A Sudanese father who had lost contact with his wife for 18 months has been reunited with his family after recognising them in an Al Jazeera news report.
Shamoun Idris lived with his wife, Fatma Ali, and their children in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, until the city became a battleground between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in August 2023, a few months after the war in Sudan started.
As the war intensified and shelling increased near their home, the couple decided that Fatma would try to escape Khartoum with their children. Shamoun would stay behind and protect the house as RSF forces advanced, looting homes and attacking civilians.
“I decided that they should leave,” Shamoun told Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, who reported on the initial story featuring Fatma and their children. “I stayed behind to guard the house. We thought the war would end soon and they would be able to return.”
But soon after, and with the violence in the capital increasing, Idris was also forced to flee. In the process, both Shamoun and Fatma lost their phones and were unable to contact each other, with no knowledge of where the other was.
The couple became two of the 7,700 Sudanese people searching for missing relatives, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“I kept telling the children he was somewhere, just unable to reach us, but, in fact, I was completely at a loss, and I was wondering what really happened to him. I couldn’t focus on the children or on him being missing,” said Fatma.
Reunion
Fatma and the children eventually reached Sennar, south of Khartoum, where they sheltered in a school.
Meanwhile, Shamoun searched for them in vain, until he eventually saw an Al Jazeera news report from February about missing relatives.
In the report was his wife, Fatma.
“I said, ‘Man, this is my family!’ I said, ‘I swear, it’s my family.’ It was such a huge surprise,” Shamoun said.
As Fatma listened to her husband tell the story of their recent reunion, she began to cry, overwhelmed with the emotion of Shamoun’s absence.
She said her hope now is for the family to rebuild their lives. “I hope we can go back and return to our previous life. I knew my children would be OK as long as I was with them, but for their father to be gone, that was a real problem.”
“Our children went to school and were very happy. Not one of our children was out of school; they even went to private schools, not public ones,” she said. “Now, it’s been more than two years since they saw the inside of a classroom, except as somewhere to shelter.”
Since being reunited, Shamound has found a small plot of land in Sennar, where he has built a little shack for the family.
It has no door to keep out rain, wind or sun, but thousands of other displaced people in Sudan do not have any shelter at all.
For now, Shamoun and Fatma are grateful for the little privacy and freedom it provides, and for being together.
