Sudan

Fiction?

I pile the fire wood neatly by the side our hut. The older children laugh playing some secret game. My three old clings to me. My husband rests in the hut. He tilled all morning. Hard work in an unyielding ground.

I stand up brushing the sweat from face. I stretch my aching back. I am with child, but only a few months gone. I squeeze a splinter in my palm. I hear a rumble, and a quiet pud-pud. I shade my eyes. I look into the distance from where the sound comes. The sound has stirred up the hot dust.

A different sweat pricks my scalp. I shout to the children: Run, run. They stop their game and look me alert like deer. I scream, “Junjaweed!” They run. The oldest holds her sister’s hand and runs one way, the boy the other. He turns back and runs to catch up with his sisters. I stand paralyzed watching them.

Soon the dust cloud arrives, camel riders and jeeps. Shooting starts. Flaming torches fly into thatch huts. The torrid air is filled with fatal screams.

I shout for my husband. My husband in sleep haze, not understanding, comes to the door. A car, covered in red dust glides towards me. The car stops. A well uniformed man steps out of the car. His hand goes to his hip. The man draws out his gun and shoots. I kneel by my husband cradling his bloodied head. The man picks up my three year old by one arm. I do not hear my plea. He walks with the wriggling child and throws him into my neighbour’s burning home.

I almost throw myself into the fire to get my son. Two men, black with white teeth, laughing, grab me. Another pulls me back by my hair and throws me on the ground. The three tear my clothes off me. They take turns to hold me and rape me. I feel waves of the hot rippling air of the fires around us.

Soon, it is all over. The invaders are gone, our village is burnt. Our men are dead. I run about searching for my other children. I turn over child corpses. Some speared, some shot, and others still burning.

Perhaps they did escape, my three children.

I find them, one by one — dead.

Fiction — no. Fact — Dafur.