Ransacked and looted: Sky reporter returns to family home left in ruins after war in Sudan

The biggest city in the Sahel has been ransacked and left in ruins.

War erupted in Sudan’s capital Khartoum in April 2023 and sent millions searching for safety.

The city was quickly captured by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after a power struggle with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for total control.

At least 61,000 people were killed from the fighting and siege conditions in Khartoum state alone.

Thousands more were maimed and many remain missing.

The RSF fled Khartoum’s neighbourhoods in caravans carrying the city’s looted treasures as the army closed in and recaptured it after two years of occupation.

The empty streets they left behind are lined with charred, bullet-ridden buildings and robbed store fronts.

The once shiny skyscrapers built along the confluence of the River Nile are now husks of blackened steel.

The neighbourhoods are skeletal. Generational homes are deserted and hollow.

Trenches snake the streets where copper electric cables were ripped out of the ground and pulled out of lampposts now overridden with weeds.

The majority of the 13 million people displaced by this war fled Khartoum. Many left in a rush, assuming it would only take a few weeks for peace to be restored.

My parents were among those millions and in the midst of the abandoned, looted homes is the house where I grew up.

A shell of a home

I have to strain my eyes to see the turn to my house. All the usual markers are gone. There are no gatherings of young people drinking coffee with tea ladies in the leafy shade – just gaping billboard frames that once held up advertisements behind cars of courting couples parked by the Nile.

Our garden is both overgrown and dried to death.

The mango, lemon and jasmine trees carefully planted by my mother and brother have withered.

The Bougainvillea has reached over the pathway and blocked off the main entrance. We go through the small black side door.

Our family car is no longer in the garage, forcing us to walk around it.

It was stolen shortly after my parents evacuated.

The two chairs my mum and dad would sit at the centre of the front lawn are still there, but surrounded by thorny weeds and twisted, bleached vines.

The neighbour’s once lush garden is barren too.

Their tall palm trees at the front of the house have been beheaded – rounding off into a greyish stump instead of lush fronds.

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Everyone in Khartoum is coming back to a game of Russian roulette. Searching out their houses to confirm suspicions of whether it was blasted, burned or punctured with bullets.

Many homes were looted and bruised by nearby combat but some are still standing. Others have been completely destroyed.

The outside of our house looks smooth from the street but has a crack in the base of the front wall visible from up close.

It is likely a bomb fell nearby and shook the house at its base – a reminder of the airstrikes and shelling that my parents and their neighbours fled.

Inside, the damage is choking.

Most of the furniture has been taken except a few lone couches.

The carpets and curtains have been stripped. The electrical panels and wiring pulled out. The appliances, dishes, glasses and spices snatched from the kitchens.

The walls are bare apart from the few items they decided to spare. Ceilings have been punctured and cushions torn open in their hunt for hidden gold.

The walls are marked with the names of RSF troops that came in and out of this house like it was their own.

The home that has been the centre of our life in Sudan is a shell.

Glimmers of hope

The picture of sheer wreckage settles and signs of familiarity come into focus.

A family photo album that is 20 years old.

The rocking chair my mother cradled me and my sister in. My university certificate.

Celebratory snaps of my siblings’ weddings. Books my brother has had since the early nineties.

The painting above my bed that I have pined over during the two years – custom-made and gifted to me for my 24th birthday and signed by my family on the back.

There are signs of dirt and damage on all these items our looters discarded but it is enough.

Evidence of material destruction but a reminder of what we can hope will endure.

The spirit of the people that gathered to laugh, cry and break bread in these rooms.

The hospitality and warmth of a Sudanese home with an open door.

The community and sense of togetherness that can never truly be robbed.

What remains in our hearts and our city is a sign of what will get us through.