By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 16, 2006; A12

GRAIDA, Sudan, Sept. 15 -- The tall, light-skinned man reeking of sweat and cigarettes often gallops his horse right into the nightmares of Darelsalam Ahmed Eisa, 18. Each time, she said, he throws her to the ground, pushes up her skirt and forces himself inside her while muttering: " Abdah. Abdah. Abdah ."

Slave woman. Slave woman. Slave woman.

He was in her dreams just last night, she recalled, as real and horrifying in his green camouflage uniform as he was the day he raped her two months ago. But when Eisa awoke this morning, there was no time for terror, no time for tears. She covered herself in an orange and blue cloth, grabbed the family's ax and departed for the perilous Darfur countryside, out of the relative safety of a sprawling camp for people displaced by the violence in this region of western Sudan.

In the wilderness, Eisa can find grass for the donkeys and firewood for cooking. But it is also where government-backed militias known as the Janjaweed roam, terrorizing villagers. Violence and disease in Darfur have killed as many as 450,000 people since 2003, and an estimated 2 million have been forced to flee their homes.

The government and a rebel group reached a cease-fire agreement in May, but since then, rapes in and around camps for people displaced by the fighting have surged, aid groups and residents say. The International Rescue Committee has recorded more then 200 sexual assaults among residents of a single camp near Nyala, a town in South Darfur state, during a five-week period in July and August.

More and more often, women in Darfur face the starkest of choices: risk being raped by leaving the camps in search of firewood and grass, or starve. If they invite their brothers or husbands along to protect them, the Janjaweed will still rape the women, they say, and kill the men.

"It is better for me to be raped than for my brother to be killed," said Eisa, soft-spoken and round-faced, with hair braided into tight rows beneath her head scarf. She has two children, ages 2 and 5, but no husband. He divorced Eisa last year, she said, after she quarreled with one of his elder wives.

But Eisa is not alone. On this morning, as she walked with the ax on her shoulder, her sister, Aziza, 15, was just a few paces behind. Other women and girls, on foot and on donkeys, soon joined them in a haphazard convoy of mothers, daughters and sisters flowing west, away from the low morning sun.

They passed braying donkeys and smoky wood fires in the camp. They passed children playing soccer and rolling pot lids with sticks. And they passed an African Union military base, close enough to hear a sputtering generator there that powers satellite televisions. On the screens, images of slinky Bollywood dancers entertained the lonely men who are posted at the base to monitor the cease-fire but rarely venture beyond the double-coiled razor wire of their perimeter.

Eisa, her sister and an 18-year-old friend had followed the same path on the day in July that they were attacked.

But that day, they had gone farther -- about two hours west instead of one -- in search of a variety of grass that fetches a higher profit at the camp's makeshift markets, about 75 cents per sack rather than the 50 cents paid for the grass collected near the camp. They had four donkeys with them that day, so 25 cents more per pack meant maybe a couple of dollars more in earnings for the day.

After walking for about two hours, they had nearly reached the better grass when dozens of Janjaweed militiamen on horses and camels suddenly appeared, surrounding the young women.

Aziza tried to run but was caught within seconds and struck in the face. Eisa froze. Quickly and roughly, the men separated the two sisters and their friend, with a man taking each one to a secluded spot.

The tall, light-skinned man was riding a reddish-brown horse, Eisa said. He was clean-shaven and armed with a machine gun. "I will take you," the man told Eisa. "My wife needs a slave."

He then ordered Eisa to lie on her back, but she refused. She knew that if he raped her and the community learned of the attack, she would probably never be able to remarry.

Her defiance enraged the man. He aimed the gun at Eisa and shouted: "I will shoot you! I will shoot you!"

At that moment, a second Janjaweed man stepped in. "Don't waste a bullet on a woman!" he said. "Just throw her."

The tall man hurled Eisa to the dirt and crawled atop her.

A few minutes later, the rapes were over but not the ordeal. The Janjaweed tied the young women together at their wrists and beat them with their fists and the butts of their guns.

Then, the militiamen ordered the women to lead them to a place where they could find some animals to steal. If they found enough, the men said, they might free them.

Terrified, Eisa helped lead their captors to a place where people water their animals. But before they arrived, they came upon two men relaxing with their animals. One mounted his horse and rode off in a panic as the Janjaweed approached, leaving 40 cows behind for them to steal. The second man, having only a donkey, was unable to escape.

The Janjaweed shot him dead, Eisa said, and took his donkey.

As the group approached the watering place, most of the Janjaweed men decided to ride ahead on their horses and camels, leaving the captives in the custody of one man who appeared to be their leader.

The man appeared to know Eisa's friend and fellow captive. He asked about her father, then untied the women and ordered them to flee, she said.

They raced toward safety, sprinting right out of their flip-flops. After 90 minutes, Eisa said, they had arrived at the outskirts of their camp, with thorns embedded in the soles of their feet.

The young women told their friends and relatives about the attack but not about the rapes. But over the next few weeks, gossip began to spread. Neighbors assumed the worst, about the attack, about Eisa, her sister and their friend.

"They scorn you. They laugh at you," Eisa said. "They look at you as if you are strange, as if they haven't seen you before."

The only good news came about two weeks later. After living in fear that the rape might have made her pregnant, Eisa's period arrived. The relief, she said, was overwhelming.

By the time Eisa reached the end of her story, she and her sister had arrived at the spot where they planned to collect firewood. With expert swings of the ax -- so hard Eisa's head scarf fell to her shoulders -- she and Aziza cut the largest branches off two trees, stripped the bark and bundled the still-moist wood.

With their donkeys long gone -- stolen in the Janjaweed attack -- the sisters hoisted the bundles onto their heads and began the long walk back to the camp beneath the relentless Darfur sun.

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