Zainabo’s Cry: A Mother’s Heart Torn Apart

June 5, 2003, in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo. Zainabo Alfani, a widow, and a merchant, mother of six, stands at the edge of hope. Her heart beats with a dream—a better life for her children. Her hands are calloused from years of trading, but her eyes are bright with love. In her bag, she carries 5 carats of diamonds, gold earrings, a necklace, three rings, and $480—her life’s savings, every penny scraped together to give her family a better life. With her are three of her children: 10-year-old Alima, with her curious smile; 8-year-old Mulassi, who clings to her mother’s skirt; and her six-month-old baby, Yacine, a fragile bundle nestled against her chest. Five older children wait back home in Kisangani, trusting their mama will return. 

Zainabo boards a bus bound for Bunia, joined by 14 other women, all carrying goods and dreams, daring to believe in a tomorrow brighter than the war-torn reality of today. But in the Congo, where the Second Congo War rages like a merciless beast, hope is a fragile thing, devoured by flames of violence.

Somewhere between Mambassa, 135 km west of Bunia, and Irumu, 56 km southwest, the air explodes with gunfire. Terror grips the bus and Zainabo’s heart pounds mercilessly as she clutches her children, their wide eyes pleading for safety. The women on the bus beg the driver—please, turn back to Kisangani!—but he shouts: “No, get out and hide in the jungle. We’ll go to Bunia when the fighting stops.” 

Desperate, Zainabo, and the other women step into the dense, suffocating unknown. Alima and Mulassi tremble in her arms, and Yacine’s soft cries pierce the silence. But the driver suddenly makes a U-turn and speeds away, abandoning Zainabo, her babies, and the other women to a jungle alive with predators, both beast and man.

Thirty minutes later, the nightmare descends. From the shadows of Muvuta Bangi, 18 armed men in tattered army fatigues emerge, their eyes hollow, carved empty by war’s cruelty. One speaks, his Swahili like a cold blade: “Take off your clothes!” The silent men circle like vultures, inspecting the women’s bodies in a sick, depraved hunt for a prized delicacy—long vaginal lips—a fetish born of madness. 

Zainabo’s breath catches as they single her out. She is the only one to meet their twisted criteria. This saves her life, at least for now. Before her eyes, the other women are mercilessly slaughtered, hacked to death by machetes, their screams swallowed by the jungle’s indifferent embrace. 

Alima and Mulassi’s terrified cries shred Zainabo’s soul as the men finally turn to her. They hold her down and separate her legs. Her children still clinging to her body she can do nothing to resist. She feels the blade slicing into her flesh, severing her vaginal lips in a white-hot inferno of pain. She tries to be brave for her children but the pain is so intense, she screams and thrashes like a wild animal. Her children scream with her in rising crescendos that only make the men laugh, as her blood stains their little bodies. This is only the beginning. One by one, the men rape Zainabo, her body a battlefield for their savagery. Darkness claims her as she collapses, praying for an end the torment.

When Zainabo awakens, the horror deepens, a wound beyond imagining. Her attackers are eating the flesh they carved from her, sharing it in a ritual so vile it defies the human spirit. They cut more flesh from her—her right foot, her left forearm, beneath her right breast—draining her blood and mixing it with water, the. drinking it like a twisted sacrament. Five of them partake, as if her suffering grants them power. 

Then they drag Zainabo and her children deeper into the bush, to a clearing that stinks of death. Human bones litter the ground, a grotesque kitchen where a “cook” skewers flesh over a fire, and barrels heat oil and water. Zainabo’s senses the unspeakable and her body reacts in wild convulsions as she clings to her petrified children in desperation.

And then, the unthinkable happens—a crime so heinous it shakes the very foundations of humanity. The men seize Alima and Mulassi, her precious girls, 10 and 8, whose high-pitched screams echo like a mother’s worst nightmare. Zainabo watches, helpless, as they drag her daughters, and throw them into the boiling liquid, and hold their thrashing bodies down with iron rods. They use the same rods to pierce the girls’ tiny stomachs and then stir them around the giant pot to “cook” them faster. They see these two girls as nothing more than meat for their monstrous feast. 

Zainabo’s screams rip her throat raw, as her heart shatters along with her sanity. She is forced to watch as the men devour her eldest daughter, Alima, with foufou—a dish meant to nourish, now a vessel for their depravity—while saving the other daughter, Mulassi’s, for later, as if her child’s body were just a commodity to be bartered. 

Can you even imagine this horror? The unbearable weight of Zainabo’s pain, a mother forced to witness her children’s lives snuffed out in such horror?

The “spokesman,” his voice empty of any remorse or compassion, finally turns to Zainabo. He tells her they’ll cut open her stomach, insert a piece of wood wrapped in white paper—a final act of desecration. Knowing death her is near, Zainabo summons a mother’s unyielding love. “Please,” she begs, her voice trembling but fierce, “Leave my body and my baby’s on the main road, so someone might bury us with dignity.” The man ignores her, and laughing, slices deep into her stomach with a blade that immediately sends her into a merciful blackout, the pain too vast for her ravaged body to hold.

By some miracle, Zainabo awakens in Nouvelle Espérance hospital in Bujumbura, Burundi’s capital. Passersby found her and baby Yacine, barely alive, on the main road near where the bus abandoned them. They were rushed to Bunia, then transferred for urgent care. 

Survival is a cruel gift: Zainabo was found to be HIV/AIDS positive from the attacks, her body a map of scars—jagged lines across her foot, arm, breast, and stomach, each a testament to war’s brutality. Her spirit broken, and haunted by the screams of Alima and Mulassi, her children she couldn’t save. 

Two years later, in 2005, she leaves the hospital, her now 3-year-old Yacine clinging to her side. An NGO, Héritiers de la Justice in Bukavu, offers a month’s support before she journeys to Kinshasa, where HIV/AIDS organizations provide care. On February 17, 2005, Zainabo stands before MONUC’s Human Rights Section in Kinshasa, tears streaming down her face as she bares her scars and tells her horrific story.  A woman stripped of everything, yet standing tall, her voice a cry for justice that echoes through the ages.

__________

Zainabo Alfani died on March 11, 2005, at Kinshasa’s General Hospital, at 42 years old. Her life, her love, her dreams—were stolen by the Second Congo War, a maelstrom of greed, power, and colonial scars that turned militias into monsters. They feasted on innocence, tore apart families like Zainabo’s with rituals born of chaos. But this isn’t just her story—it’s the story of millions in the Congo, where war’s atrocities defy comprehension. 

Imagine Zainabo’s pain: a mother’s heart ripped apart as her daughters were boiled alive, her body desecrated, her hope crushed. Feel the weight of her loss, the screams of Alima and Mulassi, the fragility of Yacine in her arms.

I came to live in the United States, from South Africa, in 2009, and have lived through the tail end of Bush, the hope of Obama, and the storm of Trump. I’ve seen division, heard the news twist truth, and people rail against injustice, but nothing compares to this. 

As an immigrant, I’ve learned to question, to argue both sides, like I taught my debate students: if you’re pro-life, argue pro-choice; if you’re for Trump, argue against him. It’s how you find truth. The truth here is undeniable: Zainabo’s story demands we look, we listen, we feel. 

Too many Americans parrot what they hear, angry and raging against a system they’re as unjust but largely blind to the world’s pain. We can’t afford that ignorance. The Congo’s scars—its women, its children—cry out for justice. Zainabo’s pain, Alima’s screams, MULASSI’S stolen laughter—they’re not just history. They’re a call to fight the darkness of war, to honor the fallen by building a world where no mother endures such hell. 

Don’t look away. Bear witness. Let Zainabo’s legacy fuel our passion, our resolve, because if we fail her, the monsters of war will consume us all.