Every week, NPR’s global staff shares experiences from their lives and work around the globe in the series Far-Flung Postcards.
A few months after the Sudanese army retook the capital, Khartoum, I traveled there in April. The extent of the destruction was completely terrible following over two years of civil conflict. When I first visited one of Africa’s most dynamic cities in 2020, it had completely collapsed.
Khartoum was hauntingly deserted. However, some people stayed. Some had survived a violent occupation by the army-fighting paramilitary group. More than 6 million people had been displaced from Khartoum, and others were only now starting to return.
My Sudanese colleagues, photographer Faiz Abubakr and writer Ammar Awad, and I spent roughly five days meeting as many people in Khartoum as we could. Some had lost family members, possessions, or experienced torture. They took us into their nearly-collapsing houses, structures battered by guns and artillery.
We encountered a type of unyielding, unstoppable hospitality all the time. Each of these interviews usually started with them giving Sudanese tea or coffee, sometimes with cinnamon leaves and sometimes black or mahogany-red. The coffee is often dense and black.
Interview after interview, glass after glass. The flood of tea and coffee became taxing after two or three, which is my optimum daily limit.
My courteous refusal was sufficient at times. The appearance of yet another tray, another set of glasses, and a dish of sugar—occasionally accompanied by dates and water—at other times batted it away.
After a few days, I began photographing this gently unrelenting act of generosity performed by those who were left with almost little and those who were lucky enough to survive the war with enough to support themselves.
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