The Return of Shomo

Dr Abdelazim Awad
In two days’ time, our esteemed Professor Ali Shomo will be back in Khartoum after three years spent enduring the hardships of displacement and exile.
His ordeal began when the “Brave Ones” forced him to leave his home in Al-Safiya, Khartoum North, during those dark days of May 2023. They stormed his house more than once, heavily armed with weapons supplied to them by the United Arab Emirates. Yes, the very UAE that Ali Shomo helped to build and whose march towards modernisation and development he helped to shape, under the patronage and special attention of the late Sheikh Zayed, may he rest in peace.
Professor Shomo was determined not to leave his home, whatever the sacrifice. However, the militia tightened the noose around him until he was eventually compelled to depart. He was among the very last residents to leave Al-Safiya, at a time when all means of life and livelihood in the neighbourhood had virtually disappeared.
His journey of displacement began with his son in the historic Omdurman district of Aburof, where some members of his extended family lived. Yet he had barely settled there before his residence came under direct threat from the fighting, forcing him to move northwards. He then settled in Al-Rawda, north of the Faculty of Education, while arranging his affairs. From there, he left the capital for River Nile State and later Port Sudan, where he reluctantly prepared for what seemed to be his final departure from his homeland.
He had invitations to visit both of his daughters, one in the UAE and the other in Saudi Arabia. Without hesitation, he chose the latter, particularly as the UAE’s involvement in the Sudan war had by then become evident. To reach Saudi Arabia, he first travelled to the Sultanate of Oman, where he obtained a Saudi entry visa from the Saudi Embassy in Muscat. He spent some time there before moving on to the Saudi city of Hail, where he settled with his daughter, a university lecturer.
Now, as Professor Shomo prepares to return to his homeland and to his house in Al-Safiya, where the “Brave Ones” left him with little more than the walls and a few pieces of furniture they were unable to carry away for one reason or another, we wish him a warm and blessed homecoming.
May his return serve as an encouragement for the residents of Al-Safiya to return as well, and may it lend support to the voluntary return programme being championed by the Government of Hope under the direct patronage of its Prime Minister, Dr Kamil Idris.
Welcome home, Professor Shomo. May your return be a happy and cherished one.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=14551