Tears of the Desert

by Halima Bashir

My father shook his head. “Didn’t you know? We sent a message via Uncle Ahmed. Grandma’s gone. She’s passed away. She’s dead. Grandma Sumah’s dead.”

  Grandma had passed away barely a week prior to my reaching home. My father had tried to get a message to me, via Uncle Ahmed and the radiophone in Mazkhabad. They had wanted me here for the funeral, but the message hadn’t gotten through. Her death had been quick and painless, my father told me, and it sounded like a stroke. It had happened in the middle of the night, and by early morning she had passed to the other side.

  Just when I most needed her fighting spirit and strength, Grandma Sumah was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A Long-Distance Wedding

  For days on end I stayed in Grandma’s hut hiding from the world. I tried to mourn for her, but my own state of mind was such that I had little energy left to grieve for anyone other than myself. Yet I missed her terribly, and especially now. If Grandma had been alive, I felt certain she would have done something dramatic to avenge what had happened. She would have taken her revenge on any Arab that she could get her hands on, with no thoughts for the consequences. That was just how she was.

  As for the rest of my family, each reacted in their own way. My mother’s response to what had happened was one of emotional collapse. My “little” brother—eighteen-year-old Omer—stomped around looking enraged and fiery. But what could he do? Whom could he fight? How could he strike back at them? He and Mo would need my father’s leadership to carry them, and my father’s intentions lay in a more long-term, considered approach. My father’s hopes lay in contacting the Zaghawa rebels.

  It was on the day of my return that my father decided to join them. It was clear to him now that we had no choice. We had to fight, or die. No one could avoid the truth anymore. He had seen what they had done to me, and from Osman he had heard of the attack on the village school. He shared his plans with my brothers, and there was lots of fighting talk. Just as soon as they could he, Mo, and Omer would join the rebels.

  The only people who knew what had happened to me were my family members, and they were determined to keep it that way. When people asked why I had come home, they said that I’d sought safety in the village from the war. Because I didn’t want to see anyone, they told visitors that I was resting after a long and difficult journey. I lay in Grandma’s hut hiding myself away and consumed by grief. The void of a deep depression swallowed me, wherein the loneliness and darkness seized hold of my soul.

  After a month or so I started showing my face around the home. I helped my mother with the chores. This was as much as I could manage. I felt like a child again—a child at home doing childish things, and protected by my family. My favorite job was washing the clothes. It would take me the whole day to complete a basket of washing, and somehow I felt that with each I was making myself clean again. Sometimes I would catch myself scrubbing and scrubbing at my own skin—as if by doing so I might rid myself of what those men had done to me.

  My father started being absent from the home for several days at a time, far longer than we were used to. No one talked openly about it, but I presumed that he had to be off making contact with the rebels. I still didn’t have the energy or the will to be interested. My daily interaction was limited to passing the time of day. A quiet, “hello, how are you?” and that was about it. Then I would go and busy myself with the daily chores.

  In reality I was still in hiding: I was hiding away from my family, my friends, and from life in its entirety. The more it became obvious that I had stopped wanting to be part of my family, the more it hurt them. My father in particular was consumed by worry.

  Four months after my return he came to find me in Grandma’s hut. He sat down next to me and held my hand. He knew that I was isolating myself, he told me gently, and he understood why. He knew that I feared rejection, rejection from all those who loved me. He knew that I was trying to protect myself, by rejecting them first. I was a victim, and nothing would ever alter his love for me. He would always love me dearly. He just wanted me back again.

  My father said that I needed something to live for, something to bring me out of the darkness. And so he had taken the liberty of asking the parents of my cousin Sharif if they might agree to a marriage. If I was happy, Sharif had accepted the match. He had fond memories of me, and we were both university educated, so it would be a union of equals. Sharif was an educated, liberal man, one deeply involved in the struggle. Did I think I could accept him, my father asked? Would I agree to the match? If so there was much to organize . . .

  I embraced my father, burying my head in his shoulder. He was so full of love for me: He was trying to drag me back from death to life. Most of the time that he had been away he hadn’t been meeting with the rebels at all. He’d actually been trying to play matchmaker. He’d been trying to find a man who might understand that I’d been horribly victimized, and not see me as the guilty party to some unspeakable, heinous act.

  As terrible as it might seem, a victim of rape is likely to be treated as an outcast by their community, and even their family. And this had been preying so much on my mind. Who would want me now, I wondered? I should have been dead. I was dead. At least inside I was. But I didn’t want anyone marrying me out of charity, either. Rather death than that.

  “Did you tell him?” I whispered. “Did you tell him the truth? Does he know? What did he say?”

  “Don’t worry,” my father comforted me. “Don’t worry. You know Sharif. He works for the cause, the struggle. He has seen so much suffering, all across our country. He understands suffering. He knew that it would come to Darfur, that it was our inescapable fate. Don’t worry—he can accept you for who you are.”

  It wasn’t an answer to my question, but it was enough for me. I hoped my father was right. I hoped Sharif was a good man, a man of enlightened understanding, a man who might understand that no woman ever invites rape. A man who might understand the unspeakable pain and trauma that I had been through, and care about it.

  “So, Rathebe, is that a ‘yes’?” my father prompted. “Can I tell his family you agree?”

  I nodded. I gave a tearful half smile. I felt my face crack as I did so. It was the first time that I had smiled since those men had done those things to me. My father had brought a smile to my face at last. I loved him so dearly. My father went on to explain that there was one complication with the marriage: Sharif was no longer in Sudan. He had fled to safety in England, because the security services were after him, too. He and I were both survivors—survivors of the madness and evil that was burning up our country.

  “You are a rebel yourself, Rathebe,” my father said. “Whether you like it or not, it is in your blood. Sharif is just the same. You are both born rebels.”

  I smiled again. That name again—Rathebe. It was so long since I had heard it. My father had been right to give me that nickname—for it embodied the person that I had become. And he had been so right to give me my birth name, Halima, after the medicine woman of the village. Both names defined me now: I was the Zaghawa doctor, the doctor rebel.

  My father left to deliver the good news to Sharif’s parents. I tried to imagine what he would be like. My last memory of him was the thirteen-year-old farm boy driving us home in his ratty old donkey cart. I had an image in my mind of the man that I’d always wanted to marry. Yet my right to choose the man of my dreams had been taken from me by rape, and now I was to wed an almost stranger. Yet in spite of this, my father’s news was like a rebirth for me. I was a phoenix rising from the ashes of my shattered dreams.

  The following morning my uncles and aunts came to visit. They sat with my father and agreed upon the date when we would make the special readings from the holy Koran so that Sharif and I could be declared man and wife. After that we would have a modest celebratory feast. My groom would be absent, of course, but once it was safe for him to return to Sudan I would have a proper traditional Zaghawa wedding.

  The day of my marriage was a low
-key affair. I sat with Sharif’s relatives and received their congratulations. They told me that they were proud their son was marrying a medical doctor. It was such an honor for their family. Sharif’s mother gave me the gift of a cow, so that I could drink its milk and grow strong while I waited for his return. It was very different from my childhood dreams of my wedding. But I didn’t mind. I just hoped that my marriage to a distant Sharif might give me the will to go on.

  I decided that my days of hiding away were over, and that I wanted to do something again. A health clinic had been started in the village. A charity run by some khawajat had been to check what medical facilities the village had. The traditional medicine women had each been given a few days’ medical training, and a stock of basic medicines. Each day one of these women would staff the clinic, and they were paid out of a community fund that had been raised by the village elders.

  I went and offered up my services. The clinic was a shelter made of wooden uprights with a grass thatch roof, and a couple of tables inside. It was basic, but it served its purpose well. The medicine women were my fellow villagers and friends of friends, and I was able to chat and laugh with them as we worked. They appreciated having a doctor around to handle some of the load.

  An old woman came, complaining of headaches and weakness. I checked her over. She had swollen hands and feet and alarmingly high blood pressure. I told her there was nothing we could do for her at the clinic. She would have to go to the hospital, where they would give her tablets to control her blood pressure.

  The woman glared at me. “You give me a pill to make it better! I saw you give one to our neighbor—what about me?”

  “You need a different sort of pill,” I explained. “We don’t have them here. Plus you need some proper tests.”

  She shook her head in disgust. “Ah, this doctor—anything you say, even a headache, she just tells you to go to the hospital.”

  Many of the women who came to see us were expecting mothers, and they wanted to know when they were going to give birth. This I could help with. I’d feel their tummy, have a listen with the stethoscope, and tell them what I thought. I loved this side of the work. Gradually, I grew more contented. I was helping my people, and I could laugh with them and feel at home. I felt happier here, and I felt as if nothing could harm me.

  Of course, there were lingering fears in the back of my mind. I had fled from Mazkhabad and I had effectively disappeared. But it wouldn’t take much for someone to work out where I had gone. A brief scan of my hospital records would reveal the location of my village. But I didn’t dwell on this. I was desperate to put my troubles and horrors behind me.

  And it was the marriage that had been the key to me breaking my self-imposed isolation.

  I now know that marriage is not the end—it is simply another beginning. But at this stage of my life I was deeply immersed in my culture, and I felt as though it was everything. After the horror and the guilt of the rape, my marriage was like a rebirth. But at the same time it was as if a death sentence was hanging over me. I didn’t know if Sharif knew the full truth—so there was always a chance that my new life might be taken from me again.

  For a while I considered keeping the darkness a secret from him, but I knew that it wasn’t something that I could ever hide. I knew in my heart that I had to tell him. I would await his return to Sudan, and then I would ask him to accept me as I was—a damaged woman and a victim of rape, but a woman all the same.

  In the meantime I would hope and pray that he and I could build a life together in our country. I dreamed of a family, of children, of the type of life that had seemed lost to me after the terrible things that had happened. I dreamed of happiness, of the love of my husband and my children. I dreamed of my parents becoming grandparents, and of the joy that would bring. I dreamed a dream that my loving father had made possible for me.

  Unfortunately, my dreams were about to be irrevocably shattered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Devil Horsemen

  It was five months after my return from Mazkhabad when they came to attack our village. It was the morning of December 23, just two days prior to what I now know and celebrate as Christmas Day. I was helping my mother prepare a breakfast of acidah mash. My father, my brothers, and my little sister were sitting nearby waiting to eat, before spending their day in the fields, or in my sister Asia’s case, attending the school.

  I stirred the acidah mash, peering into the pot to check on its consistency. Too thick and it would stick to the bottom; too thin, and it wasn’t possible to scoop it up with one’s hand and throw it into one’s mouth. In the far distance I caught an odd sound—a faint thrumming in the air. I listened hard, as the strange thwoop-thwoop-thwooping grew louder. It had to be some sort of airplane, but it was unlike any that I had heard before.

  Little children ran out into the streets, jumping up and down excitedly and pointing in the direction from where the noise was coming.

  “Khawajat! Khawajat! Khawajat!” I heard them singing. They clapped and danced about in time to thwoop-thwoop-thwooping. “Plane Number Three! Plane Number Three! Plane Number Three!”

  I smiled, reflecting on how they were still singing the same songs that I had sung as a child. “Plane Number Three. Plane Number Three.” Why did we say that, I wondered? And why was it that we always presumed aircraft had to be full of khawajat—of white people?

  I turned back to the pot and started to dish out the mash. I had a tray set before me from which we would eat communally, scooping up the maize mash with our fingers. I saw my father get to his feet. He stood, gazing into the distance, shading his eyes against the rising sun. The strange noise grew louder—the thwoop-thwoop-thwooping sounding as though it was going to pass somewhere close by the village.

  I could hear the children calling out to each other: “Airplane with a fan! Airplane with a fan! Airplane with a fan!” That is the phrase that we used for helicopters.

  My father could see the aircraft now. A fleet of five helicopters was coming speeding out of the sun. He tried to make them out more clearly. He couldn’t be certain, but each seemed to be painted in the dull khaki of military green. The atmosphere in the village began to change, as all around us people started to sense that this wasn’t right somehow. I glanced up from the breakfast tray, feeling a growing tension and panic. I jumped to my feet. We gazed at the onrushing air armada, trying to work out exactly where they were heading.

  Suddenly, the lead helicopter banked low over the village and there were a series of bright flashes and puffs of smoke from under its stubby wings. An instant later, the huts beneath it exploded, mud and thatch and branches and bodies being thrown into the air. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I told myself that my eyes had to be playing tricks, that it couldn’t be happening. But while my heart refused to believe it, my head knew that it was all too real.

  They were attacking the village! They were attacking the village! They were attacking the village!

  All around us people were waking up to the fact of the attack and crying out in alarm.

  “Kewoh! Kewoh!”—Run! Run!

  “Souf! Souf!”—Hide! Hide!

  For an instant I was frozen with fear, before my father grabbed me by the shoulders.

  “Run!” he cried. “Run! Take your brothers and sister and run! To the forest! Hide! And don’t come out until we come for you. Run! Run! There’s not a moment to lose . . .”

  “I’m not going!” Omer yelled. “I’m staying! I’m staying to fight!”

  “Don’t you dare disobey me!” my father thundered. “I’m your father and you do as I say! Go with your mother and sisters, to protect them. Now—do as I say! GO!”

  Mo and Omer were wide-eyed with fear, but my father’s face was calm and stern as he prepared to face the enemy. He seemed so resolute and so in control, gripping his dagger as he ordered us to flee for our lives. My brothers’ fear—and especially Omer’s—terrified me. It was as if the village had become a visi
on of hell so terrible that even my warlike little brother was petrified. But my father—my father was firm like a rock, and I drew strength from him being so.

  I took one last look at his face, then tore my eyes away. I grabbed my sister and my mother by the hand and we turned and ran. We raced out of the gate, joining a mass of people scurrying through the village. They were screaming wildly, as they ran and ran as fast as their legs would carry them. My brothers ran after us, leaving my father standing firm and alone.

  In the distance beneath the helicopters a massed rank of horsemen swept forward, firing their guns and screaming as they smashed into the village.

  The Janjaweed! The Janjaweed were coming!

  Asia, my mother, and I ran. The village women were all around us, little babies clutched in their arms; older brothers ran with their younger siblings slung across their shoulders. Everyone was screaming in terror, and racing to get ahead of the person in front of them.

  “Run! Run!”

  “Run! Don’t let the Janjaweed catch us!”

  “Don’t let them kill us!”

  “God save us! God save us!”

  The Janjaweed urged their horses forward, tossing blazing torches onto the huts, the dry thatch roofs bursting into flames. I kept glancing behind in fear at the flashes of gunfire and the flames that were sweeping through the village like a wave of fiery death. I could hear the devil horsemen screaming like animals, a howling wave of evil and hatred tearing our village asunder. As they got closer and closer I could make out the individual Arabic phrases that they were chanting, over and over and over again.

  “We’re coming for you! To kill you all!”

  “Kill the black slaves! Kill the black slaves!”

  “Kill the black donkeys!”

  “Kill the black dogs!”

  “Kill the black monkeys!”

  “No one will escape! We will kill you all!”

  “Kill them all! Kill them all! Kill them all!”