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 عالم برازيلي يحكي قصة هروبه المثيرة والخطرة من الحرب في وسط الخرطوم
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01:43 AM November, 11 2023 سودانيز اون لاين
Elhadi-
مكتبتى
رابط مختصر
هذه قصة تصلح بحق وحقيقة أن تروى في فيلم سينمائي :
I wrote this piece when I started trauma therapy back in the UK following my extraction, in April, from the war in Sudan. Not many people have read my story. It’s been more or less 7 months since I escaped the war. Now I feel ready to share my story widely. As an archaeologist researching Sudanese history, travelling to Sudan for fieldwork is the most expected period of my year. Though this time my experience in the country was quite different. I spent 11 days in the middle of the war zone in central Khartoum with barely any food and water. The Rapid Support Forces took over my hotel and pushed my group to the streets amid dead bodies, gun shootings and air strikes. Waiting for death, we walked across the destroyed streets of a ghost town with nowhere to go, until a random man gave us shelter, water, and food and planned my escape by tuk-tuk from the middle of the war zone to a safe place from where I could be evacuated.
1) Hostages
There is a time in the year that makes every archaeologist excited: fieldwork season. In my case, Sudan has been a regular source of excitement and joy since 2018. At least once a year — sometimes more — I travel to the country for research and excavation. I have met the most wonderful people there, some of whom became good friends. In Sudan, I have learned a lot about what it means to be a good human being. Regardless of how much one possesses, Sudanese hospitality, kindness and willingness to share have always struck me as unique. Now I can say I’m only alive because of the good heart of the Sudanese people.
This time I didn’t travel to the north of the country to excavate ancient sites. I stayed in Khartoum to start a new research project and collaboration with the Sudan National Museum, looking at one of the amazing Egyptian monuments rebuilt in the museum’s courtyard. It was supposed to be a short trip to kick off the project and gather some initial information to prepare for a larger stay later in the year. After one amazing week in Khartoum, all the excitement ended and I saw myself inhabiting hell.
On Friday 14th April, our day off, we started hearing rumours of troops being deployed to Khartoum and other places. Sudan has been facing difficult times in its struggle for democracy, so troops moving around didn’t really raise any red flags. Things changed considerably from Friday to Saturday though, when I woke up to the sounds of gunshots and explosions; our building was shaking. That morning we still didn’t know exactly what was happening, but it was the beginning of our confinement to what later became the main rebel militia headquarters in the presidential palace area.
I spent ten days literally in the middle of the war zone. We still didn’t know what exactly was going on in the first couple of days. We were certain that our hotel was one of the safest places to be in Khartoum. However, people’s general mood started deteriorating first when the electricity went down, followed by running water, then empty power banks, which means no access to the internet. The hotel owners never dared to put on the generator as we could hear soldiers outside. At this point, we didn’t know if these were the army or rebel militia soldiers, although we would receive a confirmation on the third day of confinement.
On the third day of confinement and not knowing what was happening outside, rebel militia fighters carrying heavy weaponry broke into the hotel for the first time. It was in the evening, and therefore completely dark, with the exception of three tiny tealight candles illuminating the whole hotel lobby where most of the people were gathered. Five or six RSF fighters stormed into the hotel pointing their guns at us and shouting. They were initially looking for guns. The one rebel leading the group went behind the reception counter searching and I vividly remember him angrily charging his machine gun. The youngest in the group — I’m sure he wasn’t older than 15 — didn’t hesitate to follow the lead. Luckily, they realised we had no guns, then moving to the safe where all the hotel money — including all my money — was kept. They emptied the safe, stole people’s possessions, including my mobile phone and took cigarettes. When the group’s leader — the most aggressive one — learned I was from Brazil, he came to shake my hand and show me pictures of old Brazilian football players. As someone who proves the Brazilian stereotype wrong, I forgot the name of the football player on his mobile screen and immediately thought — “It’s now that I die”. Fortunately, Roberto Carlos’ name came to mind in time. The rebel laughed and fist-bumped me, at the same time he was unsafely holding his machine gun in his left hand. Another man, also heavily armed, came and threw 3 packs of cigarettes on me as a gift for being Brazilian. This was my first of many encounters with the militia men. I was absolutely terrified but somehow, I managed not to externalise the utmost fear spreading throughout my body.
The next morning the same armed group showed up again — they said they wanted water — but they certainly just wanted to see, in daylight, how we looked like. They were much less aggressive but still terrifying. Since they broke inside the previous night, the hotel doors were only blocked by a bench. The sound of the bench moving became a warning sound for whenever they decided to come in. We lived in absolute terror knowing they were all outside and had free passage to the inside of the hotel. I still don’t know if we were officially hostages or prisoners, but we undoubtedly couldn’t leave where we were and had our actions dictated by rebels of the Rapid Support Forces — the notorious Janjaweed militia responsible for crimes against humanity and the Khartoum massacre of 2019, when hundreds were killed, several were raped and families were terrorised. One night the hotel staff had put on one of those emergency lights and immediately they shot high outside as a warning for us to turn it off. They didn’t allow us to use the hotel’s generator due to the noise and attention it would draw to the area. We could hear them outside at all times — praying, cooking, laughing, shooting — and the fear of being used as human shields increased by the hour.
The third time the militia rebels came in was unusual — a group of men brought us looted biscuits and a child soldier, of more or less 12 years of age, brought the hotel manager tea. At this point, I stopped counting how many times they broke in to either terrorise and steal from us or to offer some sort of kindness — the type of kindness killers apparently possess, which doesn’t awaken in you any strong sense of sympathy, but dread. The next time I can remember they came in was the most horrible occasion. One very aggressive man — I believe he was high on drugs — carrying an AK-47 came in shouting and pointing his weapon at us. He started separating us into groups with no apparent logic behind his choices, and at the same time, he screamed: “Dahab! Gurush!” (Gold! Money!). He didn’t seem to understand that we had nothing left; his fellow fighters had already taken everything from us. For that man, it was natural to kill (and later on, already out of Sudan, I learned these Jajaweed men are usually high on “ice”). He was definitely ready to shoot until another man entered the lobby and told him and his colleagues to leave. He was older, maybe in his 40s, while the first one must have been in his 30s (I wouldn’t be surprised if all of them were actually much younger). He was taller and wore a turban with a face-covering feature around his neck. Two ammunition belts crossed on his chest and the biggest machine gun I had ever seen made him the scariest man on earth and yet he probably saved our lives that night.
At some point, I started being able to distinguish different sorts of weaponry by their sound. Loud explosions became so common that I managed to sleep while there was heavy fighting outside. However, the most horrible, terrifying bits of this whole experience were the army jets carrying out airstrikes against militia gatherings — and we were literally in the middle of one of their largest headquarters in the vicinity of the presidential palace! How could we be sure we were not going to be bombed from the sky؟
After the turban, Rambo-like militia local commander saved us, he returned soon after to tell us that we needed to leave the hotel immediately because they were going to bomb it. That was petrifying. Though minutes later the younger guys who stole our things came back to tell us that we would have to leave in the morning instead. This was the eighth day with no electricity, water, or connection with the outside world. It is funny to think about it as now I realise that we somehow experienced some sort of Stockholm syndrome then. When they came back to tell us that we would have to leave in the morning we felt like they were saving us from having a missile dropped on our ######### and that they would drive us to a safe location.
The morning came, forced to leave our belongings behind, we were ready to be brought to a safe place. Incredibly naïve of us. Turban man was outside, observed by kid soldiers wielding guns heavier than their bodies. It was the first time we saw the outside world since the start of the war. Everything was destroyed and there was no car to give us safe passage. They took over our hotel, kicked us out and basically made us walk towards death. They released us in the middle of the fiercest battlefield in the very centre of Khartoum. We were desperate and had nowhere to go. Turban man told us to go to the big mosque — the famous Mosque al-Kebir in central Khartoum.
Completely disoriented, we made our move to the mosque. The whole hotel block had become a series of militia barracks, probably their main headquarters in the area — the quality of which was certainly much improved by the availability of an empty hotel to be used (or most likely looted as those men seem to have no sense of preservation). We had to cross the militia barracks, which were blocked by ####l roofing sheets working as road blockages. Things were usually calm in the early mornings and we found out why. While we crossed the camps, we saw all these men sitting on large dark sheets, surrounded by guns and missiles and armoured vehicles, having tea. All of them stared at us but we didn’t dare to stare back. No one bothered us because their sort of local commander — turban man — allowed us to leave. At this point, I realised I had ethnographically witnessed some sort of command chain of militia units spread throughout Khartoum, from child soldiers who serve tea while carrying weapons bigger than their bodies, to a mass of aggressive killers/thieves/looters (who are high, but can bring you biscuits nonetheless!), to local commanders who seem to be more informed and less volatile. The truth is that, despite the chain of command, in practice, these men are extremely undisciplined and uneducated. They act as they see fit — always violently and destructively — until a higher-up person tells them not to.
We walked to the mosque. Once we left the militia perimeter defined by those ####l roofing sheets, a pick-up truck full of armed soldiers on the back stopped us. The old man wearing glasses driving the pick-up truck was wearing a dark green uniform similar to the army’s. Were those men from the army؟ I had no idea, probably not as we were extremely close to the militia base. They stopped us. We told them we were kicked out of our hotel and were heading to the mosque. The old man, who was probably in control of the amorphous mass of soldiers in the back of the truck, let us walk while the soldiers observed. The hotel was fairly close to the mosque. The streets around the Al-Waha mall were empty and there was smoke coming out of the shopping centre. Signs of destruction were everywhere — cars, buildings, everything. Soon the streets would be full of militia pick-up trucks and fighters shooting their bazookas once they finished their tea.
Once we reached the mosque, we realised we wouldn’t be able to enter the historic building. Only the outside part of the mosque was open, inhabited by the homeless, the sick and dead bodies lying around. Blood stains were everywhere and the heavy signs of destruction were heart-breaking. At that point, our only hope was a security worker linked to my university’s insurance who had been trying to reach me at the hotel for some time. I only understood why he never managed to reach me when I saw the road blockages. I panicked when the guy told me he wouldn’t be able to come to the mosque and that we were on our own. We all thought we would die — and we would most certainly have died hadn’t we bumped into some of the angels who live in hell.
2) Hell
We descended into hell pretty quickly. Escorted by the rebels, as soon as we went downstairs and crossed the gate, we saw complete destruction. I don’t particularly believe in hell, but if it really exists, at this point I’m sure I’ve got a pretty good grasp of it. As expected in hell, I saw the devil every time I stared into the eyes of RSF men. Though hell had its surprises: there, I also met angels. I met angels and they don’t fly nor live in an inaccessible heaven. They live in hell and are ready to assist those in need.
It was too risky to stay in the mosque’s surroundings, in the middle of the battlefield. The dead bodies of homeless people who had no alternative but to stay and get hit by a stray bullet attested to it. Only the men and the children were visible in the mosque area, but I think there were also women inside the shelters. I will never forget one old man who was there. He couldn’t walk and needed assistance. When he saw us, he immediately came to ask if there was a doctor in the group. I told him no and we tried to have a conversation, but we were unsuccessful due to my extremely bad, archaeology-focused Arabic until another old man arrived and translated. Amid absolute horror, we managed to smile and sort of hugged each other.
Completely disoriented and hopeless, we decided to leave that place and try to find a hotel — another attestation of our privileged naïveté. We were nine people from the hotel, guests and workers, young and elderly, some of them carrying luggage. I had to leave all my equipment, belongings and research samples behind, with the exception of a backpack which I later realised was pretty empty. Despite not having any possessions myself, I carried the luggage of older people. Some people in the group had very heavy, large suitcases. Some people — myself included — were judgemental and immediately suggested they should’ve abandoned their belongings if they wanted to survive. Later on, I learned that those suitcases were filled with not just personal belongings, but also basic items and food, which were absolutely necessary for people’s survival in the context of shortages of everything. Despite having initially judged, before I was evacuated, I fed on the food carried around the war zone in those heavy suitcases. Never judge people, especially working people, in difficult situations. Had they abandoned their suitcases, there would be no food to endure afterwards.
An old man from the mosque guided us through the streets of central Khartoum. He was the first angel I met in hell and he was among the homeless and the sick outside the Mosque al-Kebir. We walked through heavily destroyed streets around the al-Zouk al-Arabi area for more or less one hour. We were a very slow group and our best chances were to stay together at all times. Some of the buildings around had been hit by airstrikes, there was rubble and trash everywhere. Central Khartoum had become a ghost town as the Janjaweed had promised years ago. We bumped into soldiers inspecting — most likely #####ng — closed stores in the zouk. One of them thought one of the Sudanese men with us was a soldier and almost killed him after forcing him to make weird, dance-like moves. We stopped at various hotels. All of them were deserted. At one place, a young man showed up with a cup of tea to refuse to give us shelter. I don’t judge him, there was no food or water anywhere.
The old man from the mosque and a Sudanese friend in our group decided to go explore while we stayed behind. It was extremely hot. At this point, we no longer had any water on us. They came back after 20 minutes or so and told us to follow them. We walked and found our saviour. Anwar, a retired man whose daughters had become doctors, owned a modest hostel in the zouk area and immediately took us in. He was sitting on a plastic chair in front of the half-closed door of his shelter. Living in hell, Anwar was a source of strength and peace for me. Amid shootings and heavy explosions, he constantly said to me: “Mushkila mafi, kullu tamam!” (“There’s no problem, all is good!”). One morning, he invited me to sit with him on the pavement, as retired people usually do in suburban areas in my hometown to keep informed of what’s going on in the neighbourhood. I didn’t manage to sit, but I stood next to him, ready to run if necessary (although I would probably never have left him behind; he had a bad knee and all I could do for him was to give him the anti-inflammatory cream I use for my tendonitis, which was miraculously inside my backpack). Outside, he showed me the massive blood stains in front of his place and calmly told me that the militia had killed a young man there the previous night. The night before that, another young man had been shot across the street, where there was a building missing a huge chunk of its top part as a result of an airstrike.
There was a group of very simple men living/sheltering at Anwar’s hostel. They had no family. Food was scarce and it was difficult to reach water. And yet those people shared all the food they had with us and went out to fetch us water every morning. As a foreigner, I had never drunk unfiltered or unbottled water in Sudan, but that cloudy, greenish water kept me alive. We found Anwar late in the morning of the ninth day stuck in the middle of the war zone. That evening, they prepared extra food: aseeda with tuna and tomato sauce, ful and chicken. This wasn’t their normal meal, as I would learn the next day when we had a very small portion of fuland bread only. It was a welcome banquet, eaten with our hands on a mat on the floor, which shouldn’t be mistaken for luxury — it would be another privileged misconception to think so — it was instead Sudanese hospitality, care and kindness, the things that kept me alive and safe. That evening I stopped being a vegetarian after 10 years.
The hostel was simple and we slept outside, under the beautiful Ramadan sky. Anwar offered us beds in an open area upstairs where they slept in the hot season. It’s much fresher to sleep outside than inside. However, it was extremely dangerous. We could hear the bullets flying close above our #########. The first morning I woke up there, I was sitting on the bed in the outside area and an insanely large bullet fell from the sky right next to me. That could’ve hit me, but I guess if I haven’t died in one of my many direct interactions with the Janjaweed or while wandering outside in the middle of the conflict zone, I wasn’t really going to die from a stray bullet. (I guess I was internalising some of Anwar’s optimism: mushkila mafi!)
On the next day my group was evacuated. The original plan was to gather at the Italian Residence to be evacuated all together. However, that was never possible, as the Residence was located in Khartoum 2, a highly dangerous area controlled by the RSF. Later we also learned that the Italians wouldn’t be able to take all of us — we were Greek, German, Ugandan, Filipino and Brazilian. Most of the group left on a van in the middle of a shooting on our street. A lot of money was paid for the lift — exploitation — one of the many tragedies of war. The leaving party wanted to pay Anwar for hosting us (if I had all my money stolen by the militia rebels, others had their stash), but he refused to take any money. Another privileged misconception is to think that money can compensate for kindness. When Anwar learned that the Janjaweed had stolen my belongings, including my mobile phone, he instantly took his own mobile phone from his pocket, removed one of the SIM cards inside and gave it to me. I thanked him and promised that when the war is over, I’d be back to Khartoum and would come visit him. He was glad to accept that as “payment”.
When the whole group left, I stayed behind with two Filipino friends who worked at the hotel. I had been strong and surprisingly calm during the many interactions with the Janjaweed and when we were pushed to the streets amid the conflict. But as soon as the group left, I had a breakdown. I thought I’d never leave Khartoum. The people I were with left me behind and the security personnel my university’s insurance sent to rescue me never managed to reach me.
On the day I stayed behind while my friends went to be evacuated, a special security team tried to reach Anwar’s hostel. They were unsuccessful. No one would be able to enter the middle of the war zone in central Khartoum. Later I learned they were shot on their way to me and that there was a casualty. I’m not sure what that means, but I’m still processing the fact that people put themselves in grave danger to rescue me. At the same time, Anwar told us that we’d have to leave as things were going to get really ugly the next day. He had heard rumours of heavy fighting was going to take place exactly where we were. They were also all going to leave that location very soon. My Filipino friends lived at a Protestant church far from the war zone but got caught in the middle of the conflict without being able to go home. They desperately wanted to leave but were also struggling to find transportation. No one wanted to risk going to our location in al-Arabi. In the end, both theirs and mine rescue strategies failed and we spent another night at Anwar’s. I panicked just to think they’d also live me behind; without them, I’d have no one to turn to in Khartoum.
As our evacuation strategies had failed over and over again, we left Anwar’s place very early in the morning on the eleventh day. Anwar decided to resolve the matter once and for all in his own way as we really couldn’t stay there any longer. He walked us to Jackson bus station with the men staying at his hostel. There were rumours that, from there, there would be transportation out of the conflict zone. We walked together with the Sudanese men. We carried all my Filipino friends’ belongings. It was hard to find myself once more being completely vulnerable walking in the war zone. Before we reached Jackson bus station, a group of militia men undercover stopped us. At first, I didn’t realise those were Janjaweed men, so I greeted them and stopped right next to them — another display of the privileged naïveté of someone who never had to survive hell before. They got angry and told us to keep moving while all the Sudanese men were forced to stay behind. We stopped at Jackson bus station praying for our friends’ safety. We were extremely relieved when we saw them approaching us. The way to Jackson bus station was covered with very large bullets, to the point I couldn’t walk without kicking them. At that moment, I was weirdly brought back to the archaeological site in northern Sudan where, in some areas, it’s impossible to walk without kicking ancient pottery sherds given their extreme abundance on the surface.
Once we arrived at Jackson bus station, we realised the rumours weren’t true. Fake news and rumours are another of war’s tragedies and can be deadly. The bus station was completely empty. After wandering about for some time, we found other people trying to leave the area. A tuk-tuk appeared to drop people at Jackson, and Anwar immediately went to negotiate a price with the driver. He paid the driver, put us three and all the Filipinos’ luggage in the tuk-tuk and rushed us out of there.
Our destination was in al-Taif, a safer area on the opposite side of Khartoum. “Safer” here doesn’t really mean safe — the area is located at the southern tip of the airport, which was taken by the rebels on the first day of the war — and for us to reach that we had to cross the most dangerous parts of Khartoum controlled by the militia. The tuk-tuk that originally took us away from al-Arabi couldn’t bring us to al-Taif because fuel shortages. However, he brought us to a square, which I still didn’t manage to locate on the map. There, people were having tea and selling vegetables and fruits. It felt good to experience a bit of normality, even though we could hear the explosions and jets from a distance. The tuk-tuk driver never managed to find us alternative transportation to al-Taif, but I wasn’t scared. It felt like I was back to the normal Khartoum for a bit, and we had a pleasant surprise: Anwar and the others managed to arrive where we were and he started sorting out alternative transportation for us. Meanwhile, he made us sit at a tea stall, where we also ate watermelon. We spent an hour or so there until we found another tuk-tuk to take us to al-Taif. We said goodbye and departed hoping that one day we’ll meet again.
It was an hour or so tuk-tuk ride to the Protestant church in al-Taif. It was a tense ride, we had to take small alleys to avoid the main streets dotted with RSF checkpoints. At one time, we almost hit a checkpoint and the rebels saw us turning right into a small unpaved road once we realised we’d be in danger, but luckily, they didn’t follow us. After that, the remaining part of the journey was smooth and we managed to arrive at the safe location. Anwar gave us money to pay for the ride, but when we finally arrived, the driver told us the amount wasn’t enough to cover the costs of fuel, especially as he had to take various alternative routes to avoid the rebels. My Filipino friends tried to negotiate with him, but he only accepted when I told him the militia had taken everything from us and we had barely anything left. He sympathised and wished us good luck before leaving us.
3) Safety and evacuation
If it wasn’t for my two Filipino friends, Anwar would have nowhere to send me to before he shut down and evacuated his hostel following rumours the area was going to be bombed. Without them, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me. At the church where my Filipino friends lived, we experienced some sense of safety for the first time in 10 days. It was silent, no gunshots nor explosions could be heard. There was water and electricity and I showered for the first time since the start of the war. They shared with me some of the food from inside the large suitcases they carried with them across the war zone. At the church, we met an Eritrean family — a mother and four daughters — who were extremely kind and welcoming. They allowed me to use their mobile phone to contact my people outside Sudan, who only then could arrange for me to be extracted successfully. I thought I would need to spend a few days at the church, but soon after I washed and ate, I received a call to be ready as the university’s insurance people were arriving in 10 minutes to bring me to the Wadi Seidna air base in Omdurman. That was a relief, but my heart was broken because that meant I’d be leaving behind the angels who helped me all the way through this war.
The local insurance people never managed to find my exact location. I had to walk to find them at a meeting point by the main road. My two Filipino friends walked me to the meeting point and we said goodbye (they’re now safe back in the Philippines). Inside the van, there were two other foreigners being evacuated. My first interaction with them was to ask if the man was Egyptian — for some reason I thought he was — and he freaked out as he had moments before been pulled out of a car by the RSF, who threatened his life because they thought he was Egyptian. I had no idea this had happened, otherwise, I wouldn’t have asked that question.
It was a long journey from al-Taif to the Wadi Seidna air base. There were heavy signs of destruction on the way to Omdurman: destroyed buildings, exploded cars, dead bodies inside some of the cars etc. There were several checkpoints along the way, both army and militia. The army checkpoints were always ok, but the militia checkpoints were always tense. We gave lifts to many armed men from the Sudanese army on our way to Wadi Seidna, but I was no longer scared of being close to armed men. The general feeling was that the men from the Sudanese army were the good guys and the militia men were the evil ones. From my personal perspective, that was true, but I never forgot that the army and militia together were responsible for the deaths of an awful lot of young Sudanese people fighting for democracy. I also experienced the demonstrations against military rule in Khartoum first-hand in the previous years I spent time working there. Once, I was leaving the Sudan National Museum and met a crowd of people bearing placards and chanting on the way to the presidential palace. Then from the hotel — the same one taken and looted by the militia now — , I could hear the stun grenades and gunshots used by the army and the militia against unarmed civilians peacefully demanding a democratic government. As an archaeologist, I’m used to studying long-term processes leading to only small-scale structural change across millennia in different societies. This time, I got to experience first-hand how everything can change from one day to another: villains turning into good guys in a war that seem to have started out of the blue — at least from the people’s perspective.
Once I arrived at Wadi Seidna, I ended up among the Swedish, who quickly assured me that they’d take me out of there regardless of my nationality. At this point, I wasn’t aware of the high-profile diplomatic negotiations between my home country — Brazil — , the country where I work — the UK — , various EU countries and the University of Cambridge to ensure I was going to be evacuated. I’m very grateful to everyone involved in this behind-the-scenes work, the dimension of which most people can’t even start to grasp. I flew out of Sudan in a Swedish Air Force Lockheed C-130H Hercules cargo plane. At that point, I was able to feel some sort of excitement to be able to fly in one of those planes that one only sees in movies. I landed in Djibouti, where I was met by two most lovely persons from the Dutch Foreign Ministry, who took care of me at the request of the Brazilian Foreign Ministry. “It’s good to have friends, isn’t it؟” — they told me when I arrived — it’s good to have friends indeed.
4) Where do angels live؟
Angels do live in hell. No one will be ever able to convince me of the contrary. I was extremely lucky to have left Sudan alive. That was only possible because, in every moment of need, I crossed paths with someone who would help me, from the very moment I was pushed to the streets by the militia rebels, to the moment of my evacuation. Without them, I’d have had no water, no food, and would have been left outside to die in the middle of the conflict zone. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to speak with my department’s safety officer in the UK, the person who was responsible for keeping me sane and who never left me alone, despite the distance, until she was able to organise my evacuation, which was only possible because the people of Khartoum didn’t abandon me to die. This is an attestation to the kindness and generosity of the people of Khartoum and Sudan in general. Since I’ve been to Sudan for the first time, I have continuously been an advocate for the Sudanese people abroad, but especially now, I will always raise my voice, wherever I am, to let people know that Sudan is far from being this war-torn country only. Instead, it is a place defined by its people, and they don’t deserve to have their lives destroyed by senseless war. Nor do they deserve to have their lives dictated by foreign powers who couldn’t care less about the Sudanese people. Inshallah, there will be peace and prosperity in Sudan. As soon as possible, I hope to be able to return to help, in my extremely limited way, improve the lives of the people in Sudan. Archaeology, education and heritage can be powerful tools towards social reconstruction, development and emancipation. But these things, which we scholars tirelessly discuss in theory, can only be achieved once people stop struggling every day to survive. #KeepeyesonSudan. Support Sudan. Learn with Sudan how to overcome your privilege and become more human. God bless Sudan and its angels.
Rennan Lemos
Cambridge, 9th May/4th June/10th November 2023
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Elhadi
Nasr
عبدالقادر محمد
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست