Adam Mohammed probably isn't the only housemate who still wakes up from nightmares, but he's the only one in the bare Vickery Meadow apartment willing to admit it.
COURTNEY PERRY/DMN
From left: Suleiman Khamis, Adam Mohammed and Adam Mostaha share an apartment and a war-torn homeland. The Darfur natives, who moved to Dallas three weeks ago, have dealt with scattered families and years in African refugee camps.
He and his three roommates, also from Darfur, arrived in Dallas three weeks ago carrying parallel pasts – burned villages, scattered family and years in African refugee camps.
"These are wounds," said 30-year-old Mohammed, pointing to crusted scars on his feet, then to his heart.
Genocide, Sudan, Darfur. The same words that once engendered only blank familiarity among North Texans are now resonating with regularity. This language is becoming more tangible as the situation in the region worsens and a budding Darfuri population joins other Sudanese in Dallas.
As many as 300,000 people have been killed since fighting erupted between the Sudanese central government and western Sudanese rebel groups in 2003. Human rights officials say a government-backed militia – local Arabic tribes called the Janjaweed – have decimated villages and used rape as a persistent war tactic. More than 2.7 million people have been displaced from an area roughly the size of Texas. The situation has turned into the largest relief effort in the world.
The recent International Criminal Court indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and his subsequent decision to boot out essential aid groups has more firmly pushed the crisis in Darfur from a celebrity cause to a globally recognized humanitarian crisis.
"We are one of the states fighting an uphill battle of people being aware and concerned," said Laura McCarthy, the director of Defend Darfur Dallas.
"We were holding on to this Wild West mentality, everybody for themselves. But these days there is less of what is Darfur as a noun as the question, 'Oh, I've heard of that, what can I do?' "
The 250-member Dallas nonprofit hosted an informational movie night recently, expecting the usual 30 people. Almost 80 showed up.
Art for Darfur, a movement founded by a pair of Southern Methodist University students, held an auction this month that brought in almost $10,000 for Amnesty International. Dolls for Darfur, a pin-making program run by Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, has raised $60,000 in proceeds for Sudanese aid.
The killings in Darfur are even grabbing attention in the state capital. The Senate just passed a bill establishing a Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission. The group would provide educational materials and create curriculum to spur early awareness. Bill co-author Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, calls it a much-needed "clearinghouse for that information."
Kristin Schutz sees the immediate connection.
"This is my generation's Holocaust," said the 21-year-old SMU senior and the co-founder of Art for Darfur. "College students have taken a responsibility with global issues. And there is an abundance of resources in Dallas, a wealthy community with so much to give."
For much of the decade, Texas has brought in the largest annual influx of Sudanese refugees to the United States. About 4,000 Sudanese live in the region today, with a little more than 50 of them from Darfur, according to Western Sudan Aid Relief in the U.S.A.
Many Darfurians have fled to other regions of Sudan or across the border to Chad. Not quite 300 have come to the United States in the past five years. The number remains low largely because the security situation on the border has made it impossible to process large-scale groups. So far, the United States has accepted individual Darfurians mainly from Ghana, Kenya, Egypt and a few from Chad.
The largest country in Africa, Sudan has been wracked with warfare for much of its existence. In the 1980s, civil war broke out between the Arabic Muslim government in the north and the black Christians and animists in the south. After their villages burned, up to 40,000 southern Sudanese children fled on foot to Ethiopia.
When fighting broke out in Ethiopia, they walked again – this time to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. These mostly Dinka males came to be known as the "Lost Boys." The United States took in nearly 4,000 in 2001, around 130 of whom arrived in Dallas.
Dallas' Darfuri refugees are often blurred with this "Lost Boy" era, although fighting between the north and the south has technically ended.
Ismail Omer, a 35-year-old Darfuri refugee who has lived in Dallas for 10 years, considers the Darfur situation an accelerated version of the previous civil war – Arab vs. African, establishment vs. farmer.
The difference now, he said, is that word spreads online.
He pulled up a slideshow on his laptop and flashed pictures of slashed ankles and malnourished children gathered from new organizations and sent from friends.
Omer escaped to Cairo in 1994 after he was jailed and tortured for refusing to fight against the south in the government's army.
He has a closet full of "Darfur is Real" T-shirts and has spent much of his time in the U.S. speaking about the country's injustices.
These days, he said, he isn't getting nearly as many blank stares when he explains his green plastic "Save Darfur" bracelet to customers in his Dallas cab.
The same is true for public events.
"When the lights come up and they turn the projectors off now, you can see people crying, signing petitions," Omer said. "Still, I don't feel that I do enough to make people aware. People back home don't have anybody but us. We are their voice."
Jerry Fowler, the national Save Darfur Coalition president based in D.C., labels the attention to Darfur "episodic." On a lecture tour in his Dallas hometown, he said that he hopes Sudan's recent events will spur more engaged American leadership. He considers the Obama administration's quick installation of a Sudan envoy a key first step.
But Omer worries about empty promises from the new administration on a politically thorny issue. Sudan once harbored Osama bin Laden, and its rich oil supply keeps it diplomatically connected to countries such as China.
That's why the surging grass-roots awareness is so vital, said Omer, who spoke at the Art for Darfur event encircled by a cluster of high-heeled students.
Soon after Omer concluded his speech, a young woman took the stage. She read aloud, in cadence, a poem of the atrocities.
Omer's Darfuri roommate and a "Lost Boy" from southern Sudan stood in the back taking pictures with their cellphones.
She closed with the words: "Darfur, now, is here."
For a direct link to the Dallas Morning News article please click here.