Tears of the Desert (25 page)

Once the girls had tried to eat a little, I gave each half a sleeping tablet, so that they might find the sweet forgetfulness of sleep. Each of the girls drifted off into the land of their dreams. I just hoped and prayed that their dreamland would remain free from dark and evil nightmares.

I went and sat at my desk, burying my head in my hands. I closed my eyes and laid my face down on the smooth wooden surface. Apart from the girls’ parents I was alone now. Sayed, Makka, and the other staff had gone home to get some rest. Soon, I felt a presence at my side. I looked up. It was Sumiah, the teacher rape victim.

She gestured toward the girls. “I just came back to see how they are.”

“They’re sleeping, which is good. I hope they’ll be better in the morning.”

“You look tired . . .”

I shrugged. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep much, not after today . . .”

“Still, you need to get some rest.”

“Sumiah, tell me what happened . . . I mean, if you don’t feel able to it’s okay . . . But I just feel I need to know . . .”

“You really want to hear?”

I nodded. I did. For some reason that I couldn’t quite explain, I needed to know. Perhaps the knowing might help me deal with my burning anger and pain. I might begin to understand the full horror, and so come to terms with it . . .

“It was around nine o’clock,” Sumiah began. “Lessons had just started. All of a sudden, I heard the pounding of hooves and wild yelling. Doors were smashed in and the windows too. We didn’t even have time to cry for help. Suddenly they were inside . . .”

Sumiah paused, her face downcast, her eyes looking inward as she relived it all.

I touched her arm, gently. “Don’t if you can’t. Don’t go on.”

Sumiah shrugged. “It’s better to talk
. . . I need to . . .
It was like a band of wild animals just jumping on us and forcing us to the floor. All around me girls were being raped, regardless of their age. The
Janjaweed
carried guns, knives, heavy sticks—the ones they use to beat their horses. If any girl tried to resist they beat her with those sticks . . .”

Sumiah glanced at me. “They were shouting and screaming at us. You know what they were saying? ‘We have come here to kill you! To finish you all! You are black slaves! You are worse than dogs! Either we kill you or we give you Arab children. Then there will be no more black slaves in this country.’ But you know the worst? The worst was that they were laughing and yelping with joy as they did those terrible things. Those grown men were enjoying it, as they passed the little girls around . . .”

In all the confusion one or two of the girls managed to escape. They ran to their homes and raised the alarm. But when the parents rushed to the school they found a cordon of government soldiers had surrounded it and were letting nobody in. If anyone came too close, the soldiers shot at them with their guns. Parents could hear their daughters screaming, but there was no way they could help.

For two hours they held the school. They abused the girls in front of their friends, forcing them to watch what they were doing. Any girls who tried to resist were beaten in the head with sticks or rifle butts.

“Before they left, they spat on us and urinated on us,” Sumiah whispered. “They said: ‘We will let you live so you can tell your mothers and fathers and brothers what we did to you. Tell them from us: If you stay, the same and worse will happen to you all. Next time, we will show no mercy. Leave this land. Sudan is for the Arabs. It is not for black dogs and slaves.’ ”

I stayed at the clinic late into the night, my mind a whirl of exhausted thoughts. I kept replaying Sumiah’s words in my mind.
Sudan is for the Arabs. It is not for black dogs and slaves.
Where had such blind, unreasoning hatred come from? Who but the evil and the insane could be capable of such bestial behavior toward innocent children? It was
inhuman.
And where would it ever end?
Where would it end?

I had no reason to stay any longer at the clinic now. The girls were fast asleep, and even their parents were dropping. I was staying for one reason only: I was scared, so scared, of being alone. I forced myself to my feet. I told the parents that if there was anything—anything at all—then they must come and fetch me. The place where I stayed was nearby, and it was unlikely that I would be sleeping.

As I walked home through the darkened village I tried to face my fear. I was scared of the night itself, but still I stuck to the shadows so as not to be seen. I was scared that the
Janjaweed
would come again. When I reached home I found that Aisha had waited up for me. She had been in the market that morning, selling her wares, and so she had seen the crowd. When I told her the details of what had happened she was sickened beyond words.

“Even the children?
Even the children?
Even those little girls?”

“Even the children,” I confirmed. “They targeted the school, deliberately, to destroy our very souls.”

“We have to fight them,” Aisha declared. “We have to kill them all. They are like a dark evil, spreading throughout this land. . . . We have to kill them all.”

I was silent. Aisha glanced at me. In the firelight she could see that I was crying. She reached out and held me, rocking me in her arms. With the children, I had tried to be strong. With them I had tried to hide my emotions, to hold back my tears. Now I could let them flow.

When we retired to our huts I took a stick with me and hid it under the bed. I lay there all night long, straining my ears in the darkness. If I heard them coming I would run and try to escape. But if they caught me, I would take up my stick and fight. Terrible images crowded into my mind: images from the school that morning; images of pain and lost innocence from the clinic that day.

As I tossed and turned those images turned into ones of my own village under assault, of my family fleeing from the screaming hordes of the
Janjaweed.
I wondered how far this evil madness had spread. Maybe all of the schools were being attacked. Maybe this evil and darkness was everywhere across our land. Here I was so far from home, so far from my family and my people.

As soon as it was light I hurried down to the clinic to check on the girls. Most were still fast asleep. The ones who were awake were in pain, and they were afraid even to go to the restroom, as it was such agony to do so. I prepared hot water so they could wash. It would be soothing, and it might make it easier to go to the restroom. Aisha’s mother and father were there, and they kept thanking me for helping their daughter.

“If it weren’t for you, doctor, we don’t know what we would have done,” her father said. “But d’you think our daughter will go crazed in the head because of this? That’s our greatest fear . . .”

“She didn’t sleep well at all,” her mother added. “She was crying, thrashing about, waking up with horrible screams. She said she could still see those men, even in her sleep.”

“You know, time is a great healer,” I said. “With time they will forget. And with time they will heal physically, too. Everything will go back to normal, you’ll see.”

I did my rounds checking on the girls. When I came to little Aisha she grabbed hold of my arm.

“I don’t want those bad people to come again,” she whispered. “Don’t let them. You’ll stop them, won’t you? Please, don’t let the
Janjaweed
get me . . .”

“Don’t worry, don’t cry, little sister,” I comforted her. “Don’t worry, we’ll protect you. You’re safe now. You’re safe here with us.”

If only it were true. If only it were true.

I spent the day with the girls, trying to comfort them. By midafternoon there was little more that we could do at the clinic. They needed to eat and sleep, so that their bodies and minds could recover. And they needed to try to forget. The best place to do so was at home. One by one girls and parents left the clinic. As they did so I wondered just where the fat commander of police had been on the morning of the attack. Not a thing went on in the village without him knowing, yet strangely, he was nowhere to be seen.

Sayed and I were just clearing up the treatment room when I heard a vehicle stopping outside. Maybe it was the police commander. Maybe he’d decided that he did exist, after all. Instead, two smartly dressed men came and introduced themselves to me. They were from the United Nations, they told me, and they had come to the village to investigate reports on an attack on the school. Did I know anything about it? Had I heard anything? Seen anything? Could the terrible reports that they had heard be true?

I agreed to tell them all that I knew on one condition—that my name wasn’t used. I told them that I was scared. I had already been in trouble with the authorities, and I didn’t want to be so again. Two of the girls had yet to leave the clinic, and as long as their parents were happy then the UN workers could also speak with them. That way, they could hear for themselves exactly what had happened, and from two of the victims.

As they listened to the accounts of the attack on the school the UN men were visibly shaken. They took notes of everything, and they even took some photos of the two little girls. Eventually they left, promising to lodge immediate reports of the attack via their organization. They also pledged to return to the clinic in the next few days with extra medical supplies.

During the days that followed I made a point of visiting the homes of the rape victims, so that I could check on them personally and dress their wounds. But fear stalked the village now, and as I walked from place to place I could feel its dark presence lurking around every corner. Talk of the war and the horrors it was bringing was on everyone’s lips.

The school remained closed, its smashed doors and broken windows staring out like dark and empty eye sockets. What was the point in it reopening? Parents were fearful of their children returning—for what was to stop the same horrors happening all over again? It was government soldiers who had surrounded the school as the
Janjaweed
had done their work. This horror was the government’s doing; it had been sanctioned by the rulers in Khartoum.

What had the inhabitants of Mazkhabad village done to deserve such treatment? What had they possibly done? What had the schoolgirls done to deserve such treatment from their own government? As the village talked in fearful whispers, no one could understand what had happened. What was it designed to achieve? It was pure madness, senseless evil. What in God’s name had the village done to deserve such things?

And what could any child ever have done to deserve to be treated in this way?

CHAPTER TWENTY

They Come for Me

Barely a week after the attack on the village school they came for me. Around midday I heard a car pull up outside the clinic. For a moment I hoped it might be the UN men returning with the promised medical supplies. But instead three men dressed in scruffy khaki uniforms strode into the clinic. With barely a break in their stride they hauled me to my feet by the scruff of my white medical tunic, knocking over my desk things as they did so.

“Move!” a soldier ordered. “Move! You’re coming with us!”

For a moment I tried to resist. “What d’you want? What d’you want? Get your hands off me!”

A face was thrust into mine, hatred burning in bloodshot eyes, a savage mouth flecked with spittle: “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!”

As they dragged me out of the clinic, my eyes momentarily met those of Sayed. For a second he looked as if he might say something, and then his fearful gaze was cast down to the floor. They marched me across to the waiting jeep and threw me into the rear. One got in on either side of me and the doors were slammed shut. The third soldier got into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine.

There was a dark, terrifying silence in that vehicle as we drove away from the clinic. No one spoke a word. I didn’t even try to ask where they were taking me. I knew that this time, it was deadly serious. My heart was pounding, pain drilling like a jackhammer inside my skull. I knew they were going to kill me. A voice kept yelling inside my head:
Today
they’re going to kill you; they’re going to kill you; they’re going to kill you today.

I didn’t know exactly why they were going to kill me. Was it my help for the injured fighters? My help for the rape victims? Who else had I helped that might mean that I had to die? Or was it my failure to keep the list of names? In a way I was past caring. Sooner or later, we all of us knew that the darkness was going to come down. Everyone in Mazkhabad knew in their hearts that the horror was coming.

So they had come for me early.
So what?
The country was burning. Children were being gang raped. Evil stalked the land. Sooner or later all of us Zaghawa, Fur, Massalit—all of us black dogs and slaves—were going to suffer. You might be lucky and live. You might be luckless, and die. It looked as if my luck had run out. So be it.
At least God, let me die quickly. Please God, let it be painless. Please God, don’t let them torture my soul.

They took me to the far side of the village, to a military camp. We stopped at three huts, with a wire fence running around the outside. The soldiers dragged me out and marched me into the nearest one. It had a hard concrete floor and bare brick walls. The windows were barred, and closed with metal shutters. A single lightbulb revealed dark, blotchy stains on the floor. I didn’t want to imagine what they might be.

I stepped into the room, and without warning the beating began. I was kicked hard in the stomach. As I doubled up with the pain, further kicks and blows rained down on my legs, hips, and shoulders. I fell to the floor and tried to cover my head with my arms. A boot made contact with my face, a searing white light shooting through my eye socket. Another kick to the head, this one smashing into the fingers of my hand with a crunch of breaking bone.

The scrunch of soles turning on the bare concrete floor. The dull thump of booted feet slamming into my soft, fleshy parts. Then silence. Tensing myself for the next blow, but none coming. Just silence, as I lie there scrunched into a ball on the cold hard floor. Silence, and the sound of their breathless, excited, animal breathing. Silence—for a second, or a minute, or an hour? I am in too much pain to register such things. Why does killing me have to start with so much pain?

“You are the Zaghawa doctor!” a voice screams at me. “The Zaghawa doctor! We know who you are!”

“You speak to the foreigners!” another voice screaming. “You tell them lies. LIES! Why do you tell them lies?”

A hand gripped my hair, dragged my head upward. A series of savage blows to the face, whipping my head from side to side. A soldier crouches down, his face a mask of loathing, his putrid breath rank in my nostrils. His dead eyes are staring into mine, as he twists his fingers into my hair and drags my head higher off the floor.

“Listen—we know you gave information to the foreign people,” he rasps, his voice cold and laden with hatred. “Why did you do this? You signed a declaration. Or did you forget? You signed a declaration to keep quiet. You promised to. Why did you break your promise?”

“This time we will deal with you!” a voice off to one side, screaming again. “This time we will teach you a lesson you will never forget!”

The crouching man glances upwards. He smiles thinly at his colleague, the screamer. “Zenil wants to deal with you. In his own, particular way. Shall I let him? Would you like me to?”

“She speaks about rape!” The Screamer again. “This dirty talking! About rape! Lying to the foreigners! About little girls . . . She knows nothing of rape! Nothing . . .”

“Zenil wants to be your teacher.” The Croucher again, his voice slick with menace. “He’s offering to teach you. Would you like him to? Would you like him to teach you all that he knows?”

“We will teach you to shut your mouth!” A kick to the small of my back, a bolt of agony shooting up my spine. “To shut your mouth! Forever!”

“We have the power to make you do anything,” The Croucher hisses, his fingers still locked in my hair. “Anything, doctor. Anything we want. Don’t you know this?”

I feel the Croucher get to his feet, releasing his hold on my hair. My head drops to the hard floor. He turns and speaks to the third man, the driver, the man who’s taken no part in the interrogation so far.

“Ali, fetch some rope and tie her. Tie her firmly. I don’t want her going anywhere before we’ve dealt with her.” The Croucher turns to stare at me. “Put her in the detention hut. Let’s give her some time to think. Some time to consider her crimes, before we punish her.”

The Driver and the Screamer haul me to my feet and march me out. They shove open the door of another hut and fling me inside. With the Screamer kneeling his weight on me, the Driver binds my wrists together. He gets my arms and forces them up behind my back—up, up until I’m burning in agony. It feels as if they are being torn from their sockets. He binds them tight in that position, so tight that my joints are burning with pain. I can’t help myself now. For the first time since the assault began I start crying.

“Bring some rags,” the Screamer orders. “We need to stop up this black bitch’s mouth. No one wants to hear her dumb crying.”

A dirty piece of cloth is jammed into my mouth and tied tight around my head. The Screamer gets off of me now. I see the two of them make for the door. The Screamer turns.

“Don’t go away now,” he sneers. “We’ll be back later. For your first lesson.” He turns to the Driver and leers. “They don’t call me Zenil the Teacher for nothing . . .”

The driver sniggers. The door is slammed shut. I hear a key turning in the lock, boots crunching away. Then silence. It is dark in the hut. Pitch dark. I am alone in there—apart from the mice and the rats. I can’t see them, but I can hear them. Up in the rafters, and scrabbling across the floor. They can smell my blood and my fear. I crab myself backward in an awkward, agonizing motion until I am tight against one wall. I face outward. I kick with my legs to let the vermin know that I’m still conscious and alive, that I can still hurt them. I’m not a corpse yet. Not yet for the eating.

I know what is coming now. It is rape and death, rape and death. Death I can accept. It is the violation by these devils that I cannot face, that I cannot allow. Is there a way out—a way that I can kill myself? There must be a way. There must be something in that room with which I can end my life. My body is a mass of cuts and bruises, and I am racked with pain. But if I can only get free of these ropes, there must be some way in which I can kill myself.
If I untie the ropes, perhaps I can hang myself from the rafters.

I try. I struggle to free my hands. I twist my arms and strain my muscles, but each time I try to break free it just causes me more pain. Eventually, I am too exhausted to continue. I lie there, the fight gone out of me. I lie there with my face on the dirty concrete floor, and I cry. I cry and I pray. I pray that God may save me from the Driver, the Croucher, and the Screamer. I pray to God to give me sweet release, to give me death, to take me away from this life of pain and hurt. I pray for sweet release.

My God, release me. My God, release me. My God, release me.

That night they come for me. It is dark outside. I can see this when the shadowy figures unlock the door. One of them lights a lantern. But it is not the Screamer, the Croucher, and the Driver anymore. It is three strangers, all in dirty army uniforms. As they approach me, I see the evil and the lust burning in their eyes. One of them grabs a handful of my hair and kneels his weight on me, crushing my chest into the floor, forcing my arms farther behind my back. I can see him laughing, as he reads the agony and the terror in my eyes.

The second one grabs me by the legs. I see the flash of a knife blade. I feel the rending of material as he starts to slice my trousers off of me. But my legs are unbound and free, and with all my might I kick out at him, slamming him back against the wall. A cry of rage issues from his unshaven, brutish, idiot features. He lunges forward and drives the knife blade deep into my thigh. I cry out in agony, but the cloth stuffed deep into my throat chokes my cries. I try to kick out again, but the third man pins my free leg to the floor.

“Hold her legs! Hold the black bitch’s legs!” the knife man urges, as he slices my trousers to the waistline. “She’s a strong one this one. Real strong . . .”

“Strong enough for all of us?” the one kneeling on my chest calls.

“For sure! For the whole damn regiment maybe!”

The kneeling man laughs. “Here, this’ll make the black dog keep still.”

He pulls something out of his pocket. It is a cutthroat razor. He flicks open the gleaming blade, holding it up to the light so that I can see it properly. He reaches out and slices open my blouse. He smiles. Slowly, very slowly, he brings the blade down, and then slashes at my exposed flesh. I feel a searing stab of pain in my breast, followed by a warm gush of blood. He moves the blade across and places the cold steel against my other breast. I close my eyes and pray and pray and pray and pray.

“That’s it, relax,” he sneers. “Fight it, and you’ll get more. Pity to spoil them both, isn’t it? Lie back and take it like the black slave you are . . .”

Below, the knife man is astride me now. I tense my muscles and try to resist, but the two of them are down there, forcing my legs to open. I feel a searing agony as the knife man thrusts himself inside of me, ripping me apart as he does so.

“My God she’s tight!” the knife man cries. “Real tight! They make these Zaghawa ones tighter than the others . . .”

“Well, loosen her up for the rest of us,” the kneeling one calls over his shoulder. He turns back to face me. “So, now you know what rape is, you black dog. Now you know.”

The three of them took turns raping me, one after the other. Once the third had finished, they started over again. And while doing so they burned me with their cigarettes, and cut me with their blades. They raped me until I lost consciousness. When I came to my senses I was alone in the hut. I was curled into a ball in one corner. I wished I were dead. There was nothing more that anyone could do to me. My life was over.

The second day they came for me again. This time it was the Driver and the Screamer. They raped me until I fainted, they raped me until one animal assault merged into the next. On the third day the door of the hut opened once more. Light flooded in from the bright outside.
Please God, please—not again, not again, not again.
The Croucher came in. He was alone. He walked over to where I was curled into a fetal position against one wall. He sank down on his haunches and stared at me in silence.

“You know what we’ve decided to do with you?” he announced, quietly. “We’re going to let you live. We’re not going to kill you. Get it? Not die. Not die. Live.”

I said nothing. I barely responded. I was in a place where no one could reach me. I was beyond words.

“You know why we’re going to let you live?” he added. “We’re going to let you live because we know you’d prefer to die. Isn’t that clever of us? Aren’t we clever, doctor? We may not have your education, but we’re damn smart, wouldn’t you agree?”

I stared at him with dull, unseeing eyes. I saw nothing. I was in a faraway place where my god had taken me, a place where they couldn’t reach me anymore. I was safe there. It wasn’t death, which is what I’d asked for and begged for and prayed for. But it was the next best thing—the next best thing that my god could do for me in the circumstances.

The Croucher shrugged. “Anyway, go. Go. It’s over, for now. You know what rape is, so go. The Teacher and the others—they’ve shown you. As for me, I wouldn’t touch a black dog like you if my life depended on it. Anyway, go. Go and tell the world. For the rest of your life you’re going to have to live with it. Go and tell whoever you want to what rape is.”