On the morning of April 19, Noon Abdel Bassit and her family climbed on board a bus in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. It was the beginning of a 48-hour journey to seek safety in Egypt. The 21-year-old medical student spoke to Al Jazeera about why her family decided to flee and why they weren’t all able to make it safely across the border. Her account has been edited for length and clarity.
Nobody knew this war was going to start. The conflict started very suddenly. Even the day of, we woke up, my siblings had gone to university, my mum was getting dressed to go to work.
Then, suddenly, people start calling and saying that there are shootings going on, that the country isn’t safe and that nobody should move.
By the night of the first day is when they started bombing and using fighter jets – and that’s when it got really scary.
We were all staying indoors, and every hour we heard gunshots, bombs and missiles being shot at everywhere throughout the city. Our house would vibrate, so it was very hard for us to try and live our normal lives.
We couldn’t leave. We couldn’t go anywhere. We tried to stock up on food and water, but all the supermarkets and shops were closed.
On day four, we woke up to a missile strike that hit our house. All of our windows and doors got shattered. Our house was very heavily damaged.
It’s then we thought, OK, regardless of what’s happening, it’s not worth it for us to lose our lives over it. So that’s when we decided that we had to evacuate.
Making preparations to leave
We didn’t really have many options for leaving. It was either taking the drive up all the way to the border of Egypt or going and seeking refuge in one of the villages or cities outside of Khartoum.
My mom predicted that this unrest will spread to outer cities so the safe option was for us to go to Egypt.
We started doing our research. At the time, we didn’t know anyone that had gone. Every time we mentioned this to anyone or asked anyone if they wanted to come with us, they thought we were crazy.
In the end, it didn’t really take too many arrangements.
We hopped on a bus on day five of the conflict without thinking about the consequences or what could happen – and just left.
Journey to the Egyptian border
We barely packed anything. Each person just took their phone, their laptop, a bit of money and a few pairs of clothing.
We…