On Killing a Cactus

I returned to our home in Khartoum after two years of displacement caused by the war. I went back to save what I could of my family’s archives—photographs, letters, documents—fragments of a life interrupted.

While going through what remained, I opened my late father’s briefcase for the first time. Inside, I found a hidden part of his life—stories he never shared. That discovery reshaped everything I thought I knew about him, and about myself.

On Killing a Cactus is my response to loss and survival. It’s my way of asking: What happens to memory when it’s scattered by conflict? And how do we carry stories when those who lived them are no longer here to tell them?

Ongoing project ...