Tears of the Desert

Completely wowed by Halima Bashir's book 'Tears of the Desert'.
Halima Bashir grew up in a village community in a peaceful place whose name has since become synonymous with genocide – the Sudanese region of Darfur.
A happy child and a bright student, she qualified as a medical doctor and worked diligently for her patients, treating Arabs and Africans alike. For this 'crime' she was abducted, tortured and gang-raped. Returning home, she shared in the experience of a savage attack on her village which left all the adult males dead, and she was forced to flee for her life.
Selling everything she had to come to a safe country, she arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker – only to be disbelieved, told she had insufficient documentation to prove her status, and informed that Sudan was safe.
Her appeal was turned down but when advocates took up her cause, an appeal was made to the House of Lords to declare Darfur still an unsafe place to return victims of hate and torture, while the same authorities remained in power.
In the days before the bill was passed, Darfuri refugees were rounded up and forcibly deported back to the Sudan. Several were captured and tortured again.
Halima Bashan remained to tell the story – her own and that of her compatriots who either didn't survive the racism in their own country, or who didn't survive the UK's attempt to reduce its immigrant statistics at all costs.
It's an amazing book written by a person with amazing courage.