Sudanese refugees desperate for safety flee to Egypt

Aswan, Egypt. It was deep night, but the first thing Mawahib Mohammed did was rush to the shower for the first time in a week. As one of the thousands of Sudanese who have crossed the border into Egypt in recent weeks, she said she hardly slept in six days and only used the toilet once. There were no decent toilets along the way.

According to her, when she got out of the shower, she still felt dirty. She immediately took a shower four more times. (“Thank God,” she said, describing her relief.)

When Ms Mohammed, 47, returned to the Sudanese capital Khartoum from Dubai four years ago, she envisioned something else: helping to build a modern democratic society after the revolution that toppled Sudan’s longtime dictator.

Instead, over the past week, she and her family have found themselves in a disorderly flight from Khartoum as it leans towards civil war.

“I had hope for Sudan,” she said on Wednesday. “I never thought I’d leave again.”

Egyptian officials say more than 52,500 Sudanese and nearly 4,000 foreigners have crossed the border into Egypt since the fighting began, heading for the country that shares a common language and deep historical and cultural ties with Sudan. By and large, these are wealthy people who spent the last of their money on a trip to the north.

And they are the vanguard of what Egyptian and UN officials fear will be a growing influx of Sudanese refugees into their northern neighbor as ceasefires are violated in Sudan by warring factions and fighting continues to rage.

The Egyptian government has relaxed border controls for arrivals from Sudan, allowing women, children and the elderly to enter without a visa, and has sent additional trains and buses to Aswan, the nearest major city to the border, to help refugees move further into Egypt. . People meet refugees there, find apartments for them and bring them food.

But officials are worried about what will happen next, expecting buses full of poorer refugees to follow. Even these first, relatively wealthy arrivals have little idea of ​​what they will do next.

“There are people who have made the decision to just go to Egypt and they will sort things out,” said Mahmoud Abdelrahman, 35, a Sudanese-Canadian volunteer who interrupted his holiday in Cairo to help in Aswan. His own parents were stuck in Cairo, unable to return home to Khartoum. “Everyone is trying to figure out what a plan B is.”

RS. Mohammed, her husband, Mohammed Hashim, 48, and their three boys — Firas, 14, Hashim, 11, and Abdallah, 6 — got off the bus in Aswan around 1 a.m. Wednesday.

For them and other refugees, it was a difficult journey north, chaotic and exploitative. Bus tickets on the Sudanese side cost more than five times the pre-war rate, workers and drivers at a bus stop in Aswan say.

Raised in the United Arab Emirates, Ms. Mohammed returned to Khartoum to attend college, where she studied medicine and met her husband. She worked for the United Nations on a hepatitis campaign in Sudan, but they returned to the Emirates before Hashim and Abdullah were born.

It was safer and easier there. Sudan has struggled with sanctions, dictatorship and conservative dress and behavior restrictions.

However, after the 2019 revolution, she returned with the boys, while Mr. Hashim stayed in Dubai to work with Sudanese agent Renault. They wanted their children to learn about their roots and connect their future with Sudan, now that it is going somewhere.

Then a couple of military leaders hijacked the democratic transitiona coup that escalated into a war last month when two men attacked each other.

Mister. Hashim was at home during the holy month of Ramadan. As Eid al-Adha approached, snipers took over their area; the bullet fell at their feet as the family went out to see what was going on.

They squatted down, sharing food with their neighbors. Due to a power outage, the generator provided running water to the building for only an hour a day. The shooting and explosions became so constant that a week after leaving, Ms. Mohammed was still hard of hearing.

Not wanting to leave a partially paralyzed 80-year-old father, the family stayed. Mister. Hashim also had elderly parents and a disabled brother to think about. But when the Rapid Support Forces, one of the two main fighters of the war, ransacked a bank next to their building, they decided it was time to leave.

Gas stations and bus operators jacked up prices, and credit cards were useless. They borrowed money from friends to buy just enough gasoline to get to the station and then buy bus tickets to Egypt. From Khartoum to the border town of Wadi Halfa, they drove for about 18 hours through six checkpoints guarded by armed men. The boys carried their PlayStation with them all the way.

But in the crowded, chaotic Halfa, where passports were urgently issued and the bus to Aswan was waiting for five days, money hardly helped. Mister. Hashim and the boys slept outside with their bags for two days while Ms Mohammed slept on the bus. They eventually found a hotel room to share with nearly 30 other people. The next night, Miss. Mohammed begged the manager to let her sons sleep in the office.

Six days after leaving Khartoum, they crossed the border without shadows, and then took a ferry across the flat, blue Lake Nasser. Aswan was a few hours away by bus.

An unknown number of Sudanese refugees are still waiting for buses at two junctions with Egypt, though traffic has slowed as Khartoum is empty of people who can afford to flee. Some of those who cannot leave the country, be it Egypt, Ethiopia, Chad across the Red Sea Saudi Arabia seems to be heading to other parts of Sudan.

The Egyptian Red Crescent provides humanitarian and medical assistance on the Egyptian side of the border. But on the other hand, where food, water and working toilets are in short supply and temperatures typically exceed 100 degrees, several people have died while waiting in the desert, according to a Sudanese doctor and bus driver who made three trips to Aswan. .

According to the driver, 51-year-old Nader Abdallah Hussain, armed gangs also hunt those waiting to cross.

As bad as it may seem, the situation on the border has improved since the first days of the exodus, when some refugees waited in the desert for several days.

Among them were Alliya Amin, 32, her half-sister Khanaa Abdelwahed, 24, and their aunt Sarah Saleh, 39. locals and drinking water straight from the Nile, as the sun was beating down.

They were not going to flee to Egypt. In the confusion, they said, they simply followed all the other people crammed into the buses. Caught at work when the fights broke out, they brought nothing but dresses on their backs and some money.

Their children, Mr. Two sons of Amin and Mr. Daughter of Abdelwahed, are said to be somewhere in the Sudan. They lost contact shortly after the shots rang out.

Their husbands are also missing. “But the priority is to hear about the children. Husbands are in second place. Amen said.

Some refugees, such as these women, planned to stay in Aswan and look for work. The richer ones like Mr. Mohammed, Mr. Hashim and their sons went further.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Hashim family waited again, this time at the Palestine cafe near the Aswan railway station, where they were to board the train. for a 13 hour trip to Cairo. At the other end: an apartment that the family managed to find through friends, and a new life, whether in Cairo, Dubai or somewhere else.

Shortly before they boarded the train, M. Mohammed got a phone call. Relatives told her that RSF fighters ransacked the family’s apartment in Khartoum. They left important documents, she said, as well as her jewelry, electronics – her eyes moved back and forth, and she breathed short, sharp breaths through her nostrils.

“Thank God,” she finally said simply and raised Abdullah’s hand. Backpack with minions by train

Hossam Abdellatif and Hagar Hakim provided reporting.