"People forcing others off their land? This is the biggest sin in our culture," he said. "We have seen conflict, but this? Never. My family has lived on this land for 17 generations. I will never leave it."
One afternoon, some government officials arrived from Nyala. "Halas," they said. Enough. There was peace now; the refugees should return home.
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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Halima couldn't wait.
"I was so hungry for milk," she recalled. "I loved the cows. That's what I missed."
For the return trip, Halima took off her torn brown dress and put on her frilly pink dress, the one she had grabbed and stuffed in a sack when Ta'asha was attacked. She said she was hoping to see her friends, her teacher, her school.
A girl's life in many African villages is a variety of chores: making tea, hauling firewood, fetching water, scrubbing clothes. School is an escape, a place where games are played, songs are taught, words jump magically from the page and into thoughts.
"The first time I wrote words, I was surprised," she said.
Halima's father had been an illiterate farmer, but he wanted her to learn to read and write. She had been in school for one month when the attack came. Now she was eager to resume her studies.
But no one was there. The school had burned to the ground, the teacher had left for Nyala. There was no milk either; the 12 cattle Mohamed's family owned were gone. Halima, her mother recounted, sank down in her ruined hut and wept.
April 20, 2004
Ta'asha to Kabesha
Halima was in a millet field, working beside her great-aunt, when she heard the gunfire. It was half a year later, the family's hut had been rebuilt, and everyone was busy planting new crops.
She looked up and saw smoke rising from her hut. The straw was on fire, and there was no time to salvage the plastic roof sheeting the family had been given by UNICEF. Halima's mother grabbed the pink dress, the cooking pots and two sacks of newly gathered millet.
There was no time for Halima to retrieve her writing pad and pencil, also from UNICEF. She usually carried them in a small satchel, hanging from her neck, but she had taken it off to work in the fields. She ran to the same spot where she had hidden during the first attack.
"It was strange, because that day I was very sad about my father," she said later. "Then the men on camels with guns came."
