The war in Sudan left one mother with an impossible choice

Warning: This piece contains information that some readers may find disturbing

Touma hasn’t eaten in days. He sits quietly, his eyes satisfied as he looks awkwardly across the hospital sadi.

In his arms, motionless and very malnourished, lies his three-year-old daughter, Masaje.

Touma can be seen crying in the cries of other small children around him. A 25-year-old mother says, “A 25-year-old mother tells us, looking at her daughter. “She hasn’t cried in days.”

Bashaeer Hospital is one of the last operating hospitals in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, which has been devastated by the civil war that has been raging since April 2023. Many have traveled for hours to get here for professional care.

The malnutrition ward is full of children who are too weak to fight disease, their mothers at their bedside, helpless.

The cry here cannot be pierced and each has decided to go deeper.

Touma and his family were forced to flee after fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Response Forces (RSF) reached their home about 200km (125 miles) south of Khartoum.

“[The RSF] “He took everything we own – our money and our property – from our hands,” he said. We only escaped with our lives. “

Without money or food, Tokoma’s children began to suffer.

He looks shocked as he recounts his past life. “In the past, our house was full of beauty. We had livestock, milk and dates. But now we have nothing.”

Sudan is currently facing one of the worst humanitarian emergencies in the world.

According to the UN, three million children under the age of five are malnourished. The remaining hospitals are overwhelmed.

Bashaer Hospital provides care and basic treatment free of charge.

However, the life-saving drugs needed by children in the malnourished ward must be paid for by their families.

Masajed is a twin, he and his sister Manahil were admitted to the hospital together. But the family could only afford antibiotics for one child.

Touma had to make an impossible decision – he chose Manahil.

“I wish they could both recover and grow up,” added his broken voice, “and that I could watch them walk and walk and walk and walk before.”

“I just want them both to get better,” Touma said, giving his daughter a dying hug.

“I am alone. I have nothing. I only have God.”

Survival rates here are low. For the family in this ward, the War has taken everything. They were left with nothing and no way to buy the drugs that would save their children.

As we leave, the doctor says that none of the children in this ward will survive.

Across Khartoum, children’s lives have been rewritten by civil war.

What began as an explosion of fighting between the forces loyal to the two prisons – the military commander of Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti – soon began to overtake them.

For two years – until the end of the march when the troops took over – the city was engulfed in war as rivals clashed.

Khartoum, once the center of culture and commerce on the banks of the Nile, became a battlefield. The tanks rolled into the neighbors. Fighter jets roared overhead. Civilians were caught between crossfire, artillery bombardments and drone strikes.

It is in this spilled state, amidst the silence of destruction, that a child’s weak voice emerges from the trash can.

Twelve-year-old Zaher devotes himself to wreckage, hot burnt cars, tanks, broken houses and broken bullets.

“I’m coming home,” he hums to himself as his wheelchair climbs over the broken glass and wrists. “I won’t be able to see my home anymore. Where is my home?”

Her voice, weak, enchanted, cut, contains both the light of what is lost and the silent hope that one day, she might finally return home.

In the hand that is now used as a shelter, Zabibah’s mother Habibah tells me what life was like under RSF control.

He says: “The situation was very difficult. “We couldn’t change our lights at night – it was as if we were thieves. We have not exchanged fire. We didn’t move during the night.”

He lives next to his son in a room made up of single beds.

“However, whether you are sleeping or bathing, standing or sitting, you find them [the RSF] breathing down your neck. “

Many fled the capital, but Zaheri and her mother had no way out. To survive, they sell lentils on the streets.

Then one morning, as they were working on the side, a Drone attacked.

“I looked at him and he was bleeding. There was blood everywhere,” Habibah said. “I was losing consciousness. I forced myself to stay awake because I knew that if I went out, I would lose him forever.”

Zaheri’s legs were badly injured. After hours of pain, they made it to the hospital.

“I have been praying: ‘I please God, take my soul instead of his legs,'” He cries.

But the doctors could not save his legs. Both had to be amputated below the knee.

“He would get up and ask: ‘Why did you let them cut off my legs?'” He looks down, his face full of regret, “I couldn’t answer.”

Both Habiba and her son cried, tormented by the memory of what happened to them. It’s made worse by knowing that prosthetic legs could give Zaher a chance in his old age, but Habiba can’t afford them.

For Zaheri, the memory of what happened is very difficult to talk about.

He only shared one simple dream. “I wish I had prosthetic legs so I could play football with my friends like I used to.”

Children in Khartoum have been deprived not only of their childhood but of safe places to play and be young.

Schools, football pits and playgrounds are now crumbling, with broken reminders of a life stolen by conflict.

“It was good here,” said 16-year-old Ahmed looking around the destroyed funfair and playground.

Printed on a Grey, soft T-Shirt of a big smiley face – the word “smiley” is emblazoned below it. But his reality couldn’t keep up with that idea.

“My brothers and I would come here. We played all day and laughed a lot. But when I came back after the war, I couldn’t believe it was the same place.”

Ahmed now lives and works here to clear the debris left by the war, earning $50 (£37) for 30 days of continuous work.

The money helps support him, his wife and one of his brothers.

He had six other brothers but, like so many in Sudan who have lost family members, he lost contact with them. He looks at his feet as he says he doesn’t know where they are or if anyone is still alive.

The war has torn apart families like one.

Ahmed’s work reminds him of that almost every day. “I have found the remains of 15 bodies so far,” he said.

Most of the bodies found here have since been buried, but there are still some bones lying around.

Ahmed walks across the park and grabs a man’s jaw. “It’s scary. It gives me goosebumps.”

He shows us another bone and innocently holds it to the side of his leg, saying: “This is a leg bone, like mine.”

Ahmed says he no longer wants to dream about the future.

“Ever since the war started, I was convinced that I was destined to die. So I stopped thinking about what I would do in the future.”

The destruction of schools has put the future of children at even greater risk.

Millions are illiterate.

But Zaheri is one of the lucky few. He and his friends go to school in a classroom at a volunteer site in an abandoned home.

They call out the answers a lot, write on the board, sing songs and there are even a few silly kids gathered in the back of the classroom.

Hearing the sound of children reading and laughing, in a world where places are limited, is like nectar.

When we asked what childhood should be like, Zaher’s classmates answered innocently and continued: “We should play, study, study.”

But the memory of the war is never far away. “We shouldn’t be afraid of bombs and bullets,” interrupted Zaheri. “We have to be brave.”

Their teacher, miss Amal, has taught for 45 years. He has never seen children suffer so much.

He says: “They were really affected by the war.

“Their mental health is their vocabulary. They speak the language of soldiers. Cursed cursed words, they even play with sticks and lights, they want to hit someone.”

The damage goes beyond this behavior.

With many families deprived of income, the food shortage is biting.

“Some students come home with no bread, no flour, no milk, no oil, nothing,” said the teacher.

And, in the midst of despair, Sudanese children cling to happy moments of joy.

With the throat of a stone ball, Zaher drags himself across the dirt on his knees, determined to play the game he loves so much. His friends cheer him as he kicks the ball.

“My favorite thing to do is football,” he said, smiling for the first time.

When asked which team he supports, the answer is immediate: “Real Madrid.” His favorite player? “Vinicius.”

Playing on his knees is very painful and can lead to further infection. But he doesn’t care.

Football and his friendship saved him. They bring him joy and escape from his reality. Still, he dreams of prosthetic legs.

“I wish they would have just fixed me, so I could go home and go to school,” Zaher says.

Additional reporting by Abdelrahman Abutaleb, Abdalalrahman Altayeb and Liam Weer

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