A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
More than a year of war in Sudan has devastated one of Africa's largest countries. So many people have fled, it's created the world's worst displacement crisis. And fighting between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group has transformed towns and cities into front lines. One of those cities is Omdurman, the twin city of Sudan's capital, Khartoum, where NPR's Emmanuel Akinwotu reports.
EMMANUEL AKINWOTU, BYLINE: It's dawn, and a vegetable vendor with a megaphone calls out to customers to buy his lemons, oranges and potatoes. They're laid out on a wooden cart hitched to a donkey that he leads down a side street. This idyllic, everyday moment in Omdurman lasts for a few hours. Then it's interrupted, broken by the daily rupture of shelling...
(SOUNDBITE OF SHELLING)
AKINWOTU: ...Launched from a few miles away in the capital, Khartoum.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHELLING)
AKINWOTU: Omdurman and Khartoum are divided by the river Nile. Both cities were occupied by the Rapid Support Forces, or the RSF, until May, when the army forced them out of most of Omdurman. The army have advanced even further, into parts of Khartoum, over the last week. The fighting has left a trail of destruction.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing in Arabic).
AKINWOTU: Military control in Omdurman has allowed thousands of people who fled for safety to return, but they face a fight to rebuild their lives amid the ruins.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing in Arabic).
AKINWOTU: On a Friday afternoon, worshippers trickle into the Sheikh Gariballah mosque. It's more than 100 years old, in Old Omdurman, a historic pocket of the city. Its sky-gray walls have been damaged, covered in bullets. Torched cars lay waste in the compound. Every window has been shattered.
ABDUL RAHIM: (Speaking Arabic).
AKINWOTU: Abdul Rahim is the imam. He says RSF fighters embedded in the mosque and killed the worshippers they found there.
RAHIM: We lost two brothers. They killed by militia.
AKINWOTU: He managed to flee, and when he returned to the mosque in May, he wept when he saw the destruction. Everything valuable had been looted.
RAHIM: (Speaking Arabic).
AKINWOTU: The fighters even dug up graves in a search for the corpse of the mosque's wealthy founder. They hoped to steal the gold and jewelry they believed he was buried with. But the tomb wasn't found, he says.
RAHIM: (Speaking Arabic).
AKINWOTU: For now, they have no plans to repair the mosque because it could be shelled at any moment. So their plan is to remain open for the few who have returned to the area and to offer meals for so many in desperate need.
MOHAMMED KHAIR: It's a lot like D.C.
AKINWOTU: After prayers, we leave the mosque with 64-year-old Mohammed Khair. He was born and raised here and worked for almost 10 years in the U.S.
KHAIR: So how long...
AKINWOTU: He walks with us past empty, skeletal houses, through eerie streets. Several doors are marked with a red X, spray-painted by the military. It's to show that RSF fighters who occupied them were defeated.
KHAIR: That my house. The shop over there, that's my supermarket.
AKINWOTU: We soon reach a terracotta-colored bungalow with a convenience store attached to the front. The house was built by his father over a century ago. He goes in to tell his wife we're here.
KHAIR: I have a friend of mine, Emmanuel. He's a Nigerian guy, a Nigerian son. He is my son. He is your son (laughter).
AKINWOTU: Then he leads us inside his living room.
KHAIR: They destroyed all my house. They bombed all my house. Look at it.
AKINWOTU: The ceilings have caved in, the cement walls cracked and punctured by shrapnel and bullets. He says RSF fighters stayed here and looted it. They took his safe with all his savings, his TV, his air conditioners, even his clothes.
KHAIR: It's terrible. It feels terrible. You know, I cannot believe it. You cannot imagine it. It's not coming to my mind that my house could be like this. Everything I saved for my old age has been destroyed.
AKINWOTU: He says the most painful thing has been to accept that at 65, he has to start over.
KHAIR: Every day, I say, how can I do that? How can I start again? But still, I'm just trying to find a way, either to open my supermarket and just to start from the beginning.
AKINWOTU: To start again.
KHAIR: I start again, yep. Inshallah.
(SOUNDBITE OF BRICKLAYING)
AKINWOTU: Nearby, 40-year-old Homeini Abdulrahaman is drenched in sweat as he works with his nephew in the heat of the afternoon sun. His family fled the city last year, then returned to the house a few weeks ago.
HOMEINI ABDULRAHAMAN: (Speaking Arabic).
AKINWOTU: They found their home in ruins, the walls blown apart. Now they're rebuilding it, brick by brick. His nephew scoops cement from a mound and spreads a layer across the length of the wall, while Homeini carefully relays each brick.
ABDULRAHAMAN: (Speaking Arabic).
AKINWOTU: "It's still dangerous here," he says. But the war has dragged on longer than they imagined, and they were tired of living as refugees in their own country. So they've come back to start again.
Emmanuel Akinwotu, NPR News, Omdurman.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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