A journalist recounts his daughter’s miraculous birth in war-torn Sudan

This is one of three articles from Sudan that we are publishing this week, highlighting that country’s travails and citizens’ efforts to overcome them. Read the second one here.

For me, the most terrifying day of Sudan’s civil war was not the day that a missile came whistling through the sky as I took a walk with my 11-month-old son, slamming into a building two blocks away. It was not when my neighbor’s scream ripped open the silence of the night, and I found him dying in his house after being attacked by thieves. 

No, the most afraid I have been since war broke out in my country was on June 6, the day my daughter was born. 

That morning, my wife was scheduled for a cesarean section at one of the few hospitals still operating in Khartoum, the capital city. We had to leave our car behind in May of 2023 when we fled our neighborhood as it was being taken over by paramilitaries, so we rode to the hospital in a dented tuk-tuk. I squeezed her hand nervously as we passed the shells of countless burnt cars and abandoned homes, their doors flung open and squeaking on their hinges. There were few people on the streets, and most of them were soldiers.

When we reached the hospital, the doctor handed me a list of supplies needed for the surgery, including pain medications and bedsheets. “You’ll need to find these yourself,” she said apologetically. 

The shelves of the tiny hospital pharmacy were mostly bare, so before I knew it, I was back in the tuk-tuk. Every few blocks, my driver and I encountered a blocked-off section of road. Soldiers with machine guns slung over their shoulders, often dressed in jeans and T-shirts, asked for my ID and demanded to know where I was going. 

When I got back to the hospital almost an hour later, my nerves were frayed, but I thought that the worst was over.

In fact, it was only just beginning. 

Born into conflict 

About 1.3 million babies will be born in Sudan this year, according to UNICEF. And each one will take their first breaths in a beautiful but broken land.

That is because, since April 2023, my country has been at war with itself. The conflict began as a power struggle between two generals, each backed by his own military force. On one side are Sudan’s armed forces. On the other is a powerful paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces. 

And in the middle are the Sudanese. Since the fighting began, more than 10 million people – 1 in every 5 Sudanese – have been forced to flee their homes. I am one of them. In fact, more people are displaced inside Sudan than in any other country. More than half of us don’t have enough to eat, and tens of thousands of people have died. 

So when my wife became pregnant last year, we were thrilled – but also terrified.

Even before the war, Sudan was a dangerous place to be a pregnant woman, with one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world. Since the war began, things have gotten much worse. 

The World Health Organization has verified 88 attacks on Sudanese health care facilities since April 2023. These attacks have been perpetrated by both sides, and the purpose is often to prevent hospitals and clinics from caring for “enemy” combatants. This has led many facilities to shut down completely, or vastly reduce their operations. 

“We are here because of our work,” our doctor told us, “but the sad part is that each side of this conflict thinks we’re collaborating with the other.”

A recent study in the medical journal PeerJ found that most pregnant women in Khartoum have no access to medical care of any kind. Meanwhile, the handful of hospitals still managing to operate witness tragedies every single day.

One of my wife’s nurses told us stories that we could not forget. 

There was the set of premature quadruplets she delivered safely, only for them to die one by one after power cuts to the hospital shut off critical machines in the neonatal intensive care unit. 

In another instance, she watched a woman’s husband walk out on her when he heard that her emergency C-section would cost about $600, a far higher price than before the war, and a nearly unthinkable sum for many Sudanese. 

As my wife’s due date neared, we became consumed with fear. Would we be able to get to a hospital in time? Even if we did, would the hospital have electricity, or the supplies to bring our baby girl into the world? 

“A reason to keep going” 

While the nurses hovered over my wife during her C-section, all I could do was pray that my family would not become another of their cautionary tales. 

“We are out of the good-quality thread,” the doctor said apologetically after she finished the procedure and prepared to stitch the incision shut. 

On the other side of the room, my tiny newborn girl was barely crying. I held my breath as I stared at her dark-blue limbs. Suddenly, the nurse whisked her away.

“This is the only oxygen in the hospital,” the nurse said as she fitted a tiny mask on my daughter’s face. As the color returned to her limbs, I finally started to breathe again. 

Soon, the hospital turned off its generator for the night, leaving us in total darkness and suffocating heat. For hours, I fanned my wife and baby with a piece of cardboard torn from a medical supplies box as I listened to bursts of gunfire from the checkpoint outside our window. 

By the time the sun rose the next morning, I was ragged with exhaustion. But I couldn’t help but feel I had been part of a miracle. 

In the midst of so much fear and mistrust, people around the city had rushed to aid us – from the pharmacists who searched high and low for the supplies we needed, to the tuk-tuk driver who bravely navigated us through the hollowed-out city. In a time of so much death, they had risked their own safety to help a new life begin.

I didn’t take any of that lightly. When I looked into my daughter’s eyes, I knew that whatever happened next, I now had a reason to keep going. 

The Sudanese journalist who authored this piece requested anonymity for security reasons. This article was published in collaboration with Egab.

Part 2: ‘They are our people’: How community kitchens are piecing Sudan back together