A Sudanese-American journalist recounts his experience fleeing Khartoum

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

The last time Sudanese American journalist Isma'il Kushkush was on NPR, he was stuck in Khartoum.

ISMA'IL KUSHKUSH: We think they haven't stormed the building yet because there are several internationals in the building. But we just don't know how things are going to go. There's also jet fighters. And we fear that, mistakenly, a missile could hit the building. There are four children in the building and a few elderly in the building. But that's the situation we are at the moment.

FADEL: We reached him again for the first time in days. He's made it out of Sudan.

You were trapped in a building in Khartoum with gunfire on both sides. How long were you stuck?

KUSHKUSH: Eight days.

FADEL: Eight days of water and food running low, of having to decide whether to stay or leave. After negotiating with soldiers who agreed to offer them temporary safe passage, 32 people, including six children who were trapped together, walked out of the building in old Khartoum. The group split in two. One went westward, Isma'il went south.

KUSHKUSH: We walked, perhaps, for an hour, looking at how the city was destroyed, many of the shops looted. We saw a large 50-seater bus coming into this particular compound. The bus was on its way to Egypt. So we said that if the space allowed, we'd like to go with this bus to Egypt, even if we just sat on the floor of the bus. So we made that agreement. At this point, five of us were able to continue the journey, paying for our seats to stay on this bus to head northward to Egypt.

FADEL: So it started with 32 people from the building, and it ended up with five people on that bus to the border.

KUSHKUSH: Yes.

FADEL: So you get to the border, which is a possible exit from the country. What did it look like? And what did you have to go through to get out?

KUSHKUSH: There was a long, long line of 50-seater buses - I would say 200 to 300 buses - waiting to get into the border. It took us one day just to get to the actual gate. Food was scarce. Water was scarce. Access to restrooms, finding ways to charge one's phone, I think all of this was just very difficult. Some slept on the bus, some on the sidewalk. We spent another day there trying to get our exit visas from Sudan and then our entry visas into Egypt. All of that took almost three days.

FADEL: How much did the entire trip cost?

KUSHKUSH: So the costs of traveling and trying to get out, I think, were increasing by the hour. I'm hearing that the prices are just continuing to rise. The day before we paid, I think the cost of the seat was around $200. We paid $330. I'm hearing it's up to $700, $800 now.

FADEL: That's a lot of money anywhere. But for an average Sudanese family, is that something people can afford?

KUSHKUSH: Not most Sudanese families. The people who left in the first days are the Sudanese middle class and those who could afford to leave. Those who left Khartoum and the fighting in Khartoum were the lucky ones.

FADEL: When you finally made it to Aswan, which was your first stop in Egypt after crossing the border, physically, how were you? I mean, after doing this arduous journey, I'm sure you weren't thinking about, oh, I'm tired or I'm hungry or thirsty until that moment.

KUSHKUSH: Aswan literally was a breath of fresh air. It's a quiet town. The water - the Nile waters in Aswan are clear compared to Khartoum or Cairo. The people were very welcoming. The large influx of Sudanese families into Aswan - I made travel plans from Aswan to Cairo. Planes, trains, buses were booked for days in advance, so I ended up staying a few days in Aswan. It ended up being, I think, a good opportunity just to relax a little bit, think about what had happened and about the next steps.

FADEL: When you think about what had happened, what has happened and what you've been through, what are you thinking about?

KUSHKUSH: I think, with the revolution in 2019, there was great hope that that would be the final episode of instability and that there would be a genuine transition into democracy. These events of the last few weeks put a further dent into that dream. I think one of the more - one of the difficult things is realizing that I was one of the very few journalists in downtown Khartoum at the time wanting to work and wanting to do the work that journalists should be doing at these times and not being able to do so...

FADEL: Yeah.

KUSHKUSH: ...Not having the full equipment, the backing, the support - being in the position to do so, but just realizing that I would not have been able to do any reporting safely by myself in that position.

FADEL: You sat stuck in a building because of gunfire for eight days. And then you walked out into a Khartoum that looked significantly different. If you could describe that city that you walked out into and what was most jarring about what you saw.

KUSHKUSH: I had been wanting to write an essay about Khartoum, about the city of Khartoum. And walking through some of the streets and seeing the destruction of old buildings, you know, places that you have memories, places that you've been with friends - and to see how in one week, the destruction that came upon those places. In one week, all of that has changed. But again, I think this is something that many of us expected. We had hoped that it wouldn't happen. But I think many of us are still committed to some of the same dreams that the revolution brought about in 2019.

FADEL: Isma'il Kushkush, a journalist who's covered Sudan for many years and just got out of Khartoum.

Thank you so much for your time.

KUSHKUSH: Thank you.

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