The Observer (Kampala)
Martyn Drakard
8 July 2009
book review
Book: Tears of the Desert
Author: Hashima Bashir & Damien Lewis
Publisher: Hodder Books. 2008
Volume: 367 pages
Hashima Bashir's Tears of the Desert, co-authored by journalist Damien Lewis, will make any reader with a heart shed tears, of sorrow and of anger. Of sorrow at the situation in Darfur where the peaceful traditional life of many Zaghawa families was irreparably shattered by the Janjaweed invaders, bursting on them like demons from hell; and at the primitive medical conditions in the village clinics. Bashir, the first person from her area to be trained as a doctor, describes how once she had to treat two small boys; the Janjaweed militia had shot down their father in front of them, and then thrown the two boys into the burning hut. She'd had to clean and dress their burns without anaesthetic for several days in succession. There was little she could do to comfort them.
Another boy was brought along with one whole side of his face torn off by gunfire, and a gaping hole where his eye had been.
And of anger at the gang rape of girls aged between seven and thirteen in a nearby village primary school; their agony and trauma can barely be imagined.
But anger too at the international community: Bashir was helped to flee to the U.K. where, against all her expectations, her troubles were to intensify. Despite evidence to the contrary, the Foreign Office said Sudan was a safe place, and saw no reason why Darfuri refugees should not be sent back home. And at the Khartoum government, the National Congress Party, which is doing everything it can to hinder international efforts to stop the "genocide by attrition", including ignoring UN Security Council resolutions to end the killing.
Lastly at China, which has effectively empowered Khartoum to cock its nose at what the UN decides. China is the largest single investor in Sudan, and the greatest customer of Sudanese oil, in exchange for arms, the tanks, artillery and aircraft that have destroyed Darfur. So confident of its position is the Bashir government that it has not only refused to hand over two war criminals, militia leader Ali Kushyb and politician Ahmed Haroun, to the International Criminal Court, but has in fact promoted Haroun.
The author herself was gang-raped twice and beaten to within inches of death, and callously left just alive but wishing she were dead. She managed to crawl home and hide, and, not unsurprisingly, went into a long and deep depression. Who, after all, would ever want to marry such a woman?
Fortunately this particular story, and this is a true story, has a happy ending. But only after a long, tortuous struggle, in which her case for asylum went to the highest court in the land and was given generous media coverage; she is now happily married - after all - with two children, and was finally granted asylum in the U.K. one year ago.
In case you're not sure whether or not Darfur is a case of genocide, and of the most brutal kind, this book will settle your doubts.
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