Wars have featured heavily in recent novels by Sudanese writers, novels that were written before the fighting that broke out in Khartoum in the spring of 2023. This is not because writers have special access to the future but because the past, whether a few years or decades ago, tends to repeat itself. The war that started on April 15th took the city by surprise – schoolchildren preparing for exams, couples putting the final touches to their wedding, shoppers heading to the market. One of the first bombs targeted the airport and the runway was damaged. It was the last days of the sacred month of Ramadan. In Muslim tradition those last ten nights of Ramadan are kept alive with prayers. Instead, the night sky over Khartoum was lit with fire, the pounding of shells drowning the sound of prayers, smoke rising at dawn. And during the day people were fasting. In such heat. In such fear.

Leila Aboulela is a Sudanese writer who lives in Scotland. Her recent novel River Spirit was a New York Times Best Historical Novel of the Year.

Even at the break of the fast, in sunset, the firing continued. That this could be happening in a holy month, by a Muslim army (militia, paramilitary or other) against its own people – completely unprepared citizens, without any warning – was obscene. The deepest betrayal of trust. A sin of the greatest magnitude. The sanctity of homes violated. Lives ruined. The start of a shameful, catastrophic chapter in Sudanese and Muslim history.

Khartoum had been a peaceful city for more than a century. The last time the city was attacked was in 1885, when the Mahdi’s revolutionary forces captured Khartoum and its British governor, Charles Gordon was assassinated. I had written about this in my novel River Spirit. The novel was published in March, just a month before the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rose against the Sudanese army. Again, as they had done more than a hundred years ago, the citizens of Khartoum fled north overland to Egypt or east towards Port Sudan on the Red Sea. River Spirit ends with the long-term consequence of the Mahdist rebellion, namely the British conquest of 1898. This had been the last time the capital’s citizens were terrorized by the sounds of gunfire – when they heard the Howitzer artillery and machine guns of the British army.

Leila Aboulela | River Spirit | Grove Press | 320 pages | 17 USD

Since then, the capital had been a peaceful, cosmopolitan place. A city of mixtures and slow blends, the Blue Nile joining the White, churches and mosques, open air gatherings of African jazz bands and Arabic songs. Civil War belonged to the south and the west. War happened elsewhere while Khartoum expanded and sprawled, growing from a steady stream of urban migration and investments by expatriate Sudanese. In the early 2000s when the Janjaweed, a fearsome horse-riding militia tolerated/supported/encouraged by the Sudanese government, terrorized and ethnically cleansed Darfur, Khartoum barely stirred or empathized. In April 2023, the city was hit in the face. Never again would it be able to bury its head in the sand.

From my home in Scotland, I trawled through social media. All these words – situation, crisis, hostilities, demanding a ceasefire – were now connected with the city I grew up in. Friends and friends of friends, some just writing prayers, some filming empty streets and bombed buildings. Others eloquent, clear-eyed, were able to reflect and contextualize in the most distressing of circumstances. They knew that the RSF, uniformed paramilitary posed for integration into the Sudanese army, were no more than a spruced-up version of the Janjaweed who had, twenty years ago, spread destruction in Darfur. The RSF were not happy with the terms of their integration into the main army and were lashing out. The chickens have come home to roost. Frankenstein’s monster has turned on its creator.

Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin | The Messiah of Darfur | Khan Aljanub | 22 EUR

On his FaceBook page, the writer Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin, exiled in Austria, delivered the chilling verdict, ‘What is happening now are war crimes and crimes against humanity. The killing of civilians, robbery, assault, rape and a destruction of the infrastructure by the Janjaweed militia in the complete absence of any government security apparatus.’ Sakin had written extensively about the Janjaweed and the havoc they had unleashed in Darfur. He is one of Sudan's top writers and a winner of the 2020 Institute du Monde Arabe's prize. In his novel, The Messiah of Darfur, a woman sets out to avenge the death of her family by the Janjaweed. Sakin depicts a society shaken to its roots, in the grip of fear and devastation. As is common in time of severe stress, the people turn to divine help and the characters of the novel gravitate towards a local, harmless ‘Messiah’ while the authorities are intent on annihilating him and his followers. Despite the subject matter, Sakin’s writing is exhilarating to read, full of humour and exuberance. His descriptions of the cultures of West Sudan (as opposed to the more familiar north) open new worlds. As in all his writings, his characters are relentlessly attacked but they stand firm in their humanity. 

Now a year later since the start of the fighting, the situation in the whole Sudan has deteriorated exponentially. Millions have been displaced, twenty thousand killed and the country is sliding into famine and total collapse. Brutal and bloody, this war is not abating. There is a shortage of everything – medicine, food, fuel – except ammunition. The weapons have not run out.

Fatin Abbas | Ghost Season | Jacaranda Books | 300 pages |  24,90 EUR

Like novelists everywhere, Sudan’s writers are loyal to the characters they weave on their pages. Individuals living specific lives in specific situation. They have names, thoughts, loves and weaknesses. They have dreams. Another novel written and published (in the United States) before April 2023, is Ghost Season by Fatin Abbas. It is set in a town between North and South Sudan, in an NGO compound, where the characters – an American drawing maps of the area, a South Sudanese translator in love with the Arab cook, a Sudanese-American filmmaker seeking connection with her parents’ homeland – come under threat from war, climate change and personal ambitions. Abbas captures shards, stillness and chaos, the uncertainty and repetitiveness of violence. In this terrible time, when helplessness and exile characterise Sudan’s writers, our novels can provide readers with a backdrop to the tensions and help us all keep company with those in pain.