NESRINE MALIK
Omar al-Bashir shortly after taking power from Sadiq al-Mahdi in 1989
© PETTERIK WIGGERS/PANOS PICTURES
Ayear after the Sudanese revolution, and the ghosts of the dead haunt the city. Since the dramatic toppling of President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019, and the violent clearing of the main Khartoum protest site that followed, an eerie normality has settled in. Locations indelibly marked with the memory of bloodshed look prosaic. Fragments of protest murals and graffiti endure, but the rest have either been painted over or faded by the elements. Snippets of wedding song are carried on a breeze that not long ago brought the sounds of protest chants and the wails of mourners. There is a profound sense of dislocation.