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A 20-year civil war in Sudan has pitted the Muslim majority north against the Christian majority south. An estimated two million people have been killed in the conflict. In 1986, Muslim invaders attacked the village where Francis's mother had sent him on an errand. Francis was 7 years old, and he spent the next 10 years in slavery, where he worked on a farm. He's now telling his story in the new book, Escape from Slavery (St. Martin's Press).

What happened that day you were taken, in 1986?

We went to the market, and I sat underneath the big tree where a lot of people come from all different villages, selling and buying. And while I was sitting there, I heard adults saying that they saw smoke and pointing toward the village that we came from. Some other adult said he heard guns shooting. I wasn't really aware what happened right away after we left the village until when I saw a lot of people start leaving the markets—and then I also looked behind me and I saw all these horsemen, people who dressing differently, with machine guns. They surrounded the market and started shooting.

I stood up and tried to run, and one of the horsemen came toward me, grabbed my hand, and was speaking a strange language I couldn't understand at that time because I didn't speak Arabic. And I was very confused and very, very afraid. I thought maybe he was going to kill me.

They just destroyed everything in the market. And after they finished, they stole some of the stuff. They marched us all over to the north. I witnessed a 12 year-old-girl shot on the way because she was screaming. She couldn't stop crying, and one of the militiamen told her to stop and she couldn't. The guy just took her out of the group and he shot her in the head.

That hurt me a lot actually when I saw a little girl get shot. I said, This danger now is not only for a man or adults, this also can happen to any one of us kids. And I saw a lot of kids who were very quiet—and learned to be quiet in that moment.

What happened to the adults that were in the village?

I went to this guy's farm, and I began seeing a lot of girls who been brought from southern Sudan and women working. I never had a chance to ask them what did [their captors] really force them to do, but I heard the story that a lot of young women were being forced for sex.

And let me just tell you this story, what happened when I first arrived on his farm. Giemma, who was my master, took me to his home. He actually called the whole family to meet me. And his three children had sticks. And they started beating me. And they were chanting to say abeed, abeed. That is Arabic is black slave—that was my welcome.

After kids got tired, Giemma told me to follow him to show me where I'm going to be sleeping. There was a little shelter close to the animals, a lot of horses and a lot camels and a lot of cows. And I had to stay there, and he sent his children to come whenever they wanted to amuse themselves by saying abeed or beating me. And I remember his wife, too, she come and stood in front of me and said that if my husband would allow me, I would shoot you.

This was a Muslim family. Was their Islam important to them?

Very, very important. When I first come there my master tried to convert me. He always said, "You need to pray with us when we pray." I didn't even know what to say, because you've got to say something when you're praying. But they forced me to do that, and I accepted because he scared me by saying to me if I couldn't, he would hurt me.

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October (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47