Six Months in Sudan (37 page)

16/05:

Hi lastly, Abyei became ashes!!! yes, since Wed until now. the fighting continue between the SAF and the militia in one side, and the SPLA in the other side, the JIU are divided into SAF and the SPLA..

in Wednesday, since 12:30 pm up to 2:00 pm, then from 2:20 pm untill the dark, we are evacuated from compound 1 in arround 7:00pm, via UN Tanker, yes, only through the tankers, they came up to CMPD1 then all inside, then to UNMIS, but the shooting never stoped..

we slept over the night in UNMIS, then Thursday morning we evacuated from there by their helecopters to Kadugli, then this afternoon to Khartoum and Juba …

all the staff are physical intact, but emossionally unstable..

nothing left from Abyei, except the mosque, which is concrete …

we could not take all our lagages, about half of the staff just evacuated with the clothes that they were wearing it..

most of our computers in the office are looted, then CMPD1 and 2 are completely burnt …

out of 26000 inhabitant of Abyei, left less than 10 person in civilian clothes, the rest either in the bouche/forest, or wearing uniforms fighting with machine guns …

I will give more updates later on.

Alfred

A
BYEI IS ON FIRE
. War finally found that place. The people in the town have fled in the rain. I’ve heard since that one of our local nurses was killed.

A few civilians were left in town, trapped by the fighting. Unable to find food, they broke into the hospital pharmacy and ate the BP-5. I wish I hadn’t eaten even one.

The town is on fire, and its people, some of my patients … Aweil. Where is she? In the rain. No.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. We were supposed to save that place, all of us, me, you, everyone we know. We were at least going to try.

The thing you don’t know is how happy she was. Once she started to smile, that day I was in Ethiopia, she rarely stopped. Now I wonder if she is tied to Rebecca’s thin back, marching through the mud, or if instead of her, it’s another of Rebecca’s children and Aweil is sitting in the middle of a puddle, crying, people pushing past.

I look hungrily on the computer for news, to see familiar faces, to try to identify the cinders of our compound, or in the background, the hospital.

I can’t.

I can’t write about this any more. My thoughts are with the people huddled under tarps in the rain, with Sylvester in the hospital again, overwhelmed by war and the dead bodies and the dwindling supplies. It’s time to stop writing about the world and return to it.

Good luck to you.

The beginning.

T
HIS BOOK OWES A DEBT
to many people. First, I would like to thank the dozens who commented on my blog; you not only offered me support when I needed it most but convinced my publishers that Abyei’s story was one worth telling.

I would like to offer the highest arc of my gratitude to Avril Benoît and Ken Tong, both with Canada’s MSF office. Their encouragement and support were unflagging, their advice golden. They are sincere champions of both humanitarianism and telling the story.

My thanks to Médecins Sans Frontières. It is an organization, of course, made of individuals. Some of them are my friends and colleagues, others my critics, but we all gather around the belief that all humans deserve to be treated humanely, no matter where they are. It is my sincere honor to be in your company. You deserve the widest support.

I am grateful to the University of Toronto, and its Division of Emergency Medicine, for allowing me the room in my career to do this important work. Thanks to Massey College for allowing me room in your basement, and to those of you who opened your doors so I could find the quiet space this book needed. To Westwood Creative Artists, my gratitude for opening the first and most important one.

To the people in my mission, thanks for being such compelling, easy characters to write about and worthwhile people to work beside.

To my family, your love and kindness have been mine for years, so too my appreciation of it.

To my friends, thank you for not asking “so how was it?” or “how is the book going?”

Lastly, to my editor, Martha Kanya-Forstner. This would not have been possible without your guidance. Thank you for understanding the book, and its author, so completely.

D
R.
J
AMES
M
ASKALYK
is an assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine and a founding editor of the medical journal
Open Medicine
. He lives in Toronto.