‘Everyone Was Terrified’: How My Family and I Escaped Sudan

When a missile hit Noon Abdelbassit’s house last Tuesday, she knew her time in Khartoum was up.

Abdelbassit, 21, a medical student studying in the Sudanese capital, had been sheltering in place since fighting broke out on the 15th of April. But when the missile struck her family home she – like thousands of others – made a break for the border with Egypt more than 500 miles to the north.

“All our windows and doors were shattered and we felt very exposed and like we didn’t have the safety of our homes anymore,” she told VICE World News over a Zoom call from Cairo.

“We didn’t want to leave our homes and family but I think they realised it was time to get up and leave.” 

Khartoum has effectively been a warzone since a power struggle between the army ruler, General Abdel Fattah a-Burhan, and warlord General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, spilled out suddenly into full-blown fighting. Dramatic video emerged overnight on the day fighting started of tanks rolling into Khartoum and fighter jets flying over the capital city. 

The UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, estimates that 20,000 people have crossed from Sudan into Chad to the west over the last 10 days, and that 270,000 refugees could be created by the fighting. The number of people crossing into Egypt is unknown, but Abdelbassit says more people have started using that escape route since she and her family made the journey. 

Fighting had slowed down on Tuesday morning after a 72-hour US- and Saudi-brokered ceasefire was called. However, many treated the announcement with caution, as previous ceasefires have not held.

As the fighting continues, more people are packing up their lives and travelling to the borders. 

Despite the shattered glass and immediate danger, Abdelbassit and her family were reluctant to go. “We didn’t want to leave our homes and family but we realised it was time to get up and leave,” she said. They started looking for bus tickets and a family friend found a whole bus for rent with a capacity for 50 people, so Abdelbassit’s family of 15 joined forces with friends to fill it. 

“We left for Egypt on Friday morning and got to Cairo on Sunday morning. You could tell everybody on the bus was so scared, everyone was terrified. We had babies and elders... We were thinking of what would happen if the worst happened and we got attacked or the bus was stopped. The second we left Khartoum and started driving on the highway to the border you could visibly see everyone starting to relax.” 

Abdelbassit later posted a tweet about her journey that went viral:

Hiring the bus cost 2 million Sudanese pounds (£2,800, $3,450) and getting the visas was a few extra dollars. However, two of Abdelbassit’s uncles and her brother were left at the border in Egypt, she said, because of an Egyptian rule that prohibits Sudanese men aged 16-49 from getting visas upon arrival. They have gone back to the border city of Halfa to await permission to cross.

Abdelbassit says more people are expected to cross into Egypt over the coming days, but communicating with people back home is a challenge because of constant power cuts, and sinister voices at the other end of the line when they call, which makes contact confusing and difficult.

“We can go a day or two without speaking to them and when we do it’s for a very short time. People in Sudan are saying that when they call their loved ones, other people seem to answer their phones,” she said.

“We think the government is playing automated voice recordings [while phone networks are down]… people are calling their families and hearing different voices. It’s bizarre.” 

Kate Maina-Vorley, East and Central Africa Regional Director of CARE International, a humanitarian aid organisation, said in a statement to VICE World News: “Sudan was already in the grips of a gruelling humanitarian crisis before the conflict escalated. One in four people went to bed hungry and many of those leaving will only be able to take what they can carry. Refugees will need support with complex needs, particularly women and girls.”

For Abdelbassit, the future is uncertain. She is in her final year of medical school in Khartoum, but is unsure if she can resume her studies in Cairo because the university can’t give her the paperwork showing that she’s five years into her six-year course. If she cannot get hold of her documents, she will have to start medical school from scratch in Egypt. 

She is in despair over the current situation and about both leaders who are waging war on her hometown – she says neither is fit to rule. “They are destroying an entire country for the power that neither is competent enough to have.”