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A Cry for Respect in a Sudan Camp
Halima Hussein Ali, right, has urged her son Abdullah Mussa Issa, front, not to join a rebel fighter group. Issa, 16, was among the youths who goaded others in the camp to action.
(Emily Wax - Twp)
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"I stayed out all night," he said. "I just joined the crowd."
During the chaos, someone stole his bicycle. The next morning he walked into his house -- dirty, haggard and missing the family's main mode of transportation. His mother was furious at first and punished him by making him do extra chores. But later she calmed down, put her hand gently on his shoulder and said she felt sympathy as well as shame for what he had done.
"It was a bad time," recalled Ali, 37, a tall, gaunt woman with long, black hair tied underneath a colorful shawl. "We were all feeling so sad. I tried to talk to him about the future and how doing these things would disturb his dreams."
A few days later, Issa told his mother he had been thinking of joining the Sudanese Liberation Army. The rebel group had placed recruiters near the camp who could smuggle fighters into rebel-controlled zones.
"I'm sick of this war. Let me defend us," he explained to her as they sat recently in the shade of a youth leader's hut. "I can be respected by the gun."
Ali started screaming.
"This war broke us and now, dear God, they are taking my boy. Please God, don't take my boy." Soon other women appeared and comforted Ali. Issa looked uncomfortable and rested his head on his chin. Shaken by her reaction, he said, he had a dream that he should stay in Kalma.
"In the dream my father asked me, 'You are still alive. What are you doing with your life? Why are you just sitting here? Why aren't you in school?,' " Issa said.
He covered his eyes and started to weep.
"Just give it some more time, for your father's honor," his mother pleaded.
"Okay," Issa said. "I will try."
A Recurring Nightmare
The night before the hostages were taken, Nazira, a pencil-thin girl, had a nightmare. She was back in her family's compound of cone-shaped huts, with her goat napping next to her metal cot.
