‘I feared for my life on perilous voyage from war-torn Sudan to study in UK’
WHEN civil war broke out in Sudan in April last year, Amin Elsheikh, 27, had to flee his home in the capital, Khartoum, where the fiercest fighting took place.
At the time, he had little idea that he was about to embark on a treacherous four-month journey that included dodging bullets and surviving arrest to start his Masters course at a British university with just hours to spare.
“I feared for my life,” Mr Elsheikh said. “Looking back on it, I feel lucky to be alive. But millions still stuck in Sudan are not so lucky.”
Since the outbreak of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, more than 12,000 people have been killed and 10.7 million displaced.
With rebel militia soldiers blocking all routes out of the city, Mr Elsheikh was forced to travel by minibus through a perilous series of checkpoints.
At one point, he was searched and interrogated by rebel soldiers for half a day after they found a $100 note on him. His precious savings, along with three changes of clothes and his engineering degree certificate, were all he had been able to pack in his hurry to flee.
In a separate incident, he was travelling by bus when rebel soldiers opened fire at passing traffic. “You could see gunshots flying, cars turning around in the middle of the street trying to get away, so the bus had to swerve out of the way,” he said. “Survival instinct kicked in. People were crying, women were screaming, I was trying to calm everyone down.”
Making the 15-hour coach journey through a mountain pass to the Ethiopian border, Mr Elsheikh and his fellow passengers feared their bus could be attacked by looters or rebel gangs as the country descended into lawlessness.
Yet Mr Elsheikh’s ordeal did not end in Ethiopia. Reaching the border city of Gondar by nightfall, he was advised to lie low amid anti-government unrest.
Then there was the issue of his passport. In his rush to escape Khartoum, Mr Elsheikh had been unable to retrieve it from a visa application centre located close to the fighting, so he had to travel using an expired travel document.
It did not matter for entering Ethiopia, where the authorities accepted his outdated passport, but it would for his onward journey to the UK, where he had won a scholarship at Warwick University to enrol in a business Masters course in September 2023. He was also concerned for his family’s safety.
When fighting erupted on 15 April, his mother, Nagwa Hafiz, 67, was on holiday in Egypt while his two brothers, Islam, 30, and Ahmed, 37, were elsewhere in Khartoum. But with access to the internet frequently cutting out and the sound of gunfire and shelling ringing throughout the city, it was impossible to reach them.
Meanwhile, his father, Abdalla, 67, was living in Gezira, south of Khartoum, and refused to evacuate. “He’s a cardiac surgeon and he thought it was his duty to man his post up until the last moment,” said Mr Elsheikh regretfully.
When Mr Elsheikh arrived in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, a two-month battle ensued to find someone to rescue his passport back in Khartoum so he could make the onward journey to Dubai and, finally, London.
Eventually, Mr Elsheikh hired a contact willing to retrieve his passport from the visa centre and had a friend carry it over the border to deliver it in person.
From here, he flew to Dubai in the hope that he could arrange safe passage to the UK from the UAE. But upon arrival, he faced yet more difficulties.
To obtain a visa for the UK, he first needed to have a place of residency in Dubai, and to rent somewhere to live, he needed to open a bank account – a process which took 28 days.
With just a week remaining before the start of his course on Sept 25, Mr Elsheikh placed his faith in the hands of the visa authorities and booked a flight to London for Sept 24, with no guarantee his visa would arrive in time.
On the eve of his flight, he had all but given up hope when he received an email at 4pm confirming his visa had been approved. “I had to sprint down to collect my passport from the application centre just before it closed,” he said.
Finally, on Sept 24, 2023 – four months after fleeing his home in Khartoum – Mr Elsheikh boarded a flight to the UK, arriving in Warwick to start his Masters course the very next day.
Despite flourishing on his course, Mr Elsheikh still worries about his wider family left behind in Sudan, particularly his father. In February, they lost contact for nearly a month when militia forces cut off communication networks in the areas they control.
“Once the RSF took over the state, it was like an ethnic cleansing. Looting, assaulting, raping and pillaging became normal,” he said. “My father’s fine. He’s still not convinced to leave the country, but we’re working on it.”
Mr Elsheikh’s brothers managed to travel safely to Dubai.
When Mr Elsheikh’s course comes to an end in September 2024, he is unsure what the next chapter holds for him. “My heart is still in Sudan, and I would love to return and help rebuild my country,” he said. “Unfortunately, there is nothing to go back to at the moment.”
The war shows little sign of abating as it approaches its first anniversary, with humanitarian access curtailed amid reports of mass killings and the country teetering on the brink of famine.
Mr Elsheikh struggles with guilt that he survived, repeatedly stressing how lucky he was to have escaped and to have a university place to fall back on.
“I know a lot of displaced people who are just frozen, unable to get on with their lives,” he said. “There are 10.7 million stories like mine. Unfortunately, not many of them have a happy ending.”