Citizen of our Earth

Tag: faith

  • When War Meets Humanity: A Baby Left Behind

    👶 A Newborn at the Door: Humanity Amid the War in Khartoum

    When the war broke out in Khartoum, someone told this story:

    “My friends and I decided to stay home and not leave. One day, as the shelling grew heavier, we heard loud banging on the door.
    We were surviving. Barely.
    And then — the knock.
    When we opened it, two soldiers were standing there. They handed me a bundle and quickly walked away.

    We unwrapped it — and to our shock, inside was a newborn baby.
    We don’t know where they found him, and we don’t know why they chose our house.”

    What does it mean — to save a life when hundreds are dying? 💔

    I kept reflecting on that moment. Two soldiers, in the midst of relentless bombardment and daily death, left a newborn at the door of strangers.

    This single act revealed something profound: the resilience of human empathy, even in the harshest conditions that strip people of their humanity.

    It was the raw instinct to protect the vulnerable. 🕊️

    We are biologically wired to respond to infant cues. They have signals that activate caregiving circuits in the brain. Even in war, this system does not switch off. In fact, it may grow stronger.

    Seeing a newborn likely triggered an automatic, primal urge in those soldiers to protect life amid surrounding death.

    War often forces soldiers into moral disengagement — psychological mechanisms that justify violence and detach them from empathy. But facing a helpless infant can spark moral re-engagement.

    A baby carries no political, ethnic, or military identity. A baby embodies pure vulnerability. For a moment, it forces recognition of shared humanity — a crack in the logic of dehumanization that war demands.

    And in the chaos of death and destruction, humans search for meaning. Even the smallest act of preservation can be a psychological anchor. Saving that child may have been the soldiers’ way of saying:

    “Not everything is lost. Not everything is meaningless.”

    It was an act of defiance against the absurdity of war — a way to reclaim both agency and humanity.

    The young man who told the story added:

    “We were just a group of young people. We had no idea how to care for a baby. Fortunately, our grandmother was with us — the only elder who had stayed behind. She knew exactly what to do: feeding, cleaning, caring.

    But the dilemma remained: how could we keep him here, with the shelling, shortages, and constant danger? We posted about it on social media. A family preparing to leave the area with their children came and took him with them.”

    Later he wondered: Why our home? Why us?

    Maybe they saw our lights on. Maybe they remembered this street from before. Maybe it was pure chance — the only house with a door still hanging straight.

    Maybe the choice was not random after all. The soldiers may have sensed something — a house that felt safe, civilian, human. Perhaps a fleeting memory, perhaps intuition.

    They didn’t have time to find a hospital. Didn’t have time to find family. Didn’t have time to be heroes. So they did the next best thing — they trusted strangers. 🤲

    While “fight or flight” is the well-known survival response, under collective threat humans also activate “tend and befriend” — the drive to protect the vulnerable and seek social bonds as a survival strategy. Leaving the baby with civilians was an act of social trust: the implicit belief that “someone will care for this child.”

    A newborn represents the future — continuity, renewal, hope. 🌱 Amid scenes of death, preserving a baby is an unconscious affirmation of life itself. Psychologically, it is a defense against existential despair.

    “If this child lives, maybe we haven’t lost everything.”

    Sara

    If you’re reading this — you’re part of that rebellion too. ✨
    Pass it on. Protect someone. Choose life.
    Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. ❤️

  • A House on Hold, But a Garden That Grew

    How Ten Trees Kept a Dream Alive

    When the war broke out in Khartoum, my husband was outside Sudan, working tirelessly and sending money to build his dream home in the city. And it was going well. The construction was complete, most of the finishing touches were done, and he had even planted trees around the house — hoping they would grow tall and shady by the time we moved in.

    But on the morning of Saturday, April 14, 2023, everything changed. In the blink of an eye, the city turned into a battlefield. People fled for their lives. Some were killed, some displaced, and some stayed behind to face the horror and destruction.

    The streets we once walked without fear turned into war zones. And with that, my husband’s dream house stood still — abandoned like so many others.

    ⚒️ The construction stopped.
    💔 Belongings were stolen.
    🌱 The trees? They died — thirsty, forgotten, abandoned in the chaos.

    At first, everyone was paralyzed, trying to understand what was happening, absorbing the shock. But slowly, people began to reposition themselves, to find new ways of living within the chaos.

    That’s when my husband made an unusual choice. He hired a guard — one of the few who chose to stay in Khartoum. Not because he wasn’t afraid, but because he, too, believed in staying alive in place.

    And then, from thousands of miles away, my husband did something that seemed small, almost irrational at first: He started planting trees again.

    🌍 Not waiting for peace.
    ⚡ Not waiting for electricity or water or functioning institutions.
    🔥 While bombs still echoed through the city, while neighborhoods burned and families mourned — he began to rebuild the green.

    Every morning, before sunrise, he’d wake up and call the caretaker:
    “Are the trees okay?”
    “Did you water them?”

    I watched him every day. He would ask about the battles in Khartoum, about the condition of the trees, whether they had been watered. He would ask if it was possible to bring another sapling from the nursery, how to solve the water shortage, or how to raise the fence to protect a fragile plant. He would request photos and videos of the trees, then call back again to discuss why one looked pale or how another could be better supported.

    And the caretaker — patient, committed — would answer, and act, and send back proof: a small tree standing straight in cracked soil. 🌱 A leaf unfurling. 🍃 A shadow beginning to form.

    This went on for months. Then years. Through explosions. 💥 Through silence. 🤐 Through grief. 🕊️

    Now, more than two years later, the war in Khartoum has subsided and shifted to other places. People are beginning to return. And in front of our house, ten trees now stand tall — proud, defiant, and unbroken.

    They stand like sentinels around a home that isn’t even lived in yet. And they say more than words ever could.

    🌳 What My Husband Was Really Doing

    At first glance, you might think he was just obsessed with landscaping. But I’ve come to understand — this was never about trees alone.

    It was about control in a world that had lost all sense of it. When he couldn’t stop the war, he made sure the soil was watered. When he couldn’t bring us home, he made sure something was growing there, waiting.

    Psychologists call this symbolic action — doing something small and tangible to represent a belief too big to speak: This place still matters. I still belong. I will return.

    It was emotional anchoring — a way to stay connected to home when exile threatened to sever every tie. Every photo, every video, every instruction — it kept the house alive in his mind, and in his heart.

    It was hope as action, not wishful thinking. While others waited for peace to begin, he began peace. He planted it. 🌱 He nurtured it. 💧 He measured its growth in centimeters and courage.

    And beneath it all — it was grief transformed. The grief of lost time, of interrupted dreams, of a city bleeding. Instead of collapsing under it, he channeled it into care. This is what psychologists call sublimation — turning pain into something life-giving.

    He didn’t just mourn the trees that died. 🌳 He resurrected them. And in doing so, he preserved his identity. Because to stop caring would have been to let the war win — not just over land, but over his soul.

    And now, two years later, those ten trees stand as living proof of his quiet defiance — his refusal to let war have the last word.

    And when we finally walk through that front door — dusty, delayed, but standing — we won’t be entering just a house.

    We’ll be walking into a story of resilience. One that began not with bricks, but with roots. 🌱

    To the man who planted trees in the middle of war — I see you. And I know: where you grow, life follows. 💚

    Sara