by Hamouda Ibrahim
KHARTOUM, April 8 (Xinhua) -- My name is Hamouda Ibrahim. I am 52 years old, and until recently I taught Arabic in Khartoum. My days would begin with the school bell and end with marked notebooks -- and the small, hopeful dreams I carried for my students.
For years, I believed my life's work was to teach my students, through poems and prose, what "homeland" means. I never imagined I would have to learn the meaning of losing it -- or teach my own children a lesson I had never prepared: how to leave home behind.
In Jabra, a neighborhood south of Khartoum, our house was simple but warm. Shrubs I had planted lined the yard. A window opened onto a lively street. My children's drawings covered the walls.
Then the war broke out.
Since April 2023, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in conflict. Soon, everything in our lives narrowed to one sound: explosions.
About 25 days after the fighting began, staying was no longer possible. Smoke filled the sky. Shelling split the night. One turbulent morning, I packed a few clothes into small bags. I looked at my wife and our four children, but I could not find the words to explain why we had to go.
We traveled by road from Jabra to White Nile State, then crossed into South Sudan's Upper Nile, and finally flew to its capital, Juba. At each stop, I felt myself shedding a piece of who I was.
After several months in Juba, we moved to Uganda in September 2023 and registered as refugees. We were settled in a camp on the outskirts of Kampala, where tents stood close together. Children's voices rose in different languages. We were all waiting anxiously.
Life there was not only a matter of material hardship. It was a daily test of dignity.
Our tent, a thick gray canvas stretched over bare earth, was stifling hot in the midday sun and turned bitterly cold at night. In the rainy season, water seeped through the seams. We placed bowls in the corners to catch the leaks while the children tried to sleep through the pounding rain.
Queues defined our days: for water, for food, for paperwork, for assistance. I would wake before dawn and, plastic jerrycan in hand, wait under a pale sky. My life was now measured in liters, not lessons.
The heaviest burden was not poverty, but helplessness.
When my children fell ill from contaminated water, I would sit beside them at night, my hand on a fevered forehead, feeling the quiet pain of being unable to shield them -- from sickness, from fear, from this life.
I had no work. Each morning, I awoke to no students waiting, no classroom to enter. Enrolling my own children was another struggle: classes were taught in English, and the fees were high. I watched them long for a desk, a blackboard. It pained me that I, a teacher, could not even give them that.
Months turned into years. The scent of Khartoum's soil after rain, the hum of its streets, would find me in my dreams, only to vanish with the wind whipping the tent fabric. I questioned my decision to leave, then reminded myself that survival was my duty as a father. Still, the pull of home never faded.
In our third year in Uganda, something finally changed. A program was announced to register those wishing to return. I did not hesitate, especially after the SAF declared in May 2025 that it had regained full control of Khartoum. Registration and travel were free. For the first time in years, hope felt like something I could hold.
On Feb. 20 this year, I arrived in Port Sudan. Stepping off the plane, I bent down, touched the ground, and wept quietly. I did not cry because everything had been restored. I cried because something had begun again.
From there, we took the road to Khartoum, a journey of about 16 hours. It was long and exhausting, yet I felt no fatigue. The road was leading me home. I watched the passing landscape the way a child watches the world from a bus window on the first day of school.
When we entered Jabra, silence filled the streets. Many houses stood empty, their walls scarred by war. I reached my home, or what remained of it. The door was broken. The garden had grown wild. Inside, nothing was left: furniture, photographs, my notebooks, even the light fixtures. All gone. I stood in the empty room as my wife wiped tears from her eyes and my children looked around in disbelief.
Yet even amid the ruin, I felt I had recovered something invisible -- my own soul.
Behind a broken window, an old schoolbook was wedged in the frame. I dusted it off and held it in my hands. The house had been stripped bare, yet it still felt alive.
Yes, the house is empty. Yes, the street is quiet. But this land knows our names, and these walls, though cracked, still remember our voices. Rebuilding will take time. The road ahead is uncertain. But having returned -- this is where the healing begins.
I dream of Sudanese families returning to their homes, of streets once again echoing with vendors' calls and children's laughter. I dream that this war will end for good.
I am a teacher who lost his home, endured exile, and returned to begin from nothing -- or rather, to begin again. Perhaps only the walls of my house remain, but my faith in Sudan's recovery endures. It stands like a blank blackboard, waiting for the first lesson of a new life. ■
