The mother who could only afford the medicine to save one of her twins

Warning: This piece contains details that some readers may find disturbing

He hasn’t eaten here in days. She sits in silence with glassy eyes as she stares aimlessly across the hospital ward.

In her arms, motionless and severely malnourished, lies her three-year-old daughter, Massaged.

Tuma seems numb to the cries of the other little children around her. “I want her to cry,” the 25-year-old mother tells us, looking at her daughter. “She hasn’t cried in days.”

Bashaer Hospital is one of the last functioning hospitals in Sudan’s capital Khartoum, devastated by the civil war that has raged since April 2023. Many have traveled hours to get here for specialist care.

The malnutrition ward is full of children too weak to fight the disease, their mothers at their bedsides, helpless.

The cries here cannot be quieted, and each cuts deep.

Touma and her family were forced to flee after fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF) reached their home about 200 km (125 miles) southwest of Khartoum.

“(RSF) took everything we owned – money and livestock – right out of our hands,” she says. “We only escaped with our lives.”

Without money and food, Tuma’s children begin to suffer.

She looks stunned as she recounts their old life. “In the past our house was full of good things. We had cattle, milk and dates. But now we have nothing.”

Sudan is currently experiencing one of the worst humanitarian emergencies in the world.

According to the UN, three million children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition. The rest of the hospitals are full.

Bashaer Hospital offers care and basic treatment free of charge.

But the life-saving drugs needed by children in the malnutrition ward must be paid for by their families.

Masajed is a twin, she and her sister Manahil were brought to the hospital together. But the family could only afford antibiotics for one child.

Tuma had to make the impossible choice – she chose Manahil.

“I wish they could both recover and grow up,” her broken voice cracked, “and I could watch them walk and play together like they used to.

“I just want them both to get better,” Touma says, hugging her dying daughter.

“I am alone. I have nothing. I have only God.”

The survival rate here is low. For the families in this ward, the war took everything. They were left with nothing and no means to buy the medicines that would save their children.

As we leave, the doctor says that none of the children in this ward will survive.

Throughout Khartoum, the lives of children have been rewritten by the civil war.

What began as an eruption of fighting between forces loyal to two generals – army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF leader Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti – soon engulfed the city.

For two years – until last March, when the army regained control – the city was engulfed in war as rival fighters clashed.

Khartoum, once a center of culture and commerce on the banks of the Nile, has become a battlefield. Tanks rolled into the neighborhoods. Fighter jets roared overhead. Civilians were trapped between crossfire, artillery fire and drone strikes.

It is in this devastated landscape, amidst the silence of destruction, that the fragile voice of a child rises from the rubble.

Twelve-year-old Zacher cycles through the wreckage, past burnt-out cars, tanks, broken houses and forgotten bullets.

“I’m going home,” he sings softly to himself as his wheelchair rolls over broken glass and shrapnel. “I can no longer see my home. Where is my home?”

His voice, fragile but determined, held both a lament for what was lost and a quiet hope that one day he might finally come home.

In a building now used as a shelter, Zaher’s mother Habiba tells me what life was like under RSF control.

“The situation was very difficult,” she says. “We couldn’t light our lamps at night – it was like we were thieves. We didn’t light a fire. We didn’t move at all at night.”

She sits next to her son in a room lined with single beds.

“At any moment, whether you are sleeping or bathing, standing or sitting, you find them (RSF) breathing down your neck.”

Many fled the capital, but Zaher and his mother did not have the means to get out. To survive, they sold lentils on the streets.

Then one morning, while they were working side by side, a drone struck.

“I looked at him and he was bleeding. There was blood everywhere,” says Habiba. “I was passing out. I forced myself to stay awake because I knew if I passed out, I’d lose him forever.”

Zacher’s legs were badly damaged. After hours of agony, they reached the hospital.

“I kept praying, ‘Please, God, take my life instead of his legs,'” she cried.

But the doctors could not save his legs. Both had to be amputated just below the knee.

“He would wake up and ask, ‘Why did you let them cut my legs?’ She looks down, her face filled with remorse, “I couldn’t answer.”

Both Habiba and her son are crying, tormented by the memory of what happened to them. This is made worse by the knowledge that prosthetic limbs could give Zaher a chance at his old childhood, but Habiba cannot afford them.

For Sacher, the memory of what happened is too difficult to discuss.

He shares just one simple dream. “I wish I had prosthetic legs so I could play football with my friends like I used to. That’s all.”

Children in Khartoum are robbed not only of their childhood, but also of safe places to play and youth.

Schools, football fields and playgrounds are now destroyed, with broken reminders of a life stolen by conflict.

“It was very nice here,” says 16-year-old Ahmed, surveying the destroyed fair and playground.

His gray tattered T-shirt has a huge smiley face printed on it – the word “smiley” written below it. But his reality couldn’t be further from that feeling.

“Me and my brothers used to come here. We played all day and laughed so much. But when I came back after the war, I couldn’t believe it was the same place.”

Ahmed now lives and works here, clearing the debris left by the war, earning $50 (£37) for 30 days of non-stop work.

The money helps support him, his mother, his grandmother and one of his brothers.

He had six other brothers, but like many others in Sudan whose families have disappeared, he has lost touch with them. He looks at his feet as he tells us that he doesn’t know where they are or if there are still any alive.

The war tore apart families like his.

Ahmed’s work reminds him of this almost every day. “So far I have found the remains of 15 bodies,” he says.

Many of the remains found here have been buried, but there are still some bones lying around.

Ahmed walks through the park and picks up a human jaw. “It’s terrifying. It makes me shiver.”

He shows us another bone and, innocently holding it up to his leg, says, “This is a leg bone, like mine.”

Ahmed says he no longer dares to dream about the future.

“Since the war started, I was sure that I was destined to die. So I stopped thinking about what I would do in the future.”

The destruction of the schools put the children’s future in even greater danger.

Millions are no longer educated.

But Sacher is one of the lucky few. He and his friends attend school in a makeshift classroom set up by volunteers in an abandoned home.

They call out the answers out loud, write on the board, sing songs, and there are even a few naughty kids messing around at the back of the class.

Hearing the sound of children learning and laughing in a country where places to be a child are so limited is like nectar.

When we ask what childhood should be, Sacher’s classmates answer with innocence still intact: “We should play, study, read.”

But the memory of war is never far away. “We shouldn’t be afraid of bombs and bullets,” Sacher interrupts. “We must be brave.”

Their teacher, Miss Amal, has been teaching for 45 years. She had never seen children so traumatized.

“They were really affected by the war,” she says.

“Their mental health, their vocabulary. They speak the language of the militias. Violent swearing, even physical violence. They carry sticks and whips, they want to hit someone. They are so agitated.”

Damages extend beyond conduct.

With most families deprived of income, food shortages are acute.

“Some students come from homes without bread, without flour, without milk, without oil, without anything,” says the teacher.

Yet, amid despair, Sudan’s children cling to fleeting moments of joy.

On a scarred soccer field, Zacher dragged himself through the dirt on his knees, determined to play the game he loved most. His friends cheer him as he kicks the ball.

“My favorite thing is soccer,” he says, smiling for the first time.

When asked which team he supports, the answer is immediate: “Real Madrid”. His favorite player? “Vinicius.”

Playing on your knees is extremely painful and can lead to more infections. But he doesn’t care.

Football and his friendships have saved him. They have brought him joy and an escape from his reality. Still, he dreams of prosthetic legs.

“I just want them to fix me so I can walk home and go to school,” says Zacher.

Additional reporting by Abdelrahman Abutaleb, Abdelrahman Altayeb and Liam Weir