I Wrote a Scene Grieving Sudan the Day Before El Fashir Fell

I have an odd habit of writing that which comes to fruition in some way or another.

It might not be particularly impressive when it comes to all of the social relationships in my life that I all but predicted through stories like the Sins of Regret. But it is hard for me to not think about the time I published a book about the threat of nuclear war within a week or so of when the Russia Ukraine war started and World War III memes were going around everywhere. Maybe it’s because of some some unresolved trauma around feeling the imminent violent death of the world approaching.

Most recently I wrote a scene in grief over Sudan the day before El-Fashir fell.

And I can’t stress enough how much this is one of those times where I really really hope when I publish this book, that scene feels out of date. That it feels irrelevant. In fact, I hope that it feels so irrelevant people argue about whether it should be considered historical fiction because babies, Sudanese babies born that same year could never know hunger. So how else would you categorize a book shedding tears over the people’s starvation and brutalization?

I hope it is a scene people skim through, because everyone is already deeply aware of the pain and trauma in Sudan’s soil. And everyone already cares deeply, so everything that I’ve written feels redundant to their own practices of grieving.

I write this post after reports have found no tangible signs of life in El-Fashir, a city of 200,000+.

And I need to see the day that sentence is always a memorial but barely a memory.

Where kids refill the markets, nodding along as elders scold them. But they live a life so overflowing with peace, security, and love they can afford to take some for granted so long as they still love their community with open arms.

I wish so much strength upon the Sudanese people through this nightmare and dream of the otherside of it all.

Please donate to those helping to feed their people through this genocide.

https://chuffed.org/project/126780-tky-alaabasy-2