Stories from the Ground

My aunt in Sudan who refuses to stop educating

getty image of displaced sudanese folk

I published this piece on The New Arab earlier this year, but I wanted to share it here as well. It took months for me to put this story together, not only because of the challenge of speaking to someone traveling through conflict, but because interviewing a loved one about their first-hand experience of war was far more emotionally wrenching that I had expected. How often had I spoken to family on the front line in platitudes, checking in on the basics, distracting them with stories of my own, low-stakes escapades on the other side of the world? The container of the interview opened up something different.

It brought to mind comments author Alice Pung made years ago, when she spoke about writing the memoir, ‘Her Father’s Daughter’. She had been trying to find ways into the story of her father, who had lived through the unimaginable experience of the Cambodian Killing Fields, but each attempt felt hollow, not quite right. It wasn’t until she had moved overseas, and began having conversations with her father over Skype, that something unlocked. The distance, the act of calling and the framework of an interview allowed Alice to learn more about her father than she’d ever known. Similarly, the act of setting up interviews with my aunt, being intentional about saying, ‘I think your story matters and I want to help tell it,’ was transformative. I learnt more about her in these interviews than I had in years of short phone calls and worried text messages. It made me want to interview every family member, find ways to record their stories. Y’all know how obsessed I am with the archive. Here, perhaps, we begin.

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Fairouz Abdel Razig El-Higzi woke up late on the 15 April, 2023.

‘I had slept in,’ said the dean of architecture and planning at Sudan University of Science and Technology, ‘because I had spent the day before shopping and cooking for our big Ramadan iftar.’ The sounds of gunfire nearby resembled the noise from regular protests, but when they switched on the news, the picture looked different. There was fighting at the airport, the bridges were being closed. Fairouz’s sister called, asking whether iftar at hers was still on, because she hadn’t started cooking yet. Fairouz’s laugh was rueful.

‘Sister, I told her. It’s war.’

But despite knowing war had arrived, like so many living in Khartoum at the time, Fairouz thought the fighting would be over quickly. ‘I assumed by the evening it would have ended,’ she explained. Her main concern that first night was whether to put the food ‘in the freezer or the fridge, because tomorrow the rest of the family would come.’

‘From 5am the next morning, the army were dropping bombs all over our neighbourhood using warplanes. After each bomb, the youth would run and check if anyone was hurt, take pictures of the damage and send them around.’

Fairouz and her family sheltered in place, along with a young teaching assistant who couldn’t get home. They were inundated by advice every which way, concerned loved ones urging them to leave, to stay, to run, to hide. After a week, an unexploded shell landed on their neighbour’s house. ‘We were told that this was a very dangerous thing, it could explode any time, and if it does, it will destroy the houses and everyone in them. I decided to leave the next morning at dawn.’

The journey Dr Fairouz and her family took out of Khartoum, first towards the north, then back down to Madani when the situation became too dangerous, is sadly shared by many. The stops at gunpoint by militia. The stench of rotting corpses, the fear, the constant threat of death. ‘We would take a side road and face an RSF check point, recalls Fairouz. ‘Buses didn’t want to travel on the highway to get attacked.’ But when they eventually did leave the conflict zone, ‘we were surprised to see normal life. People walking on the streets, selling goods on the sidewalk, even the milkman! People were throwing biscuits and water and saying, ‘Thank God you are safe, people of Khartoum.’

19 months into the conflict, ‘normal life’ is hard to come by. The dean is one of the now 14 million people displaced from their homes in Sudan. But soon after being forced from her home, Fairouz’s thoughts were on the almost 500 students under her care. How was the university going to look after its students, many of whom have already lost years of study to the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2018/19 revolution?

‘We went two months without communication with students or staff,’ she said, ‘everyone preoccupied with their personal struggles and circumstances.’ It was only in June that the University Director was able to call a meeting, gathering the deans of the faculties to consider their options.

On Being Seen

Fairouz felt a sense of urgent responsibility to the students, and so ‘we instructed faculties capable of online learning to start teaching immediately.’ Fortunately, in her department, ‘we had already finished exams for that year,’ which meant final year students could receive certificates and begin working. But the heavy administrative burden of approving grades, calculating and transferring results was still to be undertaken.

This was university administration via app. ‘We had meetings via phone, using Telegram and WhatsApp groups,’ explained Fairouz. As the academic staff had been scattered across the country, in areas with low internet connectivity, many were unable to join Google Meet or Zoom. ‘Meetings would start at 7pm and sometimes end at 1am. We would send messages, wait for replies, revisit previous topics if someone responded late. My husband and I would take notes while drinking tea, sometimes even lying down from exhaustion.’

Fairouz and her family were now sheltering in Karima, a market hub in Northern State. The town had been flooded by Khartoum migrants, displaced families filling yards which would usually be used to dry harvested dates. But the stability allowed Fairouz and her team to begin to plan.

Am I really the 'first'?

‘From June, we began to prepare the schedules for the next year’s study.’ This included classes for hundreds of students, all taking different subjects. ‘We had an old laptop to type, and would take screenshots to transfer information to our phone because there was no other way. It was very difficult.’ Although the plan had been to begin teaching in early July, practical and logistical delays made their efforts all but impossible. But the university administration was persistent.

‘In late August, the director acknowledged the war was ongoing and expanding, making the students our responsibility. Even if only 50% of the class could access the internet, we needed to teach them and keep going with whoever was available.’ They decided they would begin classes in November.

Dr Fairouz created a WhatsApp group with two individuals from each class as a way to communicate with the student body. ‘They were thrilled to help,’ the dean said, noting that being asked by the dean to assist was an honour. ‘The first thing we did was take attendance, find out where everybody was, who was unaccounted for.’

While 50% of the students were reachable, the first attempt at in-person teaching failed as most professors had left either for Egypt or other parts of the country. So, Fairouz decided to focus on the theoretical, online classes, assigning a professor to coordinate each cohort of students. ‘Some professors reported having only five students attend, while others had 25.’

But days after classes began, the Rapid Support Forces attacked Madani.

‘70% of our students, staff and administration were in Madani,’ Dr Fairuz said. Everything was once again delayed.

But somehow, they began classes again, and university studies slowly resumed, and the work became a lifeline for the dean.

‘If I hadn’t been busy with the work [of restarting the university], I might not have coped with the war. Even when I talk to friends whose work stopped, I can feel the difference. Work helped pull me out of negative energy’. Students seemed to feel the same.

‘There was another student who lived in Khartoum, and to access the internet he has to go through checkpoints where he gets searched and beaten.’ Despite contracting dengue fever, and the death of his brother, he kept trying to work.

‘Some time later, his sister contacted me and said the fever had weakened him so much that he couldn’t get out of bed. Still, he said: ‘Tell professor Fairouz I don’t want to fail the semester.’’

He was eventually able to submit the work, passed and moved onto his final semester. However, the university has since lost contact with him.

Eventually, the time once again came for exams.

Setting up university level exams in times of peace is a challenging enough task on its own. Co-ordinating a multitude of different exam centres you have never seen, in numerous countries, solely through WhatsApp, is miracle work.

‘The University had already set up four centres in Kosti, Port Sudan, Shendi and Dongola,’ said Fairouz. ‘Then we found 15 in Saudi Arabia, 50 in Egypt, 15 in the UAE, a few scattered in the Northern region, and 11 in areas near Kosti.’ She set about finding venues, staff members, printing facilities, the works. ‘I would find a professor, assign them, then find out they had been displaced,’ she said. And there were constantly people appearing that weren’t on their lists, but were desperate to continue their studies.

‘A student in Rwanda contacted me, saying please, I can’t lose another year, but I didn’t know anyone in Rwanda. I don’t have a teacher or a place there.’ So the student found an Egyptian professor of architecture at a University in Rwanda who stepped up. He offered to oversee the exams, sans payment.

‘Then news spread across the students, and another contacted me from El-Obeid, and another from Nyala.’ Both of these areas are incredibly dangerous to access, Nyala in Darfur controlled by the militia. When the student in El-Obeid was informed of a nearby professor who could organise the exam, the ‘student cried with joy.’ In the case of Nyala, another student, who was an eight hours bus-ride away, contacted the dean: ‘I had lost hope of taking the exam, but if you arrange it in Nyala, count me in.’

Dr Fairuz designed the schedule to run for a week in late May, setting exams for 37 subjects with retake exams for 17. In the end, students sat for tests across 13 centres in total, including in Omdurman. Eight students sat for their exams in a repurposed health centre, amidst tear gas and gunfire.

‘When the teacher sent me a voice message, I could hear gunshots in the background. He told me they paused the exam for 15 minutes because the students were scared. I said, stop the exam if necessary, but after another 15 minutes, he said they were ready to continue.’

I try, I try, I try

Despite the enormous challenge, professor Fairouz is proud of what they have been able to achieve, ushering students through their studies in the most challenging circumstances. The young people under her care reminded Fairouz of her own two daughters going through university, struggling with their life being put on hold. ‘I wanted them all to keep studying, take exams and succeed.’ When they did, ‘I was more excited than they were! I kept praying that the online semester would continue to they could move onto the next year.’

How has the experience of being dean during a war changed the professor?

‘Administratively, I’ve become tougher. Not rude, but firm. I no longer fear upsetting people,’ she said. But it’s not just a leadership style that has shifted.

‘When we left the house, I took only the basics. Most of my gold, I didn’t bother hiding. When neighbours told me about the militia breaking in, how they destroyed the furniture, the fridge, the kitchen– I remember how much I paid for those things and how hard I worked for them. But doing this work, something has shifted. Now I think about enjoying things in the present.’

Dr Fairouz and her team were able to usher students through a semester of study during the thick of war, however the end of the year brings little clarity.

‘Another year coming brings a sense of confusion. I keep hoping and imagining going back to Sudan, meeting people, visiting the University, crying together - but then I remember the broken house, the stolen things, the empty country.’ But she refuses to give surrender to despair. ‘I can’t give up on the hope of returning home and the war ending.’

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Thank you all for reading and paying attention to the stories of Sudanese people. As always, if you’d like to donate, check out Sudan Solidarity Collective.

Until next time,
Yassmin