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The rainy season should have been over, that’s what everyone said. And it was, in relation to any raindrops hitting the ground. The shallow desert rivers were swollen to their heights and the water was quickly disappearing back into the earth. But the storm clouds remained. The local staff said they had never seen anything like it. Scowling over the flat horizon, these sculpted columns rose up, threatening the mortals below. The effect was thunder and cloud-to-cloud lightning, but no rain. It was eerie, like someone playing with fire but not quite letting it roar.
Lena was on the rooftop of the CWW compound. The flat concrete roof had raised edges all around, so she was protected from the sight of passers by. Painted white to reflect the sun, it rumbled with the air conditioner and the generator. She rested with her back against the stand for the water tank, sheltered by its shadow. Even though the sun was falling in the sky, it would still be horribly hot until proper sunset.
She was going over her handwritten notes from the past few days visiting camps with new arrivals from North Darfur. She was looking for meaning in the stories, some pattern or clue. Anything to help her interpret what was going on. She read again and reorganised the names of people’s villages, looking for possible explanations of these movements of people. Was there an advantage for the Janjaweed to attack this village rather than that one? What was important about that area? She unfolded a geological map that also showed elevations, rivers and traditional trade routes. Was that going to be a military installation, the corridor they were ushering people away from? How about that field – a landing strip?
She looked for reasons why people were being forced to move. She tried to remain dispassionate, like a journalist seeking facts for the record, rather than a woman interacting with these people face to face. That seemed the professional thing to do.
She had interviewed women, families, teenagers. Not very many men, that was always the way – most were in hiding, in exile or joining the growing rebellion. There were girls who had been raped and became mothers at fourteen or fifteen years old. Grandmothers looking after their daughter’s children after complications. Sisters desperate to hear what had happened to their older brothers who had gone out to look after the animals and never returned to the family compound.
Lena listened and took copious notes. She also took some pictures, but respected people’s reluctance to provide photographic evidence. She tried not to absorb their emotions too much. Terror, despair, and paralysing sadness took over these people, and she couldn’t let that seep into her mind. Her notebook pages were running out and she started writing in each line twice, to cram in all the information as the stories kept coming. She felt that she owed them this: testimony, preserved.
Many reported they had been forced to leave their homes without warning. The stories were familiar and yet precise enough to ring true. Lots of people were looking for missing boys, aged between eleven and twenty. Hope had left their mothers’ eyes already. You knew what happened to boys of that age. Either they were sucked into the rebel ranks, or executed by the army. For the lucky ones, you heard reports that they banded together to walk longer distances, to safe places across the border, in Kenya or Ethiopia. The great distances from western Sudan made that unlikely, but there were still wisps of hope.
And the Janjaweed – the horseback men. People shuddered when they spoke of them. The idea of the Janjaweed scared people more than the bombings, for some reason. Their hoofbeats were heard from miles away. The dust clouds rose on the horizon even before you could make out the silhouettes of the individual mercenaries. Their scarves wrapped around their faces left just slits for their eyes, hiding all individual identity. They didn’t seem human, more of an extension of some malevolent beast.
Their words, when they shouted, were unintelligible, people said. They were from countries distant and alien. But the meaning was clear. They only went to certain villages, where the rebel groups and their families were rumoured to be based. Their horses’ hooves trampled on children. They kicked over clean water stands and poured petrol over food stores to set them alight. They never gave a reason for the attacks. Or a warning. There was no room to negotiate, as the elders had done in the past. There was just the sound of the hooves, coming to destroy village after village. Life after life.
She looked over her notes, dozens upon dozens of interviews so far. All pointing in one direction of indiscriminate harm to villagers, based on their ethnicity. Her hand shook a little as she wrote down her conclusions.
And who was she to say? Just a photographer from London with less than two years of field experience in other contexts. No training in international humanitarian law or human rights. Just the power of observation and the things she’d learned from colleagues over the last year and a half. It was minimal. She wasn’t an authority on warfare.
But she couldn’t deny it. People here were reporting being corralled into camps by these ghostly horse-riding creatures. The camps had little food or water. People were starving and humanitarian aid was being restricted. The only explanation they believed was that this was being done under the orders of the government in Khartoum.
And they were terrified.
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‘He can’t say that, not the G-word,’ Jeanette argued with her over dinner that night.
‘He’s the head of the UN here, can’t he just say it as it is?’
‘Oh darling, you don’t understand a thing about this government, do you? They hate the UN. Blame it for prolonging the war in the south, for whatever that opinion’s worth. For getting in the way with them finishing the job. They could throw the UN out at a moment’s notice and then where would we be? The humanitarian community, the patchwork we try to pull together, would be leaderless, like a headless chicken. And now that the Darfurian rebels have given the army a bloody nose, the government won’t listen to anyone.’
‘But these are violations of human rights on a huge scale! This could be evidence of war crimes!’
Jeanette put down her fork and studied Lena’s face. ‘Honey, I think you’re getting carried away. We’re not the experts. It’s not CWW’s job to say whether it is war crimes or not. We’re not international lawyers. We don’t have that kind of forensic-evidence-gathering capacity.’
‘But it’s everyone’s responsibility, is it not? To say something if there is a risk of another genocide? What does “never again” mean, if not that?’
‘I don’t know what it means. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, if people aren’t willing to enforce it.’
Lena couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This, from a woman of compassion? ‘That’s a terrible thing to say.’
‘I know darling.’ Jeanette’s eyes softened as she considered her words. ‘I’m not a monster, love. But I know these forces are much bigger than you, bigger than me. Than CWW. Than even the UN, unfortunately. What can we do? We’re just here a short time, and we try to save lives by preventing cholera in these camps and treating malaria and malnutrition, and maybe that’s good enough.’
‘Good enough? You think that’s enough?’
‘I only have my own two hands, Lena. And God gave me the knowledge and motivation to be a nurse, so that’s what I’m doing.’
‘And what if it was Rwanda all over again, like 1994? What would you do?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what I’d do. Get the hell out, I imagine. And live with nightmares and PTSD for the rest of my life.’
Lena didn’t answer. She thought back to what Petra had said, the last visit to Darfur. If you are only one pace ahead of the shadows, what happens when they threaten to overtake?