The village seemed to be strangely quiet, almost as if it were holding its breath, awaiting something. I was discussing supplies we needed for the clinic when I heard a distant commotion. There were faint cries and the pounding of running feet. I wondered, fearfully, if it was an attack.

Suddenly, I caught sight of a crowd of people surging out of the marketplace. Among them were figures carrying heavy burdens in their arms. As the crowd drew closer, I realised what they were carrying: it was the girls from the village school.

I could see heads lolling and beige nyangours, long dresses that are standard girls’ school uniform, flapping in the breeze. As the crowd enveloped me, I realised that the nyangours were ripped and dirtied, and streaked with blood.

The cries were all around me now, confusing and deafening. “Beasts . . . attacked the school . . . monsters . . . the devil himself . . . children . . . raped . . . ruined . . . The Janjaweed! The Janjaweed!”

It was barely two months since the ministry of health had transferred me to this village, Mazkhabad, in the remote north of Darfur. Although I hadn’t finished my medical training and was reluctant to go, I was at least among my own people, the Zaghawa. But there was a war on between the African Zaghawa and the Janjaweed Arab militia. Within a month of my arrival wounded Zaghawa fighters had started coming to the clinic. The local Arab police chief had threatened me in a rage when I’d refused to name them.

And now this. I took the first of the little girls and laid her bloodied form on the bed. She’d been hit in the face with a blunt instrument — probably a rifle butt — and needed stitches. But there were other, more urgent priorities. I checked her eyes: they were dead and glazed with shock. Unseeing. But at least she was still conscious. I felt for her pulse: it was racing and fearful. Yet it was strong. She would live — as long as I could stop the bleeding.

As gently as I could, I tried to prise apart her shaking, bloodied knees. The soft child’s skin of her thighs was crisscrossed with cut marks, as if a pack of wild animals had been clawing at her. I felt her body stiffen, her leg muscles tightening and resisting. Her wailing rose to a terrified scream.

“I’m sorry, little sister, but I have to look. It’s Dr Halima, from the medical clinic. I have to look, I have to . . . But I won’t hurt you or do anything nasty, I promise.”

I glanced around. The room was seething with traumatised girls and grieving parents. The youngest girl was seven, the oldest 13. They had been repeatedly attacked with unimaginably brutal sexual violence.

It was early evening by the time I had finished stitching up the last of them. More than 40 girls had been brought to the clinic, but I knew there were more rape victims than that. In some cases their parents were so ashamed that they had taken their daughters home, and would be treating them privately with traditional cures. In that way they hoped to keep the violation of their loved ones secret.

I sat at my desk, my head in my hands. Shortly, I felt a presence at my side. It was Sumiah, a teacher, who had also been raped. She told me what had happened.

“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. 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.

“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.’ 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 about the head. Before they left, they spat on us and urinated on us. 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’.”

Next day I heard a vehicle stopping outside. Two smartly dressed men introduced themselves to me. They were from the United Nations, they told me, and they had come to investigate reports of an attack on the school. I agreed to tell them all I knew, on condition my name wasn’t used.

A week later another vehicle pulled up. Three men dressed in shabby 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.

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

They marched me to a waiting jeep and threw me into the back. No one spoke a word. A voice kept yelling inside my head: they’re going to kill you; they’re going to kill you; they’re going to kill you.

They took me to the far side of the village, to a military camp, where they dragged me into a hut with a concrete floor and bare brick walls. The windows were barred and shuttered. A single lightbulb revealed dark, blotchy stains on the floor.

Without warning, the beating began. I was kicked hard in the stomach. 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 dull thump of booted feet slamming into my soft, fleshy parts.

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

A soldier crouched down, his face a mask of loathing. “Listen — we know you gave information to the foreign people,” he rasped. “This time we will deal with you!”

My arms were forced up behind my back and bound so tight that my joints were burning with pain. I started crying. A dirty piece of cloth was jammed into my mouth and tied tight around my head. Then the boots crunched away and I was left alone in the dark, listening to the scrabbling of rats. I kicked out to let the vermin know that I was alive and could still hurt them. Not yet for the eating. But I knew what was coming: rape and death. Death, I could accept. It was the violation by these devils that I could not face. If I could untie the ropes, perhaps I could hang myself from the rafters. But the struggle to break free just caused me more pain.

Shadowy figures unlocked the door. One of them lit a lantern. I saw three strangers in dirty army uniforms, evil and lust burning in their eyes. The three of them took turns to rape me, one after the other. Once the third had finished, they started again. And while doing so they burnt me with their cigarettes and cut me with their blades. They raped me until I lost consciousness. When I came to my senses I wished I was dead. There was nothing anyone could do to me. My life was over.

The second day they came for me again. One animal assault merged into the next. On the third day the door of the hut opened once more. Please, God — not again.

“You know what we’ve decided to do with you?” a voice said quietly. “We’re going to let you live because we know you’d prefer to die. Aren’t we clever, doctor? We may not have your education, but we’re damn smart — wouldn’t you agree?”

I HAVE no idea how, but some time later I found myself at the home of a boy whose life I had saved at the clinic. His father saddled a camel and took me away from Mazkhabad. Crossing desert plains at night, and resting by day, we headed for my home village.

We arrived just as the second dawn of our journey was breaking. As we approached my house the first person I spotted was my mother. She glanced up, did a double take and then realised it was me. I came down from the camel and dissolved into her arms. My father hugged me tight, his face a mask of worry.

I was my father’s first-born child, and I was his favourite when I was little. I know all children say this, but I had an especially close bond with him. Whenever he was home I would always be sitting at his side, listening to his stories. He’d tell me about the legends of the Zaghawa and the lineage of our family, which was descended from a long line of tribal chiefs. Or he’d tell me about his work buying and selling cattle, goats and camels, and about his travels in the deserts and mountains of Darfur.

My father had encouraged me to study hard at school. And when I passed my exams as one of the top five students for the whole of Darfur — a black Zaghawa girl from the bush beating every Arab girl in my school — he had suggested I go to university to train to be a medical doctor.

Now he was ashen-faced with shock. He took my hand in his and told me not to worry. I was home now, and I was safe. All that he cared about was that I was home.

I hid myself away, consumed by grief and depression. Terrible though it may seem, a rape victim is likely to be treated as an outcast by her community, and even her family. Who would want me now?

Four months after my return my father came to talk to me again. He knew that I was isolating myself, he told me gently, and he understood why. He knew that I feared rejection from all those who loved me. He said I needed something to bring me out of the darkness. And so he had taken the liberty of asking the parents of my cousin Sharif if they would agree to a marriage. Sharif? My last memory of him was when he was a 13-year-old farm boy in a ratty old donkey cart. But I was in no position to choose the husband of my dreams.

If I was happy, my father said, Sharif had accepted the match. Sharif was an educated, liberal man, one deeply involved in the struggle. Did I think I could accept him, my father asked. Would I agree to the match? I embraced him, burying my head in his shoulder. He was so full of love for me: he was trying to drag me back from death to life.

“Did you tell him?” I whispered. “Did you tell him the truth? Does he know? What did he say?”

“Don’t worry,” my father comforted me. “You know Sharif. He works for the cause, the struggle. He has seen so much suffering, all across our country. He understands suffering. He knew that it would come to Darfur, that it was our inescapable fate. Don’t worry — he can accept you for who you are.”

There was one complication: Sharif had fled to England. Once it was safe for him to return to Sudan I would have a proper, traditional Zaghawa wedding. For now, the day of my marriage was a low-key affair held in his absence; but I decided that my days of hiding away were over, and I started working in the village health clinic.

I felt as if nothing could harm me now. Of course, there were lingering fears in the back of my mind. It wouldn’t take much for someone to work out where I had gone — a brief scan of my hospital records would reveal the location of my village. But I didn’t dwell on this. I was desperate to put my troubles and horrors behind me.

I dreamt of happiness, of the love of my husband and of the children I would have. But five months after my return from Mazkhabad, my unspoken fears were fulfilled.

I WAS helping my mother prepare a breakfast of maize mash when I caught an odd sound — a faint thrumming in the air. The strange thwoop-thwoop-thwooping grew louder. Children ran out into the streets, jumping up and down excitedly.

“Khawajat! Khawajat! Khawajat!” I heard them singing. They clapped and danced about in time to the thwoop-thwoop-thwooping. “Plane number three! Plane number three! Plane number three!”

I smiled, remembering singing the same song as a child. “Plane number three. Plane number three.” Why did we say that, I wondered. And why was it that we always presumed aircraft had to be full of khawajat — of white people?

My father got to his feet, gazing into the distance, shading his eyes against the rising sun. The strange noise grew louder. I could hear the children calling out to each other: “Aeroplane with a fan! Aeroplane with a fan! Aeroplane with a fan!”

Five helicopters were coming speeding out of the sun. The atmosphere in the village began to change. We gazed at the onrushing air armada, trying to work out exactly where they were heading.

Suddenly, the lead helicopter banked low over the village and there was a series of bright flashes and puffs of smoke under its stubby wings. An instant later, the huts beneath it exploded — mud, thatch, branches and bodies thrown into the air. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

For an instant I was frozen with fear, before my father grabbed me by the shoulders. “Run!” he cried. “Take your brother and sister and run! To the forest! Hide! And don’t come out until we come for you. Run! Run! There’s not a moment to lose.”

“I’m not going!” my little brother, Omer, yelled. “I’m staying! I’m staying to fight!”

“Don’t you dare disobey me!” my father thundered. “I’m your father and you do as I say! Go with your mother and sisters, to protect them. Now — do as I say! Go!”

My father’s face was calm and stern as he prepared to face the enemy. He seemed so resolute and so in control, gripping his dagger as he ordered us to flee for our lives.

In the distance beneath the helicopters a massed rank of horsemen swept forward, firing their guns and screaming as they smashed into the village. The Janjaweed! The Janjaweed were coming!

We ran. The village women were all around us, babies clutched in their arms; older brothers ran with their younger siblings slung across their shoulders. Everyone was screaming in terror and racing to get ahead of the person in front of them.

The Janjaweed urged their horses forward, tossing blazing torches onto the huts, the thatch roofs bursting into flames. I could hear them screaming like animals, a howling wave of evil and hatred tearing our village apart. As they got closer I could make out the Arabic phrases that they were chanting.

“Kill the black slaves! Kill the black slaves!”

“Kill the black donkeys!”

“Kill the black dogs!”

“Kill the black monkeys!”

“No one will escape! We will kill you all!”

Up ahead I could see the helicopters turning for another attack, and then there were more flashes and smoke. Bullets and rockets were tearing into the fleeing women and children, ripping bodies apart. Omer dragged my mother, my sister, Asia, and me out of their murderous path.

Wounded neighbours cried out to us for help. But if we stopped, the Janjaweed would be upon us and we all would die. So we ran, abandoning the dying and the old and the slow and the infants to the terror.

Finally we reached the safety of the deep forest, where the helicopters could no longer hunt us down. All around me was the wailing of children. Tiny voices were crying and crying. Why had these men attacked us and destroyed our village, they sobbed. What wrong had we done to them?

Desperate mothers sought news of their children. Many had lost little ones in the mad rush. They began beating themselves and wailing hysterically. Hour upon terrible hour we waited. Exhausted from weeping, women and children stared ahead, their faces blank with shock.

An hour or so before sunset the noise of battle died to silence. A column of smoke rose from the village. Slowly, carefully, stopping every minute to listen, we retraced our way through the darkening forest to the outskirts. As the first huts came into view, people couldn’t hold back any longer. I raced through the choking smoke. Fires glowed red all around me, the crackle of the flames thick in the air. At every turn I could smell burning and death. Bodies were everywhere.

Somehow, I found our house. The fence had been smashed down and our possessions lay scattered all around. But I didn’t care. Where was my father? I rushed to my neighbour’s house, only to find her body on the floor. A tiny charred body lay among smoking ashes. The Janjaweed had shot the mother in the stomach and thrown her baby daughter onto the fire.

As I bent to vomit, I heard cries from the centre of the village. Women were screaming that they had found the men! I rushed in their direction. In the darkness, the marketplace was littered with corpses. I searched frantically. Where was my father? God, let him be alive. Let him be injured, but let him be alive.

I saw Omer stop. His features collapsed as he sank to embrace a fallen figure, his arms locking around the body, his face buried in the face and hair. He was sobbing and wailing. I fell to the ground.

I came round some time later, lying on my back with my mother beside me. Her face was tear-stained, her expression glazed and empty. I went to question her, but she shook her head, and fresh tears began to fall.

All through that night the surviving men collected the dead. By dawn they were ready to bury them. The first of the donkey carts creaked out of the village, its load a pile of stiff, bloodied corpses. I was in such shock that I was living in the memory of my dead father, his face before me in my mind’s eye, still talking to me and hugging me and laughing and smiling.

It took a new level of horror to shock me out of my stupor. As the cart moved off towards the graveyard, someone noticed the arm of a “dead” woman twitching. She was separated from the corpses and laid on the ground. Her name was Miriam. She had lost her husband, her father and two of her children. Her third child had survived, and he desperately needed his mother to live, for he had no one else in the world.

I bent over her prostrate form. Her pulse was faint and she was barely breathing. There was no sign of injury. It must have been simply shock that was killing her. I started to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After each breath I pressed my weight hard onto her chest. I did this for half an hour or so, her little boy holding his mother’s hand and willing her to live. I had to save her! For his sake alone, I had to.

Suddenly, her eyes opened. She gazed around herself, as if she was coming back from the dead. As soon as she realised that she was still alive, she started to scream and scream and scream.

She was screaming out the names of the dead. Why hadn’t death taken her, she wailed. Where was the sweet release of death? I tried showing her that her little boy was still alive, but she was beyond reason, in a place where no one could reach her.

The one person whose life I had saved actually wished that she was dead.

© Halima Bashir & Damien Lewis 2008

Extracted from Tears of the Desert: One Woman’s Story of Surviving the Horrors of Darfur by Halima Bashir and Damien Lewis, published by Hodder & Stoughton at £12.99. Copies can be ordered for £11.69, including postage, from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585

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