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‘I will never forget the faces of the men who raped me’...
29 years. It is hard to reconcile her manner with her experiences. For Halima has faced, and challenged, the deepest depravity of human nature. In her native Darfur, the western region of the Sudan, she was tortured and gang-raped by government soldiers after she informed the United Nations of atrocities she witnessed in her work as a doctor.
Now seeking asylum in the UK, she meets me at the offices of the publishers who are bringing out her autobiography. While we retreat to a glass cubbyhole in a corner to discuss child rape and murder in Darfur, a silent pantomime of office jollity plays out on the other side of the glass, giving some sense of the dislocation Halima has felt since arriving here. ‘Living in London is like living on the moon!' she exclaims, wide-eyed.
Our culture simultaneously fascinates and repels her. People kissing in public! She had never seen such a thing until she arrived here. That she continues to be shocked by the West's overt sexuality is appealing proof of her continuing innocence. Rape is routinely used as a weapon in modern conflict and while she may be its victim, in some respects she remains untouched.
She has been well-served by her collaborator on the book, Damien Lewis, a journalist and old Africa hand. The standout character in a lively depiction of Halima's upbringing in a tribal village is her likeable father. A cattle trader and farmer, unusually he insisted on higher education for his daughter, the eldest of four, and fuelled her ambition to study medicine. This liberalism makes it more shocking that he acquiesced in her ritual circumcision at the age of eight.
‘At first, he refused. Then I think my grandma said, "This is not your business. It is a woman's business." I knew what was going to happen to me. We believe in this tradition in our country, that this should be done before you start school otherwise the girls will gossip about you. I was happy, excited, because there is a big celebration - a special meal and the guests give you money.' In her grandmother's hut, Halima was held down by women while one of them cut away all external genitalia with a razor blade, stitching the area closed afterwards to leave only a small hole for menstrual blood and urine. There was no anaesthetic.
‘The pain was so great I will never forget it,' she says. ‘I now understand this should never have been done to me. I realise my mum and grandma are poor people with simple beliefs, who inherited the custom from previous generations, but sometimes I blame them. They should have thought for themselves. I have lost something - a loss of womanhood - for you have no sensitivity left.' She admits this caused her some difficulty ‘accepting intimacy' with her husband.
The conflict in Darfur began in 2003 with local African tribes claiming oppression by the Arab-led Sudanese government and its militia, the Janjaweed. Halima completed her degree in Khartoum and was posted to a remote Darfuri village where she secretly treated wounded rebel soldiers who made their way from the front line to her clinic.
The next day, after the last of her charges left the clinic and despite the risk to herself, Halima reported the atrocity to UN observers monitoring human rights abuses. Within a week, government soldiers arrested her, taking her to a military camp. ‘Three of them took turns to rape me. Once the third had finished, they started over again. And while doing so they burned me with cigarettes and cut me with blades.
‘I have the reminders on my body and every time I see the scars I remember what was done to me,' she whispers. After two days she was set free, and friends smuggled her back to her home village, where she spent five months recuperating with her anxious family. Once more war overtook her. In an offensive characteristic of the Darfur genocide, government helicopters attacked her village, followed by an assault on horseback by the Janjaweed. Halima, her mother and three siblings were among those who hid in the surrounding countryside, while her father and other village men bought them time to escape by fighting. Most, including Halima's father, were killed.
‘We were cowards who did nothing, while they died doing good,' says Halima of her survivor's guilt. The Janjaweed killed a baby she had delivered by throwing it on to a fire; the mother was shot in the stomach.
Separated from her surviving family members in the chaos (she has since heard they may be in a refugee camp in neighbouring Chad), Halima used family jewellery to buy the services of an ‘agent', who spirited her on to a plane to London. Now she is waiting to hear if her asylum application is approved.
Four months after arriving here, Halima traced Sharif. The marriage was her father's attempt to give her a future after the rape. ‘In our culture we grow up knowing one day we will be married to one of our [extended] relatives. None of us falls in love and chooses a partner. But I didn't know him well until we met in this country as husband and wife.' Was it difficult to adapt? There's a little exhalation. ‘Very! It's very strange. But I was alone and I find somebody supportive and I feel I am safe again. Sometimes, I look back on my story and I think this is a strange marriage, not something I chose; these evil thoughts come into my mind but I push them away,' she giggles. They are both practising Muslims with a strong set of ethics.
It was the morning of 23 December when they came to attack our village. I was helping my mother prepare breakfast. My father, my brothers and my little sister were sitting nearby, waiting to eat before spending their day in the fields or, in my sister Asia's case, attending school.
Beneath the helicopters a massed rank of horsemen swept forward, firing guns and screaming as they smashed into the village. The Janjaweed! The Janjaweed were coming!
An edited extract from Tears of the Desert by Halima Bashir with Damien Lewis, published by Hodder & Stoughton, price £12.99. To order a copy with free p&p, contact the YOU Bookshop, tel: 0845 606 4204; you-bookshop.co.uk .
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