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Spaces of Longing: A Visual Mapping of Resemblances between Cairo and Sudanese Cities in the Memories of Sudanese Refugees

Spaces of Longing: A Visual Mapping of Resemblances between Cairo and Sudanese Cities in the Memories of Sudanese Refugees

 

A paper by Rania Hassan Mohamed, with the support of CEDEJ Khartoum

 

Memory, for displaced communities, is not merely a recollection of the past; it is a mode of survival. Since the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023, hundreds of thousands of Sudanese have fled to Cairo, seeking emergency refuge in a city that is geographically near yet emotionally distant. For these refugees, the question of “place” becomes more than a matter of physical geography; it becomes a negotiation with loss, longing, and the urgent need to reconstitute continuity in the midst of rupture.

This article draws on visual anthropology project that employed three complementary tools―in depth interviews, mental maps, and participant-generated photographs―to explore how Sudanese refugees reconstruct spatial memory in Cairo. Through these tools, the study examines how the city is not simply inhabited but actively reimagined, reshaped, and rewritten through the lens of Sudanese memory.

As part of this research, the visual material and spatial narratives discussed in this article were assembled into an interactive visual map.

The map brings together selected locations in Cairo identified by participants as evocative of places in Sudan, combining photographs, short narratives, and spatial positioning.

Explore the interactive visual map here:

https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/7219d81e768b7ff73735849fa9879a49/spaces-of-longing-visual-mapping-of-urban-resemblances-between-cairo-and-sudan/index.html

 

Cairo as a Liminal City: Living in Suspension

For most refugees who arrived after the 2023 war, Cairo was never intended to be a permanent home. It was imagined as a temporary shelter―a place of waiting until the war subsided. But as the conflict deepened, temporariness stretched into an undefined future, creating a prolonged state of suspension in which the refugee lives “between places” physically present in Cairo, emotionally anchored in Sudan.

In interviews, participants repeatedly articulated this tension. Many described Cairo not as a site of belonging but as a compelling circumstance, a city they inhabit because no other choice exists. Even when discussing places they frequent―markets, cafes, riversides―the language of longing dominated: ““There is no place like Sudan”.

This recurring phrase does not reflect a rejection of Cairo, but rather the depth of rupture experienced through forced displacement. Still, refugees do not move through the city passively. Instead, they reinterpret it through what might be called affective analogies―moments, sounds, smells, and social rhythms that echo Sudan in subtle, sensory ways.

 

Emotional Geographies: What the Interviews Reveal

The interviews revealed a landscape shaped by profound emotional intensity. Some participants cried as they spoke of home; others fell into long silences, struggling to translate memory into words. What emerged was a distinct finding: Spatial memory is carried in the body before it is articulated in speech.

Four themes were particularly salient:

  1. The wound of memory: Speaking about Sudan reopened emotional scar; place was inseparable from loss.
  2. Symbolic resemblances instead of visual ones: Participants denied that Cairo “resembles Sudan,” yet identified places that “feel like” Sudan.
  3. Temporary zones of safety: Markets, Sudanese cafés, and gathering spots function as micro-worlds that make Cairo bearable.
  4. The impossibility of belonging: No participant expressed a sense of Cairo as “home”; Sudan remains the emotional centre of gravity.

These themes point to a central argument: memory constructs the city as much as the city constructs memory.

Mental Maps: Drawing Sudan Inside Cairo

The mental map offered another layer of insight―one inaccessible to interviews alone. These drawings were not attempts to reproduce Cairo accurately; instead, they were emotional cartographies, in which participants reordered space in accordance with memory, loss, and desire.

Three dominant mapping strategies emerged:

  1. Protecting Sudan through Drawing

Some participants drew places in Sudan―even when asked about Cairo. One drew his family home in Khartoum because “there is no place in the world like home.” Another drew her Omdurman neighbourhood in full detail, reconstructing a micro-community that war dissolved.

These maps resist erasure; they materialize a homeland that survives through memory.

 

Participant-drawn mental map illustrating remembered spatial anchors in Khartoum, including the family home, neighbourhood landmarks, and emotionally significant sites. The map reflects an attempt to preserve the structure of the original place despite the interview prompt focusing on Cairo

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Searching for experiential echoes

Others integrated Cairo into their maps, but only through Sudanese memory. A participant noted a similarity between his Cairo Street intersection and the layout of his old neighbourhood in Sudan. Another drew her daily commute because it “felt” like the road home.

These maps highlight experiential, not visual, resemblances―echoes in rhythm, movement, and routine.

 

A comparative memory map showing how the participant identifies experiential parallels—rather than visual duplication—between the intersection near his current residence in Cairo and the street layout around his former home in Sudan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Mapping relationships, not geographies

In some cases, “home” Appeared as a person. One participant drew only his friend, explaining: “He represent home.” This suggest that displacement redefines homeland as social relation rather than bounded territory.

Across the maps, colour played a symbolic role: pink for emotionally charged places, orange for relationships, yellow for routes. The result is a hybrid geography where Cairo and Sudan coexist in the same line, the same gesture, the same emotional register.

 

Photographs: Seeing Memory in the Everyday

Photographs taken by participants add yet another dimension to this visual narrative. They focus overwhelmingly on markets, cafés, streets, and the Nile―public, social spaces rather than private interiors. This indicates that refugees rebuild belonging not within domestic spheres but through collective, everyday practices.

 

1.Markets as sensory bridges

Images of Suq al-Ithnayn, Suq al-Barajil, and other commercial spaces evoke Sudanese markets in Omdurman, Bahri, and Khartoum―not through architecture, but through:

  • The density of bodies,
  • The arrangement of goods,
  • The smell of spices and grilled meat,
  • The soundscape of vendors calling out.

These sensory cues recreate fragments of Sudanese market life within Cairo, enabling refugees to feel temporarily anchored.

 

This photograph captures a cosmetics vendor in Sūq al-Ithnayn, displaying women’s beauty products on a simple street stall. The scene closely mirrors the aesthetic and social atmosphere of Sudanese popular markets—particularly those of Omdurman—where itinerant sellers arrange similar assortments of everyday goods in dense, informal retail settings.

 

 

 

 

 

This photograph captures the dense activity of Sūq al-Barājīl, a major livestock market on the outskirts manof Cairo. The image highlights the concentration of cattle, buyers, and traders, reflecting sensory and social dynamics that closely parallel Sudanese livestock markets—particularly Sūq Qandahār in Omdurman

 

 

 

 

  1. Cafés as microcosms of cultural survival

Sudanese cafés in ʿAbdīn, Downtown, and Faysal emerge as nodes of familiarity, where Sudanese dialect, humour, and music circulate freely. Cultural cafes like ʿAndalīb and Solitaire serve as informal cultural institution, hosting poetry reading, musical performances, and intellectual discussions.

They function simultaneously as spaces of community and spaces of mourning, highlighting the emotional weight of recreating Sudanese life in exile.

 

 

This photograph depicts everyday café environments in central Cairo (ʿAbdīn), where Sudanese residents gather for socializing, watching football, and spending evenings outdoors. The illuminated seating areas, dense arrangement of chairs spilling into the street, and informal rhythms of leisure closely echo the ambience of Sudanese cafés in Khartoum, Omdurman, and Bahri.

 

 

 

 

This wall installation at Solitaire Café displays a carefully arranged set of photographs depicting iconic Sudanese landscapes, everyday scenes, and cultural moments. The display functions as a visual anchor of belonging for Sudanese patrons, transforming the café into an affective archive of the homeland. More than decoration, these images operate as mnemonic devices that collectively reconstruct a sense of place, continuity, and cultural intimacy within the uncertainty of life in exile.

 

 

 

 

A diagonal bookshelf filled with Sudanese and Arabic literature, reflecting ʿAndalīb’s cafe role as a cultural and intellectual hub for Sudanese refugees in Cairo.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Streets, squares, and the Nile

These places occupy a central position in participants spatial memory, not because of architectural similarity, but due to shared rhythms of movement, sound, and everyday urban life.

These spaces structure how refugees navigate Cairo and daily basis and provide sensory echoes of Sudanese cities. Through walking, waiting, crossing, and lingering in these sites, participants described moments in which Cairo temporarily feels familiar.

 

 Images of the Nile reveal its symbolic force. The river becomes a sensory bridge reconnecting refugees to Khartoum, Tuti Island, and al-Fiteihab. Participants described going to the Corniche “to smell the Nile,” as if this act reactivated personal stability

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Streets and squares reflect familiar Sudanese urban rhythms: chaotic intersections, informal trade, the thick movement of bodies. These echoes generate fleeting moments of recognition within an otherwise overwhelming city.

 

 

 

 

 

A Synthesis: Rebuilding Place Through Memory

Across these three visual tools, a coherent picture emerges. Sudanese refugees do not seek to replace Sudan with Cairo, nor do they erase Sudan from their present. Instead, they engage in a subtle, daily practice of reconstructing belonging through sensory memory, affective resemblance, and social routines.

 

Cairo becomes a dual city:

  • A city lived in, negotiated through economic necessity and social precarity;
  • A city imagined, onto which memories of Sudan are projected in order to preserve the self.

Spatial memory thus becomes a site of resistance―an unwillingness to let the homeland fade, even as displacement stretches indefinitely.

 

Conclusion

The experiences revealed in this study challenge conventional understandings of refuge as physical relocation alone. For Sudanese refugees in Cairo, displacement is a profound reconfiguration of memory, identity, and place. Markets, cafés, streets, and mental maps are not incidental details; they are the very tools through which refugees maintain continuity amid rupture.

The findings show that refugees do not simply “adapt “to Cairo―they reinterpret, rearrange, and emotionally reconstruct it. Belonging is not granted by the city; it is painstakingly crafted through memory, sensory experience, and collective presence.

Ultimately, this research underscores a central insight:

Memory is not what refugees carry with them from the past; it is what enables them to live in the present.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
cedejsudan (6 avril 2026). Spaces of Longing: A Visual Mapping of Resemblances between Cairo and Sudanese Cities in the Memories of Sudanese Refugees. Researching Sudan - A perspective on contemporary Sudan. Consulté le 16 avril 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/160nv


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