ONCE UPON A TIME

MOST OF YOU WILL SEE HOW LONG THIS STORY IS AND BYPASS IT, OR SCROLL DOWN AND WRITE SOMETHING WITHOUT READING IT AT ALL...IT IS YOUR LOSS. BUT FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO TRULY DO READ IT, I LOVE YOU!

        Once upon a time...

I guess this is how I would begin if I was writing a fiction novel or a story for a child's book, and maybe I would end on "...and they lived happily ever after." Unfortunately reality is too cruel for happily ever after. The world we live in is cold and unforgiving. As you sit in your comfortable chair and read this story, a mass murder of children is carried out somewhere on earth.

        My name is Fatimah Suliman. I live in a small village located in a remote part of southern Sudan.

        I was raped when I was 10 years old. Thugs from the north came to my village and attacked all of us, raping all the women, stealing our food, killing most of our men, and taking our belongings. They said they were soldiers fighting for God. They said that this is their land and we are there unlawfully. Three of these thugs came into our hut where I, my mother, and two sisters were hiding. First, they raped my mother. They told us that if we didn't watch they would kill her after they rape her. So we watched. They tore off her clothes but she never cried or looked at us. She just froze with a black stare and not a word or a cry of pain. The three men took turns raping her for an hour. To us it seemed like an eternity. We sat there watching and praying that soon we would wake up from this nightmare. Neither one of us dared to close our eyes for fear of our mother being killed. When they finished raping her they stormed through our place eating the food my mother had prepared for us and drinking all of the boiled water. One of the thugs looked at me and asked how old I was. I said I was 10 and he smiled from ear to ear. Then he turned to his fellow thugs and said "the younger, the better". He ordered me to come closer to him. For the first time my mother cried out and cussed at the men. She screamed like a mad woman, standing in front of us trying to protect us from their hands. The thug who asked for my age got very angry and punched my mother in her stomach with all of his strength. He hit her repeatedly in the face with the back of his rifle until she fell to the floor soaked in blood. My sisters and I begged him to stop but he was deaf to our cries. He delivered one final blow to her head and all we heard was this "crack" sound. We saw blood pouring out of her head as she closed her eyes. This was the end of her misery. Now it was our turn. I was the first one to be raped. They made my sisters watch. After the three thugs raped me, six of their friends came in to joined them. I lost count after twenty. That night my sisters and I were their sex slaves. They did whatever they wanted and no one was there to stop them. I cried for my father and my older brother. I wondered where they were. Why had they abandoned us, why weren't they here to protect us, were they dead like my mother? When morning came these "soldiers of God" started burning all of the huts. Most of the people were dead, but some were still alive. I could hear their voices and the burning of their flesh. Our hut was the last to be burned. I though we were finished. My sisters and I were to be burned alive in our own home. They made us stand outside where I saw about 30 or 40 little children gathered together. One of the thugs ordered them to go inside our hut. After all of the children were in, the doors were tightly shut. Gasoline was poured all over our home and a torch thrown onto the roof. Instantly the entire hut lit up with wild fire. I heard them cry "mommy", "daddy", "papa", "mamma"...their cries were too loud, frantic, horrified, and desperate. The little children burned and burned, and burned...and then there was silence. I kept pinching my self. Something hot was running down my legs. It was blood but I felt no pain. I was numb. Numb in my heart, numb in my soul, just numb. I could no longer feel. The thugs took my sisters away in their cars and left me all alone. I ran after their trucks. I screamed for them to leave my sisters alone or kill me. One of the cars stopped. The window of the passenger sit rolled down and a man said to me, "We left you alive so that you can tell of this story to those who are to come. Tell of our power and our will to protect our land. Tell them what happens when they come to steal and live in a land that does not belong to them." I could not go back to that village. I was no longer a human.
       
        I ran away to a neighboring village where my aunt and uncle lived. I told them that thugs had killed my family but I never told them anything more. No matter how many times they asked, I kept to the same made up story. I told them I blacked out and saw noting. When I woke up everyone was dead. I saw nothing, I felt nothing, I heard nothing.
       
        Today I am 34 years old and HIV/AIDS positive. Miraculously I birthed no children by my rapists. I thank God for that....if there is a God. My disease has progressed beyond medicinal treatment and the doctors have done all they can. They tell me my death is near. What they don't know is that I am already dead. I died at age 10. I died with my mother, I died with my father, I died with my brother, I burned with the little children. My body is alive but my soul is deceased...and what's a living body with a dead soul? 

Author's Note

This is a story I have heard personally from women who have been through what Fatimah has been through. Sadly, this is not something that happens once. It happens every day, even right now as you read this. They want their voices to be heard, their stories to be read, they want the rest of the world to know about them. The conflict between northern and southern Sudan is ongoing. Educate yourself, even if you are not physically able to help them. This is something the world needs to know about. I ask you to spread the word, but most of all...PRAY!

Reviews

[Rae Elizabeth]

So sad... But so real.

[Haunzwürthe]

In fiction, you can write whatever you want to, however gory, shocking, unbelievable, or horrifying and it's ok, because it's not real. The moment though, when the truth in life is put in front of us, we don't want to look, because we don't want it to be real. Keep the bad things in fiction. After the first paragraph, I didn't want to read it but I had to for my own sake. To see what I didn't want to see, the truth.