Mohanad Hashim

How much did it cost you to put in panels for electric power?

$5,000, which is beyond the affordability of most families in Khartoum.

I mean, you can see all the houses are ridden with bullet holes, shrapnel.

Slowly, slowly, he says a lot of people are doing maintenance work and hopefully people will eventually come back.

Each day, more are returning.

Some estimate maybe a million, maybe two, have come back to Khartoum in the past year.

The city's airport has just recently reopened too.

Among the arrivals was Saif, back for the first time since he fled in 2023.

How are you feeling now?

Ironically, the city where the war started is also now becoming a refuge for those displaced by fighting in other parts of Sudan.

For while it's quiet now here, the war is still raging to the south and to the west.

We didn't think we would survive.

I meet Abdu, a student.

He's just returned from Al-Lubayyad, a city to the south in Kurdufan.

He fled there at the start of the war, but soon it too became a battleground.

It was completely surrounded by the RSF, cut off and starved, until the army managed to open a road to relieve the city.

Like Dua, during the war he joined a group of volunteers to help the community survive.

So how did you feel during those days?

Now back in Khartoum, he intends to return to the university to study art and paint murals, to bring color and joy to this devastated city.

But his family home is wrecked, so for now he's staying with friends.