If Homeland Can Betray, the Desert Too Is Certain To: A Chronicle of Death, Silence, and Survival in the Sahara

Refugees in Libya
May 24
10 min read

To write for the sake of writing is a disease I detest, but each day I look over my shoulders, I see something so damning that I can’t hold back my breath. But the world I live in has its own lens through which it chooses to see, and most of these lenses do not see the human suffering to which I bleed.

In the middle of my chaotic life, I wake up in the morning and reach out for my phone only to read captions attached to a horrible image, habitual but this rings differently. In it reads the death of 12 people, Sudanese they are, dead of thirst and the scorching heat of the desert between Libya and Sudan. For me, my feelings and consciousness know what killed them: betrayal! The betrayal of silence, the betrayal of indifference, the betrayal of exploitation, and the betrayal of recognition. In the same caption, it says more than a dozen of them were barely found alive.

Here, my imagination, in its powerful combination of experiences lived and knowledge of humane self, I start to imagine.

Who were these people? What were their lives like in Sudan? Why did they flee? Why the desert? How did the desert betray them? Why did they think Libya was a land of salvation? Within this haunting process, I put it forth within me. I tell myself I know this place, I know the desert. I have seen skulls and skeletons half-buried by sandstorms while passing by in December 2018.

I tell myself I know these people too, but to know them, I must evoke an honest imagination. And so I begin: they were born in Darfur. The oldest of them, around 60, was born into chaos, chaos when the so-called independence had just been announced, but he had never known a thing as such. All his life had been in suspension and fragile resistance. In it, he could build a family, a wife and 9 children. These children, as in all living beings, reproduce, and he has grandchildren. They too are born into displacement and terror from the Janjaweed.

They learn to navigate between a government without principles to which they can trust, a government so bent by the subjugating West and Gulf countries, and a social fabric that breathes in violence and blood. At the most deadly era, Sudan in its entirety is engulfed and suffocated into death. He, in his old age, can no longer keep up, exile is his only hope. They leave what could no longer accommodate them, although it is what they have known their entire lives and were forced to love it and call it “home.”

The neighbouring countries, though under similar grip, could offer some semblance of peace. He, his children, and their children put their last resources together and decide to flee to Libya. Libya, by name, is closer than any other country in their mind, but in reality, it stands thousands of stadia away. To reach her arms, you must drive through an arid desert so indifferent to human life. You put your trust in a four-wheel assembled iron. Your eldest child turns on the engine, and to the desert, you vanish, a desert with no known consistent human traces to follow.

The first day goes by, and you are still driving with no end in sight. You still have some food and water. It goes on, the second, third, and fourth day but you are still in the middle of nowhere. Then, on the fifth day of driving, the engine goes off. It goes, and you only hope that it needs to cool down because you can’t feed it with the little water which is the only lifeline you have. You wait for a few hours, it cools down but the engine wouldn’t start.

Amongst your children are mechanics. They disassemble the engine and study it, but to their surprise, the engine is not going to answer any call, not to the dying, not to the young, not to the old, not to the exiled, not to the fragile hope of arriving in Libya. It needs a piece that can only be found in the biggest of cities.

Around you is an enormous dimension of the desert to which your human eyes can see, but no trace of other travelers is found, no tree to provide shade, no well or oasis from which you can fetch water. You have a telephone, but there is no signal from which you can use to make communication to the outside world.

The heat arrives unannounced, slowly, betraying, and deadly. The sandstorm has an hour so predetermined by its own law that you cannot imagine when it will arrive, and if it does, what you would do. That day goes down and night falls. Contrary to the day and its heat, a chilling wind blows, cold and stinging. You go under a piece of mat or blanket already soaked with sand dunes and storms.

None of you can willingly sleep the night over, but nature is so imposing that it takes you by surprise, and to sleep you must be. The second day of this wretchedness continues. You and your children continue to manipulate the engine, begging it to recognise your status in life, but it does not speak. It too has a hand in the betrayal you are soon to suffer.

Midday arrives, and the heat continues its unforgiving nature. Your wife, too old and diagnosed with diabetes, cannot stand such climate. You watch her as life deserts her at a pace no eye should witness. Her feet start to swell; they produce water in a region where water has no source. They open up and become open wounds, bleeding all types of pain. Water too, which she requires to moderate her anguish, is soon finishing.

All of you gather around her but can’t do anything. Her voice is gone. Her breath is hard. Her throat dries up. Her stomach starts to swell. She vomits something strange, yellow, thick liquid. It doesn’t stop there. Soon it turns to blood. She vomits blood for several consecutive minutes, still mute and can’t speak. No medication at your possession. You watch her helplessly. Your grandchildren, youthful yet old enough to have known suffering, watch. By sunset, she is all quiet, no movement, no breath, no shivering. Legs stiff, arms summons its dryness. You reach to her chest, no heartbeat in sentiment. You tap her cheeks and call her by name. You summon her. You command her to stay close and endure a little longer. You recall all the hardships she’s overcome alongside you and ask her not to abandon you. But no response comes. Life has finally deserted her. She is dead.

Dead she is, but how can you weep? How can you mourn? Where can you summon any strength for mourning, mourning once visible, requires not only spiritual strength but physical. Your grandchildren are confused but exhausted to the core. They don’t understand that their beloved grandmother has been claimed by a range of betrayals.

All of you now are forced to live next to the dead. The night is haunting as were the last days. Past midnight, one of your sons is slowly giving in, life is leaving him. A few hours ago, he was still able to speak, but not anymore. He asks for water, but there is none to offer. He says he is cold. You cover him with the thickest blanket you possess. It doesn’t help. He is still cold, and from one moment to another, he is burning. He is sweating while all of you freeze. He calls you closer, and to his mouth you lean your ear. He says: Dad, I don’t want to die. My children, my wife, their future, I don’t want to die. He repeats these sentences, and you try to interrupt him, telling him to still hope, to still hold onto life, and you try to convince him that he won’t die. But before you can finish, he is no more, only his mortal body wet from sweat but lifeless.

You scream aloud in despair and misfortune, but it doesn’t help. Your spirit is divided into three, one to weep your beloved wife, the other your son, and the other your soul, which too is drying. But something tells you, so terrible it is, that there are still your other children and your grandchildren who may not survive the next hour.

The third day comes, and you wrap up the dead and watch over them as the scorching winds chew through them. The day goes on violently. Your grandchild, who is only 7, is also attacked by this ordeal. He cries, he does so in the most silent manner that only his mother understands it. She calms him, but he can’t hold up. He soon stops breathing in her arms and with it his death.

Behind you, another who is a little over 13 years is also moving his entire body as if being strangled. And within the shortest of time, he dies too. None of you have any strength left to at least lift the dead children and join them to their grandmother and father. Their dead bodies stay with you in the vehicle, which is also being engulfed by the sandstorm.

The fourth day arrives and is certain to take with it one or several of you. During the night, some of your children and their wives had covered themselves with blankets under the sandstorms. It is shining and hot, and you wonder why they cannot crawl to the vehicle which provides a bit of shade. You call them, but none of them answers.

You are deceived or tempted to believe that they are sleeping and do not want to wake up, for there is no reason to. You ignore them for a few hours, but the blankets under which they lay are so still that it sends you into suspicion. You signal one of your children to go crawl and check on them. He obeys and reaches them, but none of them gives any signal. He uncovers the blankets. Frozen they are and dead, three more have left you. Dead silently in the embrace of a blanket.

The remaining of you only survive now by urinating and drinking it. You become certain that the next hour comes only to take one of you. You lose track of time, of life, of self, of trust, of homeland, of anything good you have ever known. The days go on to reach 11 days, and with it, 11 of you have died.

You are convinced that your soul is soon to depart or at least you wish. Because you have seen so much to see more, but life, so stubborn, does not leave you. By midday, you hear a sound of a moving creature, strange to your senses. A part of it sounds like a moving machine, the other a mourning spirit that tries to subdue you.

Is this hallucination? You wonder. You can’t say anything, but your eyes can cast their gaze beyond what life and nature permit. Those next to you, your remaining children, your remaining grandchildren, and their mothers, too, start to turn their heads left and right and their gazes astray, trying to comprehend what beast of soul-taking is coming. It comes closer, to believe that it is no longer a hallucination. The sound proves certain to be a vehicle. You summon whatever life is left in you and stand up.

You signal the able ones amongst you to also stand, wave, signal, shout, or do whatever so the passerby may find you, so the passerby may save you, so the passerby even if their fresh urine can cool down your dry throats. Upon your shouting and waving, the vehicle is driving towards you in suspicion. As for your end, you cannot doubt, you cannot hide, you cannot fear the unknown. You have been dead for days, perhaps since birth. This Sahara has been rumoured to be armed with militias, indifferent to mercy. You wonder if they too are coming not as saviours but extinguishers of life.

They arrive to you and greet you in the most humble of tongues: Peace be upon you Haj! This stranger, he too, outraged and confused, asks questions you cannot answer. All you want, and the still surviving of you, is water. He wants to understand what happened. He engages with you in questions, and many of you answer from random directions.

Strange that the souls that had lost their voices could now speak, but evident to nature, life only speaks to life and not the dead. And so with the arrival of this stranger is a sign of life, an atom, so little yet so powerful and relieving. He swears on his life, on his honour, on his dignity, on anything noble to his soul, that he won’t leave you. He will give you water. He will rescue you. He is a Muslim. A Muslim does not leave his companion in Islam, so he assures you.

Soon he pulls out his satellite phone and calls. You do not know who is at the end of the call, but soon an ambulance arrives. They bring with them enough water, moving vehicles that will transport you to a place where life is certain to perhaps begin. Your dead too are lifted, and to Kufra you are driven.

Some of you are taken to the hospital, while others are taken to follow border procedures. Here, you are partially treated humanely. They give you medicines but not shelter. You go homeless and struggle to make ends meet. You are told that the entity who can provide you with any humanitarian support is in Tripoli, and that is UNHCR. Tripoli lies another thousand kilometres away.

To go there, you must possess an enormous amount of money to pay the smugglers because you cannot simply board a public transport. You are told that you are an illegal migrant. You wonder and try to understand how did you become illegal? Even in your wretched homeland, no one has ever called you “illegal,” although they killed many among you. Here in the country you paid for not only by exhaustion but with the loss of your wife, your sons, your grandchildren, and the neighbours who had joined you along in search of safety.

Here, some seen and unseen forces wield weapons so unkind, weapons of criminalisation of movement, weapons of racism, weapons of enslavement, weapons of homelessness, most despicable of all: weapons of inhumanity. As for your dead, you do not know to which part of this new country they have been taken, where they are to be buried, and what farewell you are to make them. Lost and trapped, you suffer from a disease so unknown, but upon reasoning and reconstruction of events, you know what it is but cannot name it. Perhaps: Betrayal? End!