Thread by @DocStefflbauer

This 🧵 is about one of my oldest friends, who I've admired for literal decades, and who is Sudanese.

I met her in Cairo, a million years ago when I was desperate to *not* live in Brooklyn and the Arab world felt like a revelation...

This girl and I met when we were at the same college, both Black women who wore silk scarves - but not over our hair 😉

We became friends and she kind of "adopted" me. Although she lived with her family in her 20s and I lived on my own and ran around with all kinds of people 🥴

She told me how her family had been forced to leave Sudan when she was younger: they'd left a flour processing factory behind and lived in London before moving the family to Egypt.

Although she invited me, I demurred when she went to visit relatives in Khartoum in the summer.

Six years after Cairo, she was one of 5 foreign guests (and the only Black person) who attended my wedding in Austria.

She came alone, despite visa hassles, and made me feel seen, safe, and supported. (I was disowned for marrying a white European, but that’s for another story)

Years later, when 9/11 happened two blocks from my NYC apartment, she was one of the first friends who contacted me.

She was one of a very few who understood how deeply ashamed I was of the ensuing race to war and the utter demonization of Muslims that followed…for years

But life went on. I had a child, she called me, excited, to congratulate me.

And then she met a Sudanese guy (who she’d ignored in college) who was building a company in Khartoum. She was going to marry him and would leave Egypt for Sudan!

I went back to Cairo for her wedding.

Her family put us up for the week we stayed in Egypt. When I walked back into her family flat, I could’ve sworn that 2 weeks, not 12 years had passed: her family treated me AND my ajnaby (foreigner) husband as if I had never left Egypt...

There were around 600 guests at her wedding.

I will never forget the yin-yang of watching turbaned Sudanese singers performing live, punctuated by 50 Cent and other priceless rap jams packing the dance floor with all the younger guests...

10 years would pass before I visited her in Khartoum. The way the capital reminded me of Beirut in the’90s was crazy: lots of “this used to be the [X Western company] building” and my hubby tagging along at a Sudanese trade fair where her hubby made deals with Chinese exporters

There was no Google in Sudan: no App Store. But there was WhatsApp (everybody was on it) and there were families and university students and an economy trying to overcome years of being ignored & blacklisted by the West

She brought her family to Berlin; her kids met my kids. We discussed schools and the future and she and her husband talked about how fascinating it had been to visit China on a lengthy business trip. By then, her husband had begun importing machinery to Sudan 🇸🇩

And then, just over 4 years ago, he passed away.

All at once, my friend who’s dreamed big and been brave about the future for as long as I've known her had 3 kids to raise and an international business to run by herself.

And then the protests started. Sudanese protested day and night. From what I heard and read - most people supported the demands of students and youth for freedom from military tyranny.

She told me she was never leaving.

“It’s my country. If I leave then who will change it?"

Year One went like this.

Year Two, COVID destroyed their routines and killed aunt after uncle after cousin and more distant kin. In headline news, I read daily about Americans dying in droves. I only heard about the non-stop funerals and deaths in Sudan from her over the phone.

Year Three was still full of hope for a civilian government while the country was dealing with the usual challenges - like climate change driving temperatures to well over 40°C every month of the year.

(My friend’s import business? Air conditioners)

But, just a few weeks ago, my friend's eldest daughter was at the Dubai airport, going home to see her family.

The flight was cancelled: hostilities had broken out at Khartoum airport and RSF + army were everywhere. My friend's daughter didn't end up flying to Khartoum...

She was lucky. My friend couldn't even get back to her house, which was near Khartoum airport. Within a day, it was infested with armed RSF. And so her mother, sister, brother, his wife & child, her two kids, and three household helpers, were stuck in an active shooting zone...

They shuttled back and forth inside the house when the gunfire and missiles got too loud , too close, and when they heard people moving through the streets outside. There was too much gunfire to leave the house safely.

Separated from all of them, my friend was losing her mind

I texted with her on WhatsApp (which I normally avoid).

I got Twitter DMs from her cousin in Cairo.

I read her sister's public tweets while the family waited for a chance to leave their house.

theguardian.com/world/2023/apr…

There was no break in the fighting. Two nearby houses were invaded by armed RSF*

*(RSF, by the way, are apparently Janjaweed - the same criminals that raped/murdered and pillaged Darfur without consequences twenty years ago)

aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/26…

After an airstrike, they tried to sneak out of the house - just taking people and passports - but their cars were trashed beyond use, the petrol in the tanks siphoned off. They had no way to leave.

Although militiamen could break in and do anything to any one of them at any time

My friend is telling me all this as she's praying to God that she sees her family again. She hasn't seen them in six days. Meanwhile, her sister (a former journalist) is live-tweeting. Everyone is desperate to get word to the world before the telephone, internet lines are cut...

A German attempted rescue mission is aborted (RSF shot at the Lufhansa jet???) And, slowly, people realize that all the Westerners are leaving Dodge and "devil take the hindmost."

They're not going to be rescued, whatever Western visas they might have, and there is NO ceasefire

And then, friends of the family manouver into the neighborhood with empty cars...they load up with the clothes on their backs, passports, what cash they have at hand and leave the city.

Slowly. Stopping at safe houses. Sweating buckets at the risk of being shot along the way

They reach my friend and, finally, FINALLY, she's with her kids, her mom, her siblings. They made it!

But “making it” means that more than 10 people are now crammed into a cousin’s flat and cannot, realistically, stay.

Negotiations, haggling, and heat as my friend and twenty-odd family members get on a bus-for-hire to Port Sudan. 26 hours of bad road and terrified children later, they reach the port city that friend’s late husband was from.

“They’re in PS!” her cousin DMs me when they arrive.

Days later, I’m texting with my friend: she’s in Egypt, airlifted by Egyptian military.

Her brother and his family caught a ferry to Jeddah.

Her eldest daughter’s still in Dubai.

Her mother and sister are trying to go to the UK, where they have family (and visas). But how

…to get enough money to their employees? How many months is enough? What will happen to those who cannot leave? What about people whose passports are in foreign embassies whose staff left the passports behind?

My friend’s youngest daughter wouldn’t eat, when we last texted.

My friend couldn’t believe that, in a matter of days, the country they’d poured so much into had been “eaten by wolves.”

She’s not ready to believe in the collapse of her country.

My friend of 31 years is now a refugee, like so many I’ve encountered in Berlin who left Syria, Yemen, Eritrea, Afghanistan.

Like her, they have passports; they’ve studied abroad; they speak Western languages.

They'd rather be in their own countries. aje.io/7tgzfb

How do you treat people who cannot (and may never) go home? Why does it take a Western visa (or passport) to be delivered from a war zone? Most of us will never witness armed gangs demolishing our neighborhood. If we did, would it trigger compassion for those who become refugees?

I hate that Twitter's now a plaything of a bored rich man seeking public affirmation. But w/o it, I couldn't have updates from my friend’s cousin or journalist sister.

I hate that WhatsApp's a glorified spying tool for the US gov't. But w/o it, I couldn't reach my friend at all

No one should depend on Western-owned-and-run platforms in life-or-death situations, but this is where we are: relying on technology that’s poorly regulated, subject to random white men’s whims, and inadequate for the needs of ppl facing terrorist violence and societal collapse.

I wish I didn’t have to justify the humanity of people who society - especially their own society - has done wrong.

If you've read this far, thank you for caring about my friend, her loved ones, her family and her country 🇸🇩
/End of 🧵#KeepEyesOnSudan