by Fayez Elzaki Hassan
KHARTOUM, Feb. 25 (Xinhua) -- The rifle barrel glinted under a desert sun. My camera, laptop and cellphone lay scattered on the hood of our Toyota Land Cruiser, their contents exposed to the harsh glare of three heavily armed men.
It was Jan. 23, and I had been planting myself for hours in the dust of the Butana plain, detained for photographing a barren landscape now synonymous with Sudan's unraveling.
The armed men scrutinized every image and file in my devices, their suspicion a mirror of the paranoia that has gripped this nation. When they finally released me -- confiscating only the camera's memory card -- I felt not relief but a dull recognition: This is the price of bearing witness.
This 26-hour slog from Atbara in the north to the capital Khartoum, which previously took merely four hours, was the latest in a series of my "Odysseys" in Sudan, which altogether redefined travel in this wartime nation.
Each mile etched deeper the truth I've learned since the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began in mid-April 2023: Movement here is no longer about destinations, but survival from a wilderness where danger wears no uniform.
My first reckoning with this truth came on June 12, 2024, when I traveled from Al-Azhari, a neighborhood in southern Khartoum, to Kosti city to celebrate Eid al-Adha with my family. It was a bittersweet reunion that marked precisely one year since they fled the capital.
The 320-km trip had turned into a nearly 10-hour gauntlet. A relative's tuk-tuk picked me up at 4:00 a.m. local time (0200 GMT) and ferried me to a nearby bus station through pre-dawn Khartoum, where sporadic explosions echoed through empty streets.
"I usually transport passengers to the bus station; I have got used to this environment," the driver said flatly as gunfire crackled in the distance. After finishing the bumpy tuk-tuk journey, I spent about two hours reaching the main bus station, where I paid 80,000 Sudanese pounds (about 133 U.S. dollars) -- over five times the pre-war fare -- for a seat on a battered vehicle reeking of sweat and dread.
Throughout the trip, passengers, including me, endured relentless searches and interrogations at each checkpoint where soldiers scrutinized our identities and reasons for traveling with bored menace. As a journalist, I concealed my profession, acutely aware that my role could render me a target for both factions embroiled in the conflict.
I still remember a young woman beside me along the way: She had shaved her head and donned masculine attire, a necessary disguise to evade the scrutiny of armed guards known for preying on women.
"Right now, I am thinking about how long it will take for my hair to grow back, but my sacrifice seems trivial compared to what others have endured at these checkpoints," she said.
Seven hours later, I embraced my family in Kosti, finishing the journey that had transformed us --- a group of traveling strangers bound by shared vulnerability.
By October last year, Khartoum's southern areas had become combat fields. Fleeing the suffocating violence, I joined a convoy on the evening of Oct. 22, heading north through the Butana, then Atbara, and finally to Port Sudan. On our way, an eerie stillness enveloped the road, broken only by the distant sounds of wildlife that heightened our collective anxiety.
Our driver maneuvered through the rugged terrain with a skill born of experience, switching off the headlights for miles at a stretch. "In some places, there are armed men, and I don't want to attract their attention," he explained.
During the journey, I struck up a conversation with an elderly man beside me, his face bruised, and his right hand marked with fresh cuts -- evidence of a past attack.
He told me that he had stayed in his house in besieged Jabra, south of Khartoum after his family's early displacement. Illness and hunger eventually forced him to flee when "death was near."
When I voiced my concern about the dangers ahead, the man said, "We have already been drowned, so we won't be afraid of getting wet."
When the first checkpoint at the southern entrance to the River Nile State emerged after a 12-hour drive, seven soldiers circled our vehicle like vultures, their fingers hovering over their triggers. Most carried light weapons, and a DShK -- a heavy machine gun I have seen many times while covering Sudan's military-related events -- was mounted on the back of a nearby vehicle.
"There is no need to fear army checkpoints; what's required is calmness and not speaking to the soldiers or trying to joke with them," the driver advised after we passed the checkpoint more than half an hour later.
He was right, but no one was in the mood for joking. Exhaustion settled over us as we pressed on toward Port Sudan, our clothes coated in dust and our spirits drained. With no air conditioning in the vehicle, we had to leave windows open to combat the stifling heat.
These journeys -- three among countless others undertaken by Sudanese like me during the past 22 months -- reveal a war that devours not just lives, but also movements and identities beyond one's doorstep.
Once teeming with traders and pilgrims, roads are controlled by armed interrogators and bandits capitalizing on the chaos. Fare prices have ballooned, with a single bus seat costing the equivalent of a week's wages, exacerbating people's hardships. Worse still, residents have to hide their identities for safety, women disguising themselves as men and journalists burying their press passes.
Entire neighborhoods in Khartoum have transformed into open-air prisons. Many have no money or safe havens to shelter themselves, whereas others cling to their homes as acts of defiance. Many rely on relocated family members for support, community kitchens known as "Takaya" for food, or local resistance committees for aid deliveries. Even something as simple as fetching bread may court death.
To travel in Sudan today is to navigate a nation's fragmented soul. Each road taken, each checkpoint crossed, and each face encountered whisper that survival is not about resilience, but about adaptation. The seasoned tuk-tuk driver, the calm young woman, and the determined elder are not heroes, but ordinary people learning how to breathe underwater.
As the conflict nears its second anniversary, I often think of the soldier who confiscated my memory card a month ago. What he sought to erase, others risk everything to document. Our roads may be fractured, but our stories will endure -- scattered like seeds on barren land, refusing to be silenced.
The question lingers: What price must we pay for the faintest hope of tomorrow's freedom? In Sudan, the answer lies in the grit of those who keep moving, keep remembering, and keep believing the journey might one day lead somewhere else, somewhere better. ■
