Piercing the Silence

Bashir herself (no relation to the Sudanese president) supports the indictment too. But "Tears in the Desert" is far more than a litany of her pain. Indeed, much of its relevance lies in her account of her life before Darfur became a byword for genocide. Written together with veteran BBC journalist Damien Lewis, the book paints a vivid picture of a traditional lifestyle under siege, a portrait of the people of Darfur before they became victims. Bashir is Zaghawa, a member of a proud semi-nomadic tribe that can trace its roots back to the 7th century and that, together with other non-Arab Muslim tribes in Darfur, has been at the center of the conflict with the Janjaweed. Now 29, she grew up in a typical desert village. Home was a compound consisting of four circular mud huts surrounded by a fence made of tree branches. A chicken coop housed hens and pigeons, whose droppings were often mixed with oil to make a paste for injuries. Her days were spent playing with friends and helping a demanding grandmother with chores like collecting firewood or catching locusts for the frying pan. Traditional customs had to be observed: young children were cut on the face with a razor blade to form the distinctive scar patterning of the Zaghawa. Later, the girls marked their transition to womanhood through the searing pain of circumcision. Bashir had run away before her grandmother could scar her cheeks, but she couldn't escape the mutilation of the genital cutting—and her anger about it afterward.

That life is over now. Bashir's village is destroyed, its inhabitants either dead or in camps. Bashir herself managed to sell the family's hidden gold to buy herself passage to Britain. There she managed to find her husband, win political asylum and—in spite of the injuries sustained during the rape—give birth to two sons. By Darfur standards, she's enormously fortunate, but her tale is hardly a happy one. Her husband, also a Zaghawa who fled Darfur, still faces the threat of deportation from England. Her mother and sister, who fled the village ahead of her, face an uncertain future in a Chad refugee camp. She doesn't know the fate of her brothers.

Meanwhile, the fear of retaliation by the Sudanese government for telling her story forces her to protect her face and her identity. The name Halima Bashir is a pseudonym, she says, and she is afraid to be photographed with her face unveiled. The stigma her society attaches to rape also lingers; some of her remaining family is angry that she has told the world about it. Nonetheless, Bashir believes the risk and pain of publicity was necessary. "I'm writing my story for the people who can't write it for themselves," she told NEWSWEEK during a recent visit to New York. "We need to move past the political and focus on the personal." In the end, that may be the only way to fully grasp the ghastliness of Darfur.

" Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur " : Halima Bashir with Damien Lewis (Ballantine Books, 2008)

© 2008