Maw Books Blog

Tears of the Desert, A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir with Damien Lewis is utterly amazing and one of the best books I’ve read all year.  This is one of those books that looks beyond the numbers of 2.5 million people displaced, 400,000 killed, and women and children raped in the ongoing genocide in Darfur.  Halima puts a name, a face, and a very sad story to the brutality.

Reading her story was horrifying.  I literally was covering my mouth while reading many parts of it.  Even though it was a difficult subject matter to take in, I couldn’t put it down.  I realized that Halima and myself are exactly the same age.  That small detail made a huge difference for me while reading about her life.  At each age, I reflected upon what I was doing in my relatively comfortable life free from war, killings, and rape.

Halima Bashir was born into the Zaghawa tribe in the Sudanese desert in Darfur.  Her father was the wealthiest man in the village and was able to afford many luxuries, including the ability to send Halima to the best schools.  Her father wanted nothing more for her than to receive an excellent education.  It was while going to school in the city that Halima began to see the differences between those who lived in villages versus the city, but most importantly the difference between the Arabs and black Africans.  Halima was an excellent student and received top marks enabling her to enroll in college and receive her doctorate degree.  At the age of 24, she was her village’s first formal doctor.

Halima soon transferred to a different village but was worried for her family as villages began to be attacked.  Halima soon discovered that nobody would escape unscathed.  This is a pretty long passage from the book, but it’s one that you just have to read for yourselves. It recounts the gang rape of about 40 girls from the ages of 8-13 when the Janjaweed attacked their schoolhouse in her village:

“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 care 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 of 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 the school they found a cordon of government soldiers had surrounded it and were ltetting nobody in.  If anybody 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 ther 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.’ “

As punishment for speaking out about the gang rape school incident, Halima herself is taken, tortured, and gang raped for days.  When they finally allow her to leave, she makes her way back home to her own village.  But not even there can she find peace.  Her village is attacked from the sky by her own government and on the ground from the Janjaweed.  It’s then that her father is killed and her family scattered.  Granted aslyum in London, Halima has still not found her family.

Halima’s story is heartbreaking.  How she was able to sit down and tell us about it, is beyond me.  This is the type of memoir that makes you sick to your stomach not only because it happened but because it is still happening.  And not enough is being done to stop it.  What’s even more heartbreaking is the idea that Halima’s story is not unique.   Many women and children are suffering as a result of war, brutality, killing, and rape.

Click here to watch a short three minute video with Halima Bashir and Damien Lewis.  The two organizations that the two authors support are www.fund4darfur.org and www.aegistrust.org.  A donation of the money made from the book will be made by the authors to the Aegis Trust.

Read this book!

Would you like to win a copy of  Tears of the Desert, A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir with Damien Lewis?  Random House has graciously donated two copies to be given away in conjunction with my Darfur awareness campaign.  Click here for details on how to get involved and entered to win. Check back (you are subscribed to this blog, aren’t you?!) at the end of the month to put your name in the hat for this one.  Prizes will build up throughout the month.