Amid the horrors of Darfur, acts of courage and selflessness.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF


GOZ BEIDA, Chad

So I’m bunking with George Clooney in a little room in a guest house here in eastern Chad, near Darfur in Sudan. We each have a mattress on the floor, the“shower”is a rubber hose that doesn’t actually produce any water, and George’s side of the room has a big splotch of something that sure looks like blood.

He’s using me to learn more about Darfur, and I’m using him to ease you into a column about genocide. Manipulation all around - and, luckily, neither of us snores. (But stay tuned to this series for salacious gossip if he talks in his sleep.)

The slaughter in Darfur has continued for six years largely because world leaders have been complacent and preoccupied. In the coming weeks, the International Criminal Court is expected to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for orchestrating the killings - and that will give the world a new opportunity to end the slaughter.

But to seize that opportunity, world leaders will have to summon some of the same moral courage that Darfuris show all the time.

Take Suad Ahmed, who is in the pantheon of my personal heroes. I introduced her to George in her little thatch hut. Suad, 27, fled from Darfur to a refugee camp in Chad five years ago with her husband and beloved younger sister, Halima, who is now 12 - if she is still alive.

Then Sudan dispatched its janjaweed militias into Chad to slaughter members of black African tribes - applying to eastern Chad the same genocidal policies that had already gutted Darfur.

Shortly before I met Suad two years ago, she was out gathering firewood with Halima. A group of janjaweed fired into the air and yelled at them to stop.

Suad, who was married with two children and another on the way, ordered Halima to run back to camp. Then Suad made a decoy of herself and ran loudly in the opposite direction, making sure that the janjaweed saw her. That night, after the janjaweed had left, the men from the camp found Suad semiconscious in the bush, brutally beaten and raped.

Suad refused medical treatment, for fear that word would get out that she had been raped, and she didn’t even tell her husband, instead saying that she had been robbed and beaten. Yet she revealed the full story to me and allowed me to use her name.

I questioned her to make absolutely sure she understood the dangers of publicity - from stigma and revenge - and asked her why she was willing to assume the risks. She replied simply,“This is the only way I have to fight genocide.”

Ever since, in a world that has proved so craven in the face of Sudan’s genocide, Suad’s courage has haunted me. Thus on this trip I tracked her down and introduced her to George and to Ann Curry of NBC News, who for years has borne powerful witness to the madness of Darfur.

Alas, Suad’s latest news isn’t good. Her back, injured in the beating, still pains her. She doesn’t dare go outside the camp to get firewood, so she must buy wood, which leaves the family poor and short of food. Her baby, Abdel Malik, whom she was carrying at the time of the rape, is one and a half years old and was just hospitalized for malnutrition.

The most heartbreaking news concerns Halima. Ten months ago, Halima decided to go back to Darfur to the camp where her parents were living. They had sent messages that they were sick, and that there were too many soldiers around for them to escape to Chad. So Halima, at age 11, resolved to walk back through janjaweed lines into Darfur to rescue her parents and bring them to safety.

The girl disappeared into the desert.

“I haven’t heard from her since,”Suad said grimly.“I don’t know if she got there, or if she was killed on route.”Suad has spent a fair amount of money trying to call people in the camp to find out news of her sister and parents, but she has found out nothing.

This is my 10th trip to Darfur and the area around it, and people always ask how reporters and aid workers keep their sanity among such horrors. Yet the truth is that genocide spotlights not only the worst of humanity, but also the best - the courage and altruism of people like Suad and Halima.

So the most indelible memories I will take back from the region aren’t from my famous roommate on the mattress beside me, but from uncommon heroes like Suad and Halima. We can learn so much from them.