ChAD

"(…) Over a few months, in Chad, along the Sudanese border, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR) urgently set up eleven camps to meet the exodus of 300,000 persons. A majority of women and children crossed the border to flee the Janjaweed militia supported by Khartoum’s troops. The Tulum camp, in the Iriba region, is in the north, where the Sahel turns into desert.

(…) Halimé belongs to the Fur ethnic group (Dar-fur, 'the house of the Furs'). One day, fighters sprang from the sky and from trucks, either governmental troops or the Janjaweed Arab militia – or perhaps both. She doesn’t know. They bombarded, pillaged and set fire to her village. They killed men and stole the livestock. Halimé had two sons. In the midst of the panic, she saw her elder son flee with his grandmother. To this day she doesn’t know what became of them or whether they survived. They slit the throat of the younger one, who she was holding in her arms, before carrying her off along with six other girls from the village."

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard