A Humanitarian Story: Enaam Al-Nour
In times of war, it is not only people who vanish; the answers vanish along with them. Behind every missing person in Darfur stands an entire family living on mere possibilities a wife who postpones her mourning, and children growing up while searching for fathers who vanished without a trace.
Through the testimonies of women from Darfur, this A Humanitarian Story traces the least visible face of war, the lives of those who are still waiting for men who left one day and never returned.
One night in the refugee camps of eastern Chad, Amna was trying to coax her child to sleep. The cold wind seemed to seep through the edges of their tattered tent, while the child kept staring at the entrance, as if waiting for someone. Before closing his eyes, he asked her in a quite voice: “Mom… is Dad still on his way coming?
She paused for a moment , The question was not new, yet each time it opened a deeper chasm within her. She looked at her other child an infant born just weeks after his father’s disappearance then turned her eyes back toward the darkness outside the tent.
she said “God is generous, my son. She did not say yes, yet she could not bring herself to say no.
For three years, Amna has lived within this “grey zone” created by the war in Darfur neither a wife with a husband to return to, nor a widow with a grave at which to weep.
In April 2023, when Al-Geneina transformed into a city laid bare to killing, arson, and mass manhunts, her husband vanished while attempting to evacuate their family from the Al-Thawra neighborhood, which had been engulfed by violence. He told her he would return in a few minutes to fetch his elderly mother; but he left. and never came back. Her husband worked to the household goods trade within Al-Geneina market. She adds that, to this day, she cannot pass by a biscuit vendor without recalling the way he used to tuck sweets into his pocket to surprise his eldest son.
Amna recounts: At first, I thought he had been detained. Then I was told he had been spotted in the Al-Jamarek neighborhood. Later, a survivor informed me that a group of men had been taken to an unknown destination near the outskirts of Al-Geneina.
Since that day, not a single confirmed piece of information has reached me.”
Amna: said During those first few months, I chased after every rumor. If anyone told me they had seen him somewhere, I would go there. I scoured every list of detainees released. I scrutinized every face in every video I came across. I felt that if I stopped searching, I would be betraying him.
she adds the hardest thing she faced was neither hunger, nor displacement, nor seeking refuge but rather, “the waiting.
If they had told me he died, perhaps I could have wept and found a way to go on living. But this absence this lack of an answer kills the soul, step-by-step
Life ties to nothing
Three years into the war, thousands of Sudanese families remain in search of men who vanished while fleeing besieged cities, at checkpoints, following arrest, or during attacks that swept through entire places in Darfur.
In Al-Geneina, Al-Fashir, and Nyala, women recall not only the moment of disappearance but also the chaos that preceded it: the sound of gunfire, people running in every direction, phones going dead due to communication blackouts, and bodies left lying in the streets as families struggled to escape with their children.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports that the number of missing persons files registered with the organization in Sudan has exceeded 11,000 a figure that continues to rise amidst significant challenges in accessing information and documenting cases during wartime.
According to various reports, numerous Sudanese families are enduring indescribable suffering due to the mysterious disappearance of their loved ones since the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of Al-Fashir on October 26th of last year. The fate of thousands remains unknown, particularly given the widespread violations committed by these forces against civilians including brutal summary executions and the hundreds of deaths that have occurred.
Unofficial human rights estimates suggest that the actual number of missing persons could reach tens of thousands. Both the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Army stand accused of involvement in unlawful detentions and arrests targeting civilians in Darfur yet, despite these grim circumstances, the families of the missing have not lost hope of finding their loved ones, continuing their search through every available avenue and means.
Al-Farouq Ibrahim, a civil society activist, states that emergency rooms and local volunteers have emerged as one of the few entities attempting to assist families in searching for missing persons or documenting their names.
In the absence of clear official institutions, volunteer groups have taken to circulating missing-person alerts including photographs of the missing and lists of survivors across local pages, as well as via WhatsApp and Facebook groups, particularly in Darfur.
He adds, however, that many women contend that these efforts significant as they may be remain insufficient in the face of the sheer magnitude of the tragedy.
A Small Bag Instead of a Grave
Huda Salim, 25, keeps a small bag that she hasn’t opened in three years. Inside lie her husband’s clothes, a small copy of the Quran, and an old family photograph.
“These are the last things he touched before he vanished,” she says.
Huda arrived in Uganda following a long journey of displacement that began in Al-Geneina city she fled while pregnant. Just minutes before her husband disappeared, he handed her the bag and said “If I’m late, take the children and go.”
At the time, she believed he would return; yet, to this day, he has not come back.
Today, Huda works at a small restaurant in Kampala. At the end of every month, she struggles to pay the rent for her room and, whenever she can afford it, send her young daughter to daycare .
She says the war forced her to become “a different person.” The true exhaustion, however, begins at night; after her daughter has fallen asleep, she slowly pulls the bag toward her, opening it as if fearing that whatever remains of her husband might somehow slip away.
Sometimes she takes out his clothes, holds them close to her face, then quickly puts them back. Her little daughter who was born after her father’s disappearance points to the old photograph and asks Who is that? Huda replies in a hushed voice: “Your father.”
Then she falls silent, for explaining absence to a small child seems even harder than enduring it herself. She admits she has thought many times about getting rid of the bag, or sealing it shut forever, but she simply cannot bring herself to do it.
The impact of such disappearances is not limited to wives alone it extends to the children, who grow up within a void they do not know how to fill.
Huda notes that her daughter who is yet six years old has begun asking increasingly complex questions as she grows older.
Sometimes she asks me: If my father is alive, why hasn’t he returned? And what if he dead, why doesn’t he have a grave we can visit?
As for her youngest child who was born after her father’s disappearance she knows him only through an old photograph the family keeps.
Huda says that the most difficult moments occur when her daughter returns from school after hearing her classmates talk about their fathers.
“One day, she said to me: All the other girls fathers come to the school except my dad , She adds that, on another occasion at school, the teacher asked the children to draw their families. Her daughter returned home holding a drawing of a tall man standing beside her. Her mother asked her Who is this?
The child replied simply, My father I drew him just like in the picture.
Huda finds no satisfying answer children do not grasp the concept of enforced disappearance, nor can they comprehend how a human being could vanish for years without anyone knowing whether they are alive or dead.
As time passes, it is not only the children who grow older the unanswered questions grow with them, while the photographs of their absent fathers transform into memories the little ones cling to, lest they, too, fade away.
The Women for Whom Time Stood Still
In the cities of Darfur, war is measured not merely by the death toll or the number of destroyed towns, but by the countless women for whom time has stood still since the very moment their husbands vanished.
Maryam Osman a 29-year-old displaced woman from Al-Fashir, now living in Tawila says that what frightens her most is not the possibility of her husband’s death, but rather the fear that she might forget the small details that define him.
Sometimes, I fear I might forget the sound of his actual voice; I fear I might forget the way he laughs, or the sound of his footsteps as he walks through the door.”
Every evening, Maryam sits beside her mobile phone, poring over old photographs and short video clips the family captured before the war began. She says she does this so that he might “remain present.”
Since her husband’s disappearance during their displacement, Maryam has become the sole provider for her four children. Yet, the burden of daily responsibilities has not brought an end to her waiting; on the contrary, it has only made it more agonizing.
By day, she labors for the sake of her children but by night, all the old, haunting questions returnall at once.
At night, I feel as though time has stood still while the people around me keep moving children have grown up, yet I remain frozen in the very day he vanished.
This internal stasis is a recurring theme in the lives of many women who have lost their husbands without ever learning their fate.
For the war granted them neither the certainty of death which would allow them to begin the grieving process nor the return that would bring an end to their waiting , It left them suspended in a limbo, caught somewhere between the two possibilities.
Although most families remain trapped within this cycle of waiting, some occasionally stumble upon faint clues that either rekindle hope or merely deepen the mystery.
Yet, not all stories end in utter silence. In the (Alashah) camp in eastern Chad, Aisha Adam (a pseudonym) cherishes an old mobile phone an object that, just months ago, became her most prized possession. While scrolling through video clips received via WhatsApp, her finger suddenly froze upon a familiar face captured in a short video filmed inside (Dagarais) Prison in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur.
Aisha explains that her husband disappeared in 2023 while attempting to flee the city alongside a group of civilians. For three long years, she received absolutely no confirmed information regarding his whereabouts until that video arrived.
She recounts: At first, I thought I was imagining things.
I replayed the video dozens of times, I zoomed in on the image, pausing it frame by frame. I saw those same eyes that same small mark just above the eyebrow.
The video was not clear enough to dispel every doubt, yet it was sufficient to turn her life upside down once again. Instead of bringing an end to her long wait, Aisha says she spent countless nights re-watching that short clip a mere few minutes in length.
“People told me, ‘Congratulations! We’ve finally found a trace of him.’ But I felt no joy; instead, I felt an even greater fear. For suddenly, I had a renewed sense of hope and that very hope became an exhausting burden.
Since that day, her husband’s absence has no longer been a complete mystery yet, neither has it become fully understood. It transformed from a question with no trace into a trace with no answer. After three years of searching, Aisha did not find the truth she had been waiting for; instead, she found a new possibility one that merely added another layer of questions.
We can’t even bring ourselves to mourn
As for “Suad” (a pseudonym) a 30-year-old woman displaced from the city of Nyala , she now resides in a small rented home following a long and arduous journey of displacement. All she possesses is a small notebook belonging to her husband, in which he used to meticulously record their household expenses. She says she has never allowed her children to hold it too much.
“This might be the last thing that reminds me of him.”
Her husband vanished while out fetching groceries during the first few days of the fighting in Nyala.
At first, Suad thought it was just a normal delay caused by the clashes spreading across the city. She waited for hours, then for a full day, and then for a week. That marked the beginning of a search that continues to this very day.
She says she scoured lists of survivors as they were published, questioned people arriving from neighborhoods that had witnessed the fighting, and even reached out to complete strangers simply because someone had told her they might have spotted her husband somewhere.
Suad: Every time I chase down a new lead, and every time, I end up right back where I started , We cannot even mourn. Mourning requires a truth and we have no truth
She mentions that some of her relatives have advised her to stop waiting, while others have tried to persuade her to hold onto hope. “Everyone has an opinion, but no one is truly living through what I am feeling.”
She continues, “I cannot live as a wife, yet I cannot grieve as a widow.”
For Suad, the pain lies not merely in the loss itself, but in the absence of certainty. Death cruel as it may be offers a family a definitive conclusion, marking the point where the journey of mourning can begin. Disappearance, however, leaves the door wide open to every conceivable possibility.
She says that, at times, she imagines him suddenly knocking at the door only to immediately blame herself for harboring such hope.
At other times, she tries to convince herself that he is gone and will never returnyet she feels consumed by guilt for merely entertaining the thought.
She adds that the most agonizing moments occur during special occasions and holidays when the children ask about him, or when she is forced to make decisions that he alone used to make.
This “gray zone” is what.It drains women, for they endure not only the pain of loss but also the anguish of uncertainty.
They possess neither the certainty of death which would allow them to begin the grieving process nor concrete proof of life which would enable them to cling fully to hope. Suspended between these two possibilities, an entire life remains frozen at the moment of a disappearance that has yet to reach its conclusion.
Absence as a Legal and Social Burden
In conflict zones, disappearance leaves behind more than just a psychological wound; it creates an intricate web of complications regarding documentation, inheritance, guardianship, aid, and family decision making.
Suwaken Al-Tayeb, a lawyer serving as a legal advisor for displaced women from Darfur, notes that the wives of missing persons often find themselves facing a predicament whose true complexity goes unrecognized by others.
“A woman cannot legally prove her husband’s death, yet neither can she interact with him as if he were present. This impacts her right to manage her children’s affairs, conduct certain legal transactions, claim inheritance, and access various forms of support. However, the deepest impact is social society demands that she wait, while the demands of daily life compel her to act as if she were entirely alone.
She adds that, following their displacement, many women lack complete documentation some having lost their papers during their escape which makes proving family ties or following up on missing-person reports significantly more difficult. Amidst the institutional collapse across vast areas of Darfur.
the search for missing persons becomes an exhausting, deeply personal undertaking, relying heavily on eyewitness accounts, phone calls, unofficial lists, video footage, and testimonies from survivors.
She further points out that reports issued by the United Nations and human rights organizations have documented widespread patterns of killings, human rights violations, and forced displacement across various regions of Darfur, particularly in Al-Geneina during the conflict.
These reports highlight the immense difficulties encountered in accessing these areas and fully documenting the atrocities, largely due to the persistence of violence and the complete breakdown of essential services.
In such environments, it is not only bodies that are lost; lost along with them are the evidence, the names, and the ability to bring stories to a close.
She adds that, although international humanitarian law obliges parties to a conflict to hand over missing persons and the bodies of the deceased, the absence of effective oversight mechanisms renders this legal provision mere ink on paper.
The Absence That Disrupts Life
Dr. Hadeel Ibrahim, a mental health specialist working with displaced families in camps in eastern Chad, describes these cases as “ambiguous loss,” where a person disappears without a definitive answer, leaving the family with neither certainty of death nor a sure hope of return.
She explains that in this type of loss, the mind cannot fully grieve, nor can it continue living normally.
People remain trapped between two contradictory possibilities: perhaps they will return, or perhaps they never will , She adds that this ambiguity psychologically consumes women over the years.
Dr. Hadeel: The long wait keeps women in a constant state of alert. Any news, any call, any rumor can send them back to square one
Hadeel points out that some women now live in a state of perpetual anticipation, as if their bodies no longer know the meaning of complete safety. Interrupted sleep, anxiety, fear of news, and sudden collapses upon hearing names or places associated with the war have all become part of their daily lives.
Many women feel guilty if they laugh, or if they try to move on with their lives, as if adapting to life means abandoning the one who is gone.
As the years pass, psychological strain begins to manifest even in the smallest details of life.
some women lose the ability to concentrate, others are unable to make simple decisions, and some withdraw into prolonged isolation because talking about the missing person brings back the full pain every time.
A Path Open to Absence
That night, Amina stayed awake, staring at the tent flap open to the darkness. Outside the tent, the wind stirred dust between the narrow passages, while the children finally fell asleep after a long day of heat, waiting, and queuing for water.
Suddenly, her son woke with a start. He approached her and whispered, half-asleep, “Mother… what if Papa comes back and doesn’t find us?
This time, Amina didn’t answer. She simply pulled him close to her chest, her eyes fixed on the dark road outside the tent, the same road her husband had walked down one day, saying he’d be back in a few minutes. But those minutes turned into three years three years in which the children grew up, and the women grew weary of chasing after news and rumors, while the absence remained, open, cold, and heavy.
For Amina, the war didn’t end the day she left El Geneina. It continues every night, in the same question she hasn’t found an answer to in three years: Where did the man who left for a few minutes and never returned go?
Behind every missing person in Darfur, there isn’t just one story of disappearance, but an entire family trapped between hope and despair. While the fate of thousands remains unknown, many women keep the doors of waiting open, not because they are certain of the missing men’s return, but because they haven’t yet received the truth that would allow them to close them.
