Tears of the Desert (35 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to my wonderfully supportive literary agent, Felicity Bryan, and all the staff at her agency. Special thanks to my British publisher, Judith Longman, and all the team at Hodder: From the very start you believed my story had to be told. Special thanks to my German publishers, Carolin Graehl and Hans-Peter Ubleis, and all at Droemer Knaur, for your commitment and boundless enthusiasm. Thanks also to my Italian publisher, Enrico Racca of Sperling & Kupfer; my Canadian publisher, Jennifer Lambert of HarperCollins; and my American editor, Melody Guy of Ballantine Books. Special thanks also to Andrew Nurnberg of Andrew Nurnberg Associates, George Lucas of Inkwell, and Vanessa Matthews of Anne McDermid & Associates. Very special thanks to the following, for reading and commenting on early drafts of this book: Alan and Fran Trafford, Adrian Acres, Eva Lewis and Christine Major. Your words and thoughts were much appreciated. Special thanks to Louise Roland-Gosselin, and all at Waging Peace, for your groundbreaking work in Darfur, and for the use of the children’s pictures. Special thanks to Baroness Caroline Cox, for your tireless work supporting me in my fight to be recognised as a bona fide refugee. Special thanks to Albert Harwood and all at my lawyers, White Ryland and Co., and to my barrister, Graham Denholm, for fighting for my right to be recognized as a bona fide refugee. And very special thanks to my husband, for standing by me in sickness and in health, forever and a day. Finally, very special thanks to David Brown and James Smith, and all at the Aegis Trust, for your tireless work campaigning on behalf of the victims of genocide, regardless of race, color, or creed. Without your good offices, this book would not have come to pass.

A note from Halima Bashir and Damien Lewis: The Aegis Trust is a charity that works to prevent genocide worldwide. Based at the UK’s Holocaust Center, Aegis is responsible for the Kigali Memorial Center, in Rwanda, which plays a vital educational and commemorative role regarding the 1994 genocide. Aegis is at the forefront of the campaign to end the Darfur crisis, organizing the global “Day for Darfur” demonstrations, and working to end the removal of Darfuri survivors—such as Halima—from the UK to Sudan. Aegis is responsible for “Fund for Darfur,” an initiative providing support to Darfuri survivors of rape, torture and mass atrocities, and to assist destitute survivors.

For more information: visit
www.fund4darfur.org
and
www.aegistrust.org

A donation from the money earned by the authors from this book will be made to the Aegis Trust.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

H
ALIMA
B
ASHIR
lives with her husband and two sons in England, where she continues to speak out about the violence in Sudan.

D
AMIEN
L
EWIS
has spent the last twenty years reporting on war in Africa, with a particular focus and expertise in Sudan. His reporting from Darfur won the BBC One World Award. He is the internationally bestselling co-author of
Slave,
winner of the Index on Censorship Book Award.

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Copyright © 2008 by Halima Bashir and Damien Lewis

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

O
NE
W
ORLD
is a registered trademark and the One World colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Bashir, Halima.
Tears of the desert : a memoir of survival in Darfur / Halima Bashir, with Damien Lewis.
p. cm.
1. Sudan—History—Darfur Conflict, 2003– 2. Darfur (Sudan)—Ethnic relations. 3. Darfur (Sudan)—History. 4. Genocide—Sudan—Darfur. I. Lewis, Damien. II. Title.
DT159.6.D27B37 2008
962.404’3—dc22
[B]                                                               2008020588

www.oneworldbooks.net

eISBN: 978-0-345-50990-1

v3.0