War in Sudan left mother facing impossible choice

Warning: This article contains details that some readers may find distressing.

Touma hasn’t eaten in days. She sits silently, her eyes glassy as she looks aimlessly around the hospital room.

In his arms, motionless and severely malnourished, lies his three-year-old daughter, Masajed.

Touma seems unfazed by the cries of the other young children around him. “I wish she would cry,” the 25-year-old mother tells us, looking at her daughter. “She hasn’t cried in days.”

Bashaer Hospital is one of the last functioning hospitals in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, devastated by the civil war that has raged since April 2023. Many have traveled hours to get here to receive specialized care.

The malnutrition ward is full of children too weak to fight the disease, their mothers at their bedside, helpless.

Here the screams cannot be quieted and each one is profound.

Touma and her family were forced to flee after fighting between the Sudanese army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries reached their home about 200 km southwest of Khartoum.

“[The RSF] We took everything we owned – our money and our livestock – from our hands,” she said. “We fled with only our lives.”

Without money or food, Touma’s children began to suffer.

She looks stunned when she talks about their old life. “In the past, our house was full of goodness. We had cattle, milk and dates. But now we have nothing.”

Sudan is currently experiencing one of the worst humanitarian emergencies in the world.

According to the UN, three million children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition. The remaining hospitals are overwhelmed.

Bashaer Hospital provides basic care and treatment free of charge.

However, the life-saving medicines needed by children in the malnutrition ward must be paid for by their families.

Masajed is a twin, she and her sister Manahil were brought to the hospital together. But the family could only afford antibiotics for one child.

Touma had to make an impossible choice: she chose Manahil.

“I wish they could both get well and grow,” his distressed voice cracks, “and I could watch them walk and play together like they used to.

“I just want them both to get better,” Touma said as he cradled his dying daughter.

“I am alone. I have nothing. I only have God.”

Survival rates here are low. For the families of this parish, the war took everything. They find themselves with nothing and no means to buy the medicine that could save their children.

As we leave, the doctor says none of the children in this room will survive.

Across Khartoum, children’s lives have been rewritten by the civil war.

What began as an eruption of fighting between forces loyal to two generals – army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti – quickly engulfed the city.

For two years – until last March, when the army regained control – the city was gripped by war as rival fighters clashed.

Khartoum, once a cultural and commercial center on the banks of the Nile, has become a battlefield. The tanks arrived in the neighborhoods. Fighter jets roared above us. Civilians were trapped between crossfire, artillery bombardments and drone strikes.

It is in this devastated landscape, in the silence of destruction, that the fragile voice of a child rises from the rubble.

Twelve-year-old Zaher rolls through the rubble, passing burned cars, tanks, demolished houses and forgotten bullets.

“I’m going home,” he sings softly to himself as his wheelchair rolls over broken glass and shrapnel. “I can’t see my house anymore. Where is my house?”

His voice, fragile but determined, contains both a lament for what has been lost and a quiet hope that one day he can finally return home.

In a building that now serves as a shelter, Habibah, Zaher’s mother, tells me about life under RSF control.

“The situation was very difficult,” she said. “We couldn’t turn on our lights at night. It was like we were thieves. We didn’t light a fire. We didn’t move at all at night.”

She sits next to her son in a room lined with single beds.

“At any time, whether you are sleeping or showering, standing or sitting, you find them [the RSF] I’m breathing down your neck.”

Many fled the capital, but Zaher and his mother had no way out. To survive, they sold lentils in the streets.

Then one morning, while they were working side by side, a drone struck.

“I looked at him and he was bleeding. There was blood everywhere,” Habibah said. “I was losing consciousness. I was forcing myself to stay awake because I knew if I passed out I would lose him forever.”

Zaher’s legs were badly damaged. After hours of agony, they arrived at the hospital.

“I kept praying, ‘Please, God, take my life instead of his legs,'” she cries.

But doctors couldn’t save his legs. Both had to be amputated just below the knee.

“He would wake up and ask, ‘Why did you let them cut off my legs?'” She looks down, her face full of remorse, “I couldn’t answer.”

Habiba and her son cry, tormented by the memory of what happened to them. The situation is made worse by knowing that prosthetics could give Zaher a chance to relive his childhood, but Habiba cannot afford it.

For Zaher, the memory of what happened is too difficult to recall.

He only shares a simple dream. “I wish I could have prosthetic legs so I could play football with my friends like before. That’s all.”

Children in Khartoum have been deprived not only of their childhood, but also of safe places to play and be young.

Schools, football pitches and playgrounds are now destroyed, a reminder of a life stolen by conflict.

“It was very nice here,” said Ahmed, 16, looking around a destroyed funfair and playground.

His tattered gray T-shirt has a huge smiley face printed on it – the word “smile” is written underneath. But his reality couldn’t be further from that feeling.

“My brothers and I would come here. We would play all day and laugh so much. But when I came back after the war, I couldn’t believe it was the same place.”

Ahmed now lives and works here, clearing debris left by the war, earning $50 (£37) for 30 days of continuous work.

The money allows him to support himself, his mother, his grandmother and one of his brothers.

There were six other brothers but, like so many people in Sudan whose family members have disappeared, he lost contact with them. He looks at his feet and tells us he doesn’t know where they are or if any are still alive.

The war tore apart families like his.

Ahmed’s work reminds him of this almost daily. “So far I have found the remains of 15 bodies,” he said.

Many of the remains found here have since been buried, but a few bones still remain.

Ahmed crosses the park and picks up a human jawbone. “It’s terrifying. It makes me shake.”

He shows us another bone and, holding it innocently next to his leg, he says: “It’s a leg bone, like mine.”

Ahmed says he no longer dares to dream of a future.

“Since the start of the war, I was certain that I was destined to die. So I stopped thinking about what I would do in the future.”

The destruction of schools further endangers the future of children.

Millions of people are no longer educated.

But Zaher is one of the lucky few. He and his friends go to school in a makeshift classroom set up by volunteers in an abandoned house.

They shout the answers out loud, write on the board, sing songs and there are even a few naughty children having fun in the back of the class.

Hearing the sound of children learning and laughing, in a country where places to be a child are so limited, is like nectar.

When asked what childhood should be like, Zaher’s classmates respond with an innocence still intact: “We should play, study, read.”

But the memory of war is never far away. “You don’t have to be afraid of bombs and bullets,” interrupts Zaher. “We should be brave.”

Their teacher, Miss Amal, has been teaching for 45 years. She has never seen children so traumatized.

“They were really affected by the war,” she said.

“Their mental health, their vocabulary. They speak the language of the militias. Violent insults, even physical violence. They carry sticks and whips, wanting to hit someone. They have become so anxious.”

The damage extends beyond behavior.

While most families are deprived of income, food shortages are severe.

“Some students come from homes without bread, without flour, without milk, without oil, nothing at all,” says the teacher.

And yet, amid despair, Sudanese children cling to fleeting moments of joy.

On a devastated soccer field, Zaher drags himself to his knees, determined to play the game he loves most. His friends cheer him on as he hits the ball.

“My favorite thing is football,” he says, smiling for the first time.

When asked which team he supports, the answer is immediate: “Real Madrid”. His favorite player? “Vinicius.”

Playing on your knees is extremely painful and could lead to more infections. But he doesn’t care.

Football and his friendships saved him. They brought him joy and an escape from his reality. However, he dreams of prosthetic legs.

“I wish they would have treated me so I could walk home and go to school,” Zaher says.

Additional reporting by Abdelrahman Abutaleb, Abdalrahman Altayeb and Liam Weir

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