When The Stars Fall To Earth. Rebecca BSL Tinsley

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СКАЧАТЬ herself for the inevitable kick. When it came, several villagers screamed and two people fainted. Zara heard the officer kick the woman once more, and finally, Sheikh Muhammad’s youngest wife lay still, her agony at an end.

      The officer looked around at the stunned crowd. “Please tell your next sheikh that we’ll be delighted to address his concerns if he graces us with his presence at our headquarters.” He climbed in beside the driver and they pulled away, in no particular hurry.

      After a moment, Zara found her voice. “Where’s Father?” she asked her mother, her eyes wide with fear.

      Her mother held her close, unable to answer. Over the girl’s shoulder she said quietly to her eldest son, Abdelatif, “They need to hear from you.” She nodded toward the crowd. “Tell them what they must do.”

      The eighteen-year-old understood his duty, and without missing a beat he headed for the group standing at the gate of their compound. Zara heard him graciously accepting expressions of sympathy from those who could find a voice. He listened as villagers poured out their fears and anger, and then he asked everyone to help him dig graves and perform the burial ceremony immediately.

      “Your brother’s a good boy,” her mother murmured, holding onto Zara.

      But where’s my father? Zara screamed silently.

      * * *

      The village’s new sheikh returned the following morning. He limped when he dismounted from his donkey, but soon sank to the ground. Abdelatif helped him to his hut while Zara, her hands trembling, brought him several mugs of water. When her mother had washed his face, he began to talk, through bleeding, cracked lips.

      “I kept blacking out, but the one thing they kept saying to Father was that he was trying to overthrow the government of Sudan. They said they knew he was plotting against the regime.”

      Sitting beside Abdelatif, too petrified to take a deep breath, too stunned to move, Zara listened to her father’s halting story in silence.

      Later, as she and her half-sisters lay in the hut that had belonged to Cloudy’s mother, Zara was bombarded by waves of grief and anger. For hours, sleep eluded her, as she recalled the sight of her grandfather’s broken body and that of his wife at the officer’s feet. It was as if she were being jabbed by a sharp knife again and again; the shock got no better with familiarity.

      Then Zara recalled the way that Sheikh Uthman had twisted her grandfather’s words, deliberately making him sound as if he were plotting against the regime in Khartoum. But their visitor was a Fur, like them, and the idea that he would betray his own people to the security was unthinkable. Still, she wondered, was she the only one who had been present who was now reflecting on Uthman’s words? She would choose the right moment to ask her father, she decided.

      The next day she felt ashamed for her uncharitable thoughts, when news reached the village that Uthman and his family had their own problems. Uthman’s brother in El Geneina was gravely ill, at death’s door, and the wedding of the sheikh’s gloomy grandson, Rashid, had been cancelled at the last minute. Apparently Uthman’s whole family had left their village at great speed, keen to reach El Geneina as fast as possible.

      The following day a neighbor told Abdelatif he had seen their stolen goats being sold by a trader in a livestock market twenty miles away. The trader freely admitted he had bought the animals from a friend in the Janjaweed. Then the rumors about Uthman’s connections to the district authorities started, tentatively at first, and then gathering force, until another trader told Abdelatif that the Janjaweed were boasting that a sheikh had tipped them off. Zara knew better than to pester her father and brother with questions. Uppermost on their minds was when the Janjaweed would return.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      The Arab market town near Sheikh Adam’s village, Western Darfur, November 2004

      It was eleven o’clock, and Ahmed was packing up the unsold tomatoes he had carried from his village to the market, hoping someone would buy them. His mother would be unhappy when he returned with the vegetables, but she would not be surprised. There were no longer enough customers around their district to take all their produce. Gradually the countryside was emptying as people left to stay with relatives in Chad. Those without family connections were reluctantly coming to the conclusion that if the worst happened, they must head for the big refugee camp in El Geneina.

      Ahmed’s path home, the same one he ran each morning at dawn, took him past Khalil’s store, and as usual they exchanged a few words. “What have you got there?” asked the shopkeeper, indicating the covered reed basket at Ahmed’s feet.

      When Ahmed bent over and pulled off the cloth protecting the produce, Khalil made appreciative noises. “The wife was just saying she needed some for tonight’s dinner,” he lied unconvincingly. “Here,” he said, stuffing some notes in Ahmed’s hand. “Give me the whole bunch.”

      Ahmed, just as unconvincingly, pretended he didn’t need Khalil’s charity, but the matter was soon settled. With feelings of mutual relief, the two friends parted, and Ahmed continued his journey.

      Ten minutes out of the town, though, he was surprised when two Sudanese army trucks rumbled past, heading toward his village. It was unusual to see the army on the road because the market town was largely inhabited by Arabs, whom they left alone for the most part. His pulse quickened as he wondered why they were heading for his village, populated entirely by people from the Fur tribe.

      Then suddenly the trucks veered off a hundred yards ahead, turning down a track. The only building along their route was a boarding school, frequented by the female offspring of the more affluent Fur families in the region. It was famous for its strictness and the fervor with which its students studied the Koran, but Ahmed knew no one who attended the school.

      Nevertheless, he was concerned. He cut across a field and joined the track taken by the trucks. Ten minutes later, he caught up with them. They had parked within the school compound, and when Ahmed reached the buildings, he found the trucks were empty.

      Alarmed, Ahmed kept to the shadows, hugging the walls of the main structure, and crept up to an open window, straining his ears. At first he heard girls whispering, accompanied by the thump of boots against cement. Ahmed realized he was listening to girls being herded along a corridor. He stooped, ran to the next window, and listened. It sounded as if the girls and their teachers were being assembled in one place. The teachers were encouraging the girls to keep calm and quiet, but Ahmed detected terror in their voices.

      He crouched by the window and slowly edged around the sill, looking inside. The girls, perhaps one hundred and fifty of them, were standing at one end of the hall, all dressed in bright blue uniforms and head scarves. Before them were a dozen or so women, most of whom wore glasses and looked like teachers. It seemed to Ahmed they were trying to form a protective barrier between the girls and the soldiers, who stood at the other end of the hall, their rifles trained on the students. Ahmed looked from one girl’s face to the next, his heart fluttering in his chest. Mostly they stared at the soldiers with wide, unblinking eyes, but several girls were crying quietly, arms around each other.

      Oh, no, he thought, seeing the excitement in the soldiers’ eyes. Just leave them alone and get back in your trucks and go away.

      Ahmed wasn’t close enough to hear what was said but one of the teachers appeared to be talking to the commanding officer, holding her hands out, imploring him, her head on one side. Without warning the uniformed man stepped forward and swung his truncheon at the woman with such force that she СКАЧАТЬ