22313. The War in the West
JéRômE tubiana
Our problem is not between farmers and herders. Lies, useless,
useless!
You’re blind, open your eyes, our problem is ethnic cleansing.Brejing is the largest Sudanese refugee camp in Chad, a tent city that
shelters almost 30,000 people from Darfur, most of whom are Masalit,
one of the main non-Arab groups in the region. Abdallah Idris, who is
singing this song, is one of them. Around him are several musicians
with makeshift instruments: a five-stringed lute with a metal plate for
a sound box, a blue jerry-can disguised as a drum, empty Pepsi bottles
painted in the colours of the Sudanese flag. The group calls itself Firkha
Sabha Darfur al-Hurri, the orchestra of the dawn of free Darfur. Abdallah
Idris sings both in his mother tongue and in Arabic. As he sings, men
shout war cries and women ululate: the crowd approves each verse of his
song. Shaded from the afternoon sun by a single tree, the circle around
him grows: men, women and children cross the bed of white sand of the
wadi, the dry riverbed that separates us from the tents in Brejing. This
is the song they hear:
If you wake up and Darfur has been destroyed, it’s too late.
We are Darfurian army, inshallah, inshallah, Darfur army.
Darfur liberated, even the flies in the sky are free.
The shebab have become lions, you can’t, no you can’t!
If they see you [Omar al-Bashir], they will cut your throat
without saying bismillahi [in the name of God], you can’t,
no you can’t!
The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors
(www.riftvalley.net).