Letter from Khartoum

Khartoum was warm and alive in the first few months of 2023. 

Before the war broke out on 15 April between the Sudanese army (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, it felt as though we were, in some sense, saying our goodbyes to our city. Art galleries continued to announce new events, and young people enjoyed coffee on boats along the banks of the Nile. During Ramadan, tents and pop-up events took over Nile Street and the beautiful al-Sunut Forest.

A few weeks before our lives changed, I was given the opportunity to speak about my book at Downtown Gallery, where Hassan Musa—one of my favourite artists—was in attendance. Just a few days later, we met again on a Nile cruise featuring Sudan’s take on Afro-pop. We both agreed that the country was heading towards war, and that there was little left to do but enjoy our remaining days in this city we love. The imminence of war never truly prepares you for it, I’ve come to realise.

Khartoum is a city of resistance, and it has been destroyed many times only to be rebuilt. Its southern tip, Soba, was once the capital of Alwa, a Christian kingdom that reigned from the sixth to the early sixteenth centuries AD, before being destroyed with the rise of the Muslim Sennar Sultanate, which emerged as a confederation. Diverse communities lived along the banks of Khartoum, overlooking what is often called the longest kiss in history at Al-Mugran—the confluence where the Blue Nile, darker and more tempestuous, meets the lighter, more placid White Nile as they journey from Ethiopia and Uganda, respectively.

Present-day Khartoum, with its centre, was officially established in the 1820s as a military outpost and port by the Khedives as part of the Ottoman Empire. It was later subjugated and neglected during the extremist Mahdiyya period (1881–1898), during which many of its homes were destroyed and their bricks repurposed by the Mahdists to build a new capital in Omdurman, its twin city. Khartoum was eventually reinstated as the capital under the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, and became Sudan’s social, political, and economic epicentre.

Khartoum is a city of wealth and great poverty, a city of culture and art, where Islamic and Nubian architecture compete. 

Khartoum is a city within a state also called Khartoum, and the state has seven localities hosting up to 10 million people. They live in bougainvillea-wrapped homes in the wealthier neighbourhoods in its centre; on lush farmlands inherited from their forefathers in some localities; in government-built budget housing and buildings in its outskirts; in makeshift cardboard houses in the sprawling periphery of the city, as it contests the borders of neighbouring states; and in traditional one-storey houses with many yards, built to house several nuclear families at a time.

The yard was central to our family fabric: tea was served there, and my mother—and before her, my grandmother—kept plants and flowers in pots that circled the yard and made it cooler during the warmer season. Others, like my uncle, used his yard to grow cucumbers and aubergines, taking advantage of the city’s fertile soil and generous rainy season.

Khartoum is a city of wealth and great poverty, a city of culture and art, where Islamic and Nubian architecture compete. It is also home to thousands of illiterate children begging on the sides of the streets. Some have arrived as economic migrants, hoping to break through in the capital city; some have come fleeing drought and conflict, believing that Khartoum—“where the president sleeps and the plane takes off”—is the safest place for them. Some have come to further their education, became absorbed in social networks, and chose to settle down; while others found freedom from social norms and traditional families, and were able to create their own lives as part of the city’s subculture. Khartoum has always shown up as a kaleidoscope of identities, flowing peacefully together like the waves of its Niles.

The Nile is for all of us to enjoy for free, as we sip on ginger-flavoured coffee (jebena), sitting on a stool overlooking the river and Tuti Island.

Khartoum state has many arid lands, as well as small forests and farmlands along the banks of the Nile in Eastern Nile and Khartoum East, but its greatest asset is the Nile. The Nile is a lifeline for fishermen and also a cause of distress for communities in places such as Tuti Island, who have to shield themselves in the rainy season by placing bags full of sand around the island to stop the Nile from entering their homes. One time, a famous song tells us, the men laid down on top of the sandbags in an attempt to challenge the Nile and protect their island.

It took decades to convince the people of Tuti to allow the authorities to build a bridge connecting them to Khartoum. Their resistance seemed very reasonable when the war broke out, as the island became a major centre for RSF fighters, who blocked the bridge and placed the island under siege. Tuti residents found themselves back to using boats to leave the island or to bring in food items.

The Nile is for all of us to enjoy for free, as we sip on ginger-flavoured coffee (jebena), sitting on a stool overlooking the river and Tuti Island. Or you can pay for a cup of cappuccino at the Rickshaw restaurant in the Corinthia Hotel, which was built with Gaddafi’s money and is shaped like an egg—or a penguin, depending on the angle. The hotel now appears damaged, its beautiful blue glass shredded, and parts of it bombed. It is somewhat lucky, as many city landmarks, such as the Coral Hotel and the Friendship Hall, were burned to the ground by the RSF.

Not far from Corinthia is my third favourite museum—the University of Khartoum’s Natural History Museum—which opened in 1929 and holds rare specimens from the 19th century, as well as endangered species that have been on display for decades, either as live animals or mummified exhibits. Due to the lack of food and care since the start of the war, we have heard that many of the animals there have died, as well as some in the Sudan Animal Resource Centre.

Because the fighting was concentrated along the banks of the Nile and near the presidential palace, many historical buildings that housed ministries, universities, and research centres were burned to the ground. The fate of other institutions and buildings remains unclear. An unverified video, which went public, shows RSF militia entering the National Museum of Sudan and claiming that the mummies—dating back to the Nubian kingdoms that ruled parts of Sudan thousands of years ago—were tortured civilians.

We’ve been erased from our city, a place that my mother’s family called home for almost 150 years.

After the city was liberated by the SAF between September and March 2025, we were further devastated. The damage to our collective identity was now evident: no museum was left untouched, and the National Museum was robbed bare. The pain was not only difficult—it was personal. This history is tied to my community, the Nubians, who are among the oldest inhabitants of the Nile Valley.

Khartoum was essentially gutted in what has been described as the “biggest looting of an African city, if not any capital city, in modern history.”

A few days after we fled our home—with a little carry-on containing my daughter’s belongings, a bag with four items of clothing and four books for me, and some spices and food items carried by my mother—our home was violated, and RSF fighters moved into it. We’ve been erased from our city, a place that my mother’s family called home for almost 150 years. All of a sudden, my family became strangers, displaced in cities and towns inside and outside Sudan, with no idea of when we would be allowed back into our home, or even into Khartoum State.

The once-bustling city remains largely empty; still images taken from Google Earth show a depopulated place. Thousands have returned since the city was liberated, only to find a place that is unfamiliar—a violated home, with no furniture, only human faeces, and even corpses left behind by militia members who used our houses as bases, hospitals, and detention and torture facilities.

I feel that I’ve never had the chance to mourn our personal loss, because I am occupied with mourning my city and trying to find out what remains of it. I do know that our living room is burned, our furniture is gone, and even our pictures were not spared—my uncle found my graduation photo lying on the street in front of our home. Our books are there, but they are on the floor, gathering dust.

The day I found out about the losses at the National Museum, I couldn’t get out of bed. I began to panic about the National Records Office, a mighty building in downtown Khartoum that holds some of the rarest manuscripts and historical records. 

Our family library was not so fortunate. It had been housed at the Mohamed Omer Bashir Centre for Sudanese Studies at Omdurman Ahlia University, and the centre was burned to the ground. We donated the library in 2012 to honour the memory of my grandmother, and to show solidarity with the university—a progressive gem that continued to be targeted by the authorities.

The day I found out about the losses at the National Museum, I couldn’t get out of bed. I began to panic about the National Records Office, a mighty building in downtown Khartoum that holds some of the rarest manuscripts and historical records. Luckily for us, although the RSF did intend to burn the building, the damage was confined to the administrative section, and the archive housing the records was unharmed. At least we can say that part of the history of Khartoum continues to be preserved.

I’ve watched every video and scrutinised every image of Khartoum over the past few weeks. I’ve mourned each burned market, looted building, and destroyed landmark. In the meantime, I’ve been quietly plotting my return to a city I still love. As much as I recognise the difficulty of such a decision, I also wholeheartedly believe that we must reclaim Khartoum if we are to truly defeat the project that instigated this war—one that seeks to change the country’s demography and subjugate its remaining population, employing them as free labour on farmlands and in mining sites.