Tears of the Desert (32 page)

Over time, I grew comfortable with him, and I grew accepting of our intimacy.

It was early January by the time my bump was really starting to show. Sharif and I were so happy. In our culture, a marriage means nothing without children. Exiled many thousands of miles from home, Sharif and I were the only family we had. But soon there would be a third member of our clan, all being well.

At the end of January two women came to visit the Zaghawa community in Southampton. They were from an organization called the Aegis Trust, and they were gathering evidence of war crimes in Darfur. They were especially keen to talk to women. A Zaghawa friend came to our flat and introduced the two women. Was I willing to tell them my story, he asked? No names would be used. Six Zaghawa men had already spoken, but no women. There were precious few Zaghawa women in the exile community, in any case.

But was I willing to be the one to break the silence?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Breaking the Silence

At first I was reluctant. Sharif and I had agreed that the horrors that had happened to me were our own secret. I called Sharif and asked him what he thought. He told me that if it was in private, and if I wanted to, then I should go ahead. I asked the women what the information would be used for. They told me it would be given to powerful governments to expose the terrible abuses in Darfur. And the women’s voice was a vital one.

For a moment I thought about my father. I knew what he would have wanted me to do. He would want me to be like my namesake, Dolly Rathebe, and to speak out. I told the women my story, but left out some of the worst private horrors. They didn’t pry. I told them about the attacks, what I had seen, and how I had escaped. Once I’d started talking, I began to feel better about it. It was good to be doing so knowing that my words might have an effect. Perhaps it gave some meaning to all that I had suffered.

After speaking with these women life quickly went back to “normal.” I had lots to deal with, of course, like preparing for the birth of my baby. I was convinced that I was going to have a little girl. I went shopping and brought girly clothes in girly colors, all flowery and pink. But as the pregnancy progressed I started to feel horribly weak and tired.

I was hospitalized, and after various tests I was diagnosed with chronic anemia. I had bleeding in the womb, which was very serious. I was pregnant and I was constantly losing blood. I was sent to London to see a specialist, but still they couldn’t work out exactly what was wrong. I had to keep going back and forth to see that specialist, but deep inside I still felt as if it was all going to be all right. And then the bombshell hit.

It was early May and I was seven months pregnant. I was still weak, and the bleeding hadn’t stopped, but at least I still had my baby. I had a call from my lawyer. She didn’t quite know how to break the news to me, but my case for asylum had been refused. She couldn’t even begin to explain why, but I would have to go to London to prepare an immediate appeal. We had five days in which to do so. If we failed to lodge the appeal, then they would deport me. They would send me back to Sudan.

I have no words to express how I felt upon hearing this news. I was in such physical discomfort that I knew I wouldn’t be able to manage the bus journey to London. My pregnancy had made me hypersensitive to smells, and I couldn’t bear the thought of being cooped up on a stuffy, airless bus for hours on end. So Sharif forked out the expense of a train ticket for me—which we could little afford—and I set off for London.

I sat on the train and stared out at the pretty English countryside. Spring flowers were pushing through the grass, trees were in bloom, but there was winter in my heart. Almost a year had passed since I had lodged my asylum claim. What had that year been for?
For this?
To be told that my story was untrue and be sent back to Sudan? My village had been destroyed, my father killed, and my family was scattered to God only knew where. My people were being hunted down like animals, as I had fled from those who hunted me.

Yet I was to be sent back to Sudan?

I wondered what that spiky-haired man had written about me on the day that I arrived in London. What could he possibly have said that might warrant such a decision? Upon arrival at my lawyer’s office my refusal letter was read to me. As far as I could understand the main argument seemed to be that it was safe to return me to Khartoum. There was no fighting in Khartoum, so why would I be in any danger there? How could they say such things? Had they even read my file? This was madness—blind, stupid lunacy.

I was allocated a new lawyer who dealt specifically with asylum appeals. He was a kindly young Englishman called Albert Harwood, and we met in a cramped office that was piled high with files. We had to prepare a whole new witness statement for my appeal. I had to repeat my story, only this time adding in the new developments: finding my husband, my pregnancy, talking to the Aegis Trust people. Albert wrote down everything, and my trust grew in him as we worked. He really seemed to care.

He told me not to worry. Once the appeal was lodged I would be safe—it would then be illegal to deport me to Sudan. After I was done with Albert I went to see my GP. He examined me, and told me that I was going back into the hospital right away. I was so weak that he doubted if I would be allowed out again before the birth. There was certainly no way that I could return to Southampton. And he was going to try to get me housed as an emergency case, in London.

Sure enough I was told that I would have to stay in the hospital. I was around thirty-seven weeks by now, and soon I could be induced. I spent a few days there, bored and fed up and alone. I wanted to give birth in Southampton, so that Sharif and my friends could be there. I told my consultant that I wanted to go home. She begged me to stay. One more week of eating well and building up my strength and then she would induce me, she promised. I agreed to stay.

On the day of the inducement Sharif traveled up to London. But the birth was difficult from the very start. I started bleeding heavily, and my Australian midwife pressed the emergency button. A team of doctors came running. They used ultrasound to check, but it seemed that the placenta was stuck to the baby. I would have to give birth by caesarean. Sharif donned a medical gown so he could be with me in the operating room. But all of a sudden the baby just started to come, and the room went into total panic.

My baby was born naturally, but by that time I knew nothing of it. I came to sometime later in a dark and shadowy place. I was surrounded by lights that beeped and flashed with every beat of my heart. I was cold, so cold. I felt as if I might be dead. I saw a white face appear above me, floating among a sea of muted lights. It was one of the nurses.

I was in the Intensive Care Unit, she explained. My body was bound in bandages, and I had drips going into either arm.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

I tried to smile. “I’m okay . . . Where is my baby?”

The nurse gestured with her eyes to my bedside. I glanced across. Next to me was a see-through plastic cart, and inside it was a little bundled heap of life. I saw tiny hands and feet poking out of the bundle. A fuzz of jet black curls. Eyes closed tight.
My baby.

“Can I hold her?” I asked.

The nurse shook her head. “You’re too weak. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, it’s not a ‘her.’ It’s a ‘him.’ You have a lovely baby boy.”

She pushed the incubator closer. I gazed in rapture at his tiny, scrunched-up face. His eyes opened just a fraction, as he blinked in the dim light. For just a moment his gaze met mine and I swear that he smiled. My little baby boy had smiled at me.

“Is he safe?” I whispered. “They’re not going to steal him? I can’t watch over him and protect him . . .”

The nurse smiled. “Don’t worry. Look, I’ll put a little alarm on him so that if anyone picks him up you’ll know, okay?”

The nurse reached into the incubator and fastened something around his tiny ankle. I guessed he was safe enough now. I started to sing to him—gently, quietly, a lullaby whispered under my breath, a song that my father and mother had sung to me when I was just a child . . .

It was many days before my baby and I were allowed to go home. Sharif and his friends collected us and drove us back to Southampton. It was high time that we held the naming ceremony. Of course, as he was our firstborn son he had to be called “Mohammed.” I had no boy’s clothes for him, so that first day Sharif and I dressed him up like a baby girl.

All of our visitors exclaimed: “Oh, what a beautiful girl!”

So I told them that “she” was called “Mohammed,” and that put them straight! After the naming Sharif and his friends vacated the flat, and went to stay with friends. I was left with a gaggle of Zaghawa women. They cooked for me and washed baby Mohammed and clothed him, while I rested and regained my strength. Every day Sharif would come to visit. This went on for the full forty days, by which time I was pretty much recovered.

For a while Sharif, Mo, and I lived the life of a happy family. But at the same time we knew that there was a shadow hanging over us. During this time we were given a little flat to live in, in London. Our new home consisted of a tiny apartment in a Victorian house that had been divided into a dozen similarly sized flats. We had one room with a foldout bed, and a walk-in kitchen and shower off to one side. It was hopelessly cramped, yet it was
our home.

Finally my asylum appeal was heard, and I received a letter from the Home Office with the result. I couldn’t bear to open it myself, and so I took it to my lawyer. I would need him to read it in any case, because I couldn’t understand the complex legal jargon they used. I handed Albert the letter and he opened it, with a smile. He knew it was going to be good news. He started to read it out loud, but as he did so the smile froze on his lips.

He couldn’t believe it. He was dumbfounded. My appeal had been turned down. In essence the letter stated that the Zaghawa were not affected by the war in Darfur. It was safe to return me to Khartoum. And while I had spoken out to the Aegis Trust, there was free speech in Sudan so that would not cause me any undue problems. The letter concluded by stating that both Sharif and I had been refused asylum in Great Britain. Once again, we were scheduled for immediate deportation to Sudan.

By the time he had finished reading the letter Albert was stunned. He had a look of total disbelief on his face. As for me, I just felt drained. What was the point in continuing, I wondered? Why go on? It was Albert’s anger that galvanized me into action. We would appeal once more, he said. We would appeal to the highest court in the land. We would go to the House of Lords if necessary, but we were not going to give up.

Albert went about preparing a second appeal, and baby Mo, Sharif, and I returned to our little London flat. I was miserable and downhearted. I was also scared. All I wanted was to stay here in peace and safety. I wanted my dignity back, and I wanted to contribute to this society. I was a trained medical doctor, and I knew this country needed doctors. But instead the Home Office forced us to live on handouts, while arguing that my story was a pack of lies.

Each week I had to go to a Reporting Center to sign for the family, and to be fingerprinted. The Center was like a prison. There was a row of cells off to one side. It was here that asylum seekers were grabbed by the guards and thrown into the cells, from where they were taken to the airports and flown back to the countries from which they had fled. Being there was so dispiriting, and each time I was terrified that the same was going to happen to little Mo and me.

I was approached by the Aegis Trust for a second time. My first testimony had been very powerful, they told me. Now they were organizing a Global Day for Darfur—a worldwide campaign of publicity. No one knew exactly how many had been killed in Darfur, but there were reports citing hundreds of thousands. It was a mind-numbing figure. Whenever I thought about it, I imagined the whole of my homeland bathed in blood, and burning in flames. Millions and millions had fled into refugee camps in Chad, but even these were places of dark suffering. God only knew where my family might be.

The Aegis people asked me if I was prepared to speak out publicly, to the media. I said that I would think about it. I was worried. I had spoken to the press once before, in Sudan, and look where that had got me. Might it get me into more trouble if I did so here in England? I met their press person, David Brown, in a café in London. He told me that the Global Day would focus on violence against women. That was why it was so crucial that I spoke out. The world had to know the truth. He had an interview lined up with the BBC.

I thought about what he had said. I was angry myself now. I was angry that the nightmare in Darfur was ongoing, and I was angry with the British government. Three times they had refused to believe my story—once in person at the Home Office, and twice since then in writing. They were intent on sending me and little Mo back to Sudan, and they were doing so in cold, blind ignorance. David was right. The world did need to know.

I understood the power of the BBC. I knew its reach. I remembered my father tuning his little radio into the BBC World Service. I didn’t even need to ask myself what he would have wanted me to do in the circumstances. It was obvious. I told David that I would speak to the BBC. In fact, I would speak to any press and any media that would hear me. I didn’t give a damn what anyone thought and I didn’t give a damn about the shame.

But there was one thing that I wanted to be reassured of. “If I speak to the press can I be punished? Can they hurt me? Is it safe? I have little Mo to think of . . .”

David smiled. “This isn’t Sudan. . . . There’s a free press here. No one can do anything to you. You’re free to say whatever you want.”

The BBC went ahead and filmed an interview with me for
Newsnight,
their flagship news program. At around the same time I spoke to a journalist from
The Sunday Telegraph
and
The Independent
newspapers. The
Sunday Telegraph
ran a story with this headline: “Tony Blair admits Darfur is a tragedy. So why is he sending this gang-rape victim back to her attackers?”