i'm writing this because i don't know else to do to stop crying. and because there is little else my helpless hands can do to change this horrifying reality we're living in. i am sudanese. and my mother just told me that we've lost yet another relative in the ongoing civil war in sudan. i've also learned that the small lovely town i grew up in, Shambat, in Khartoum Bahri, is currently plagued by this fever the origin of which is yet to be identified. from what little we know whoever gets this fever just does not wake up to see the sun of another day. it might be because the dead bodies people buried in their backyards in a desperate attempt to grieve and honor them are unearthed by the rain. it might be because the entire health system has collapsed months ago and there is no way for these people to attain any form of medical help. we've lost family members with chronic conditions simply because they couldn't get medical attention until it was too late. my own grandfather died of complications that could've easily been managed had they gotten him the proper treatment. we've lost people to this fever, too. a brother and the very next day, his sister. and more keep dying. it hurts and angers me that no one's talking about this. and just as equally my heart breaks for each and every palestinian out there, and i keep praying for them and hoping to be half as patient as they are. i know what it's like to be so scared your entire body goes numb, i know what it's like to be displaced and leave behind everything you've ever known with little hope of ever coming back. to survive and not really feel like you did. i saw this video of a palestinian woman holding her dead baby and just begging to nurse him one more time. i see palestinian men breaking down into tears while trying to comfort children, literal babies, whom they pulled out of the rubble. a little girl who's saying god why didn't you take me along with my mother, god, you know i can't live without her. and i suddenly remember that i know of a friend of my family who just sits there crying helplessly every night because she doesn't know what to tell her starving nieces who are too young to understand that they can't get food because of all the shooting outside. i keep seeing entire villages in the west being completely wiped off the map, reduced to nothing but a black dot of ashes and ruin. and this isn't even a first; ethnical cleansing in the western areas of sudan went on for decades and no one even bat an eye. my heart will never stop bleeding for Darfur. i know of a group of boys who were stuck for days in the very university i went to, waiting for a ceasefire for days on end until one of them died of fear or starvation or illness or whatever it is that we still don't know to this very day, and they had to bury him in the very field they used to play football matches in. a field every student in that university knows and has been to and laughed and cried in. girls are raped and sexually enslaved in terrifying numbers. the biggest maternity hospital in the country, the one i was born in, was looted and patients kicked out. these are all stories that will never leave my memory til the day i die. they're all deaths i will never forgive nor stop mourning. i won't despair and i won't give up, but the heart aches and cracks, and the tears run and run and leave crevices behind. the world is an ugly, ugly place. only hope and solidarity can save us. my sudanese and palestinian brothers and sisters, you are not alone. and you never will be.
