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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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Then she felt an explosion. In the dream, she hid behind some sacks of grain, then ran to a friend's hut. Her mother found her there and they both started running.
"In my nightmare, I was being chased down and hurt," she said. "There was shooting everywhere. I felt like someone was stabbing my skin with sticks."
As Nazira recounted the dream, her mother said she wished she could help her daughter but did not know how.
"Her nightmares are like the things that actually happened to us," said Halima Ismail Adam, 35, who was nursing her youngest child. "I tell her we are safe here, but she doesn't trust. We lost our trust."
Since the war began three years ago, the family has moved three times, always fleeing attacks. During those attacks, Nazira's father and 17-year-old sister were killed.
She now spends most days helping her mother cook, clean and collect firewood. But she has been depressed, often unable to sleep at night and exhausted during the day.
"I really hate it here," she said. "There is no privacy, and I don't understand why we can't be in our village again."
The night the hostages were taken, her nightmares grew worse. She dreamed she was traveling on a long road that led out of Sudan.
"My family was all there, and I felt okay. But then we were bombed and my mother's face was filled with blood and scratches. And my baby brother was dead and his body was crushed. My lips were torn off and I couldn't speak. That really frightened me."
The next day, Nazira woke up late and was totally withdrawn. She went to collect water but then just sat down at the borehole and started crying, her mother said.
Over the next few weeks, she sometimes screamed for help in the middle of the night, wet her bed and then hid in bushes outside. Her mother grew so concerned that she started taking Nazira to clinics for help.
At one center, social workers and artists from across the country had formed a counseling group. Nagla Zakaria, a painter from Darfur, came to Kalma to help children draw pictures as a form of therapy. Nazira's first drawings were of fighter jets and burning villages; after a while, she began drawing African Union troops and people waiting for food.
