I Will Never Find Home

2023-Ongoing I was lying down with my whole family on the ground of our living room while we heard the sounds of shelling at the military base close to our neighbourhood. My sisters and brothers were screaming. After the sound went down, we started laughing about how silly we looked. I do not know how everyone else felt behind these laughs, but I saw a look of concern beside my father’s smile, as if we were not going to stay in Khartoum anymore. I was once a diaspora child. Born in Sudan but raised in Qatar. In 2016, we went back to Sudan; I tried to reconnect with it, but before I got to that point fully, the war began. I experienced displacement within Sudan; I left my family behind and lived illegally in South Sudan, sought and gained refuge in Uganda, and experienced different meanings of exile beyond it. And while going through all of that, I realised that I had lost that sense of belonging long time ago, and I might never have experienced the full meaning of 'home'. This ongoing documentation traces my personal journey of displacement and constant movement that has never stopped since the outbreak of the war in Sudan in April 2023. I search for a sense of home that remains out of reach through the cities I’ve passed by. I am searching for it within my memory, emotions, my displaced family and friends, and fellow refugees. I question how we feel about where we stay, and how we can navigate these circumstances together while also having different experiences.