That morning when the fighting started will remain with me for ever. It started normally enough: I planned to break the Ramadan fast with a group of journalists in downtown Khartoum, preparing myself to go out for an appointment with a musician in our home in Omdurman, the city on the other side of the Nile from Khartoum.
Then, around 9am, I saw messages from colleagues about sounds of gunfire coming from south Khartoum, so I thought I would go and see what was going on. Soon I was hearing about fighting between the Rapid Support Forces and the army around the airport, the presidential palace, and the military headquarters. I know all of these locations very well, and most of them are very close to the neighbourhood where all the newspapers are based and where I often work. Now they were a war zone.
