Tears of the Desert (15 page)

My father became angry and despairing. The President, Sadiq al-Mahdi, was a fair man who had felt keenly the neglect of the black African tribes in Sudan. Yet he had been thrown into jail. Those who had seized power were calling themselves the “National Islamic Front.” They declared that they were “a Government of Islam,” their mission being to purge Sudan of all un-Islamic thoughts, actions, and peoples. They would turn Sudan into a pure Islamic state ruled by Islamic
shariah
law.

They promised to quadruple their efforts to defeat the black African “unbelievers” in the south of the country. They called on all young men to join this
jihad.
Anyone who refused to volunteer would be rounded up for military service. My father knew what a government of soldiers and Islamic extremists would mean. He knew that this was truly going to be a government of the Arabs for the Arabs. His instinct told him that this was the beginning of a terrible time in Sudan, one in which the whole country would be plunged into war. And the people of Darfur would not escape unscathed.

So worried was he that he decided we should leave the country. We should go to live across the border, in Chad. But my mum and Grandma refused. He was overreacting, they said. In any case, what would happen to the children’s studies? In the coming months we heard of several families that had fled to Chad. They were getting out while they still could, my father argued, and we should follow their example. But my mother and Grandma refused to leave our people and our village, and so we stayed.

My father’s worries threw a dark shadow over my schooldays. Much as I might try to concentrate purely on my studies, I saw things differently now. Whenever I passed by the exclusive district of town, I looked at those grand people in their grand houses and I was torn. On the one hand, I wanted what they had. On the other, I knew that among their number were the men who had stolen power and shattered my father’s dreams.

Early one morning I found myself in the marketplace buying some food. I wanted a little salad and some bread for my lunch. Suddenly, a quarrel erupted out of nowhere. The market traders had been listening to a radio news bulletin about the war in south Sudan. The rebels had scored a minor victory. A muscular black man was in a heated exchange with an Arab, as they argued about who was fighting on the side of right.

“Idiot! What do you think?” the Arab yelled. “You think we will allow you black dogs to beat us, to rule over us? Is that what you believe?”

The black man just stared at the Arab, his eyes flaming anger. For several seconds neither spoke, and then the Arab man exploded.

“
Abeed! Abeed!
”—Slave! Slave!—he yelled. “Take your eyes off of me!
Abeed!
You’re nothing but a black slave. Get yourself away from me before there’s trouble!”

The black man sprung at him, and with one blow he knocked the Arab to the ground. The other market traders tried to hold him back, but he was wild with fury. He smashed his fist into the Arab’s face, and I was both elated and fearful. Part of me wanted the black man to pound the Arab’s head into the dust so that he never got up again. But part of me feared what the consequences would be if he did.

I turned to leave, but as I did so there was a screeching of tires and a police Land Rover ground to a halt. Six Arab policemen rushed over, their batons drawn. With barely a moment’s hesitation they started to give the black man a savage beating. He went down under a hail of blows. I watched in horror as they pounded those heavy batons into his back and head, hearing the hollow thwack of wood on bone. They dragged the bloodied black man into the rear of the Land Rover, and roared away from the scene.

I felt rage boiling up inside me. Not for one instant had they tried to find out who was at fault in the argument. All they had done was beat the black man, while allowing the Arab to go free. I heard murmurs of anger all around me, as market traders and customers commented on how unjust it all was. A ruthless Arab elite was ruling the country, and they didn’t even try to disguise their racist policies. It was the law of the jungle now. The strong would beat the weak, and the country would end up burning in flames.

I walked away from the marketplace, my mind in turmoil. The Arab man had openly called the African man a “black dog” and a “black slave.” That meant that he had also called
me
a black dog and a slave—for the African man and I were the same color, with similar facial features. What was it about the difference in the shade of the color of one’s skin that made the Arab believe he was superior to me? What was there in a sharper, more pointed set of facial features that made him believe he was my master?

I was confused and enraged and hurt and scared. I was born this way. It was who I was. I wasn’t about to change.

It wasn’t long before my father’s fears took concrete form in our own home. A new TV program had started up, called
Fisah hart el fidah—
Voice of the Martyr’s Battlefield. This was a daily bulletin showing graphic and bloody images of fighting in the south of Sudan. The first time I saw it I was horrified. I asked Grandma what it was all about. Grandma simply adored the clash of warfare and the noise of battle portrayed: She explained that Muslims were fighting the unbelievers, which was the right thing to do.

But whenever I saw it I had terrible nightmares. One day I was watching in horrified fascination, together with my brothers and some of my friends in the village. Grandma was there, her eyes glued to the screen as she soaked up the violence and the bloodshed. But when my father realized what we were watching he strode over and snapped off the TV, angrily.

For the first time ever I saw him turn on Grandma. “Why do you let the children watch such things? Such evil and violence? You are an elder! You are wise with the years. You of all people should know better!”

For once Grandma was at a loss for words. She had never known my father to speak to her like this.

“How can you be
proud
of that war?” he demanded. “You know nothing about it!
Nothing!
It is a wrong war, a bad war, and an
unholy
struggle.”

“But the TV says it’s a
jihad,
” Grandma tried to object. “Holy warriors fighting against infidels, people who have no faith . . .”

“A
jihad
?
A jihad?
What lies!” my dad cut in. “I’ll tell you what it is: It is propaganda made by those who stole power in this country—that’s what it is. It is a pack of lies made by a bunch of criminals, murderers, and thieves.”

There was an uncomfortable, embarrassed silence.

“I’ll tell you about your so-called infidels, shall I?” my father added. “There’s four million of them that have fled to refugee camps, just to escape those brave ‘holy warriors.’ Mostly they’re women and children. A great deal of them are Muslims. You go to kill your fellow Muslims, you slaughter women and children, and you call that a
jihad
?”

My father pinched the skin of his arm. “And all of those ‘infidels’ are black African people, just like us. So think before you fill the children’s heads full of propaganda, rubbish, and lies.”

My father stalked off into the shadows. Grandma hadn’t really considered what was right or wrong in this war: She just enjoyed the images of fighting. I watched as a shadow passed across her face, and then she hitched her shawl over her head and turned toward her hut. She walked away in silence, and I thought for the first time in my life that Grandma looked old. I knew how much she loved and respected my father, and I knew how much his words must have stung her.

But my father was right, of course. And this was a far bigger issue than simply what was shown on TV. Recently, government agents had been going around Zaghawa villages recruiting young men to go and fight in this so-called
jihad.
They picked easy victims: the orphans, the young men with no education and no work. And it was in this TV show,
Fisah hart el fidah,
that Zaghawa families were learning that their loved ones had been killed—as the bodies of the “martyrs” were paraded in front of the cameras.

Whenever my father heard of any men tempted to join them, he tried to persuade them not to. Most of those recruited were simple village boys, and they were brainwashed in special training camps. It was a bad,
unholy
war, from which few would return alive, my father explained. There would be no holy martyrs, no honor in such death. It was hardly a befitting end for a Zaghawa warrior. And worst of all, we black African Zaghawa were being made to fight our black African brothers. It was all so wrong.

My father hated the idea of brave Zaghawa warriors wasting their lives in this way. We needed them for the next battle—a battle that he knew in his heart was coming.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dream to Be

In order to get a place at university to study to be a doctor I would have to achieve the highest possible marks at secondary school. All my previous achievements would be nothing if I failed. So I forced my father’s worries to the back of my mind, and concentrated hard on my studies. While I couldn’t yet help with my father’s political dreams, at least I might achieve his academic ones.

My years at secondary school flew past. Seemingly in no time at all I was eighteen, and facing my high school leaving certificate exams—a nationwide test across all subjects studied. If I failed to achieve over seventy percent, my chances of securing a place at university would be zero. And in order to make it to medical school I would need an exceptional mark. With the exams fast approaching I studied as I had never done before.

The exam results were announced first by the Minister for Education, on national television. He named the top thirty students in the country, but I was not among them. Every one of those top achievers was from a school in Khartoum. I headed to school, and joined my friends waiting at the gates for the headmaster. As soon as we saw him we rushed over, begging to be told how we had done. But he shrugged us off, angrily.

“All of you—all of you have failed!” he cried. “Failures! Failures!

Only two did well. Only two! The rest of you—failed!”

I couldn’t believe it. It was a disaster! I hoped and prayed that I was one of the two lucky ones. The headmaster made us wait the whole morning for details of the results. We knew why he was so angry. The more pupils that got a university place first time around, the higher the points the school would score, and the bigger the headmaster’s pay bonus would be. This year had not been a good earner as far as he was concerned.

Just prior to lunchtime the grim-faced headmaster had us line up in stiff ranks on the playing field. The name of the girl who had achieved the top mark was announced first: It was Rehab, one of the cleverest of the Arab students. She had achieved eighty-nine percent, a good pass rate by anyone’s standards. I was truly worried now. My heart pounded as I waited to hear the second name, hoping beyond hope that it would be my own.

“Second, with eighty-eight percent—Halima Bashir!” the headmaster called out, his brows scanning the faces in front of him.

I felt a wild mixture of emotions surge through me as I stepped forward to receive my pass certificate. On the one hand I was overjoyed to have passed, and to have the chance of going to university. On the other, I berated myself for letting Rehab beat me by one percentage point. Plus I knew that for me the struggle was far from over. Medicine was the hardest of all subjects for which to gain a university place, and my results still had to stand up nationwide. Eighty-eight percent just might not be good enough.

Where had I gone wrong, I wondered? My subjects had been geared toward the sciences, as that was what was required to study medicine. Just as soon as the results were pinned on the notice board I went to check. I ran an anxious eye down the list: I’d gotten top marks in chemistry, biology, English, Arabic, math, and Islamic studies. It was physics that had let me down, the one subject that always did seem to confuse and confound me.

As Mona, Najat, Samirah, and Makboulah gathered around to congratulate me, I could see just a hint of envy in their eyes. This was the beginning of the end of our friendship, as none of my friends would be going through to university this year. That afternoon, Mona and I shared one of our last walks home from school. She confessed to me her big secret: Her exam results didn’t matter much anymore. Her parents had told her that there had been an offer of marriage from a cousin. They had accepted. Mona’s education was over.

All through her schooling they had encouraged Mona to do well and to take a place at university. But her husband-to-be was an uneducated trader, and he had refused to countenance her continuing her education. I felt so sorry for Mona. She hadn’t done that well in her exams, but the very knowledge that she was being married off would hardly have encouraged her. I was so glad that my life hadn’t followed the same pattern as hers—that my father had had the guts to refuse my cousin’s offer of marriage.

Thursday marked the end of the week and the end of my days at secondary school. My father arrived in the Land Rover and we set off for the village. On the long drive home I confessed how disappointed I was with my results. But my father urged me to be happy. Eighty-eight percent was easily good enough to get me to university. If I couldn’t get a place in medicine, then we would try for something else. He was so proud of me, and I should be proud of myself, too.

Back in the village everyone was so happy that I had passed. The sense of joy was infectious, and I started to feel as if maybe I had done all right. No one from the village had ever been to university, so simply getting a place would be a great honor. Normally, village girls would be married off long before they could ever think about university, and the village boys would be hard at work earning money to support their families.

My best friend, Kadiga, was married with a little boy now. She had moved away to her husband’s village and I hadn’t seen her in five years. I decided to visit her, to tell her my news. But it was a bittersweet reunion. Kadiga tried to make light of things, yet we both knew that there was a huge gulf opening up between us. She had been married at the age of fourteen, and she was proud of her first born, a little boy called Mo. Laughingly, she told me that we would have to remain best of friends, so I could become the family doctor.

“Our lives went in very different directions, didn’t they?” Kadiga remarked, quietly. “I got married, you went on to study. I have a good husband, but he told me that wives weren’t meant to study. I should be looking after children. So, I stopped. But I’ll make sure my boy goes to school, and maybe even university, just like you.”

More than ever before now, I felt as if I was no longer of the village. My education had alienated me, setting me apart from those who had been my childhood friends. Somewhere deep in my heart I regretted it, but this was the path that I had chosen.

Back at home I filled in the forms to apply for my university place. I opted first for medicine, and failing that, law. My third choice was to study economics. My father took the forms with him to Hashma, and he fed them into the applications system. It would take many, many weeks for us to hear, and so the long wait began.

It was during this time that we received some terrible news. Grandma’s estranged husband had gone off to fight in the civil war in Chad, taking Grandma’s two sons with him. Grandpa had a second wife in Chad, of course, so he was fighting alongside his family. But there had been a massive battle in the Chadian deserts and all three of them had been killed. In one blow, she had lost her husband and her sons.

Upon hearing the news Grandma’s strong face just seemed to collapse in on itself. She broke down in tears, and nothing we could do seemed able to comfort her.

“My man! My man! My children’s father!” she wailed. “My sons! My sons! I’ve lost the only men in the world. All men are dead now. All men are perished . . .”

This was the first time that I had ever seen Grandma cry. To see her openly reveal her heart like this was a real shock for me. Grandma had treated her estranged husband so harshly, yet here she was mourning his death as if he had been her one true love. She had never stopped loving him—that much was clear from her grief. It had been her pride and her hot temper that had prevented her from being reconciled with him. Now he was dead and they would forever be apart, and her two sons had perished alongside him.

We dressed ourselves in the traditional white robes of mourning. Visitors started arriving to pay their respects. The women removed their shoes at our gate, in deference to the dead, before joining us in our lamentations.

“They were such good men,” they comforted Grandma. “We’ll miss them. We’ll miss them.”

Normally, the bodies of the dead would be wrapped in white, perfumed robes, and placed on a funeral bed—an
angrheb.
The bed is covered in a white burial shroud—a
bhirish—
and left in a hut so that people can pay their last respects. Before sunset the body would be taken to the graveyard—as a Muslim has to be buried upon his or her day of death. The men carry the
angrheb
out of the village, the women running after and trying to touch the body one last time. Upon arrival at the freshly dug grave, the body is lowered into the ground using the
bhirish—
the white robe, which wraps the body like a funeral shroud.

But in this case Grandpa and his two sons had been buried where they had fallen, so the funeral in our village was largely symbolic. For three days the visitors remained at our house, forming a party of mourning. Grandma, my parents, my siblings, and I had to remain in mourning for a full forty days and nights. Forty is a sacred figure for Muslims. This is because the prophet Mohammed went out into the desert wilderness for forty days, and that’s when he heard the word of God and received his holy teachings.

During those forty days’ mourning I witnessed Grandma start to wither away. It was almost as if she had nothing left to live for. She kept going on and on about how her men were dead, and there was nothing left in her life. All was empty. All was bereft of hope. Grandma stopped eating properly, and she stopped being angry. She even stopped beating the children. Instead, she became quiet and gentle, as if she was scared of losing what family she had left.

At times I felt so sorry for Grandma. She had had such a hard life, and now this. She started spending time at the mosque, praying for the souls of the dead. But the most worrying thing was when she started to give her possessions away. Her precious possessions—things that she had hoarded for years and years—were handed out to family and friends as if she didn’t need them anymore. It was as if her very spirit had died, as if Grandma had given up the will to live.

Toward the end of those forty days we were all in need of some good news. It came in the form of an early morning visit from an excited neighbor, one of Kadiga’s uncles.

“I heard your name!” he cried out. “On the radio! Halima Bashir! In a list of students accepted into university in Khartoum!”

“Oh my God! Oh my God! But which degree course? Which one?”

“The medicine one,” Kadiga’s uncle announced. “The medicine! You’re going to train to be a doctor!”

I couldn’t believe it. I thought perhaps that Kadiga’s uncle had misheard it. My dad cursed the fact that he had missed the radio announcement himself. He decided to drive to Hashma, to check directly with the Ministry of Education. He set off immediately. I wanted to go with him, but he told me I had to stay behind. I was still in mourning, and it would be unseemly for me to go.

Two days later my father returned. He got down from the Land Rover with the biggest smile I had ever seen. He held out his arms to me. Kadiga’s uncle was right, he announced. I had secured a place to study to be a medical doctor.

Mo and Omer did their best to be pleased, and little Asia seemed content to soak up the general happiness. Even Grandma seemed lifted out of her gloom a little. I heard her and my mother boasting to the other women about the ills that I could cure, as if I was already a medical doctor. I hoped I would be up to the six years of intensive study that now lay ahead of me. I hoped that I would prove myself, that I would live up to my father’s dream. And I hoped that I would make friends and be happy far away in the big city.

I was halfway through my holiday by now, and my first term at university wouldn’t start until the following May. I had eight months to kill. I spent the time at home helping to cook, wash, and do the other chores. My mother and father chose a whole new wardrobe for me, and we went on several trips to Hashma to buy books for my studies. But most of the time there wasn’t much to do, and I grew overweight and unfit. I felt my brain cloying up with all the inactivity. It was time that I left to commence my studies.

It was time that I moved on to new pastures.