off the past. For too long the Arabs have abused us and this is the start of the fight for our rights. I’m happy it’s started—this is a good thing. I just hope and pray that we succeed. We’ll know we have won when we take our rights, when we have true equality.”

  The men of the village had started a watch duty, my father explained. Day and night someone was on guard to warn of an attack. They had marked out the best escape routes, in case the women and children had to flee to the forest. People kept talking about trying to get some guns, but how did simple farmers become gun dealers overnight? In any case, where was the money to come from? My father was the richest man in the village, and he could hardly afford to arm everyone, even if the weapons could be found.

  Everyone was hoping and praying that the soldiers wouldn’t come, while at the same time trying to ready themselves for an attack. Fear was stalking our villag
e—fear and horror and evil. A darkness had descended upon my home.

  It was terrifying, and totally chilling.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Medicine Woman

  The morning after my return I awoke late to a hubbub of voices outside. I emerged from Grandma’s hut with a sleepy yawn. A line of people snaked away from the gate and down the street. I wondered what was going on. My father was organizing a welcome-home party, but it wasn’t supposed to start until the following evening.

  “What’s this?” I asked Grandma, trying to stifle another yawn.

  “What time d’you call this?” she countered, with a smile in her eyes. “You’ve kept your patients waiting long enough. I’ll prepare some breakfast, while you do your rounds.”

  For a moment I stared at Grandma in confusion. What was she going on about? What patients? And then I realized that the woman at the front of the line was pointing at me. She lifted up her tope to reveal a swollen abdomen, and motioned for me to go and take a look. Oh no . . . I glanced at Grandma, half in amusement and half in horror.

  “Go on,” she urged. “What’re you waiting for? Six years studying and now’s your chance to get your hands on some real patients. Go on—Doctor Halima Bashir.”

  As I made my way across to the group of waiting women I felt myself cringing with embarrassment. How was I going to explain that in spite of being a doctor, I couldn’t cure most of their ills? I felt hopelessly inadequate. My father had set up a little table by the gate. On it was a stethoscope and a blood pressure monitor that he’d purchased in Hashma. As I sat down behind the desk I was painfully aware that my family was watching, their pride like a fire burning all around me.