Returning to Khartoum is not an ending. It is a beginning.
Three years after conflict tore through Khartoum, a humanitarian worker returns to a city that exists now more as memory than place — its homes emptied, its infrastructure stripped, its people scattered across a continent of grief. Shihab Mohamedali's return with Islamic Relief is less a homecoming than a confrontation with what war leaves behind when the fighting moves on but the suffering does not. His story stands as one thread in a vast human tapestry of displacement, resilience, and the long, unglamorous work of rebuilding not just cities, but lives.
- Khartoum, once a functioning capital, was reduced to looted homes, broken infrastructure, and vanished services — a city that survived the conflict only in outline.
- Residents who stayed faced detention, hunger, and family separation; those who fled, like Mohamedali, carried the psychological weight of displacement while continuing to serve others in crisis.
- Islamic Relief's own offices were stripped bare, forcing humanitarian workers to operate from exile — themselves refugees navigating a double burden of personal loss and professional duty.
- Children who fled bore trauma that took years and stability to begin healing, offering a quiet measure of how deep the human cost runs beneath the headline numbers.
- Markets are reopening and some services returning, but returning residents find themselves starting from near nothing — the emotional pull to rebuild colliding with the practical reality of ruin.
- Millions across Sudan remain displaced, and the crisis has not ended — it has only shifted from emergency survival into the harder, slower work of reconstruction.
When Shihab Mohamedali returned to Khartoum after three years away, he was not coming home — he was arriving at a reckoning. A Senior Programme Manager with Islamic Relief, he had fled the Sudanese capital in April 2023 when conflict erupted without warning, evacuating with his family along roads where neighbors looted and strangers offered shelter in the same breath. What began as emergency flight became years of suspended existence: displaced, yet still working; a refugee who was also a relief worker.
The city he returned to had been hollowed out. Homes stood empty or destroyed. Water, electricity, and medical care had become scarce. Islamic Relief's own offices had been stripped of equipment and vehicles. Those who had stayed faced impossible choices — detention, hunger, or the loss of everything they could not carry. Many lost family members. The city had become a geography of scarcity and fear.
Through it all, Mohamedali and his colleagues continued their humanitarian operations from other locations, reaching people across Sudan who faced the same devastation their own families had endured. His children carried psychological scars from the displacement — wounds that healed slowly, and only with time and stability. Their recovery became a small, private measure of resilience against a much larger landscape of loss.
Now, as residents trickle back, Khartoum is in the earliest stages of reconstruction. Markets are reopening. Some services are returning. But the damage is structural and deep, and most returning residents are beginning from almost nothing. For Mohamedali, this return is not an ending — it is the opening of a new phase, one in which humanitarian work must shift from emergency response to long-term recovery. Millions across Sudan remain displaced. The crisis has not resolved. It has simply changed shape.
Shihab Mohamedali stood at the threshold of a city he no longer recognized. Three years had passed since he fled Khartoum in April 2023, when the conflict that would reshape Sudan erupted without warning. Now, as a Senior Programme Manager with Islamic Relief, he was returning to the capital—not as a homecoming, but as a reckoning with loss.
The early days of that conflict were chaos. Mohamedali and his family evacuated under conditions that left little room for sentiment or careful planning. Along the roads out of the city, they witnessed the full spectrum of human response to catastrophe: neighbors looting homes, strangers offering shelter, the ordinary world collapsing into survival. The evacuation marked the beginning of three years suspended between displacement and work, between the life they had left behind and the humanitarian crisis unfolding around them.
What they returned to was a city hollowed out. Homes stood empty or destroyed. Infrastructure lay in ruins. Basic services—water, electricity, medical care—had become luxuries. Islamic Relief's own offices had been stripped bare, equipment and vehicles gone. The residents who remained or tried to stay faced a calculus of impossible choices: stay and risk detention, hunger, family separation, or leave and lose everything. Many lost family members. Many were detained. The city itself had become a place of scarcity and fear.
Yet Mohamedali and his colleagues at Islamic Relief had not stopped working. Displaced themselves, they continued their humanitarian operations from other locations, trying to reach people across Sudan who faced the same devastation their own families had endured. This double life—being both a refugee and a relief worker—carried its own weight. His children bore psychological scars from the displacement, trauma that took time and stability to heal. Their eventual recovery became a small measure of resilience in a landscape of loss.
Now, as people began trickling back to Khartoum, they encountered a city in the early stages of reconstruction. Markets were reopening. Some services were returning. But the damage remained profound and structural. Homes were gone. Livelihoods had been erased. The emotional pull to rebuild was strong—this was home, after all—but the practical reality was that most returning residents were starting from almost nothing.
Mohamedali's return was not an ending. It was a beginning, the start of a new phase in which the work of humanitarian relief would shift from emergency response to long-term recovery. Millions across Sudan remained displaced, still in need of assistance. Those who were returning faced the harder challenge: not survival in flight, but survival in reconstruction, rebuilding lives and a city from rubble. The crisis had not ended. It had simply changed shape.
Notable Quotes
Mohamedali describes the emotional toll of being both a displaced person and a humanitarian worker— Islamic Relief Senior Programme Manager Shihab Mohamedali
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When you say he was forced to flee in April 2023, what does that actually mean? Was there a moment when he knew he had to leave?
It wasn't a single moment. It was the city turning into a war zone around him. The conflict erupted, and suddenly the choice wasn't whether to leave—it was whether you could leave safely. He and his family evacuated under dangerous conditions. That's the reality of it.
And during those three years away, he kept working for Islamic Relief?
Yes. That's the thing that strikes you about it. He was displaced, his family was displaced, but the organization kept operating from other locations. He was living the crisis while trying to respond to it. That's a particular kind of exhaustion.
What happened to his children during that time?
They experienced trauma from the displacement itself. But they recovered, which speaks to something about resilience, about what stability and time can do. It's not a happy ending—it's just survival and then slow healing.
When he returned to Khartoum, what did he actually find?
Destruction. Homes looted or demolished. Infrastructure damaged. Services gone. But also something else—people coming back anyway, drawn to rebuild in a place that was still broken. The emotional pull to home is stronger than the rational calculation of what's been lost.
So returning isn't the end of the crisis?
It's the opposite. It's where the real work begins. The emergency phase is over. Now comes the long, slower work of rebuilding a city and a country from ruins. And millions are still displaced, still waiting.