Chapter 1
Inferno in Darfur
Ranya had seen it coming – all that had happened in the past few months; only she had never expected it to sweep through her homestead like a tornado, uprooting homes, leaving tears and blood in its trail. What shook her the most was that almost overnight she had become an orphan and a widow; it happened all too fast. She placed the blame squarely on the Janjaweed and their backers in Khartoum.
Ranya walked out of the now roofless mud hut and sat outside on a tree stump against the wall. The moon hung bright and still in the sky, as if unstirred by the cool breeze blowing across the plane. Ranya placed her elbow on her lap and supported her chin with her hands as she stared vacantly into the open space ahead. The Jebel Mara Mountains loomed in the distance, a colossal mass of stillness.
As a child, she had always been in awe of the sheer beauty and magnificence of the Jebel Mara. The mountains were so high that their peaks touched the clouds at certain times of the year. Streams radiated from the caldera at the mountaintop. Many evenings, she would sit and watch the sun gradually disappear behind the mountain range, often thinking there was naught beyond these mountains but the end of the world.
Those were the beautiful days when life was good in Zalengei. She, her father, and her older brother used to go to the farm right at the foot of the Jebel Mara. On the way back many an evening, her father would place her on the donkey drawing the cart filled with freshly harvested maize and groundnuts. Her father and her brother trekking and she on the donkey, they would stroll back home under the softening red gaze of a Sudanese sunset.
At home, her mother would have prepared a sumptuous dinner made with fresh fish from the market. She and her brother would sit around a big bowl of aseeda[1]; her brother, being older, always took his share of the meat before her. He would close his eyes as he savored the taste of the food.
Often, Fatimah Abass would place Ranya between her legs and plait her hair while singing her an old Zaghawa song. Ranya was her only daughter and many used to mistake her for her mother’s much younger sister because of their striking resemblance and similar mannerisms.
Memories of her mother brought pain to Ranya. Fatimah Abass had been hit by shrapnel during an air raid, bleeding to death before any medical aid could reach her.
“The Arab nomads’ constant struggle with us for grazing land is bound to escalate into full blown war if the situation is not checked. Granted, droughts have compelled them to migrate into our lands; they need water and food for their herds, but must they gratuitously commandeer our farmland for their grazing activities? This conflict is bound to escalate if Khartoum does not address the growing neglect of our region,” El Nour Abass, Ranya’s father, had once said.
Those words were ringing in her ears now, as she sat in the silence of the night. That silence would once have been punctuated by the noise of a mother beckoning her children for dinner or the sound of laughter from the neighboring compound, or the loud braying of a donkey. All that filled the night now was the intermittent high-pitched shrill of crickets.
Now back in her hut, lying on her back, hands behind her head and staring into the star studded sky, Ranya couldn’t sleep. Random thoughts were flooding her head, thoughts of the past that she cannot change, thoughts of the future that lay shrouded in mystery.
Ranya woke her children up just before dawn. “We have to get going now,” she said briskly.
It was time to be strong for the surviving members of her family. Without much ado, they got up from their mats and picked up the bundles they had packed the previous night. Fear at what lay ahead gnawed at Ranya’s insides; fear that she and her children might not make it to Kalma. Ranya felt an intense rage at the world, which did not intervene to stop this injustice against humanity. Darfur must be the playground of some wicked gods, she thought as she stifled the tears welling up in her eyes. The angst, in a strange way, became her drive. She would do whatever it took to survive, to stay alive, to stay strong for her daughter Mayadah, whose magnanimous view of the world had suddenly been irreparably shattered, having witnessed more deaths and misery in the past two years than any seventeen-year-old should ever see.
“Why are these people bombing our village and killing people who have done them no wrong?” she had once asked Ranya, amidst tears. “It is just not fair.”
Ranya had hugged her and said, “God will send help.”
Ranya was worried endlessly about Marwan, her son. He had withdrawn into himself after his father’s death. No longer able to even crack a smile, Marwan just kept a blank face. He had sworn to avenge his father’s murder as he clung to his lifeless body. Ranya was worried that his rage and hunger for revenge would lead him into trouble—or worse, get him killed.
Ranya and her children walked purposefully along the major road that leads from Zalengei to Abata. They would try to cover as much ground as they could before the red sun unleashed its fury.
[1] Milled porridge
