This website is dedicated to the memory of Sharif Barko (also known as Majed Hassan). It has been created as a place to remember him, to tell his story and to celebrate his life.
CROCODILE SEEKING REFUGE
Performed at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in 2005 and then on a UK National Tour in 2006.
The text below consists of two scenes from the play Crocodile Seeking Refuge written by Sonja Linden.
The character of Zakariya is based entirely on Sharif and his words are exactly as told to Sonja and to his asylum lawyer Emma Douglas. Please be aware that the first scene is very explicit about his arrest and torture in Darfur and the attacks on the villages. The second scene is lighter and shows Sharif’s sense of humour.
Act 1 Scene 7
Zakariya’s asylum lawyer Harriet is taking down his story
Harriet: Right now before we go through your statement I just want to ask you a few more questions. When you left Sudan, were your wife and children still living in and around Sendikerow village?
Zakariya: Yes.
Harriet: Do you know what happened to them?
Zakariya: No.
Harriet: Is the village still there?
Zakariya: Nothing there. I phone Khamis. He sometimes has contacts with the rebels
Harriet: (to her clerk Jamal) Khamis is the representative of the Massalit community in the
UK.
Zakariya: They said from Nyala to Jeneina and the Central Republic of Africa there is not one village left (downcast) I’m asking this all the time - no village standing.
Harriet: This is an area you tell me was the size of France?
Zakariya: Exactly
Harriet: Let me just write that down. (writes) “ I have since heard that there is nothing left of Sendikerow or any of the surrounding villages and I do not know where my family are now.” OK just a couple more points, you said the second time you were a refused asylum your benefits were cut which left you destitute.
Jalal: (in Arabic) Fakir
Zakariya: Yes .
Harriet: When you were asked to leave your accommodation where did you sleep?
Zakariya: At first with one Somali friend but he is asylum so I leave. Later in telephone boxes.
Harriet: It was winter.
Zakariya: It was freezing. I’m starving.
Harriet: How did you feed yourself?
Zakariya: I found bananas from the market, when the market was closed.
Harriet: And how long did you do that for?
Zakariya: About 10 days?
Harriet: And then?
Zakariya I went back to Peterborough and speak to my friend.
Harriet: Is he the friend who suggested you make a new claim for asylum under a different name?
Zakariya: Yes.
Harriet: And when you were told you had committed a crime, do you know the name of the crime?
Zakariya: No.
Harriet: So if I said why did you go to prison?
Zakariya: I apply for asylum twice.
Harriet: Officially it says, (reads) “Seeking leave to enter by deception.”
Zakariya: (Compliant) Aaaah.
Harriet: But I’m going to use your words instead makes a note and if I ask you how you feel about it now?
Zakariya: I really regret about that. I feel sad about it it
Harriet: (Writing) “I deeply regret that I try to claim asylum under a false name and I feel very sad I did this.” OK now I’d like to clarify some of the political aspects of your story in Darfur.
Zakariya: OK.
Harriet: These attacks against your tribe started in the late 90s?
Zakariya: No before. The murder started at the beginning of the 90s.
Harriet: Tell me about these murders.
Zakariya: At first only educated people from our tribe, the leaders. And nobody knew who did these murders. And even to talk about them, ask questions, was dangerous. The police, the Arab police, they were not interested. Even they laughed. And then the burning started. The burning of villages. The killers came in the night on their camels. While the people are sleeping you know - women, men, children, old people, babies – they make fire to the houses and when the people run out of the village to escape the fire, the Arabs were waiting for them, the Janjaweed militia, they surrounded the village and they wait like this with their kalashnikovs. (mimes the men standing holding kalashnikovs) Kill us you know? They want to kill all of us.
Harriet: Why?
Zakariya: Because they want to make us leave this land, it’s good land, they want it for the animals, they have only desert, and Arab government is giving them money and guns to help them take the land from the African tribes.
Harriet: They want to Arabise that part of Sudan?
Zakariya: Exactly, because they are racist.
Harriet: When you say ‘they’ do you mean the Arabic government or the Arab Shepherds?
Zakariya: All of them are racist. Always they treat the African like…. [makes a demeaning gesture] Even how they call us “abd” and “khadim’.
Harriet (to Jalal) What do those words mean?
Jalal: They mean male and female slave.
Harriet: So this is instead of calling you a man or a woman, the Sudanese Arabs use the term slave?
Zakariya: Exactly.
Harriet: When did you get involved in defending your people from these attacks, when you became, a ‘warnang’? (to Jalal) An elected village leader.
Zakariya: Yes the warnangs would watch the villages in the night. Sometimes you could stop an attack but we only had our traditional weapons like spears for hunting.
Harriet Tell me about your arrest.
Zakariya: One day soldiers came to our village and they asked me for the names of the ‘rebels’. Because they are defending our people, they call them rebels.
Harriet: What happened then?
Zakariya: I said I didn’t know any rebels. But they didn’t believe me and they took me to the car. And they burnt me with cigarettes. [pulling up his shirt sleeves] Here, and here, and here. And then they took me to a prison.
Harriet: Can you say exactly where the prison was?
Zakariya: Dar Massalit.
Harriet: You knew this place?
Zakariya: Everyone knew it, it was a school built by the British and they made it into a prison.
Harriet: Can you say exactly what happened in the prison?
Zakariya: A prison guard gave me a Pepsi and then he told me to sit on the bottle. I say no. So he [mimes] break the bottle and cut me from here to here [mines a diagonal slash on his left side] and then he push the bottle in here [mimes stabbing into the back of the right knee] The meat came away from the bone in my leg, so it was like this, [indicates his thigh separating on either side of the bone.]
Harriet winces in sympathy.
Harriet: How long were you kept in this prison?
Zakariya: Two months?
Harriet: And what else happened to you there?
Zakariya: Beatings, asking questions for information.
Harriet: Beaten with what?
Zakariya: Okas
Jalal: Batons
Zakariya: Sot
Jalal: And horsewhips
Zakariya: [indicating his back] I have scars
Harriet [writes] “ I was beaten daily and constantly interrogated. Throughout this time I refused to name names.” Is that right?
Zakariya: Yes
Harriet: What happened at the end of the two months?
Zakariya: Then we were taken to a different prison in Khartoum. Three days to get there
Harriet: We?
Zakariya: Me and four other warnangs.
Harriet: What was the name of this prison?
Zakariya: Kober.
Harriet: And you were tortured there too? (grabs a piece of paper and starts making notes)
Zakariya: Everyday. They beat me.
Harriet: Can you say what happened there?
Silence as Zakariya is drawn back into the memory of torture.
Harriet (gently) This is very important for your statement. You were interrogated in the second prison as well I presume?
Zakariya: Yes. They asked me for the names of the rebels.
Harriet: And did you give them any information?
Zakariya: No. Let them kill me but the others are safe.
Beat.
Harriet starts to fold away her sheet of paper as though the meeting is over
Harriet: (winding down) OK. So maybe next time you can tell me…
Zakariya: I still hear them screaming.
Pause. Harriet clocks the intensity of Zakariya’s expression and sits down and motions to Zakariya to sit down also.
Zakariya: For me I’m alive now, but my friends… I see people killed in that prison, when they take you out of isolation. I see some of my friends sometimes, how they look, (mimes) their eyes out here you know, blood. I hear them tortured every day - me also, but if you hear it is your friends,(shakes his head, voice breaks) and you love them you know. (beat) And when they stop screaming and suddenly there is no sound coming I know someone is dead. (pause while he wipes his eyes) The good people don’t live in this world. My best friend died in that prison. Then my uncle helped me to escape. He said to me “They want to kill all of you.” He paid money, a lot of money to get me out. Then he died too. Only me alive now.
In the following scene Sharif’s day to day life in Darfur as told to Sonja is recounted verbatim by the character Zakariya in a fictionalised scene where he meets Harriet’s friends over dinner.
ACT 2 - Scene 1
Harriet: (to Zakariya) I’ve made a North African dish. It’s the nearest I could get to Sudan.
Zakariya: (broad smile) Thank you Harriet. You are kind.
Harriet: Lamb with apricots and almonds and spices.
James: Delicious.
Harriet: starts to serve out the food.
Katrina: (to Zakariya) You eat lamb I suppose?
Zakariya: Lamb, goat…
Harriet: (mischievous, looking at Katrina) Gazelle.
Katrina: (looking squeamish) Such a beautiful animal.
Zakariya: (not noticing her qualms) Very beautiful.
James: Difficult to catch.
Zakariya: Oof! They run very fast. Very fast. When we hunt, I run maybe two three hours
after…
Fiona: Wow.
James: What and then you… (mimes throwing a spear)
Zakariya: Exactly, yes.
Fiona: With a spear?
Zakariya: Exactly.
Katrina makes a face. Fiona looks impressed.
Harriet: Gazelle is nothing - you should hear what else he eats.
Zakariya smiles.
Zakariya: You mean hudge, hudge, hud…?
Harriet: Hedgehog.
Katrina chokes on her veggie dish.
James: What about the prickles?
Nick: You remove them don’t you?
Zakariya: You kill them…
Katrina closes her eyes.
Nick: Katrina’s a vegetarian.
Zakariya: (with smiling disbelief) Really? Then you put them on the fire. Very quick, then you… (indicates scraping off the prickles) you take out the insides, (mimes) open it up, then put it to cook, is very good, very healthy. My grandfather told me that, hudge…
James: Hedgehog.
Zakariya: …hudgehog is very good for health. You eat hudgehog, you never ill. Like my grandfather. Very strong, and healthy (makes a gesture to underscore how healthy his grandfather was) Every morning he eats one onion and one garlic.
Fiona: Ah yes garlic is supposed to be very healthy.
Katrina: You can get garlic tablets.
Fiona: (eating) This really is delicious Harriet.
Nick: It really is.
James: Fantastic.
Beat.
Fiona: What exactly do you do on Eid?
Harriet: It’s OK if you’d rather not talk about it.
Zakariya: No, no it’s OK. On this day we must ask for forgiveness for everything we do wrong in the year. So we visit everybody and say to them, “Forgive me if I did something wrong”. We go to everybody in the village. This is after we have prayers.
James: In your mosque?
Zakariya: No, outside in the field or in the dry river bed, where the sand is soft and clean and we can sit. The imam says the prayers and then we hug each other and ask forgiveness and after all this we eat.
Katrina: Sounds wonderful. All the families eat together?
Zakariya: Yes, yes.
Fiona: But the women make the food I bet and hardly have time to eat themselves.
Zakariya: (laughs) Only the men are eating together. The women they go home.
Fiona: Charming, after all that hard work!
Beat
Katrina: Well I think we should drink to the future of your people.
Fiona: Good idea. Fill up his glass Nick.
Nick: Will you drink? I have some beer.
Zakariya: Yes, yes. Beer is good.
James: You do drink then?
Zakariya: (laughs) I like beer. Not too much.
Glasses are filled.
Harriet: To the future of the Massalit.
Katrina: Who?
Zakariya: (smiling) The Massalit. My tribe.
All: (raising their glasses) The Massalit!
Fiona: And your wife and children!
The penultimate scene in the play when Harriet the lawyer says goodbye to Zachariya, whose asylum appeal has just been refused, and who is being deported back to Sudan, at which point he abandons his Western clothes.
