Halima Bashir

Halima Bashir is the fictitious name of a Sudanese medical doctor, who is the author of Tears of the Desert, a memoir about women's experiences with genocide and war in Darfur. She worked as a doctor in rural Sudan, before being abused at the hands of the National Intelligence and Security Service after reporting truthfully to United Nations officials about an attack by the Janjaweed militia on a nearby school. She has since moved to the United Kingdom, where she claimed asylum.

Life Halima Bashir, a pseudonym later adopted to protect her, grew up in rural Darfur in Western Sudan.

At her new clinic, she found herself treating the victims of the Janjaweed militia, including 42 school girls who had been gang-raped in a government supported attack on the village. She later explained, "At no stage in my years of study had I been taught how to deal with 8-year-old victims of gang rape in a rural clinic without enough sutures to go around." When two officials from the United Nations came to gather information about the attack, Bashir told them the truth. In response, she was taken by the National Intelligence and Security Service, She was released and returned to her village, where her father arranged for her to be married to her cousin Sharif, who she had only met once before. He had chosen Sharif, because he was viewed as being progressive. The village was attacked shortly afterwards, resulting in the death of her father and the disappearance of her siblings.

Journey overseas and writing Bashir left Sudan and travelled to the United Kingdom to claim asylum,

Tears of the Desert Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur is an autobiographical book co-written by Bashir and English journalist Damien Lewis. This autobiography gives an account of Bashir's life in the Darfur region of Sudan, marked by personal experience of civil war, genocide, sexual violence and murder.

In her book, she has changed names and places. However, independent verification by The New York Times has demonstrated the facts appear without any exaggeration. In 2010, she was awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Award for speaking out about the Janjaweed's violent attacks on school girls in Darfur.

Synopsis When Halima attends secondary school in the city, she comes up against traditional enmities between the black Africans of Darfur and the minority Arab elite and their group's subsequent discrimination against the black Africans ever since. She further speaks about the lack of support from teachers in physical fights stemming from prejudices against schoolgirls, which leads to expulsion – all of it an early lesson in helplessness.

Aim of the novel Co-author Damien Lewis stated that one of his goals was to, "make (…) you or I or anybody else in the West feel that that could be them (…) how would they feel, if that happened to them, brings it home to on the personal human family level. What would you feel, if it was your children or your father, or your grandparents, or your village? (…) So it doesn't feel like thousands of miles away in a different culture in a place we don't understand".

Critical reception Kirkus Reviews called Tears of the Desert "both heartrending and chilling." Publishers Weekly expanded on the idea, saying the book "offers a vivid personal portrait of life in the Darfur region of Sudan before the catastrophe," and "the violence the author recounts is harrowing."

Booklist also reviewed Tears of the Desert.

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