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The Guardian
11-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Given up on reading? Elif Shafak on why we still need novels
A recent YouGov poll found that 40% of Britons have not read a book in the last year. 'The literary era has come to an end,' Philip Roth prophesied in 2000. 'The evidence is the culture, the evidence is the society, the evidence is the screen.' Roth believed that the habit of mind that literature required was bound to disappear. People would no longer have the concentration or the isolation needed to read novels. Several studies seem to support Roth's conclusion. The average time that a person can focus on one thing has dropped in recent decades from approximately 2.5 minutes to about 45 seconds. I witnessed this when I gave two Ted talks almost 10 years apart. In 2010, we were asked to keep our talks to 20 minutes; in 2017, that was reduced to around 13 minutes. When I asked why, the organisers informed me that the average attention span had shrunk. Still, I kept my talk to 20 minutes. And I would similarly like to push back on the idea that people no longer need novels. The same YouGov polling shows that among those who read, more than 55% prefer fiction. Talk to any publisher or bookseller and they will confirm it: the appetite for reading novels is still widespread. That the long form endures is no small miracle in a world shaped by hyper information, fast consumption and the cult of instant gratification. We live in an era in which there is too much information but not enough knowledge, and even less wisdom. This excess of information makes us arrogant and then it makes us numb. We must change this ratio and focus more on knowledge and wisdom. For knowledge we need books, slow journalism, podcasts, in-depth analyses and cultural events. And for wisdom, among other things, we need the art of storytelling. We need the long form. I am not claiming that novelists are wise. If anything, quite the opposite: we are a walking mess. But the long form contains insight, empathy, emotional intelligence and compassion. This is what Milan Kundera meant when he said, 'the novel's wisdom is very different from that of philosophy'. Ultimately, though, it is the art of storytelling that's older and wiser than we are. Writers know this in their guts – and so do readers. In recent years, I have noticed a change in the demographics of book events and literary festivals across the UK: I am seeing more and more young people. Some are coming with their parents, but many more come alone or with friends. There are noticeably more young men attending fiction events. It seems to me that the more chaotic our times, the deeper is our need to slow down and read fiction. In an age of anger and anxiety, clashing certainties, rising jingoism and populism, the division between 'us' and 'them' also deepens. The novel, however, dismantles dualities. The long narrative, ever since the Epic of Gilgamesh, has quietly cast its spell. One of the oldest surviving works of literature, at least 4,000 years old, Gilgamesh predates Ovid's Metamorphoses, Homer's Odyssey and the Iliad. It is also an unusual story with an unlikely hero at its centre. In the poem, King Gilgamesh emerges as a restless spirit, burdened by the storm of his heart. He is a brute, a selfish creature motivated by greed, power and possession. Until, that is, the Gods send him a companion: Enkidu. Together they embark on journeys far and wide, discovering other lands, but also rediscovering themselves. It is a story about friendship, but also about many things besides, such as the power of water and floods to destroy or renew our environment, our desire to prolong youth, and our fear of death. In many classical myths, the hero returns home triumphant – but not in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Here we have a protagonist who has lost his dear friend, failed in almost everything, and has achieved no clear victory. But having experienced failure, defeat, grief and fear, Gilgamesh evolves into a kinder, wiser being. The ancient poem is about the potential for change and our need to attain wisdom. Since the Epic of Gilgamesh was narrated and written down, so many empires have come and gone, so many mighty kings – 'strong men' – have perished, and some of the tallest monuments have crumbled to dust. Yet this poem has survived the tides of history – and here we are, thousands of years later, still learning from it. King Gilgamesh, after journeys and failures, reconnects with his own vulnerability and resilience. He learns to become human. Just as we do when we read novels about other people. There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak is published by Penguin. To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
San Francisco Chronicle
08-05-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
What to know about John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Senator who talks about mental health
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, the lawmaker known for his unconventional and irreverent brand of politics, is in the news again after a blowup at a closed-door meeting with union allies and former staff aides who aired concerns about his mental health. Fetterman's life and political career have been upended the past three years with medical scares, including a stroke he suffered on 2022's campaign trail and a six-week hospital stay to be treated for clinical depression in 2023. As Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, the plainspoken Fetterman became a popular campaign surrogate for Democrats in the battleground state and a force in raising small-dollar campaign donations. Fetterman's victory in 2022 's Senate race was cause for celebration for Democrats, flipping a seat that was key to the party holding the Senate majority. He ran as a hero to progressives, with a platform ranging from the legalization of marijuana to strengthening union and LGBT rights. But as a senator, he has made a rightward shift on some issues, prompting some former supporters to disavow him. Getting his start in a tiny former steel town Long before that, the Harvard-educated Fetterman, now 55, had made himself into a minor celebrity as the mayor of downtrodden former steel town Braddock, where he settled originally as an AmeriCorps alumni to set up a GED program. There's his unusual looks: he's 6-foot-8 and tattooed with a shaved head, goatee and glower like a professional wrestler. 'I don't even look like a typical person,' Fetterman once joked. There's his home: a converted car dealership across the street from U.S. Steel's blast furnace. There's his casual dress: as mayor he often wore short-sleeve work shirts and cargo shorts. (As senator, his style evolved to gym shorts and hoodies, causing a stir in the chamber.) There was his bare-knuckled politics: In 2010, he was arrested in a protest over the closing of a hospital in Braddock. Later, he performed same-sex marriage ceremonies before it was legal. His attention-getting efforts for reviving Braddock helped land profiles in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The New York Times and other news outlets. He appeared on Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report.' He gave Ted Talks. He has three school-age children and has spoken at length about his wife, Gisele, whose legal status later lapsed after arriving in the U.S. from Brazil as a child. Not always playing nice with other politicians Fetterman has long been a wild card in the political realm, forging a career largely on his own, independently from the Democratic Party. He endorsed the insurgent Democrat Bernie Sanders in 2016's presidential primary and ran from the left against the party-backed Democrat in Pennsylvania's 2016 Senate primary. He lost. As lieutenant governor, Fetterman didn't always shown reverence for job expectations or requirements, skipping Senate voting sessions where he was supposed to preside or getting removed by Republican senators as the presiding officer in partisan disputes over floor rules. He curses casually on his social media feeds and, in the 2022 Senate campaign, relentlessly trolled his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, in ground-breaking ways. But his time in the Senate has been tumultuous. Hospitalized after joining the Senate Fetterman checked into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center barely a month after he was sworn in to the Senate, amid staff concerns over his isolating and disengaged behavior. At the time, he was still suffering from effects of the stroke that he said nearly killed him. Fetterman returned to the Senate a much more outgoing lawmaker, frequently joking with his fellow senators and engaging with reporters in the hallways. He has talked openly about his struggle with depression and urged people to get help. Still a something of a loner Two years later, Fetterman is still something of a loner in the Senate. He has fallen out with progressives over his staunch support of Israel in its war in Gaza and drawn anger from rank-and-file Democrats for arguing that his party needs to work with, not against, Trump. It nevertheless has brought some Fetterman plaudits. Bill Maher, host of the political talk show 'Real Time with Bill Maher,' urged Fetterman to run for president in 2028 while conservatives — who had long made Fetterman a target for his progressive politics — have sprung to Fetterman's defense.
Winnipeg Free Press
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
What to know about John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Senator who talks about mental health
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, the lawmaker known for his unconventional and irreverent brand of politics, is in the news again after a blowup at a closed-door meeting with union allies and former staff aides who aired concerns about his mental health. Fetterman's life and political career have been upended the past three years with medical scares, including a stroke he suffered on 2022's campaign trail and a six-week hospital stay to be treated for clinical depression in 2023. As Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, the plainspoken Fetterman became a popular campaign surrogate for Democrats in the battleground state and a force in raising small-dollar campaign donations. Fetterman's victory in 2022 's Senate race was cause for celebration for Democrats, flipping a seat that was key to the party holding the Senate majority. He ran as a hero to progressives, with a platform ranging from the legalization of marijuana to strengthening union and LGBT rights. But as a senator, he has made a rightward shift on some issues, prompting some former supporters to disavow him. Getting his start in a tiny former steel town Long before that, the Harvard-educated Fetterman, now 55, had made himself into a minor celebrity as the mayor of downtrodden former steel town Braddock, where he settled originally as an AmeriCorps alumni to set up a GED program. There's his unusual looks: he's 6-foot-8 and tattooed with a shaved head, goatee and glower like a professional wrestler. 'I don't even look like a typical person,' Fetterman once joked. There's his home: a converted car dealership across the street from U.S. Steel's blast furnace. There's his casual dress: as mayor he often wore short-sleeve work shirts and cargo shorts. (As senator, his style evolved to gym shorts and hoodies, causing a stir in the chamber.) There was his bare-knuckled politics: In 2010, he was arrested in a protest over the closing of a hospital in Braddock. Later, he performed same-sex marriage ceremonies before it was legal. His attention-getting efforts for reviving Braddock helped land profiles in Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The New York Times and other news outlets. He appeared on Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report.' He gave Ted Talks. He has three school-age children and has spoken at length about his wife, Gisele, whose legal status later lapsed after arriving in the U.S. from Brazil as a child. Not always playing nice with other politicians Fetterman has long been a wild card in the political realm, forging a career largely on his own, independently from the Democratic Party. He endorsed the insurgent Democrat Bernie Sanders in 2016's presidential primary and ran from the left against the party-backed Democrat in Pennsylvania's 2016 Senate primary. He lost. As lieutenant governor, Fetterman didn't always shown reverence for job expectations or requirements, skipping Senate voting sessions where he was supposed to preside or getting removed by Republican senators as the presiding officer in partisan disputes over floor rules. He curses casually on his social media feeds and, in the 2022 Senate campaign, relentlessly trolled his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, in ground-breaking ways. But his time in the Senate has been tumultuous. Hospitalized after joining the Senate Fetterman checked into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center barely a month after he was sworn in to the Senate, amid staff concerns over his isolating and disengaged behavior. At the time, he was still suffering from effects of the stroke that he said nearly killed him. Fetterman returned to the Senate a much more outgoing lawmaker, frequently joking with his fellow senators and engaging with reporters in the hallways. He has talked openly about his struggle with depression and urged people to get help. Still a something of a loner Two years later, Fetterman is still something of a loner in the Senate. He has fallen out with progressives over his staunch support of Israel in its war in Gaza and drawn anger from rank-and-file Democrats for arguing that his party needs to work with, not against, Trump. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. It nevertheless has brought some Fetterman plaudits. Bill Maher, host of the political talk show 'Real Time with Bill Maher,' urged Fetterman to run for president in 2028 while conservatives — who had long made Fetterman a target for his progressive politics — have sprung to Fetterman's defense. ___ Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report. Follow Marc Levy on X at
The Guardian
17-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘All of his guns will do nothing for him': lefty preppers are taking a different approach to doomsday
One afternoon in February, hoping to survive the apocalypse or at least avoid finding myself among its earliest victims, I logged on to an online course entitled Ruggedize Your Life: The Basics. Some of my classmates had activated their cameras. I scrolled through the little windows, noting the alarmed faces, downcast in cold laptop light. There were dozens of us on the call, including a geophysicist, an actor, a retired financial adviser and a civil engineer. We all looked worried, and rightly so. The issue formerly known as climate change was now a polycrisis called climate collapse. H1N1 was busily jumping from birds to cows to people. And with each passing day, as Donald Trump went about gleefully dismantling state capacity, the promise of a competent government response to the next hurricane, wildfire, flood, pandemic, drought, mudslide, heatwave, financial meltdown, hailstorm or other calamity receded further from view. Our two-hour live video session was taught by Alex Steffen, a 56-year-old author, speaker, podcaster and 'foresight consultant', who was addressing us from his home in the Bay Area. For many years, Steffen worked as an environmental reporter. He wrote several acclaimed books that explored technological solutions to the climate crisis, served as 'futurist in residence' at the design firm IDEO, and taped a couple Ted Talks, gradually gaining a reputation as one of the foremost thinkers on the sustainability circuit. Meanwhile, he watched in horror as the window for action narrowed and governments and institutions dithered. 'I still find it staggering and heart-rending that we blew this so badly,' he said in an interview. Having eventually concluded that the worst consequences of a heating climate had become inevitable, Steffen made a pivot. He now advises individuals, as well as businesses and localities, on how to gird themselves for impact. Interest in his classes and one-on-one consultations had roughly doubled every year since 2021, he said, and he expected 2,000 participants this year. Steffen bucks the image of the prototypical end times prepper, most of whom are creatures of the right. Emerging in the 1950s, preppers were animated by a variety of often overlapping fears: some were troubled by the increasingly networked, and therefore fragile, nature of contemporary life. Others perceived a divine warning in biblical references to the Tribulation, the ultimate scriptural nightmare fuel. Still others, alarmed by the superpower brinkmanship of the cold war, sought a refuge from nuclear annihilation. Finally, there was the widespread conviction that the turbulence of the 1960s presaged a full-blown civil war. Kurt Saxon, the author often credited with inventing the term 'survivalist' in the mid-1970s, had been a member of the American Nazi party and the John Birch Society, and the need to guard against a vaguely racialized horde animates some of his writings. Originally known as 'retreaters' (a term Saxon rejected due to its association with weakness), early adopters of what we now think of as the prepper philosophy went off-grid; hoarded provisions, firearms and ammunition, and sometimes constructed hidden bunkers. They championed individual fortitude over collective welfare. Wary of being vilified as violent crackpots (not to mention one day finding a throng of desperate neighbors banging on their steel-reinforced concrete door), many kept their hobby secret. As a result, researchers have long struggled to quantify the movement's reach. Prepperism took a reputational hit in the 1990s, when it was linked with the militia movement, along with incidents such as the deadly standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing. But it re-emerged with renewed force after 9/11, the first assault by a foreign adversary on the US homeland in decades. Among the many casualties of the World Trade Center attack was Americans' long-unquestioned sense of safety. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans, George W Bush's assertion that his Fema director was 'doing a heck of a job' – even as thousands of storm refugees huddled in the Superdome without food or water – seemed to validate a central pillar of the prepper ethos: relying on government was the height of folly. In the ensuing years, the philosophy went mainstream, fueling radio shows and YouTube channels as well as an ecosystem of regional conventions and wilderness survival trainings. Meanwhile, Americans began devouring survival-oriented programming, from Lost and The Walking Dead to Doomsday Preppers and Naked and Afraid, which played to our darkest eschatological nightmares. Though accurate demographic figures on preppers remain elusive, surveys taken after the worst of the Covid pandemic suggest that more than 20 million Americans are now taking steps to prepare for cataclysm – assembling go-bags and stocking up on food, water and first aid supplies – more than double the estimated number in 2017. Not all of them are conservatives. Liberals make up about 15% of the prepping scene, according to one estimate, and their numbers appear to be growing. One private Facebook group dedicated to preparedness for liberals has more than tripled in size since the election. Here, one finds no tradwife panegyrics, gun porn or 'TEOTWAWKI' (the End of the World as We Know It) merch. Instead, participants offer advice on maintaining one's online anonymity under a potential fascist regime, advocate the stockpiling of anxiety meds and reading material (ahead of expected bans), and debate the moral dilemma of buying a first aid kit from a company that caters to law enforcement. Liberal preparedness podcasters and newsletter writers I spoke to also reported a notable uptick in subscribers since Trump's election. Liberal preppers differ from their rightwing counterparts because the calamities they anticipate have different characteristics. Rightwing bugbears like civil unrest and globalist tyranny lead to a focus on the stockpiling of weapons to defend one's property and family from hostile adversaries. But concerns about global heating point to different notions of readiness. Climate breakdown – the destabilization of the entire ecological system on which our lives depend – is not a fleeting crisis one can ride out with a well-stocked arsenal and a few pallets from Costco. As Margaret Killjoy, who launched the prominent anarchist-prepper podcast Live Like the World Is Dying at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, put it: 'There's not much preparedness you can do for the end of the world.' While Steffen, who considers himself 'moderately progressive', believes it's only prudent to have a reserve of basic items – water, food, medical supplies and the like – on hand in case of emergencies, his approach to preparedness differs markedly from the version promoted on the right. 'I would put to you that if you find yourself in a situation where you're having to let off some rounds to protect your canned goods, you've already failed,' he told our class. 'You have not understood the assignment.' Eric Shonkwiler, author of the When/If newsletter, which focuses on prepperism with a leftist spin, agreed. 'The first time this guy in his Maga hat falls down the stairs and breaks his leg and it gets gangrenous and neither him nor anyone in his family are doctors, he's done,' Shonkwiler predicted. 'And that's a month into the apocalypse, and all of his guns did nothing for him.' For Steffen and other preppers on the left, threat analysis begins with an understanding of network effects: how various social and economic systems work together to support our ongoing survival, or undermine it. Bald and bespectacled, with headphone wires dangling from his ears, he explained that the effects of climate collapse will be experienced as a series of localized disasters – flooding here, wildfire there – each requiring planning and forethought. 'Every piece of infrastructure, every home, every community, every business, every industry, was built to work in a world that no longer exists,' he told us, adding that this ever-widening gap will be 'ripping through every single person's life'. Steffen's prescription was 'ruggedization', a term borrowed from the military. Ruggedization, he explained, was 'the design of a system such that it can take unexpected punishment and retain its core functions'. Its opposite he termed brittleness – 'the condition of a thing being subject to sudden failure'. Our primary goal ahead of climate chaos was to recognize brittleness in the systems around us – from failing infrastructure to political ineptitude – and either remedy it or avoid it altogether. Steffen shared a map on the screen of the US Climate Vulnerability Index, which is operated by the Environmental Defense Fund and Texas A&M University, and noted that some places would be harder hit than others. 'If I lived there,' he told the class, referring to the Gulf and the south-eastern coast, exceptionally high-risk areas, 'I would already be thinking about how to get out.' Extreme heat will make much of the Sun belt inhospitable as well, and if the Atlantic meridional ocean current, or Amoc, collapses, as some models predict, New England could soon look more like Siberia. As the reality of climate collapse hits home, those with the means to do so will beeline for safer locales, Steffen predicted. (Though is anywhere really safe? Sleepy Duluth, Minnesota, for example, had been identified as an especially attractive destination before a 'generational storm' associated with warmer temperatures destroyed 100,000 acres of forest around the city and knocked out power for tens of thousands of residents in the area.) 'Some very smart people believe it is going to be the largest human migration in history,' he said. While his $149 introductory course is short on specifics, he also offers a more detailed 12-hour Crash Course in Personal Ruggedization, as well as individual consultations. For some on the left, steeped in the mutual aid framework of the anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin, Steffen's vision of migratory musical chairs smacks of the all-against-all gospel of the right. 'Not everybody can do that,' Shonkwiler said of relocating, calling it 'a ridiculous solution'. Steffen is all too aware uprooting is far from ideal even for those who can afford it. For one thing, it will tend to weaken the family and community ties that help keep us safe. Moreover, he noted that the exodus of people with money, resources and skills from endangered areas would tend to amplify the crisis for those left behind. Then again, nobody said the apocalypse would be pretty. Killjoy, who lives in rural West Virginia, thinks her identity as a trans woman may have contributed to her interest in preparedness. 'Queer people have always had to look out for each other,' she said. Which highlights another important way in which liberal prepperism differs from the rightwing version: a rejection of individualism and an emphasis on community building and mutual aid. When Hurricane Helene hit, Killjoy, who had previously lived in western North Carolina, loaded her stash of dry goods, water jugs and solar generators into a van and drove to the hard-hit area to help out her former neighbors. The typical survivalist fantasy of isolating oneself in an off-grid cabin deep in the woods is unlikely to offer much protection, Steffen said. 'Most people who try to use distance as their means of providing safety don't succeed,' he said. 'We still have this idea that we can just move out into the middle of rural Kentucky, put up some solar panels, drill a well, and we're good, but it's really not that easy. You can learn those skills, but you're still going to have to work really hard on physical tasks compared to people who have common infrastructure that they're sharing.' Elizabeth Doerr, co-host of the Cramming for the Apocalypse podcast, agreed: 'Researchers talk a lot about how your ability to survive a disaster or thrive post-disaster is contingent on really knowing your neighbors – because when they don't see you, they're gonna come check on you.' The vast majority, Steffen believes, would be safer in urban settings – especially cities that are taking the threats seriously and developing resilience plans. 'You are better off choosing to move towards systems that are used by a lot of people,' he told us. He admitted the idea may sound counterintuitive; a steady diet of zombie movies have taught many of us to associate proximity to other people with increased peril. 'But the more people who are using the same set of infrastructure, the more money you have to keep those things well repaired and the more easily you can devote resources to it.' Another distinctive characteristic of liberal prepperism is an increasing focus on the emotional and even spiritual aspect of facing catastrophe. Given the damage we've already done to the atmosphere and the alarming lack of collective will to address the issue, those seeking to prepare have begun talking about what acceptance looks like. For them, the question is less whether we survive than how we maintain our humanity in the face of calamity, how we cope with loss, and how we use the time we have. David Baum spent years volunteering for the Community Emergency Response Team in Seattle. But when he learned how much of the preparedness budget had been earmarked for police equipment – 'you know, armored trucks and weapons and handcuffs and sound cannons' – he began to question an approach to crisis response more suited to violent repression than communal wellbeing. He changed course after encountering the influential academic paper Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy by Jem Bendell, a professor of sustainability leadership and one-time darling of Davos, who has come to believe that our addiction to fossil fuels will soon bring about the destruction of civilization. After participating in online forums devoted to Bendell's thinking, Baum started his own group. Three times a week, he and several colleagues host free online meetups where participants from around the world assemble to talk through their emotional responses to the prospect of human extinction. They call it Collapse Club. I participated in one session, and came away persuaded that genuine prepping requires not only 'outer resilience', as Baum puts it, but an inner kind as well. 'Survival is not the goal,' he told me afterward. 'It is impossible, given what's happening. The relationship and the wisdom and the love that one discovers by approaching nature with respect – that's the goal.' Despite his dismal prognosis, Baum is no doomer. 'Even though it's a global collapse we're talking about, it really is possible in the company of others to metabolize these feelings and find stability in your life,' he promised. 'You can imagine new ways to live, and you can find a purpose to go on.' Or as Bendell put it in his 2023 book Breaking Together: 'Humanity is really screwed, so let's slow down, help each other, be nicer to animals and nature, defend freedom, grow food, play more, be open-minded about what might help, and forgive ourselves.' For the last few years, Bendell told me in an email, he has done exactly that. He quit his full professorship, moved to Indonesia, and launched a school to teach sustainable agricultural practices to local farmers. He is under no illusion that the small, volunteer effort will have any real impact on a global crisis. And by no means would he refer to it as prepping. Rather than an effort to defend himself and his adopted community against a nightmare future, it's a part of a commitment to living meaningfully in the present. 'I know we could get washed away next week,' he wrote in a blogpost not long ago. 'Or we could run out of money next year. Or we could get shut down due to a bureaucratic hitch. But it would still have been great for a time.'
The Guardian
09-04-2025
- The Guardian
‘No one recognised him, even as he said his name': last video of rescued man shows horror of Sudan torture camps
In the last video of Alwaleed Abdeen, taken in the school turned prison in which he had been held for six months, he was so emaciated that friends could barely recognise him – even when he spoke his name to the camera held by his rescuers. Lying on a dirty floor as he spoke, the 35-year-old's bones were visible through his skin after months of detention and torture at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary, which controlled most of Sudan's capital, Khartoum until late March. The video was taken by soldiers from the Sudanese government army, and was among many recorded as they drove the RSF out of the city and made grim discoveries of graves and prisons, revealing the conditions many residents endured under the RSF. 'Honestly, I was shocked by what I saw on that video – I couldn't believe my eyes, seeing his body so thin from the hunger, the sickness and torture he endured,' says Mohammed Awad, a neighbour of Abdeen's. 'Whoever can torture and kill a peaceful person like Alwaleed so brutally, they are a person of no faith, no morality, no humanity.' Like Abdeen, Awad had remained in the wealthy Arkaweet neighbourhood of Khartoum despite it becoming overrun by the RSF, whose senior commanders took over abandoned houses as their lodgings or used them to store weapons. Abdeen stayed because his elderly parents refused to leave. He had been briefly detained by RSF forces on several occasions since the war between the RSF and army began in April 2023, before he finally disappeared in October 2024. Awad says he does not know how Abdeen was captured but that many in the area were taken prisoner while trying to reach markets to buy food. Last month, the Sudan Tribune reported that 50,000 people have been forcibly disappeared by the RSF during the war, based on data from the Sudanese Group for Defending Rights and Freedoms. Awad said citizens who remained in Khartoum struggled to access food, water, electricity and medical care after health facilities were taken over by the RSF; shortages which led to Abdeen's mother dying from illness during his detention. 'They brutally arrested citizens and tortured them without any care for their rights, especially in Arkaweet,' says Awad. 'Our homes, women, were not safe. They threatened by gunpoint to steal, loot, beat and abuse.' The video of Abdeen in detention was taken in Jebel Awliya, on the road south out of Khartoum. In another video from the area, the same soldier recorded images of bodies and says they died of hunger and thirst. The news that Abdeen had died later in hospital prompted a wave of mourning on Sudanese social media because of his popularity in the city, where he was a well-known figure. Abdeen was considered a force in Sudan's entrepreneur scene, helping co-found the Khartoum edition of Ted Talks and innovation hubs such as 249 Startups, which helped young entrepreneurs. He also won fellowships to study in the UK and US. As friends shared their memories, many wished that final video was not their lasting memory of him and posted images of him healthy and happy. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion 'I want to have the image of the Alwaleed I remember,' says Dalia Yousif, who considered him a business mentor. She says he was a kind, generous man, who was always eager to help others and did so by championing Sudanese entrepreneurs, not only in the capital but in marginalised areas such as Darfur. 'He was passionate about what he was doing but also about what other people were doing. So he was always trying to not just grow himself but also empower others to grow with him,' says Yousif. Reem Gaafar, a neighbour of Abdeen's, who met him at an arts workshop, says his death brought home the reality and violence facing people in Sudan. She had hoped he had escaped the area, as many in Arkaweet had. She initially refused to watch the prison video, having avoided such imagery throughout the war. But then her sister told her the man pictured was one of their neighbours. 'I screamed. I was in shock, my mum came running to my room. The shock of seeing him in that way, to know that all of this time he was in that situation,' she says. 'All this time we were living our lives and he's been in this awful situation, detained, starved. No one even recognised him from that video, even as he said his name. It was like you were looking an old, sick man.' 'I am ashamed because I know this happened to thousands of people, some in worse situations, to women, but when you see it happen to someone you know, it is a whole different thing.'
