Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur [Hardcover]

Halima Bashir (Author), Damien Lewis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 9, 2008

Like the single white eyelash that graces her row of dark lashes–seen by her people as a mark of good fortune–Halima Bashir’s story stands out. Tears of the Desert is the first memoir ever written by a woman caught up in the war in Darfur. It is a survivor’s tale of a conflicted country, a resilient people, and the uncompromising spirit of a young woman who refused to be silenced.

Born into the Zaghawa tribe in the Sudanese desert, Halima was doted on by her father, a cattle herder, and kept in line by her formidable grandmother. A politically astute man, Halima’s father saw to it that his daughter received a good education away from their rural surroundings. Halima excelled in her studies and exams, surpassing even the privileged Arab girls who looked down their noses at the black Africans. With her love of learning and her father’s support, Halima went on to study medicine, and at twenty-four became her village’s first formal doctor.

Yet not even the symbol of good luck that dotted her eye could protect her from the encroaching conflict that would consume her land. Janjaweed Arab militias started savagely assaulting the Zaghawa, often with the backing of the Sudanese military. Then, in early 2004, the Janjaweed attacked Bashir’s village and surrounding areas, raping forty-two schoolgirls and their teachers. Bashir, who treated the traumatized victims, some as young as eight years old, could no longer remain quiet. But breaking her silence ignited a horrifying turn of events.

In this harrowing and heartbreaking account, Halima Bashir sheds light on the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives being eradicated by what is fast becoming one of the most terrifying genocides of the twenty-first century. Raw and riveting, Tears of the Desert is more than just a memoir–it is Halima Bashir’s global call to action.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Writing with BBC correspondent Lewis (Slave), Bashir, a physician and refugee living in London, offers a vivid personal portrait of life in the Darfur region of Sudan before the catastrophe. Doted on by her father, who bucked tradition to give his daughter an education, and feisty grandmother, who bequeathed a fierce independence, Bashir grew up in the vibrant culture of a close-knit Darfur village. (Its darker side emerges in her horrific account of undergoing a clitoridectomy at age eight.) She anticipated a bright future after medical school, but tensions between Sudan's Arab-dominated Islamist dictatorship and black African communities like her Zaghawa tribe finally exploded into conflict. The violence the author recounts is harrowing: the outspoken Bashir endured brutal gang-rapes by government soldiers, and her village was wiped out by marauding Arab horsemen and helicopter gunships. This is a vehement cri de coeur—I wanted to fight and kill every Arab, to slaughter them, to drive them out of the country, the author thought upon treating girls who had been raped and mutilated—but in showing what she suffered, and lost, Bashir makes it resonate. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Bashir’s story of her life in Darfur is difficult to read largely because so much of it is ordinary. She recounts growing up in a loving family, attending school, and, with the strong support of her father, becoming a doctor. After she enters professional life, civil war comes to her doorstep, and her life is torn apart. She witnesses horrible suffering and is herself brutally treated by the Janjaweed, the armed militias fighting with the tacit approval of the Sudanese government. As a “black African,” Bashir recalls years of discrimination from ruling Arab Africans, but the spreading war accelerates the violence to epic and devastating levels. After fleeing to Britain, she finds herself in a new battle to prove that the nightmare in her country is real. Bashir is now a powerful voice for the victims of Darfur, speaking out on numerous painful subjects, from her own genital mutilation to rape and the loss of her family. Harsh in its honesty, Bashir’s chronicle is shocking and disturbing. An unforgettable tragedy. --Colleen Mondor

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: One World/Ballantine; 1 edition (September 9, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345506251
• ISBN-13: 978-0345506252
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #485,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #64 in Books > History > Africa > Sudan

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pride and Prejudice, September 9, 2008

By 

Gary Severance - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur (Hardcover)

Tears in the Desert is a memoir of genocide in the Sudan, Muslim against Muslim over skin color. Halima Bashir is a black African raised in the Zaghawa tribe in a family of comparative wealth. The Zaghawa men are proud of their history as fierce warriors who protect their village territory and their families from invaders. Halima is proud of her heritage and her intellectual gifts, particularly mathematics. Her gifts and her family's wealth allow her to attend a private school for girls and later university in Khartoum.

The history of tribal pride has led to competition in Darfur and throughout the Sudan for land and prestige. But there is more than tribal rivalry. The Khartoum government is run by white "Arab" Muslims whose proud heritage causes the people to despise the black tribal Africans. Although Halima's advantages paid off in education, her M.D. degree is fully useful to her only if all Sudanese are treated equally. Of course, in the Sudan they are not.

After being mistreated for many years, African tribes attacked Arabs and regrouped in the hills. Government attacks on villages were carried out leaving few surviving men and a great many women and children. For the survivors like Halima, brutal female circumcision, rape, and mayhem were perpetuated by the Arab Muslims in the rationalization of jihad. Halima survived, but barely. Many others died or left their villages to stay in large refugee centers.

The memoir is written like a novel with the help of Damien Lewis, a BBC reporter and writer who has covered conflicts in Africa for many years. Halima and Lewis have produced an exciting and important work that will give the reader great insight into activity in Darfur and explain why humanitarian activists have demanded that the United Nations and specific countries like the U.S. intervene and stop the genocide. China has blocked this intervention because of reliance on Sudanese oil.

Interesting parallels are drawn between Darfur and the holocaust in Nazi Germany. Do the people of the world claim ignorance of the situation in Darfur as German citizens claimed ignorance of Buchenwald and Auschwitz? The book suggests that irrational cultural pride provides an excuse for domination and extermination of perceived rivals.

This is a fascinating book that will inform, shock, and perhaps drive the reader to some action. The graphic descriptions of mutilation and assault are disturbing and the story puts hope for the future in some doubt. Is this an inevitable human condition in which individual misery is irrelevant? Halima is attempting to fight back by publishing this memoir at some risk to her and her family's safety.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Moving Memoir of Courage and Tragedy, September 23, 2008

By 

Fruit Loop (Down South) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur (Hardcover)

Dr. Halima Bashir's autobiography is a testament to the tragedy taking place in Darfur as well as a picture of her life. She begins with her happy childhood in her village - although the chapter of her "cutting time", when she underwent the gruesome ritual of Female Genital Mutiliaton, is wrenching, and progresses to her work as a medical doctor.

Targeted just for speaking out against the violence, and for serving her people, Dr. Bashir is kidnapped and viciously tortured and raped, then released as the ultimate punishment since rape victims are shunned in her society. She could have suffered in silence, as so many women of her culture do, or at least kept her torment private to heal. No one would have blamed her. Instead she bravely speaks out about her ordeal in an attempt to both help her violated country, and to help other victims of sexual assault.

I'm delighted that she has found joy in her marriage and child, and has been granted asylum in England, but as of publication, the fate of her other family members is unknown. I will not close my eyes at night without a prayer for her relatives and the people of Darfur, which also raises the question: WHERE IS THE WORLD??? Why is my USA, as well as the other countries who cried "never again!" after the Holocaust of the last century, so strangely silent? Dr. Bashir chose to become a voice for her oppressed people. The remainder of humanity has a moral obligation to join theirs to hers.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wake up call, September 18, 2008

By 

P. Edie (Playa del Rey, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur (Hardcover)

I welcome a wake-up call. It is so easy to unconsciously become cocooned in my protected life on the West Coast of the United States, where daily issues end up being hunting for the best price for gasoline for my car, battling the crowded freeways and looking for a parking place, discussing the what to fix for dinner that night. I try to stay abreast of the global situation by watching the nightly News Hour on our local PBS station, but it is easy to glaze over or become anesthetized by the onslaught of words from talking heads, figures and maps so that the news takes on a element of the unreal. So when something happens to hit my radar in a way that makes me say, "I didn't know that!" or that says to me, "Open your eyes!" I am grateful and I feel a little more connected to reality.

The book, "Tears of the Desert" was slipped inside my screendoor, an advance review copy I was sent to read. I looked at the cover, the title word "Desert", the subtitle word "Darfur" and thought to myself, "I am going to read something I know very little about." I had heard of the cries of genocide in the Sudan, seen pictures of streams of refugees, and read of the outcry of protestors during the summer Olympics in China, but I didn't understand the conflict and it felt very impersonal to me.

However, when I began to read the book I entered a new world and culture, the life of Halima Bashir in a Zaghawa tribal village in South Darfur. The first part of the book described the tribal life, the traditions and practices as seen through the eyes of a child. Her descriptions of her family members brought the characters to life and her portrayals were so personal that when events involved them later in the book, I felt a personal sorrow and outrage. Because of her father's dreams and encouragement, Halima was able to gain an education and go on to the University to study medicine, rather than marry and settle down to have children like most of the girls in her tribe. The first glimpses the conflict between the Arabs and Africans were presented in the chapters covering the school years when Halima leaves her village to attend a school for girls in the city. Here she finds herself in a mixed population of city Arab girls and rural African girls. The incidents that occur here are but a omen of what is to come in the remainder of the book.

[...]

After listening to it, I could hear the lyrical cadence of her speech as I read the rest of the memoir. I choose not to go into the remainder of the story in my review. To fully appreciate it, the reader has to be guided gently through the passage of time, page by page. Be aware that it is not an easy read. Some passages of the cultural rituals or the atrocities inflicted by militants affected my "protected sensibilities." But I considered it a small price to pay for having my awareness heightened to the reality of the situation affecting so many innocent victims in the Sudan.

I gave the book a 5 rating, the highest possible, not for the writing craft, which is not as polished as some, but for the content. The writing style is simple and direct...which makes the story all the more haunting. Halima's courage, strength and will to survive amidst overwhelming odds is gripping. To realize that so many people are having an experience of life under the most horrific circumstances is important. Hers is a story that needs to told and needs to be heard. Brava to Halima Bashir for speaking out. Bravo to Damien Lewis for participating in the telling. And bravo to Random House for publishing it. For me, now behind the headlines, numbers and statistics, there are faces.