At my mother’s house in Khartoum, friends and family kept us company, mourning with us and exchanging stories late into the night. After all, my family lived on one of the busiest streets in a packed city. Only then did I realize that my family and I were trapped in the middle of a war zone in the heart of Khartoum. In 2019, an uprising by the Sudanese people spurred the SAF and RSF to remove longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir from power. The silence was haunting, a scene out of a horror movie: abandoned cars ablaze; scores of dead bodies rotting in the streets; RSF soldiers glaring and pointing their guns directly at us.

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