Ciad, a former French colony, gained independence in 1960 and, following the proclamation of the birth of the Republic of Chad we know today, the history of this African nation has been characterised by autocratic governments and continual war. The actual president is Idriss Derby, in office since 1990 following a military coup, and the country is one of the poorest in the world: 183rd on the list of 187 countries on the Human Development Index, with 80% of the population living under the poverty line, 9% have access to adequate sanitary services, and only 48% have the use of drinking water, illiteracy is above 50%, the average life expectancy hardly exceeds 53 years of age, and the rate of infant mortality is one of the highest on the planet.

Today the nation, located between North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, is facing also the most complex humanitarian crisis in modern history: the desertification of the Lake Chad, whose surface has decreased by 90% is respect to the size in the 1960s, and the Islamic terror cell Boko Haram are uniting to make the region lake region one of the most oppressed regions in the world: according to data from the Ocha (The Office of the United Nations for Humanitarian Affairs), the humanitarian disaster has resulted in 2.3 million refugees, and 10 million people living in need and 500,000 babies suffering from malnutrition.

An unforgiving light dazzles an disorients travelling along the road that leads from N’Djamena to Bol, the main coastal center: anything to do with man is an enemy of this land. The water is miracle and the thirst is constant, food is a mirage and hunger is ingrained into this place, the emptiness is a prison without any possibility of escape, with the sentence being that of pain without any respite. And then the wind: sheer violence, that can drive you to madness, uninhibited and able to attach anyone that it meets on its path, taking away air like a noose around the neck.

Crossing the Sahara you will meet only a few villages, absolutely silent, mute sanctuaries of tragedies, necropolis of the living. A few dry shrubs, camels, cow carcasses, goats and very few people are all that’s there. There are people, those that cross, that drag their bony bodies, moving like shadows. Just by looking at them it is possible to understand the crisis that exists in this place of silence and this continued abandonment is killing off humanity.

The village in the desert ends in Bol, a village of six thousand souls. A road of sand, huts of shrubs and straw mattresses and some shacks that sell some groceries and bottles of mineral water that are worth their weight in gold. Then there is the house of the Imam, the police station, the Mosque and the only hospital in the whole region. It is here that one begins the descent into the abyss. It is the starting point for understanding and to immerse yourself in a pain that contaminates, which imposes the responsibility to be of assistance, turning other people’s pain into our own.

There are slums so isolated that they have not been reachable by the indignations of the media, by the presence of social positions and the slogans of resentment. “We don’t have local media a no international groups ever come here to report on what is happening. This is the only hospital in all the region and there are only three doctors. Do you understand? Three doctors for the entire region.” Giving this angered speech is the hospital’s general director, Dr. Youssuf Saleh “The people are dying of Aids, of malnutrition, of tuberculosis. We like in the red zone; the arrival of the Boko Haram jihadists has exacerbated the already critical situation. The world knows about what’s happening in Syria or Yemen, but not what is happening here. A drama is going on without anyone noticing and time is running out: NGO’s, European governments, international donors are need to act. Coming and see: this is an emergency that needs your help.”

The doctor’s words prophesise what is feared to soon happen. Crossing the threshold of the hospital, we see the patients packed into every available space where, in the small room occupied and filled with the stench of urine, blood and vomit, in the sand courtyard or the floor of the corridor.

A mother, making use of all available resources, moves a fan, trying to ease the pain of her daughter crippled by a disease, in the maternity ward a newborn is laid in the arms of her mother after being born while lying on the ground, and then there is Ousman Abakar, who at 11 years old is in a coma caused by meningitis: and his father, sitting on his bed, holds his son’s shaking hand, trying to keep him still, to keep him quite while attempting to ease his pain.

“Everything is missing: equipment, vehicles and personnel. Additionally, with the arrival of Boko Haram the situation is becoming even more devastating. The problems with which we have always had to come to grips are made even more difficult through the addition of new problems we have never faced before.” These are the words of another doctor, Mahmat Hassan: “The rapes, the kidnapped children, the psychological trauma. This doesn’t even include the effects of HIV. 7% of patients are HIV-positive, the misery, the continuous displacement of people and poverty have caused an increases in the rate of prostitution and spread of disease.” In finishing she collects in the most intimate parts of her memories, forming story of pure tragedy which she gives voice with great effort, in order to the prevent these stories from being forgotten: “A child saw her father slaughtered in from of her eyes. Then she was raped by Islamist militants and contracted HIV. She had ingested nails in order to commit suicide. I operated and today she is under treatment. These are the type of stories I am confronted with every day.”

Among the patients are the brothers Mbokoiy and Chari Aumi. Two fishermen who defied army orders to leave the islands and for this, while they were lifting out their trawl nets, they were captured by regular Chadians, who tortured them and accused them of being jihadists: hanging them with their arms tied behind their backs for a week, before eventually releasing them when it was clear that they were simply hungry fishermen. Now Chari has necrosis in his arms and Mbokoiy, was the victim of an amputation, today he was lying down between the sand and the mosque.

It is a disturbing snapshot into a place where the hungry are tortured because they are guilty of their own needs, where the defenders of the Patriarch make fear the antidote to terror, jihadists are trying to destroy humanity in the name of God for whom they have renounced everything and the stories of the innocent, with their names, their expressions and their faces, which are disappearing under a blanket of sand and oblivion.

It is a hypnotic song. A pounding, almost indistinct sound that the winds of Bol carry through the streets. The percussive rhythm, the long and baritonal notes of the horns and the high voices of women become clearer while walking through the village lanes towards the music. A brick wall of mud and straw slabs prevent you from seeing or understanding what is happening, but then, passing through a gate, the show appears in all its extraordinary mystic: this land is in the territory of Boko Haram, the jihadist faction that seeks the create terror through the enforcement of Sharia law, thus annihilating each and every form of cultural and artistic expression. In spite of this, dozens of men and women are playing, singing and dancing in a semicircle.

Stamping and moving, bodies touching and intertwining, creating plumes of dust that swirl around in the air, losing themselves in a dance which expresses this conspicuous desire, which cannot be hidden, but manifests itself, through a tornado of sound, smiles and excited expressions.

There are beautiful women that would seduce even an angel, possessing the musicians with their beauty. It is all incredible and extraordinary, because the banks of Lake Chad is the territory of the African Caliphate, and this show is a demonstration of willpower, performed by a population that will not accept living in fear, and will continue to challenge the mania and authoritarianism of the black flags, through pride of their own traditions.

The semicircles grows larger, the musicians gather all the air in their lungs and blow their horns, the women with swaying veils, earrings and necklaces produce a continuous tinkle, which remains suspended in the air, until Youssouf Mamadou Affono rises from a handcrafted throne, leader of the canton of N’Guela and the organiser of this ceremony.

His rising is welcomed with a wave of shouted celebrations, bows and kisses. Wrapped in a turban and leaning on a stick, he greets his people and then, accompanied by his men, steps away from the uproarious celebrations in order to conduct our interview: “Since 2014 we have faced a serious crisis due to this sect of Boko Haram and these terrorists who want to impose Islam, that is not the real Islam: they want to impose a dictatorship. Dance and music have always been part of the Muslim world, they are instruments of expression, of joy and also faith. In a moment like this, in which we are under attack from terrorists, it is important to maintain our culture and our traditions.

It is a means for us to resist and to demonstrate that we are not willing to give in to violence and fear.” Continuing to speak on the situation, the canton leader added: “We as the local authority are trying by every means available to confront the problem of terrorists by our own means and our own possibilities. Another important group we have created in order to try and reduce the attacks is the self-defence committee, made up of groups of citizens that voluntarily control and patrol cities and villages, in an attempt to prevent bloodshed and massacres. They are our heroes.”

What Canton Chief Youssouf Mamadou Affono said could be seen on Thursday, the day of the week in which the Bol market is held. Camel caravans leave their encampments in the dessert, heading into the city to sell their merchandise, at the same time the women that live on the islands disembark onto the shores of the city, bringing with them containers with fish and food. The roads of entrance into Bol and the port however, are barricaded by groups of voluntary citizens and some men from the Chadian army. As the traders approach, they are separated into lines, to be search and made to empty their bags.

All of the sacks in the trader’s carts or tied to their camels are searched, the pots containing fish are overturned and the young women with plastic bottles filled with milk are forced to drink it in front of the security officers. “We cannot allow for any detail to be overlooked. There could be hidden poison or some kind of liquid to carry out massacres inside one of these bottles. Boko Haram does not hesitate in acting by any means available to them, and so we cannot afford to lower our guard.” says Zara Adoim, leader of one of of the patrols of the watch committee. “We know all too well that every moment we are working at a checkpoint could be our last. If a suicide bomber was to arrive, they would instantly pull the trigger. However if we are not willing to make this sacrifice for our people, it would mean that we are giving in to terror, and this is not what we want!”.

The fight against terrorism in Chad has many faces, not just that of the military; in fact, the sub-Saharan country is the first state in Africa to have opened a center dedicated to deradicalization and the prevention of extremism. Il CEDPE, le Centre d’ètude pour le developpement et la prèvention de l’extrèmisme, has a base in a hidden building in the outer quarter of N’Djaret, in the capital N’Djamena, Ahmad Yacoub, president and founder, tells me while seated at his desk: “The founding of this center is tied closely my personal life. When I was younger I was enlisted by rebels from the FROLINAT (National Liberation Front of Chad).

I was only a child and so was manipulated; today the same situation is afflicting many young people, and not just those being forced to enter Boko Haram. The terrorists make promises of money, food and eternal glory in order to recruit men, women and even children.” The president, at the end of his guerrilla experience was able to resume his studies, eventually becoming a professor of Sociology, continued in saying: “I have formed a team of researchers whose purpose is to interview these former rebels.

We research how indoctrination takes place and then we proceed in two ways: on the one hand working with those who have have managed to leave these terrorist groups, and have the chance to return to a normal life, and on the other trying to prevent and hinder the proliferation of Boko Haram. We travel to villages and school, talking with these groups in order to describe and show how the methods of persuasion used by terrorists are all lies and how what they assert about the Holy Book is false.”

Dar es Salaam, house of peace, a prophetic name for a village just a short distance from Bol where victims of the jihadist group Boko Haram live. An infinite spread of sand and huts where families twisted by hatred and fear, spend their time living with the memories of constant pain without being able to forget. Zenaba Ali Abou, 36 years old, was kidnapped in 2014, together with her son still in swaddling clothes, by the rebel soldiers of Abubakar Shekau (leader of Boko Haram).

The wrinkles carved onto her face, a stigma of her ordeal, a face which crystallizes the sense of hopeless suffering which enveloped her with fear. “For two years I was their slave, they gave me to be married to a soldier, who forced me to do his bidding and made me pregnant. I gave birth when I was a prisoner; then, a year later, one night, I took my children and, taking advantage of the distraction offered by the raging battle, I fled with another woman.

During the battle, not being able to escape with two children in my arms, I gave my smallest, the one born during the violence, to the woman who was with me. I was aware that there was a chance that something could happen to her, and I would have lost forever my son as well. It was because of this that I hate Boko Haram, because they have forced a mother to accept the possibility of abandoning her son. Fortunately, everything was ok on this day and my children are together. I want a happy life for them, but the sense of fear and guilt for what I have done will never give me peace.”

Similar to her is the story of Mariam Hassam. She is 20 years old, originally for the village of Midi Kouta, and today she lives also here in Dar es Salaam, sitting here just outside her home made of mud and straw, a white veil surrounds here face as she concentrates on breastfeeding her baby: “I was kidnapped by the men of Boko Haram who forced me to marry a soldier, I think he was called Mahamat, I’m not too shure, but it’s not important, I just want to forget about him.

He abused me and I got pregnant. I managed to escape just before giving birth and I’m happy that my son came into this world when I was already free and was not born in a prison. Today all I have is him: he is the future!”, explains the woman, while she holds him tight against her breast, and then finishes the interview saying: “After everything that has happened to me, I am a woman without a past.”

To truly understand the horror of the jihadists occurring, it is necessary to step across the barrier that divides the victims and the perpetrators, to abandon that sense of ingrained solidarity with the innocent that have suffered, and to instead push ourselves to understand the other side, the artisan of the tragedy, the perpetrator of violence, the villain of history. It is a dangerous barrier to cross, but it has to be done, because our job is to speak on behalf of those who suffer, without discrimination, even when that involves venturing through doubts, doubts in understanding the line between right and wrong, an awareness that, perhaps, sometimes, the other executioner is nothing but a victim forced into this horror against their will, by necessity, for lack of choice against the oppression of jihadists, which is an anthropomorphic evil, whose goal is for the destruction of man.

Abdoullaye Tidjani, an ex-soldier of Boko Haram, lives in Bol, and spent three years of his life wearing camouflage, a balaclava and an assault rifle, but today he works in a carpentry workshop. It is difficult to imagine these hands, that are used to shave and hammer in search of redemption in an occupation of biblical sacredness, have carried out massacres, pulled the trigger on guns that have spilled the blood of the innocent. “I am a Nigerian and used to be a shopkeeper.

I was at work when the terrorists arrived and forced me and other men to become soldiers. Those who refused were killed. They took me to a training camp and we quickly began military training, once this was finished they sent me into battle. First we attacked villages or military posts, they made us pray and the imam told us to kill because it was the will of Allah.” Then the ex-islamist rebel continued: “I continued to see people killed without cause and one day it came to a point in which I had to ask myself: “why?”.

From that moment I had no desire other than to escape. One night during a military operation I managed to escape and find my way here to Bol. It has been seven months since I arrived here and I would like to return to my life from before, but how can I go back after all of this horror?”.

Incidentally, it was also possible for us to speak with Halima Adama, the only suicide bomber, that we know of, to have survived this act of massacre. Today this woman is 20 years old and lives on the island of Gomirom Domou. In order to meet her, it was necessary to travel for hours in a small motorised canoe across the waters of Lake Chad. The temperatures are fierce, and there was risk of running into a group of Boko Haram soldiers hidden among the reeds or in the marshes throughout the length of our dangerous journey. The soldiers of the regular army don’t even attempt to maintain control of the reeds along the Kalashnikov flats, and it is only when our small boat crosses a small layer of silt and stops on an arid and deserted beach, that we know we have arrived on the island where the woman who everyone today knows as “the kamikaze” lives. After making our way through brambles, thistles and weeds, we find ourselves at a hut made of branches, the home of Halima Adama: she was sat on a wicker mat and soon after we arrived, begins to recount the story of her of her ordeal.

“When I was 12 years old, I was forced to marry a man who worked as a fisherman. One day, in 2016, my husband told me that that we were going to be transferred to an island where the fish were more abundant, but instead he turned me into a terrorist. After a year of indoctrination he came to tell me that he had offered me as a suicide bomber. I was terrified, the leaders summoned me, telling me that I would be acting out the will of Allah and that I would have to carry a bomb into in Bol. Then they drugged and strapped an explosive belt to me, I could not defy them, otherwise I would have been beheaded.” Listening to her, I could see the true terror deep in her eyes, and the fear which had controlled her. It is only through an understanding of the true importance of her testimony that I was able to continue to listen, and avoid being enveloped in the tragedy of her story. Halima Adama caresses her prosthetic legs and continues: “We were a group of eight attackers, men and women from Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon, all with explosive belts tied to our bodies, but I put mine in a bag, I was too scared of dying. When we were three kilometers from Bol, we were intercepted by volunteer protectors from the village. The other suicide bombers quickly activated their belts, and there was an explosion, killing all of them: both vigilantes and bombers. I was the only one to live, I woke up in the hospital without legs and without a life.

It is like there is a Jinn, a desert spirit, a ghost, so old that, at sunset, while warmly wrapped up in a white jellabiya and holding on tightly to a walking stick, advancing with effortless elegance through the dust and the wind of the Sahara, showing the entrance of the world to the margins of history. Advancing still further with this Jinn, it forces us to follow in its footsteps, but then dives into the fiery horizon of the desert and disappears, leaving no footsteps, just endless huts and sand. A maze of tents and improvised hovels open up wide before our eyes. And then the fugitives appear. They are the fisherman and farmer Boudouma and Kanembou, having escaped aboard a pirogue canoe from the islands and scattered within Lake Chad, when the jihadists Boko Haram arrived to ransack, rape, raid and force enlistment. Lake Chad has become a stronghold for the African caliphate of Al Baghdadi. The African branch of Isis has turned this land ravaged by desertification into a battle ground: here the horrors don’t come as stories sent via the web, but are felt in person, through the words and nightmares of the people.

Mahamat Issa is one of the leaders, and on this day he spoke about all of his displaced communities. He describes how all they have are dry branches under which to live and empty pots inside to look for leftover food. He then recalls when he used to live on the island of Braserie. Fishing, farming, rearing cows, goats, camels with feeding troughs: a nativity of African land which was then interrupted by a massacre of the innocent, perpetrated by soldiers in camouflage balaclavas and black flags, who landed on the island aboard barges, set fire to the houses, stole the livestock, bloodied their bayonets and riddled the night with sounds of gunfire. I asked him what he saw on the day in which he had to flee and abandon his life. Mahamat did not open his mouth, but raised a finger on his right hand, tracing it across his throat without ever lowering his eyes, which were full of those sweet and melancholy tears that fill the eyes of the elderly.

The stopwatch of time has been lost down here. The gears have jammed and all that is left is the hammering sound of suffering. Celou Al Hadji is ten years old and limps through the sand clinging onto his crutches. A year ago her mother sent her to buy a bag of rice, and while she was out a suicide bomber blew himself up. The child lost a leg and today does not go to school. She now lives with her younger sister and the mother that cannot forgive herself for having sent her to the market that day.

The story of Apsa Mohamet is equally pitiful: she is 17, and lives in the refugee camp at Dar es Salaam having arrived there after she was a prisoner for two weeks under the jihadist group Boko Haram. “They arrived in my village in Nigeria and I was kidnapped because I was still unmarried so they wanted to turn her into one of their brides.” Her face was framed by a pink hijab, her hands were paint with hennè patterns and her voice was filled with the pain of her past punishments. “They kept me segregated in a house with other girls. One day they freed a mother, and her daughter begged them to let her go with her: they, Boko Haram, refused, but the young girl insisted, so they slaughtered her in front of her mother and all of us.

“Sheitan, sheitan!”, demons, devils, they tell how they survived this horror but cannot forget the nightmare, because in the camp, today, while the traumas are detached from the memories but are not forgotten. Psychiatric conditions are becoming increasingly more common: the doctors tell of how many of the women and men can’t even bring themselves to say the fiery words, and are scared of the colour red and hide in fear whenever they hear a sudden noise. Afflicted by “post-traumatic stress” as it is scientifically known, or “Satan” as its more commonly known name, which at times, gives it a more effective meaning.

There isn’t any difference between refugee camps: the endless sand is all the same. After the events of 2014, the crisis began, the number of refugees in Chad rose to 130 thousand people. Their lives in these years seemed to have been shaped and formed to represent fatigue and suffering. The situation in Kurfa is the same as that Dar Es Salaam. In this second tent city there is also a small well. There, in a row, dozens of women wait with their containers to pump their water. The temperatures are searing and mothers and children roll up their hijab and niqab in order to carry by hand and on their head their containers of water, being careful not to lose a drop. The constant ladeling of water leaves them fatigued, and also yearning for a piece of bread. A barefoot girl in the shade of a tree, with her face encircled by a green hijab, continues kneading cereal in her mortar. The cadence of the blows, measured, neither increasing or decreasing in speed. Its blows strike like a metronome that punctuates the whole field’s rhythm of hunger.

A further image of desperation that chokes the population is the island of YIga, where desertification can be seen in its most ferocious form. A few improvised huts, made from branches and brushwood, trying to keep out a heat that can melt bodies and drain you of any life force, occupy a view on the horizon. Seven hundred people bravely populate this island, in spite of constant attacks.

Some women sit under a small tree, with children sleeping in a hut, another young girl drinks from a water tank that she then pours into a bowl to give to her younger brother.

In order to survive the heat and the desert, people have had to learn to limit themselves to activities of minimal effort: no pleasure, no exceptions, even for religious or personal reasons.

With temperatures reaching above 50 degrees, and the earth offering nothing other than more sand, only what is absolutely necessary is allowed in order to survive. “I am old enough to remember what it was like before this whole disaster started. The lake was filled with animals, and we lived on fish and agriculture. You don’t believe us? It really was like that.

Tanto pesce e pesci grandi, numerosi: come mettevamo le reti in acqua queste subito si riempivano e poi vacche, capre, dromedari. Oggi invece non c’è più nulla. Questo è quello che abbiamo”.