War has achieved what geography could not: it has drawn cities together and fused their pain and sorrow. Amid the wreckage, a new homeland is taking shape, not inked on maps or drawn by cartographers, but born of mercy and encounters between cities that were once remote.
Since the morning of October 26 when reports arrived that Al-Fashir had fallen and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had taken control, the national mood across Sudan shifted. The news struck hard in towns that have heard the thunder of artillery, and in others that received it like a distant echo. Between the Northern State, Port Sudan, Omdurman, River Nile State and the villages and centres of Al-Jazirah, climate and geography differ, yet residents’ temperaments have merged into one feeling: fear of what is coming. War has seeped into daily life: into conversations, into the way people look at one another, and into how they follow the news as if checking the weather.
In the Northern State
People sip tea while clutching their phones, listening to recordings from the war. The air is heavy, as if the town breathes with difficulty.
Halima Ahmed, Ad-Dabbah
In Merowe, the town painted by sand and the blue of the Nile, the market continues to operate as usual, but the faces have changed. Merchants sit before their goods with anxious eyes; shop talk is no longer only about prices but about distant fronts. Yusuf Abdel Rahim, a trader in the main market, told Atar that people in Merowe follow the news all day, asking each morning about developments in Darfur and Al-Obeid. “If those truck routes between Khartoum and Al-Obeid stop, everything will stop with them.”
At a Merowe school, teacher Amina al-Tayeb tries to shield her pupils from the details of war, but questions slip through despite her efforts. “The students ask me: can the war come to Merowe?” She says. The question is simple but painful; you sense the children have grown up too soon. On the town’s eastern bank, Haj Ahmed Wad al-Badawi looks over his palm groves clinging to the gullies and says with quiet bitterness: “These dates need a market before they need water. If the country is not whole, the crops themselves are of no use.”
In Ad-Dabbah, on a bend of the Nile in the Northern State, only the echo of anxiety is heard. The town once known for calm now watches the war from the edge of crisis, as if it were at its doorstep. Muhammad Ali, a local official, told Atar that official meetings have become entirely focused on security. People now discuss the possibility of hosting displaced families or the deployment of military forces in town. There is a widespread sense that the conflict is advancing northward.
In Ad-Dabbah’s market, Halima Ahmed has sold tea for twenty years, yet she has never seen customers so silent. “People sip tea while clutching their phones, listening to recordings from the war. The air is heavy, as if the town breathes with difficulty.” Young university student Abdelrahman Fadl had been preparing to return to Khartoum before his plans were upended. “After the fall of Al-Fashir, I stopped,” he said. “I felt as if the whole country could shut down suddenly. Young people here are caught between confusion and anxiety; we do not know whether to prepare for university or for mobilisation.”
A farmer in Merowe summed it up simply: “This war does not just level cities; it destroys the spirit of the people.”
Port Sudan
At every checkpoint, you are asked: where are you coming from? Where are you headed? The war feels like it is travelling with us on the road.
Abdallah Musa, Port Sudan
In Port Sudan, the news landed with greater force. The port that connects Sudan to the world has become the country’s provisional lifeline, and any domestic disruption reverberates there immediately. At the docks, where the salt air mixes with engine oil, Safaa Mohammed, a worker at the Maritime Ports Authority, said the atmosphere is tense: “When a ship is delayed, we assume it is war-related. Even if the fighting is far away, its impact is visible at the port. Everyone is worried.” On the corniche cafés, conversations drift between prices, fuel, and the looming unknown closing in on the country.
Abdallah Musa, a truck driver who hauls goods between Port Sudan and Khartoum, says the road feels “heavier than before”, because news now travels faster than the convoys: “At every checkpoint, you are asked: where are you coming from? Where are you headed? The war feels like it is travelling with us on the road.”
Fatima Hamad, a community activist in Port Sudan, says women in the city are shouldering a double, silent burden of fear. “They are afraid for their children because of the war, and afraid for their livelihoods. We run small donation drives for people from Darfur; everyone knows the danger has become general.”
In the Villages of River Nile
Villagers in the countryside around Al-Matamma in River Nile State were stunned by the fall of Al-Fashir. Most have never seen the city, yet the war has become a lesson in geography they know well since the conflict erupted on April 15, 2023.
Residents of Al-Matamma’s hinterland have been tallying attacks on Al-Fashir for months, and if you sit with them, you sense a mix of pride and admiration for the city’s resilient inhabitants. Still, news of its fall struck something raw in people’s hearts. Those who know Al-Fashir best in Al-Matamma are the servicemen: soldiers, officers and police, because many served long tours in western Sudan. Since October 27, people have gathered around them in community circles, and Atar listened as they spoke of Al-Fashir: the soldiers described its streets and neighbourhood names as if they were their own villages; they shared familiar memories of people, markets and daily life there. Sorrow threaded through every story. Afterwards, people lifted their phones and scrolled through the latest updates in silence, the devices filling the air with clips filmed by the RSF showing executions in Al-Fashir, followed by muttered curses.
Western Sudan and Al-Matamma’s countryside are linked by crop trade, especially onions, whose market saw notable price relief during the previous season after the war began. With the RSF’s capture of the town of Bara last weekend, some Al-Matamma farmers voiced deep worry about this winter’s onion crop and the risk that western Sudan’s markets will falter, and prices will drop because demand weakens. Yet villagers’ talk of Al-Fashir was not limited to profit and loss.
When Al-Fashir fell, frustration appeared on Al-Matamma faces; something dear to them had been harmed. Throughout the months of siege, residents here had called its people “the knights”.
When Atar asked several villagers how they felt, answers varied. Women expressed clear sympathy for the victims, while men seemed to conceal a mix of shock and unease at the cruelty displayed in the RSF’s clips. Others voiced disappointment at the SAF’s retreat. Most, however, conveyed a profound sense of looming danger and lamented what they called the map named “homeland.”
Omdurman
The fall of the historic city of Al-Fashir has left a bewildering mix of grief and dismay across wide swathes of Omdurman and greater Khartoum, a bitter sense of defeat intensified by the city’s long, legendary resistance and the horrific massacres attributed to the RSF. This defeat echoed earlier painful withdrawals by the SAF from cities such as Madani, Sennar, and Umm Ruwaba, particularly after the SAF commander Al-Burhan cited security and tactical reasons for the retreat from Al-Fashir.
I felt a lump in my chest, a bitterness in my throat, and tears ran without my noticing. Its fall was another calamity that exposed the futility and absurdity of this war. It must stop immediately.
Nabil Mohsen, Omdurman
Nabil Mohsen, a resident of Omdurman, told Atar that losing Al-Fashir amounts to losing all of Darfur: its people, resources and shared history, and places the entire country at stake. “I felt a lump in my chest, a bitterness in my throat, and tears ran without my noticing,” he said. “Its fall was another calamity that exposed the futility and absurdity of this war. It must stop immediately.”
Nabil said he cannot imagine Sudan without Darfur, which he described as having been severed, “cut with a bloody, sharp knife”, and punished wholesale for the firmness of its people despite systematic starvation and long sieges. “How can I look my neighbour, the shopkeeper, in the face and trade with him?” he asked. “I have long friendships and family ties with people from Al-Fashir, and the blood between us will never become water.”
Mahdi Abdullah, a resident of Bahri, said Al-Fashir’s capture by the RSF marks the start of a new chapter of suffering for its people. The city endured months as a focal point of the conflict, and residents suffered siege, starvation and bombardment until life became unbearable. “Now full control of the city has passed to the Rapid Support Forces, and a new phase of abuses and reprisals has begun under the pretext of punishing those who cooperated with the SAF and allied forces,” Mahdi said. He noted similar patterns after the SAF entered Madani and Sennar, where civilians faced comparable abuses, and stressed that unarmed citizens always pay the heaviest price. Mahdi warned that Al-Fashir’s fall raises doubts about the SAF’s and allied forces’ ability to secure areas under their control. With much of Darfur effectively under RSF control, the de facto authority the RSF gains could expand its influence geographically, potentially into Kordofan and beyond if it takes Al-Obeid, a shift that would be seismic unless both sides accept negotiated solutions to avert the country’s partition.
Fatima Haroun, from the Karrari district, said she felt profound disappointment and betrayal after seeing violent, blood-soaked videos showing the killing of women and children. “We watched Al-Fashir’s heroic endurance with great concern and felt powerless to support them,” she told Atar. She voiced deep fear that the city’s fall could trigger a new wave of conflict as the RSF expands into additional states after seizing all of beloved Darfur, a prospect she called terrifying.
Al-Jazirah
For Khidr Taha al-Jabu Sido, 65, from the village of Add al-Ghabash east of Al-Jazirah, Al-Fashir, Bara, Al-Obeid and Ad-Daein are not merely distant names on a map of Sudan. Taha told Atar, wiping away tears as he recalled memories from Al-Fashir, that he owes his whole life to those places. He left his village in the 1970s as a young man and worked as an assistant on his uncle’s large truck. “From that job I bought one of my own. We traded livestock between western and northern Sudan and carried assorted goods from Khartoum and Wad Madani on the outbound trip. It was profitable.” He married into the trade, educated his children, one became a doctor who worked at the Saudi Hospital in Al-Fashir and was wounded in last year’s shelling of the public hospital. He is now receiving treatment outside Sudan. He also has a daughter who teaches in Ad-Daein and came to Al-Jazirah before the war, and another son who ran a pharmacy in Al-Fashir and is currently abroad.
Taha followed the fighting in Al-Fashir with deep concern; he knows its neighbourhoods, rough roads and hidden tracks better than he knows parts of Butana and Tamboul, unsurprising, since his trade with Darfur continued until the war began. When the first shots rang out, he was buying and selling sacrificial sheep between An-Nuhud and Al-Khuway.
Similarly, a member of the tambak traders’ chamber in Al-Jazirah told Atar that their trade has been severely disrupted since the war moved into Darfur, particularly after last October, when the RSF blocked the passage of tambak and other goods to northern and central Sudan. He said the conflict threatens to halt the trade entirely, adding that what is sold now are inferior stocks kept in storage; there are virtually no new supplies except tiny amounts carried back by soldiers returning from those regions.
Abdul Ghaffar Ali Hamdu, from Salim village in Al-Hasahisa locality, described being deeply affected by what is happening in Bara, North Kordofan. “I have ties to Bara and its outskirts stretching back more than forty years,” he told Atar. “Each October, I would hire seasonal workers for cotton picking at the Al-Jazirah Scheme. The labourers stayed from November to April and then returned home to plant their autumn crops.” Hamdu married a woman from Jabal al-Rakhmi on the outskirts of Bara; she now lives with him in Al-Jazirah. He lamented the abuses and tragedies he witnessed when the RSF controlled Bara: “What I saw of violations and calamities under RSF control, I would not wish on anyone, not even an enemy.”
When I remember people in Farajallah, Namla, Umm Quwayz, Al-Karamsha, Mliha and Shawq al-Nawm, I cry a lot.
Barakat Osman, Al-Fuwar, Al-Jazirah
When the SAF briefly retook Bara, Hamdu felt overwhelming joy and planned to visit to check on relatives and acquaintances. But before he could arrange the trip, reports came that the RSF had regained control; his elation turned to deep sorrow, and his wife fell into grave distress.
Not far from Hamdu, Barakat Osman of Al-Fuwar village in Al-Hasahisa says he breaks into tears whenever he thinks of Bara and of the times he and others contracted seasonal workers for the cotton harvest. He told Atar that memories of those days, compared with what he now hears and sees, overwhelm him: “When I remember people in Farajallah, Namla, Umm Quwayz, Al-Karamsha, Mliha and Shawq al-Nawm, I cry a lot.”
Saeed Farajallah Dakin, from Al-Kamalin locality, admitted to Atar the community’s anxiety upon hearing news of Al-Fashir, Bara and Umm Dam Haj Ahmed falling: they feel the RSF threat drawing nearer.
These days in Al-Jazirah, people speak almost exclusively of the battles in western Sudan, following every minute in greater detail than before and analysing the causes of defeat and prospects for future gains. Loudspeakers in mosques and markets exhort people not to abandon arms, to keep weapons ready, fingers on triggers, and to re-establish positions they had relinquished while adapting to civilian life.
Yet if the fighting stops, a new struggle will begin: the battle to restore trust. Society will need to rebuild itself from within, rediscover a common language and redefine what security means. Then Merowe can resume its agricultural role in reconstruction; Port Sudan can regain its commercial vitality; Ad-Dabbah can become a calm refuge for community balance and grassroots initiatives; Omdurman can return as a haven for all; and the cities of Al-Fashir, Nyala, Al-Obeid and Bara can come back with their people and produce, filling Al-Jazirah and the country with wheat and promise.
