My desperate search for safety in Sudan

The night before street warfare broke out in Khartoum, I was at a cultural centre in the north of the city listening to a panel of feminist speakers. It was the kind of event that would have been unthinkable under Omar al-Bashir, the dictator ousted by a popular uprising four years ago. Under Bashir, Sudan was one of the most oppressive places in the world to be a woman, and it was women who led the protests against him.

The panellists that night talked about strategies for forcing legal reforms (Sudanese courts can still sentence women to be stoned to death for adultery). Afterwards the audience, which contained men as well as women, carried on discussing the issues over tea, coffee and black forest gateau. Since the revolution was hijacked by a military junta in 2021, these kinds of civic gatherings have represented our best chance of bringing about change. The atmosphere was great. We all knew that there was tension on the streets because the junta’s two leading generals, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, were locked in a stand-off. But you never think the situation is actually going to explode.

I’d returned to Sudan the previous week to carry out some academic research, having left my home to study in Britain some years earlier, and was staying at my friend Kholood’s home. I’d only slept a few hours when Kholood woke me up. “I can hear gunshots,” she said. We listened. The sound of gunfire gave way to the boom of explosions. We switched on the TV in the living room and watched the news for a little while. Then we heard a bomber plane roar over our heads, and it dawned on us just how close we were to the fighting. We relocated to a windowless pantry off the kitchen, where there was barely enough room for two people to stand up and face each other. Then the electricity went out.

We didn’t know that we would be stuck there indefinitely. We felt reassured by having six hours’ worth of battery for our phones in my power bank, though the water pumps were out, which meant we couldn’t wash, and had to drink hot, bottled fluids. After about 12 hours we decided to leave the pantry to try to sleep. We thought it was safer to rest in the same bed so that one of us would know if the other got hit by a stray bullet. I lay sideways, dazed, watching the dawning sky through a crack in the door.

By the next day, it was clear that our situation wasn’t going to improve. We didn’t watch videos for fear of draining our phone batteries – we tried to get all our news from Twitter. Kholood was constantly searching for information: how widespread was the fighting? Had everyone in Khartoum lost electricity? Another day rolled by of sitting in the pantry listening to guns and mortars and rockets and not doing anything. I started to panic. “We need a plan,” I said, leaning forward and trying to catch Kholood’s eye. She continued to scroll through her phone. I stood up to give her some space, then reiterated gently: “we need a plan.”

We started to chase down leads on streets that might be quiet enough to drive through, so-called “safe passages”. People were texting each other updates on the roads all the time; someone even built an app for it. At 2pm on the fourth day I received a hurried call from a friend living in the east of the city who had heard about a safe passage to a calmer part of the city. “Leave now if you ever will,” he said.

We set off 15 minutes later, taking only the most necessary items: a change of clothes, cash and our identity documents. We planned to stay at my parents’ house – if we made it there. The previous day I’d heard about a man who had been shot while trying to escape on the same route we were taking: he had bled out in his car. As we set off I couldn’t stop thinking about our blood soaking the seats. I decided to roll down the tinted windows protecting us from the ferocious sun so that everyone could see we were women.

The streets were deserted. After ten minutes we came to a checkpoint. I slowed down and arched my back trying to see which side the soldiers were on. The man lolling next to the checkpoint wore a dark-green uniform and carried an old AK-47, which suggested he belonged to the forces commanded by Burhan, the de-facto head of the junta. I smiled and said in a gentle, pleading voice: “good day, officer, may we pass here?” He didn’t bother to get up, but asked us brusquely where we were going. Other soldiers who had been standing nearby drifted towards us.

We’d planned a script for this situation, something that would make us seem as unthreatening as possible. “My mother”, I said, “is an elderly woman and by herself, I need to get to her, she’s been without food or drink for days. This lady driving with me is my sister.” There was a pause, then the soldier asked how I intended to get there. I asked if he would be kind enough to guide us, but he just waved a hand to indicate we should turn right at the junction ahead.

I drove forward slowly and turned the corner. Forty yards down the new road I saw another checkpoint and more soldiers in dark-green uniform. I assumed we had been cleared to drive through territory controlled by Burhan’s men and kept driving. Then I heard the soldiers shout, and glancing in the rear-view mirror I saw four of them training their weapons on us. I stopped the car in fear and stretched my arms out of the windows in a gesture of surrender. After checking our papers and searching the car they let us go.

We drove through the Khartoum suburbs for the next hour and a half. As we entered my parents’ district I spotted soldiers in light khaki toting state-of-the-art weapons, and my heart sank. These were Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The RSF evolved from the Janjaweed, a state-backed militia accused of carrying out acts of genocide in the Darfur region in the early 2000s. It is now supposed to be merging with the army as part of a transition to civilian rule, but its commander does not seem to want to take orders from anyone. I’d heard terrible things about the Janjaweed’s atrocities, which included mass rapes. But when we got to the checkpoint the young militia officer just shouted “go!” and waved us through hurriedly.

I turned off the main road as soon as possible and took the back streets to my parents’ house. We came across a bakery that was open and stopped to buy some food. People were jostling to be served, and the baker seemed to be rationing how much people could buy. I heard one man shout, “It’s not up to you how much bread you give me!”

Shortly afterwards we pulled into my parents’ garage. When I stopped the car, we high-fived each other. It felt like a moment from “Thelma and Louise”. We’d navigated the deadly and toxic world of men and their guns. For now, we were safe. ■

Raga Makawi is an editor and researcher based in Britain