Postcards from Cairo

 Living in exile / a diary of life in Cairo / Egypt / 2024
contributed by Sudanese photographers in Cairo

The ‘Postcards from Cairo - living in exile’ is the continuation of the project Postcards from Khartoum. Many people fled to the neighboring country of Egypt after the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023. The following pictures and texts were created in a workshop on behalf of the Goethe Institut Sudan. Over a period of 10 days, 13 Sudanese photographers photographed their everyday life in exile in Cairo.

© images and captions by Ahmed Nogoud, Amar Mola, Mahamoud Mohamed Abdalla, Mohamed Esmail, Razaz Saif, Ali Abuswar, Ola Mohamed, Hafsa Boraei, Leenah Seifaldowla, Mazar Attia, Mohamed Abdelrahman, Sari Omer and Ula Osman

curated and conducted by André Lützen

facilitated by the Goethe Institut Sudan

Contact: info-sudan@goethe.de

A year and a half and our minds are still locked in memories and dreams of coming back, a year and a half and the difference in place and people still forms high prison walls which we try to destroy.

I see the quiet resilience of my family as we try to adapt to life in a new and temporary home. Our simple familiar details are now displaced, reshaped within unfamiliar walls. The half-filled spaces stand as a refuge for what we have lost, as we trace the contours of our shared displacement. There is stillness, silent survival, moments of connection, and an enduring attempt to hold on. In the fragile beauty of these moments, the weight of our journey settles in the small, everyday details of this new life.

Razaz Saif

Dawn will come before long.
We will move to another place.
Carrying portfolios,
We will work out detailed arrangements,
Will carry out our work step by step.
Tomorrow night we will sleep on different rented bedding.

 Poem by Shigeharu Nakano

This represents how I feel post-war in Sudan; this isn't my bed, this isn't my room, this isn't my house. Even I, myself, I'm not the same person I was in Sudan. And I must be ready for any sudden events that will force me to leave my temporary home here. Nostalgia lingers in my heart with an ache that reminds me of our warm sun, the familiar streets, the voices of our dialect, and the children in the street, which all seem very distant now.

Currently, trapped in Cairo, with no way out unless I don’t want to come back here and see my family again. The conferences and travels I used to attend abroad have stopped since coming here. The change in my brother’s schedule to go to weddings near our house every day and listen to music with his favorite artists has turned him into a ticking bomb, ready to explode at intervals and crying to go back to Sudan, uncaring of the current war. My parents are feeling continuously helpless about how to help us get out of these depression episodes. Egypt has provided a house for us that we are grateful for, but it’s just not our house. The streets aren’t ours; the familiar faces aren't there. We all sleep and wake up with dreams of returning home.

Ola Mohamed

Cairo, I'm a simple disoriented man in your presence. I am empty in a non-buddhist way. I am further to where I want to be than I ever have been and experience more internal doubt than I ever have. Living as a refugee in Cairo feels like wandering in a fog where the past and present blur into something indistinct. Time here doesn’t feel linear, instead, it loops and twists in ways that leave me perpetually displaced, not just geographically, but within myself.

Friendships, once the foundation of my identity, have become fractured by the very act of living. Meeting new people in this city feels like planting seeds in cracked soil, There’s potential, but it feels as if something essential is missing, It offers new faces, but there is a hollowness to these encounters, a sense that I am no longer capable of forming the deep connections I once did. Displacement does something strange to your sense of self, the version of me that existed before this, before Cairo, before the war, before the the 1st of January, feels like someone else entirely, I look in the mirror and see fragments, pieces of a whole that no longer fits together. My reflection in the mirror is both familiar and foreign, as though the person staring back at me is someone I’m still getting to know, self-consciousness leads to inaction, and in that inaction, I find myself slipping further into a state of depression, the city moves around me, and within me.

The trauma is not something that can be neatly packaged and left behind, It linger embedded in every interaction, every thought, my family and friends are now like fallen leaves, scattered to the wind, carried far from where they once rooted. I am not the person I was when I first arrived in this city, nor will I be the same person when I eventually leave. What I’ve learned from these months in Cairo is that identity is not something fixed, it shifts, changes, is torn apart, and reassembled based on the spaces we inhabit and the experiences we endure. My identity now feels like disassembled being, a puzzle of pieces that don’t quite fit together but somehow form a whole. Belonging too, has changed it’s no longer about place, but about the connections I form, the memories I hold, and the hope that, even in displacement, there is a place for me somewhere in this world.

Mazar Attia

I miss my room, the bed, my clothes , everything and more. We have lost everything during the war in Sudan since 15th of April 2023. Our life, home, family, friends, even the joy of life it's ending , we came here to seek safety and a better life, but even in the little details it is not the same as it was. We try to do the best we can, but i think it will take time, or it will not happen.  I don't know yet, Time will eventually tell . The most I miss beside my friends and family, is The smell and warmth of home, the nights we gather.

Mohamed Abdelrahman

 My relationship with Cairo is very old and renewed since 2007. I came every year to spend my vacation month here, I enjoyed the cinema, cultural programs, exhibitions, and traveling from Cairo and many other areas. Now, not as I used to, I am forced to stay here, as the raging war in Sudan, my country, does not allow me to even think about returning because it destroyed all my things and dreams. I search in Cairo for what Khartoum resembles and what makes me feel safe. To Khartoum... Be well until we meet again

Sari Omer

Here in Cairo I found safety but the longing for home remains my companion in every picture. Every click of the button reminds me of places that were once part of my life and every corner here reminds me of a different path in my country, each photo is an attempt to ease the longing. One day we will meet again, but until then I will cherish the moment in this ancient city, no matter how great the city is, home remains in the heart until we meet again in our land.

Mahamoud Mohamed Abdalla 

Not only was my house looted, but my mind and passion, too. When I first escaped Sudan, it was extremely challenging to notice the beauty of my new surroundings. Everything seemed dull, and the warm, bright summers of Egypt felt gloomy. Despite my superpower to find magic in the mundane, I found myself less engaged with my environment than I had ever been before, and I felt weak when having to face the feeling of homesickness on a daily basis. In Sudan, I used to feel like I was floating around like a fairy, looking at everything from above with a big smile on my face. Everything felt comforting—the sounds, the houses, the loud hellos followed by genuine hugs—but now the unfamiliarity of exile made it difficult to find the same sense of belonging and inspiration that I had once felt back home. As I spent more time adjusting to my new life and accepting that the Khartoum I once belonged to doesn’t exist anymore, a veil was finally lifted. I began to notice the details that filled this city and tried to explore it, all while doing my best to keep the memories of Sudan deep in my heart until we reunite.

Leena Seifaldowla

The woman on the wall remains silent, she is never speaking to me. Cairo, before the war? Was it like the Egypt of the dramas I once watched on the streets, veiled by a fragile screen? I gaze into the mirror, and there I am confronted by a single question: Should I leave, or stay? I came here for a week and now I am here for one year and eight months.

Hafsa Boraei

Over the years, and especially after coming to Cairo, I couldn’t find the words to express all that was painful. During my stay, I found myself swinging between past experiences and memories and the unknown future, between what could be and what could not be, between love and loneliness and the feeling of death and hatred of people, between the body and the self, which made me stop and contemplate all the lives I had lived. Everything is temporary, and the only real thing is the fragility and weakness of our existence in this world.

Ahmed Nogoud

Temporary homes: Between the journey and arrival and the dream of returning. My journey to Egypt as a refugee started last October 2023. Egypt was not strange to me. I used to come here a lot, but I wasn't used to staying all this time. Almost a year and I have been in the same hotel and room. I have been trapped between the same walls and one question revolves around my mind: When will this nightmare end? Life is harsh here and I couldn't adapt and I don't want to adapt alone and away from my family and home.

Amar Mola

During my time in Cairo, me and my friends became a family of some sorts. All of us come from different parts of Sudan, but we were brought together by a lot of circumstances, that scared us at first. Being in a city completely different from anything any of us had experienced before, away from any family or relatives, surrounded with people from a completely different color, culture and mentality. This was exile. Fast forward many months, meals eaten together and weekends spent together. We adapted and became closer. We were very lucky because despite us coming from different backgrounds our personalities and interests worked in harmony to produce this life we are grateful for.

Mohamed Esmail

“Home is Not a Country” is a book written by Safia Elhillo, and I feel it is the only book I can truly relate to. I didn’t realize I had a country until the war devastated me, making me feel like an outsider between nations. My transit across Cairo after being uprooted from the misty city of Khartoum is the subject of my project, everything took on new characteristics for me, and I began to sing hymns about my home and country. That, according to Tayeb Salih, is the warmth of clan life. How can we come together again after this conflict when I no longer belong to a clan? Identification and Belonging: issues of identification and belonging, as well as how migration impacts individual and societal identities, in a manner reminiscent of Tayeb Salih’s books like “Season of Migration to the North.” Internal Conflict: A recurrent motif in Tayeb Salih’s work, the project represents the internal conflict I feel between my history in Sudan and my present in Egypt. Similar to Salih’s artwork, the project portrays homesickness and the need to return home despite the difficulties that prompted migration. As Tayeb Salih wrote, “Over there is like here, neither better nor worse. But I am from here, just as the date palm standing in the courtyard of our house has grown in our house and not in anyone else’s.” My journey, which frequently delves into themes of identity, displacement, and the diasporic experience, reflects my difficulties, both internal and external, in finding a sense of self and belonging. As Safia Elhillo puts it, “Verily everything that is lost will be given a name & will not come back but will live forever.” Elhillo’s poignant reflections on the past and present and captures the nostalgia I feel for my homeland and the memories that shape my identity.

Ula Osman