"We had heard this was happening in other places," recalled Mohamed, his round face somber beneath a gray turban. "We grabbed some blankets, water jugs and cooking pots and ran into the bush."
By 6 p.m., 22 villages in the area were aflame. The family hid behind thorns and high grass, hunkered in the hot sand.
Displaced children mill about in the Nera camp. The violence in Darfur has driven families away from their farmlands and children away from their schools.
(Jahi Chikwediu - The Washington Post)
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_____Crisis in Sudan_____
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Q&A: Darfur A brief explanation of the issues and current humanitarian situation in Western Sudan.
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Photos: Sudan's Rebels
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New Pilgrims, Familiar Dreams (The Washington Post, Nov 25, 2004)
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Violence Fractures Cease-Fire In Sudan (The Washington Post, Nov 24, 2004)
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Violence in Darfur Inspires Surge In Student Activism (The Washington Post, Nov 23, 2004)
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Rebel Attacks Raise Tensions in Darfur (The Washington Post, Nov 21, 2004)
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In Sudan, a Sense of Abandonment (The Washington Post, Nov 16, 2004)
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"We had to be silent," Mohamed recalled. "I just kept praying for the children not to cry. The most important thing was to save my family. The rest we could grow again."
When the marauders withdrew, the men ventured back. Halima, Mohamed's young cousin, tugged on his long white robe. She wanted to go, too. Her father was missing, and her mother was crying hysterically.
Mohamed gently held her back, and later he was grateful for his decision. The sight awaiting him was worse than he had imagined.
All five family huts were burned, and 30 men were dead. Among them, Mohamed found the bodies of his brother and his uncle Hamis -- Halima's father.
Hamis was 40 and the father of seven. His body was slumped under the ruins of his burned mud and straw hut. He had two bullet wounds, one in the chest and one in the head. In an abandoned hut nearby, five girls huddled motionless, smeared with dirt and blood. They had been raped by the attackers, Mohamed said.
"I was feeling so angry," he said. "I was praying to God for the first time in my life that I too could have a weapon. But I had nothing."
That day, in the smoldering village, Mohamed buried two men with whom he had grown up, shared wedding ceremonies and farmed in the thorn fields nearly every day of his adult life. There was no time to wrap the bodies in white sheets and bury them in wood coffins, as Islamic tradition requires.
Instead, the survivors gathered around two dirt mounds and recited the Islamic prayer for the dead: "God bless them. Take their souls to paradise. Keep them among good people."
With her little brother strapped to her back, Halima left Ta'asha and walked for three hours in the darkness until the family reached Bashom, a market village near the regional capital, Nyala.
Sept. 29, 2003
Bashom to Ta'asha
For the next 20 days, they camped under a cluster of trees. The village elder in Bashom, a blind man named Abakar Yusuf who estimated his age at 119, instructed the villagers to collect grains and donate them to the newcomers.
"We are all from the same tribe, the Dago, and many of us are even relatives," Yusuf said in a raspy voice. He held court from his sagging bed, his frail and useless legs poking out like toothpicks from beneath his robe. Not much shocked him anymore, he said, but he never could have imagined what was taking place in Darfur.
