Sudan Tell A Friend About Us:

By Reem El Fatih

I am a northern Sudanese woman. A black woman but not as black or beautiful as my sisters in the South. I am not proud of what my country is doing to itself. I have sisters in the West too. They are lovely, kind, gentle and resilient women. They too are oppressed. But don’t be fooled by my status as a Northerner. I am not part of a protected, esteemed elite. My country oppresses me too. It throws my father in jail and takes our home. It threatens to take my brother by force so that he may fight and die in a meaningless war. It ignores my mother’s tears.

Today my convoluted past is a prominent stain in my memory. I remember the day my father was taken from us to be beaten for his beliefs. I remember my mother running to everyone we knew to seek help—or any string of hope that might bring her husband back. I remember friends and neighbors who took us in, thumbing their noses at the authorities, feeding and clothing us despite the fear of being associated with the family of a political prisoner. I remember their courage. And the compassion of classmates and teachers who looked upon me with sympathy. I remember the skies over Khartoum, smattered with stars, the cool night breeze, the incessant singing of mosquitoes at night. I remember poverty, stray goats, street children, minarets, sand and yellow-brick homes, the sun burning through the rooftops. I remember the desert-thirst in my mouth and the thirst in my soul for retribution. I harbored an intense rage towards those men who tortured my father, ripped him from our home. Where they the same men who beat and brutalized women in the South? Where they the same rapists and thugs who were plundering Darfur? Why were we told to ignore them? Why was I always told that they didn’t exist? That Darfur was lie and the South was the enemy?

When my father came home he had aged by about twenty years. They had beaten and maimed him--silenced his beautiful spirit. My mind opened to a new reality and I began to find comfort in feminist ideals. I began to see the war in the South as a war against women. And Darfur as a catastrophe for every woman walking the earth. For women to be attacked, brutalized and raped…for women to bear the children of their oppressors-- that is the ultimate disgrace and human scandal.

I began to realize that my womanhood is a precursor to my being human. In my mind is the ability to wage peace, in my heart is the ability to cherish and nurture, and in my body is the ability to bear life – to grow, feed, and sustain it. How dare any man attack me when I am the life-force of his universe? How dare he violate my sister or usurp her rights when through her he seeks nurture, order, love, respite and the furthering of his progeny? When he strikes my sister, does he not know that he offends and disgraces the woman that bore him?

I am from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, where somehow people are convinced that they are fortunate, that they are entitled to the sense of false-pride that is instilled in them from childhood. I am exhausted by their sense of racial superiority. I am exhausted by their negligence of their brothers and sisters in Darfur and Southern Sudan and by their conviction that they are not responsible for what happens in their country. I am a Muslim, I am a woman and I am Sudanese and no one can take that away from me. But I am dishonored by the crimes that happen in my name and in the name of my beautiful religion and identity which they have tarnished and dragged through dirt.

I was enraged that I could do little to help my people. My family was silenced, forced to lay-low in fear and trepidation. My brother was forcibly made to enlist in the army. Any day now they would come for him. It was clear that the time had come to leave Sudan. Ours was a small, low-impact exodus which no one will remember. It will not leave a mark in history and within a few years we would be forgotten. My family escaped to Cairo and from there we fled to the United States. I am fortunate that we are all alive and together but I miss my home, my friends, the familiar surroundings, the place that I love and was always told to be proud of. After we abandoned our home, thugs invaded it and claimed it as their own. They took everything from us – our identity and sense of dignity.

I found a community of concerned Sudanese women in the United States who call themselves the Sudan-Reach Women’s Foundation. They are a glimmer of hope in an otherwise barren landscape of indifference and apathy. Out of the very few Sudanese organizations working for change, this one was founded on genuine principles, promoting education, pride in womanhood, self sufficiency, and restoring dignity to women who have long been ignored by both their male and female counterparts. Sudanreach is an organization that aims to harness the potential energy of women and turn it into something tangible, workable, and kinetic. Through them I have found a small but crucial part of what I have been missing – women who realize that we have failed our sisters and that enough is enough. Women who wage peace, take action, and through their courage, outshine every Sudanese who hasn’t bothered or cared for so many years while their sisters were being raped and tortured.

In Sudan, it doesn’t matter if you are a Northerner, a Southerner or Westerner. We are all oppressed by the same political and ideological machine that wages war on women and children, kidnaps and tortures our fathers, and brainwashes our friends. We live in the same climate of fear although in different degrees. In no way did I suffer as much as my Darfurian sister. Nor do I posses her strength and resilience. For her I am prepared to do anything but I am so small in the face of such massive brutality.

I write today to urge you to speak out for her, for me, for our sisters in the South who, although the war there has ended, still continue to live in dire poverty. And for every woman in the world who suffers as a result of conditions that they neither caused or contributed to. The Sudanese people, those who live in the capital, are educated and wealthy, have long been ignoring these problems. But their mute voices can in no way mask or alter the brutal truth…that they are all guilty if they allow these crimes to continue. I am baffled and vexed by their silence.

Reem El Fatih is a student at Marymount university, a Northern Sudanese refugee, and an aspiring women’s rights activist.

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