Side by side with the worst of humanity, you regularly encounter the best. And so it was that while covering murder, rape and starvation in Sudan, I was awed by a heroic refugee, Naima Adam.

I’m on the Chad-Sudan border reporting on atrocities against Black African ethnic groups in Sudan, wrenchingly similar to the Darfur genocide here two decades ago. To report here is to appreciate that “evil” is not just an archaic Hebrew Bible term, but a force still powerful in the 21st century.

And yet: When civilization collapses and we humans are tested, some people reveal themselves as sociopaths, but a remarkable number turn out to be saints like Naima.

Naima, 48, is a member of one of the Black ethnic groups that have been targeted by destructive extremists in Sudan’s Arab leadership. Four times in the last 20 years Arab marauders have burned her home in their efforts at ethnic cleansing of non-Arab groups, and the Janjaweed Arab militia murdered her husband nine years ago.

After two military factions started a civil war in 2023, one of them — a descendant of the Janjaweed called the Rapid Support Forces, armed and supported by the United Arab Emirates — tried once again to drive Black Africans from Darfur. Naima recounted the same pattern I heard from so many people: The militia surrounded her village, lined up men and boys, then shot them one by one.

“We’re going to get rid of this Black trash,” she quoted the Arab gunmen saying.

Then the gunmen went house to house to kill, plunder and rape. Mostly, those they raped were girls and women, she said, but they also raped at least one man.