Oof this was hard to read, emotionally and psychologically. The beginning of Dr. Halima Bashir's story is clearly a story of privilege, with a very progressive father who wanted his smart daughter to become a doctor. As she grows up and faces discrimination, she tries to keep her head down and ignore the growing differences between Arabs and Darfuri and overcomes several instances of racism. She regularly refers to the jihad and the violence but it seems far away. You get a sense of an encroaching tide, getting closer and closer.The second part of the book, the tide has arrived and suddenly she is underwater. She tries to simply treat patients, regardless of ethnicity, regardless of their side in the violence, but she keeps getting in trouble. The trouble escalates and suddenly the violence is so personal and it keeps getting worse. Personally, while I know what is happening in Sudan and I've seen the newscasts, I was not prepared for what happens to her. Even after she escapes to England, she is threatened with being sent back to Sudan, being told that it is safe for her. While reading, I wanted it to be a story, not a real event, but Halima's voice is so informal, it could be a girlfriend. And my heart hurt as if I knew her. On a simple writing standpoint, the writing is pretty simple and there are plenty of times that she glosses over events and situations that I wish she would explain but I stopped caring about it pretty early on. I felt like I could hear her voice, telling me what had happened. Recommended by Maggie Carroll This is a great biography. I believe Halima wrote it to convince people of the severity of the situation in Sudan, and she certainly succeeded with me. I knew Arabs bought and sold Africans as slaves in Sudan but didn't know the civil war there was essentially Arabs vs. Blacks. The racism is sickening. This story is pretty sickening, too, in case you have a weak stomach. But it's also inspiring as Halima's survival was in large part to her wonderful family, especially her modern father, her motivation to study and improve her life, and her bravery in fleeing the country without knowledge of where she was going.
