Similar to other millions of Sudanese my life changed drastically after April 15th 2023. I’ve lost everything my house, my car, my job and I’m thousands of miles away from my family in a foreign country.
The terrors of this war do not require me to speak further about them. the atrocities committed by the RSF left the whole world shocked not just Sudanese people. But as you might have guessed from the title of this post I’m going to talk about the positive things that I learned or happened to me during this series of unfortunate events.
Days without water, electricity, internet connection have been the norm for many residents of Khartoum (and even other states). Along with my family we fled to our home town in Aljazeera state about 80km south of Khartoum, our house there wasn’t a 5 star hotel of course but we are extremely lucky to have a “spare” house that we could live in. I spent days without electricity, fastest internet connection was in kilo bytes if you were patient enough to stay up all night long to use it, for many days I forgot the taste of cold water. while this was happening all I did was wondering how did I ever had the audacity to complain previously about anything in my life but also I was surprised by how much adaptable I was to the whole situation, sure not having an alternative solution back then helped but still I realized how much of our inability to do things or bear any conditions was due to our own mentality.
Losing Hope, I know that this seems like a negative thing but losing hope in things that holding you back can be one of the most liberating things ever “only after we’ve lost everything we are free to do anything” war destroyed every comfort zone I had before in life making it easier for me to take on harder challenges and choose harder decisions.
Life is ultimately a zero sum game you have nothing to gain and truly nothing to lose. Nothing last forever and whatever is it that you work so hard for in this life can be easily taken away from you without your permission, without you seeing it coming and without it being your fault.
We tend to think that we are in complete control over our life, our hard-work will get us so far in life, we get things because we deserve them, good things will happen to us because we are good people, and the truth is that none of these is actually true, the worst day or the best day of your life could be around the corner and you wouldn’t even know it or predict it let alone trying to control when or where or with whom it might be. Of course I’m not downplaying the importance of hard-working -if this what you understood from reading this then please stop reading- I’m just saying we should stop the wishful thinking that’s all, basically do your best and be ready for the worst because that’s life.
I love Sudan and I really love it more than I thought I’d ever do as far as I could remember I wanted to leave Sudan and establish a new life for me away from everyone I know, now this is actually happening I don’t find it as rewarding as I thought it would be. I desperately want to get my old life back, I want to go back to Sudan and I want to spend my life working towards making it a better home for future generations. No matter how many years I spend outside of Sudan or which nationality I can get, there’s an ultimate truth that is I will always be Sudanese and I wish that one day far down the line people would be proud of this instead of feeling that it’s just a bad luck for them. If I could meaningfully contribute to that then that’s it for me.
Not all these “spoils” are philosophical some are tangible things I gained from this war, one of which was improving my painting skills, I have been practicing more consistently during the past months and it was so satisfying to watch my skills grow and finally have confidence in my skills and I can now paint faster using my own unique styles and techniques, honestly this was my sole goal since I got into drawing and painting this is literally a life long dream to acquire this skill. All that was possible because of the time this war has given me by taking away things that had more priority in my life, so it’s good to see some light in all of this darkness.
Spoils of war is the 4th episode of season 7 of Game of Thrones, it’s also the name of one the best sound tracks in this show and I liked it so much it was only fitting to make it the title of this post.