Riyadh was very busy, with a lot of life and movement,” Khartoum resident Haneen El recalled. “The streets were filled with restaurants, fast food trucks, shops and corner stores. People were always out and about.” A substitute teacher who volunteered at a dental clinic twice a week, El ended her work week every Friday by visiting her grandmother, before going out with friends in Riyadh’s bustling streets. 

This changed in April 2023, when, like thousands of Khartoum residents, El and her family found themselves fleeing the heavy artillery descending on their capital. 

An escalating rivalry between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—previous collaborators in the October 2021 coup led by  SAF captain General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan—was leading to civilian deaths, the displacement of millions of people and the destruction of infrastructure in Khartoum and other nearby cities. 

When the war broke out, El said they expected it to last a week. People barricaded themselves in their homes in anticipation of a ceasefire. But the ceasefire never came.
At least not a permanent one. Her hopes were dashed when jets loomed overhead and the streets near their home were targeted by shelling.

As the situation became increasingly dangerous, El and her family knew they had to leave. They had discussed it previously, but this time they had no choice but to take action. El said they “locked up the house, got in the car and made a run for it”. They had only one thing in mind: survival. “We were focused on getting from point A to B, all together and alive.”

Taking what essentials they could carry, they left Khartoum on 29 April, during the first temporary ceasefire. “We packed our passports, toiletries and a change of clothes. My brother managed to grab his laptop. We were in a state of panic because we didn’t know if we would finally go through with leaving,” she said while still in Sudan.

The journey was horrific. Completely on edge, the family took a circuitous route to its initial destination on the outskirts of Khartoum before eventually managing to flee the country for Cairo, Egypt, on 7 June.

El looks back on her former life with appreciation and longing. It was, she says, perfect. But the war robbed her and her family and friends of safety and normality, throwing their lives into turmoil. “Almost everyone I know is now either on the outskirts of Khartoum or out of the country. The only thing harder than staying was leaving. It has been tougher on the older generation. It’s heartbreaking for them to make that decision,” she said.

While she hasn’t lost any of her loved ones in the violence, El knows people whose lives were lost in the bloodshed in Khartoum. And her mental health has not been left unscathed by the war—she is still trying to process the changes happening around her, having been forced to uproot her life and start afresh. The former teacher tried to find work in Cairo, but has since travelled to Sweden, where she hopes to study for a Master’s degree. She doesn’t know what became of her home. “We occasionally got updates from the employees who worked at a supermarket across from our house,” she explained. “But since the situation escalated, everyone had to leave and we don’t know what’s happened to our house.”

The neighbourhood WhatsApp group her mother belongs to has also been quiet for some time—everyone gone.

••

By early August, it was reported that almost a million people had fled Sudan to neighbouring countries—Egypt, South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Libya—while another two million had been internally displaced. The majority (71%) of those who have left their homes are reported to be from Khartoum, where pillaging and forceful “occupation of and attacks on public institutions and private residences” continue, according to the United Nations’ International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

Visual artist Galal Yousif also fled Khartoum when the war broke out. His neighbourhood of Al Halfaya (north Khartoum) was seized by the RSF militia, who kicked people out of their homes and then occupied them. His house was one of these. When he left, he stopped in his birth city of Rufaa (Al Jazirah state in east central Sudan) before trying to reach Kenya. “The war forced me to leave my home, and Kenya was my choice because I already had connections, and some of my work is in art galleries here.”

Boarding a bus from Sudan to Gondar in northern Ethiopia, he planned to fly to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, and then catch another flight to Nairobi. But he contracted malaria at the Sudan-Ethiopia border and missed his initial flight to Addis Ababa. Though he eventually made it to the capital, he was very sick by the time he arrived, and was rushed to the hospital by some friends when his condition worsened still. “I was in the hospital for seven days,” he said. “I really thought I was going to die in Ethiopia. I feel like God saved me twice—once from the war and once from malaria.”

Discharged from hospital, he made it to Kenya, but still wishes he had not had to leave Khartoum.
He had had several chances to depart before the war, but wanted “to stay and build a life” in his home country. “Life was normal,” he said. “Yes, people were struggling due to economic issues and the political situation wasn’t ideal after the coup in 2021, but it wasn’t this bad,” he said, referring to the 2021 coup that sparked protests in Khartoum. At that time, the military was accused of firing at demonstrators. “People were protesting to demand a civilian government and democracy, but there was a semblance of peace.”

“”
Though he eventually made it to the capital, he was very sick by the time he arrived, and was rushed to the hospital by some friends when his condition worsened still. “I was in the hospital for seven days,” he said. “I really thought I was going to die in Ethiopia. I feel like God saved me twice—once from the war and once from malaria.”

While Yousif lost his art studio and work made over many years, some of his friends remain stuck in the war-torn city. Two were arrested by the military and RSF. Although one is now free, the other, a graphic designer who had returned to Khartoum to get his laptop so he could work outside the city, remains in the custody of Sudan’s national army. Another of Yousif’s friends was beaten and dumped in the street by the armed forces, which cut off his dreadlocks as they are associated with the movement fighting for democracy. “I used to have long dreadlocks but I decided to cut them off to avoid putting my family in danger,” Yousif explained.

Yousif’s family stayed behind in Rufaa, and Yousif hopes peace will prevail so he can go back home to Khartoum. This desire is shared by El, who appreciates the safety and quiet of her new home in Sweden, but continues to hope for “security, safety, freedom and a prosperous near future for Sudan”. That is, she wants to return home and rebuild her life.

“I understand that would mean starting over, but nothing compares to feeling secure and safe in your own country. I don’t take it for granted,” she said. 

Article reproduced with the kind permission of OpenDemocracy.net