Current Issue – Transition Magazine

**Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, Procession (Zaar), 2015.** Oil on canvas. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Mohamed Noureldin Abdallah Ahmed. © Kamala Ibrahim Ishag. Ishag also provides the hero image on the Home page. See Credits for full caption.

CURRENT ISSUE

T138: SUDAN

When will all eyes turn to Sudan—as the social media campaign #all eyesonsudan asks us to do? Is it now that the blood of those killed by the Rapid Support Forces can be seen from space? Even that horror, will pass into the void if we don’t know the stories of those who have been affected by this widespread war and genocide. In Transition’s current issue on Sudan, political, historical, and racial complexities are laid bare, and the people who have found themselves and their families in the crosshairs of these complexities tell their stories. Whether through poetry, fiction, or essay, the work in this issue emerges from lived experience, families fleeing checkpoints, artists documenting torture, communities confronting incomprehensible change. These personal testimonies point to the structural forces behind Sudan’s collapse.

In the introduction, Guest Editor Rogaia Abusharaf writes: the accounts you will find in this collection “refuse academic abstraction, emerging from lived experience, families fleeing checkpoints, artists documenting torture, communities confronting incomprehensible change…” She asks, “Will Sudan survive?”

As noted in many of the essays, the Sudanese have a great capacity for organizing and a deep history of revolution, but that will not suffice. Sudanese survival “demands that the international community move beyond the failed paradigm of elite negotiations and recognize that Sudan’s crisis reflects broader patterns of extraction and abandonment that pervade the global order. The same forces that enable external actors to fuel proxy wars through weapons shipments, that allow multinational corporations to profit from humanitarian catastrophe, that permit the systematic weaponization of famine, operate across Africa and the Global South.”

Contributors

With personal essays, memoir, and short fiction by Rogaia Abusharaf, Jamal Mahjoub, Fatin Abbas, Ahmed Abdel Aal, Wagas Elsadig, Suzi Mirghani, and David Mikhail. Poetry by Mohammad al-Fayturi, Lameese Badr, Nadaa Hussein, and Safia Elhillo. And historical and political analysis by Nisrin Elamin, Alex de Waal, Hamid Ali, Ahmad Sikainga and Hassan Musa, along with forward-looking essays by Alden Young and Lynda Iroulo.

Art by Kamala Ishag, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Salah Elmur, Amel Bashier, Reem Aljeally, Mosab Abushama, Metche Jafaar, Yasmeen Abdullah, Issam Abdelhafiez, Ahmed Shibrain, Osman Wagialla, and more.

Metche Jaafar, This Is Not a False Alarm, 2018_2019. Digital photograph. Courtesy of the artist

Essay

Introduction: Bearing Witness to Sudan’s Unraveling

Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf

…memory alone cannot explain Sudan’s trajectory from revolutionary hope to catastrophic collapse. These intimate accounts of lost worlds demand deeper excavation, not just of what was destroyed, but of how the foundations of destruction were laid generations earlier. The personal testimonies of vanished neighborhoods and silenced voices point toward broader structural forces that shaped Sudan’s capacity for both revolutionary uprising and systematic failure. To understand why Sudan’s remarkable ability to overthrow dictatorships has never translated into sustained democratic governance, we must trace the historical roots that connect colonial manipulation to contemporary crisis.

Salah Elmur, Theater Day, 2021. Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City).

Essay

The Murderous Bazaar

Jamal Mahjoub

Looking back at that time now, it’s as though we were immersed in a dream, unaware of what was actually going on around us. There was, after all, a civil war in the South of the country. Far enough away for it not to be a threat to our safety and security, but serious enough to contain the seeds of our undoing. It was a war about discrimination, about racism and inequality. The Northerners were prejudiced against the Southerners. They referred to them casually as ’abeed, meaning slaves, a term inherited blindly from the past that had never really been challenged. The people of the South had darker skins, they wore tribal scars on their bodies and faces. All of this could be traced back to a slave trade that had lasted for centuries…

Mosab Abushama,
part of Tadween Project 2023/2024. Photography. Courtesy the artist

Photo Essay

The Politics of Hunger in Sudan

Nisrin Elamin

Both sides have weaponized hunger and food aid in their efforts to starve and turn civilians against their adversary in a battle for legitimacy and power…the RSF has rightfully been described as the architects of famine as they “intentionally poison water sources, destroy irrigation channels, block water flows, loot agricultural machinery and contaminate fertile soil, rendering vast stretches of land in central Sudan unusable.” They have also used starvation as a coercive tool to force youth into recruitment…Since May of 2024, the RSF, with the backing of the UAE, has besieged the capital of North Darfur, El Fasher, cutting off access to food sup-plies and aid. As a result, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been trapped for over a year, facing extreme hunger with some resorting to animal fodder to survive.

Artist Spotlight

Reem Aljeally

Reem Aljeally’s artwork accompanies Rogaia Abusharaf’s essay “Omdurman: A Requiem.” Aljeally’s work is characterized by her striking use of color and motifs of domestic comfort (such as plants and cats) to illustrate scenes of surreal intimacy. These scenes often center Sudanese women, depicting either several or a sole figure engaged in acts of reflection and care. The objects which surround her act as additional instruments in crafting and realizing her self-image.

In an interview with Dazed MENA, Aljeally reflects on the significance of objects as memorials: “What are the things that matter most when we face the end of the world?” Aljeally asks, recalling the items she would have taken at the onset of the war. “I would have wanted to take memories—whatever they are, whatever they resemble. If a memory is a photo, or a small book, or something else, that is what I’d choose.”

**Reem Aljeally, *Melody in the Clouds,* 2025.** Acrylic on canvas. Courtesy of the artist.

Aljeally works across mediums. In addition to painting installation work and printmaking in addition to painting. In addition to being a force of artistic innovation, Aljeally is also a community-builder: she is the founder of The Muse multi studios (2019) in Khartoum, which promotes regional artistic practices by providing collaborative support to artists. She is also the founder of The Sudan Art Archive (2022), which has curated and preserved a digital archive of Sudanese art spanning fifty years (1975-2025).