Diaspora and Exile  3 min If borders disappeared, what would your morning look like?

What remains in one’s memory when departing from one’s homeland? The neighborhood where they were born, the familiar clamor of the streets they grew accustomed to? Or those daily and seasonal traditions during holidays that remind us that leaving does not mean abandoning one's identity, which forms the conscience of a people—even if it has become scattered across the corners of the earth? In a personal account of leaving home under the weight of political conflict in Sudan, Hind Sourig narrates a story about a family struggling to soothe the pain of departure, holding onto the hope of return, and creating new memories.

I cross the borders we thought were mere dust.

I leave, my heart heavy, unable to find even the appropriate words to describe what I feel.

I leave with what remains of my family, except for my stubborn father.

I don’t dream regularly—or rather, I don’t dream comprehensible dreams. Yet for some reason, I remember a particular dream I had last year. I saw myself wandering around my house in South Khartoum. There I was, entering through the main door and wandering into the front garden. I strolled into the same spacious living room that had witnessed our heated discussions, our evening gatherings, our joys, our grief upon receiving sad news, and my parents’ congratulations to my siblings when they completed each grade: in short, the sum of our lives over the past decade.

There, on that same sofa, my mother had always settled in to wait for us every day when we came home late. I left the living room to encounter a strange scene that didn’t match the rest of the dream; I found myself in the courtyard of a different, yet familiar, house.
  Yes, it was the same wall as in the Al-Sahafa neighborhood, where I had grown up until I moved to South Khartoum. The same room I had shared with my sister, and the same strange crimson wall color last chosen before we moved. Of course, I woke up before I reached a meaningful conclusion that I could interpret.

I don’t know what the message of this dream was. Do dreams even have messages and deeper meanings?

Or was it my subconscious trying to remind me of what I once had?

Or was it just another reminder that perhaps you can adapt to new places, even if you didn’t arrive in them willingly?

I always imagine mornings when I could find my friends just minutes away, not thousands of miles and several time zones apart.

I daydream, imagining myself having thorough conversations with my friend on the other side of the planet, chatting over a cup of milky tea and the nashader biscuits my mother makes. Warm, uninterrupted chats, neither interrupted by conflicting work and sleep schedules, nor revolving around how to overcome borders, wars, or lines of longitude and latitude.

These daydreams stretch out, until they seem like distant, almost unattainable, wishes. In a parallel reality, these meetings were possible, filled with laughter among friends every Thursday on the sidewalks along the Nile through Khartoum.

Spontaneous meetings, filled with dreams and ambitions, grumbling about the country’s details and contradictions, and planning for what we truly wanted—never forgetting plenty of "milky" tea.

Alternative Places

 

I remember those weekly meetings, which took place without prior planning. I remember my last evening on the banks of the Blue Nile in Khartoum in every detail, as if it were hidden in my memory as a way to confront the coming loss.

For some reason, I return again and again to Sudanese poet Saif al-Din al-Dessouki’s masterpiece about the Nile. It’s as if he is addressing me directly through his verses, describing with amazing precision my long-standing and ongoing relationship with the river. It’s as if he anticipated the complex emotional mix that stirs within the soul of anyone who has moved away from a particular place, whether by force or willingly.
  This was the first thing that came to mind the last time I visited the Nile, within Sudan’s borders but far from the capital. There, I saw courageous attempts to create spaces similar to our familiar afternoons on Khartoum’s Nile Street. It may have been strange at first to the old residents—and to us, too. Yet it was only a matter of time before it became clear to everyone that the fatigue we all carry, the longing that is folded into our ribs, may truly have its answer on the banks of the Nile.

During our first Ramadan after the outbreak of war, after a lengthy discussion (most of which revolved around the number of genuflections and which parts of the prayer the Imam would pray), we found ourselves unwittingly recalling our old mosques in Khartoum, and the details of how the neighborhood would mark the occasion each year.

What we didn’t realize, however, was that most of those taking part in the discussion weren’t old residents of the city. In fact, we were all displaced people from Khartoum.
  On that Ramadan night, in the corner of a small mosque on the outskirts of a city in northern Sudan, the most important connection between the worshippers was the moment when we realized that we were not strangers in any way. Our prayer breaks became opportunities to get to know each other and to share news of our disaster-stricken areas, our looted homes, our fears, and—most importantly—our hopes and aspirations for an end to this madness. I followed the shifting conversation and the evolving emotions around it; its cautious beginning; questions and confusion; a certain sense of alienation and reservation.

Then, after passing through surprise and a momentary sense of connection and belonging, the feelings strangely transformed, in a moment of silence, into a deep sense of familiarity, that we were not strangers, that our heavy grief was somehow lighter, that we all shared it.

That Ramadan was in a strange place, and was preceded by many feelings whose weight increased as we approached its end—Eid al-Fitr—and the first anniversary of the war. But all I have is my ability to preserve as many memories as possible from past years, to live off them, to make endless comparisons to what was, to create new ones, and to celebrate their “ordinariness” and familiarity, no matter how strange the place seemed and no matter how intense the sense of loss inside me.

Small Details, a Silent Restoration

The paradoxes of the place remain strange, and certain details remain all that connects these contradictions.
  Speaking of holidays, their hands adorn every aspect of life.

Is Eid complete without cones of henna at these women’s fingertips? These same hands bake various types of biscuits and fill the corners of the house with a scent that restores a little reassurance, despite everything.

Given all that I’ve experienced over the past two years, these simple moments saved me from drowning in the details of everything that has happened and is still happening. The small details attended to by the women around me silently restored my inner self, especially as alarming news became ever more frequent.

This was my chance to look at things from a different angle. I was finally freed from the trap of stereotypes, and of viewing them as examples of eternal patience and sacrifice, or metaphorical heroism. I began to see instead their remarkable ability to organize life, in the absence of any order.

I’ve always wondered about their magical abilities: How do they bring life into the darkest situations and moments? How can a small act like baking, or making tea, lighten the mood and give a sense that we’re still here?

Between us and chaos, a fine line is drawn, a sense that we have a little control occasionally, without the petty romanticization of war. It constantly reminds us that these small details are sometimes an act of resistance, not a departure from reality.

Inner voices
 

In the contradictions between my dreams and my reality, I can simultaneously see light and darkness. But I can hear a jumble of voices within me. The scene seems funny at first: multiple voices, from different sources, each trying somehow to find a foothold in the gray space between them.

Some of the bravest voices stand closer to the light, their voices rising to remind me of the ideal image I sought, or perhaps thought I wanted. They remind me of the value system, all the different expectations on which I built myself, and which must be carried out, despite everything. On the other side rise other voices, but with a fearful tone, standing closer to the darkness, reminding me of the justifications of their position and the injustice of the world, of everything that has happened and is still happening. They remind me of the losses and the bereavement and everything I fear, whether I’m awake or dreaming.

I don’t think I have the same list of worries today. The list has changed a lot since several items on it became realities.

I sometimes feel guilty saying this, even to myself. For example, what’s the point in worrying about climate change and issues like that in the midst of all the enormous events and cross-border atrocities we’re witnessing in real time?

At other times, I laugh at myself as I remember how I used to get overwhelmed with anxiety at the mere thought of losing my small library, or the collection of colorful mugs I’d collected over the years.
I’m not talking about some kind of black comedy, but I do laugh every time I see the coffee-scented candle sitting silently in the corner of the room. I feel it giving me a cynical look whenever I enter, silently asking me:

“As a displaced person, fleeing the heat of the war in Khartoum, out of all the things you could have taken, why would you take a scented candle?”

After the Dream

Somehow, anxiety still haunts me, but it’s no longer limited to small things. It’s embodied in bigger questions about our uncertain and rapidly changing future, and about our transformation into mere numbers and files in the long term, our reduction to flat rhetoric like “the largest displacement tragedy in modern history” and “violations and atrocities.” Phrases that are repeated with lazy references to action, often omitting the subject of the verb, deliberately normalizing pain and violence, without any accountability or real action to confront them. Rhetoric that shows no regard for the degree of anger raging in the minds of those responsible for “the largest displacement tragedy in modern history,” and doesn’t allow the space they deserve for their own narrative about what’s happening, their history, their ambitions, and their vision of how things should turn out, in a geopolitical reality that is constantly, violently changing.
  Just remember, every morning, as you navigate between your reality and your flailing attempts to recall the details of your shattered dreams:

Remember well who drew those boundaries
and this reality,
Remember who insisted on this exile,

And always remember:

The anger you feel is not a luxury,
but rather, your just and legitimate right.



 

October 2025