Tears of the Desert (33 page)

Following publication and broadcast of those first stories a tidal wave of publicity just seemed to engulf me. Channel 4 News carried a long report on the abuse of women as a weapon of war. Al Arabia TV ran a feature on my story, which broadcast across the Arab world. American TV stations picked up on it, and soon there was a steady stream of journalists and camera crews shuttling in and out of our tiny little flat.

This is what I told the media was happening in Darfur:

Innocent people are dying. There are people with nothing to eat and drink. People living with no homes, on the streets, in the bush. They are lost in the desert, dying of hunger and thirst, dying from war. Why? What have they done? Nothing. People should think about our common humanity. If the same happened to you, would you accept it? If this happened to your family, would you accept it?

Where is the Muslim world? Where is the Arab world? Where are the people of the whole world? How can Muslims kill other Muslims for no reason? This is something that God forbade. God said, “Do not take a life without justification and right.” But this is happening with no right, no justification, people killing innocents for no reason.

Darfur is not separate from the world; Sudan is not isolated from the world; but people are standing and watching this happen, those who have it in their power to stop such things. People shouldn’t look at this in a political way, because the victims are innocent people. They are dying through no fault of their own. What did they do? They did nothing to deserve this.

I feel like I am one of the survivors, one of those who escaped, and possibly God chose me to send out a message to the rest of the world, to alert the entire world that there are innocent people dying, so that the world might protect them and extend assistance to them.

My face became the face of suffering in Darfur, as newspapers across the world carried full-page advertisements decrying the rape of women in my homeland. It reached the stage where I didn’t know anymore who or where each journalist was coming from. Eventually, I could take no more. I told David I would have to call a halt. I was exhausted. And we needed some private space in which to be a family once more. David told me that he understood. In any case, I had done more than enough. I had truly broken the silence.

But there was one last thing David urged me to consider doing—as much for myself as for the cause. James Smith, his boss at the Holocaust Center, which is home to the Aegis Trust, is himself a fellow medical doctor. He had suggested that I might visit and speak to an audience of doctors and other health professionals about my experiences in Darfur.

I had never spoken publicly before, so I was nervous to do so now—especially if it would mean talking about the dark horrors that had engulfed me. But I was curious to learn more about the Center, and the murder of so many innocent millions during World War II.

The Nottingham-based Holocaust Center is Britain’s first Holocaust memorial and education center. I was encouraged by the fact that survivors from the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides had spoken there before me. And because it was fellow doctors that I would be talking to, I felt that they would really identify with my suffering.

One June morning I traveled up there by train. The Holocaust Center is set on two acres of lovely gardens. After the beauty and tranquility of those gardens, I was shocked to see the images of the Holocaust that line the walls of the center’s exhibition rooms.

As I gazed at the photos of unspeakable horror and mass murder from the time of the World War II, I found myself back in the hell that is Darfur. The darkness from which I had fled engulfed me again. I was back inside the suffering of my own people, and my own personal tragedy. I felt the tears start to flow, and I could not stop them.

Yet at the same time I felt a strange kind of contentment and happiness.
Yes,
I told myself,
here at last was a group of people who were investigating and challenging genocide, so that nobody could ever forget the dying of the innocents in my homeland, in Darfur.

The lecture room was quiet, the audience bathed in darkness. As I stood up to talk to them, I was horribly nervous and I feared that the words would fail to come. But an instant later my voice started speaking, and I began telling the story of my happy childhood growing up in Darfur.

I wanted to convey the ordinariness of it all, the sense in which my own childhood was perhaps so similar to those in the audience. I wanted to communicate the love and laughter of my close-knit family and village and tribe, so as to better demonstrate what had been crushed and desecrated when the nightmare descended in Darfur.

I spoke quietly, and with growing confidence, as the words started to flow. But once I began to relate the horrors that I had witnessed, and those that had befallen me personally, I felt my voice tremble, as if it were going to break. But I strove to hold back the flood of emotion that was threatening to overwhelm me, so that I could go on.

When I finished speaking, silence filled the lecture chamber. And then my fellow doctors rose to their feet and applauded me. I knew from the questions that followed that I had touched them deeply. That such things could happen to a fellow doctor—and simply as a result of trying to help the sick and injured in my home country—shocked them to their core.

I returned to my little London flat to discover that there were problems with the neighbors over all the journalists who had been dropping by. There were two Iraqi sisters at the top of the communal stairway. They had been accosting journalists and complaining that they had only one room for the two of them to live in.

“Look! Look! Come! Come!” they would scream. “Mr. BBC, look what your British government gives us—what place is this to live? It is hell! Not even fit for dogs . . .”

“You have a room,” I’d tell them, once the journalists had gone. “It is somewhere to live. Have some respect. Stop complaining.”

But those Iraqi women never did cease their complaining. They complained to anyone who would listen. Eventually, they were moved to better accommodations. That was how the system seemed to work. If you complained and worked the system, it responded. If you were quiet and respectful, as we were, it was a dead end.

There was a shocking example of this in our building. Across the way from us was a pretty blond Albanian lady called Zamirah. She had a little baby girl, and she and I used to take Mo and her daughter to a local playgroup. The teachers and the mothers were all very good to us, and it was a lovely place. There were different races and religions at the playgroup, and we all got along just fine. I really loved it there, and so did Mo.

Zamirah was quiet and decent and she never complained about anything. And in contrast to the Iraqi sisters, she never once tried to belittle us because we were black Africans. The sisters were forever trying to do so. But one day Zamirah came back from the Reporting Center looking as white as a sheet. A car pulled up outside, and she began rushing in and out of the flat bundling all her worldly possessions into it. I met her at the ent trance, and suddenly she was stuffing her daughter’s toys into my arms. She looked absolutely finished, and I could see a dark panic in her normally sunny eyes.

“For Mo!” she told me, breathlessly. “Take them!”

“But what . . . ?”

Before I could ask her any more she jumped into the car and was gone, her little girl strapped in behind her. That was the last I ever saw of them. It was from another of our neighbors, a British woman called Frances, that I heard what had happened. The people at the Reporting Center had seized Zamirah, so they could deport her. But she had been released so she could fetch her little girl, whom she’d left in the care of a friend.

The next time I went to the playgroup the mothers asked after Zamirah and her daughter. I didn’t know what to say. We were the only asylum seekers there, and what was I to tell them? That their government had tried to send Zamirah back to the country from which she had fled; that she was terrified; that she had gone into hiding instead? So I just told them that I didn’t know what had happened to my friend and her little girl.

The lady who ran the playgroup was a beautiful black woman called Samantha. She had gorgeous hair that fell to her waist. She befriended me, and she started to visit me at home. Eventually I told her my story, and she listened in floods of tears. She told me that she felt so sorry for me. Why didn’t I do some volunteer work, she asked? It would get me out and I would meet people. I told her that I needed to be here to look after my son. I found it so hard to trust people, and I wouldn’t let anyone else care for Mo.

Little Mo was so precious to me. Little Mo was my life. It was he who had given me the will to live.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Will to Live

Little Mo was approaching his first birthday, and still we had no news on my asylum claim. I had inquired about working as a doctor or even a nurse, but I’d been told that asylum seekers weren’t allowed to work. Sharif and I had tried to look for a bigger flat, but we soon realized that if no one would let me work then we couldn’t afford the rent. We were dying to get away, and we couldn’t believe how some of the people lived.

In Zaghawa culture we have a saying: “Your nearest neighbor is better than your farthest relative.” It means that in your daily lives your neighbors might be more important to you than even your family. But it certainly didn’t seem to hold true here. Many of our neighbors were from hell.

The woman next door had nine children, most with different fathers. The whole family seemed to live on benefits. Teenage kids were in and out at all hours, playing loud music, arguing and fighting. One day I came home to find the street cordoned off by the police. It turned out that her children had kidnapped a young boy from the park, and they were holding him hostage inside the house. Theirs was truly a madhouse, and I didn’t want to live near such people.

Then there was our neighbor, Frances. If anything, her situation was even more unbelievable. Shortly after we’d moved in I found her slumped on her doormat. I stopped to help, half carrying her inside. As I did so I could smell the alcohol on her. She must have remembered my help, for she began calling on us. She was lonely and she wanted someone to talk to, and in our culture we could not refuse hospitality to visitors.

We invited her in and cooked her meals. She unburdened herself of her life story, and I was shocked beyond words. She had a little two-year-old daughter, and it turned out that girl’s father was her son’s best friend. Four years back she had been married, with two children and a good job. Then she had fallen in love with her twenty-year-old son’s best friend. She started having an affair with him, fell pregnant, and was thrown out and divorced by her husband. He had gotten custody of the children, and she had ended up unemployed and homeless. She’d started drinking and been housed here.

She told me all of this openly, even speaking in front of Sharif. Such behavior was inconceivable in our culture. It was as if she lived on a different planet to my own. I told her as much. I told her that she had put herself in the fire by her own actions. How could she have done this? Had she lost her mind? She said that it wasn’t so unusual in British culture. People might be married but they’d always be having affairs. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not.

Frances kept dropping by. We couldn’t be unwelcoming, even though half the time she was blind drunk. Part of me was concerned for her and I wanted to help. Each time we would cook her some food and try to cheer her up. Eventually, Sharif made a peephole in our door. Whenever she came around and I couldn’t face her I just didn’t open up. I felt bad doing so—it was wrong in our culture—but I just couldn’t keep inviting her into our lives.

One morning Sharif went out to buy some bread for breakfast. Frances had been around the previous night and she had eaten us out of house and home. He was away for ages, and I wondered what might have kept him. I went down to put out the garbage, and as I did so I caught sight of two policemen just across the street. They were speaking with Sharif. I felt a bolt of panic shoot through me as the nearest took something shiny out of his pocket. An instant later he had handcuffed himself to my husband.

Oh my God! What was happening? Where were they taking Sharif?
Where were they taking him?

I dashed across the road. “What’s happening? What’re you doing?”

The policeman stared at me for a second. “Sorry, love, but we’ve been told to take him . . . Who’re you, anyway?”

“He’s my husband. . . . But why are you taking him? What for?”

The other policeman pulled out a notebook and pen. “First off, love, we’ll need your full name and date of birth.”

I told him. He made a radio call to check that I was who I said I was. Then they explained that they were taking Sharif to the police station. They had spoken with the Home Office, and my husband was slated for immediate deportation to Sudan.

“Look, I know this is tough on you, love,” the policeman added. “But it isn’t easy for us either. We’re just doing our job.”

A car pulled alongside and Sharif was bundled inside. The policeman scribbled down the address of the police station and handed it to me.

“Bring any personal effects,” the policeman told me. “Anything he might want—a change of clothes, that sort of thing.”

As the car pulled away Sharif was gazing out of the window at me. I realized that I hadn’t even been given the chance to say goodbye.

I felt the claws of fear tearing at my heart. They had taken Sharif.
They had taken him!
Surely that was it now? What on earth was I to do? Who could help him now? I thought of Samantha, the nursery school teacher. Surely she would help. I tried calling her, but there was no reply. I felt mounting panic. I was alone on the street, I’d left little Mo in the flat, and Sharif was being sent back to Sudan.
What was I to do?

All of a sudden I thought of David, the man from Aegis Trust. I called his mobile. It rang and rang and for a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer. At the sound of his voice I burst into tears.

“They’ve taken Sharif!” I wailed. “They’ve taken him. They’re sending him back . . .”

“Who’s taken him?” David asked. “And why?”

“The police. They took him just now. I don’t know why. But they’re going to deport him . . .”

“All right, look, d’you know the address where they’re holding him?”

I gave David the name of the police station.

“Okay, this is what we’ll do. First, call your asylum lawyer and ask if there’s anything he can do to stay the deportation. Okay?”

“Yes, I’ll try.”

“I’m going to call some press. If I can get them to you, can you go to the police station with them?”

“Of course. Anything. We have to stop them.”

“Right, I’ll call you back as soon as I know anymore.”

The phone went dead. I rushed upstairs to comfort little Mo. I’d heard him crying from the street, and I thanked God that he didn’t know what was happening to his father. Mo was the spitting image of his dad, and he and Sharif were so close. Sharif was very liberated for a Zaghawa man. He would carry little Mo everywhere in his arms, like a proud father. Normally Zaghawa men would leave all that “baby stuff ” to the mother.

Almost immediately David came back on the phone. He hadn’t been able to raise the BBC, but he’d spoken to Channel 4 News. They had a car on its way to me, complete with a camera crew and a reporter. He couldn’t guarantee it, but he hoped that media pressure might force the Home Office to stay Sharif’s deportation.

I rushed about getting Mo and myself ready. I was angry now, and I sensed Grandma Sumah’s fiery spirit rising within me. I recognized the Channel 4 team from the last interview. We headed for the police station, whereupon the cameraman set up his equipment on the street—the camera looking directly into the station doorway. The reporter readied herself for action. Together, we walked in with the camera rolling. I caught sight of Sharif sitting in a side room. I pointed him out to the reporter.

She marched up to the desk and announced who she was. She had a microphone clipped to her collar, so the sound could be recorded by the camera outside. She demanded to speak with Sharif; and she asked to interview a police spokesperson who might explain to her why they were about to deport a man to a country where his life was in danger.

“They’re refugees from the war in Darfur,” she said. “I presume you do know what’s happening in Darfur? Several hundred thousand killed, mostly women and children. Millions of refugees . . . Not exactly the nicest of places to send someone back to . . .”

The police spokesperson said that they were only acting on instructions. He showed us a fax from the Home Office. It ordered Sharif to go to the Reporting Center, from where they would deport him. Strictly speaking Sharif wasn’t under arrest, he said, so they had no problem with him doing an interview. He was allowed out onto the street, where he spoke to the reporter for several minutes about the fearful prospect of being sent back to Sudan. Then I spoke about the trauma and pain of having our family torn apart.

Eventually, the police told us that Sharif was free to make his own way to the Reporting Center. The Channel 4 crew needed to rush back to the studio, in order to get the story on-air that evening. It was an outrage what they were doing to us, the reporter said, and the story was bound to have a big impact. As for Sharif, he knew what he had to do now. He had no choice but to disappear. He said a hurried goodbye to me there on the street, hugged little Mo tightly, and then he was gone, shouldering his way into the crowd.

I spoke with David later that day. It turned out that there had been mass arrests all across the country. Darfuris were being held in dozens of locations, pending their deportation to Sudan. Even more worrisome was the legal background to all of this. The House of Lords was about to hear a case arguing whether or not it was safe to return Darfuris to Khartoum. The Home Office were expected to lose, and so it now looked as if they were trying to deport as many of us as they possibly could, before they lost that hearing.

The only reason that Sharif had managed to escape was because I had a profile in the media, and that gave us a little bit of power. Even so, they hadn’t stopped hunting for him. A week later they came for him again. I was awakened at six in the morning by a hammering on the door. I opened up to find a mixture of policemen in uniforms, and others wearing plainclothes. The plainclothes officers showed me their IDs. They were peering around me into the room, and I knew that they were searching for Sharif.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Who’s here with you?” one of them countered.

“There’s my son. That’s all.”

I opened the door wide so they could see into the room. A policewoman in uniform took a couple of steps inside. She caught sight of little Mo fast asleep on the bed. Mo must have felt her eyes on him, for he woke up and started wailing.

“I’m sorry,” the policewoman said. “The baby . . . D’you mind if I check the other rooms?”

I shrugged. “There are no other rooms. But go ahead.”

She poked her head around the corner of the walk-in kitchen and shower. As she did so the plainclothes officers started knocking on the doors of the other flats. I heard them asking if “Mustaffa” was there. I didn’t know if they’d simply got Sharif’s name wrong, or if they were trying to be clever or something. I didn’t really care.

“Do you know where your husband is?” the policewoman asked.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t. And his name is Sharif.
Sharif.
Not Mustaffa.”

“You’ve no idea where he might be?”

“I last saw him when he was told to go the Reporting Center. Since that day I haven’t seen him.”

“And you don’t know where he is now?”

“I don’t. I would like to know. Sharif is my husband, and the father of my baby.”

They left, the policewoman apologizing again for disturbing me. I knew that she was just doing her job. She’d tried to be nice to me, and to treat me with respect. The police here were a joy, in comparison to the rapists and murderers that I had faced in Sudan.

The following morning I went on GMTV. I talked about the way in which my people were being sent back to Sudan to face arrest, torture, and worse. I knew what would happen to them at the hands of the authorities, for look what they had done to me.

Sharif remained in hiding. I spoke to David regularly, and he told me that the situation was worsening. In some cases whole families were being seized and threatened with deportation. Some had been deported already. David had tracked two Darfuri men to Khartoum, where they had been arrested and tortured. David had managed to get them out of Sudan, to a place where it was safe to record their horrific stories and see the proof of the scars of torture on their bodies. He had fed their stories to the international media. Yet the Home Office was continuing to try to deport people.

I was angry, and my anger just wouldn’t go away. Sharif was angry, and getting angrier by the day. I spoke to him on his mobile phone. He told me that he was reaching the stage where he
wanted
to be deported. He hated this country and what it was doing to us, to him. I told him that he couldn’t leave without Mo and me. Either we all would go and face the horror, or we would all stay. But he wasn’t going back there alone.

For two months Sharif remained in hiding, and then the House of Lords issued its judgment. The Home Office had lost, the Lords ruling that Khartoum was not a safe place to return Darfuri asylum seekers to. The deportations had to cease. I called Sharif. I gave him the news. For now at least he was safe. He could return to us. He could come back to me and little Mo. For now at least we could be a family again.