Letter to the postman

Dear Postman,

I know you don't knock on the doors of tents or deliver mail to children in camps, but I'm writing to you anyway. I'm writing because I once heard that you postmen can deliver letters to impossible places, and my hope is that this will be one of them. It's a letter from a child who has lost everything, asking you to deliver it to an unknown person whom he doesn't know, and who he doesn't know will even read it.

I'm writing to you from a tent with no address, on foreign soil, in a country that doesn't know me. They say I'm a "refugee," and that I'm only here temporarily. It took me two months to write this letter, while my country was destroyed in much less time. I wrote it on paper I took from an abandoned school, and every night I would add a word and cry.

My name is Saif El-Din. I'm twelve years old, and I used to live in Khartoum. We had a small house with a big tree next to it and a street where children, including me, played football. I dreamed of becoming a doctor, but mainly to treat my mother when she was tired and to put the stethoscope on my father's chest and hear his heart say, "Thank God, my son."

But all of that is now a story from the past.

Suddenly, there was no street, no tree, and no house. The war came and swallowed everything. Armed men entered our neighborhood. I didn't know who they were, but their faces showed no mercy. They took our food, broke down our doors, beat my father when he tried to stop them, and slapped my mother until she fell to the ground. My little brother, Hamed, ran out, terrified. A silent bullet hit him. We carried him with our own hands, and I stopped calling his name after that.

We fled Khartoum.

On the road, our feet were bleeding, the women were crying, and the children didn't know why they were running. My mother became very quiet, and my sister, Amna, no longer cried. She just looked at the sky often, as if asking it, "Why?"

We arrived in this distant country. They told us, "You are refugees." They told us, "Be patient, the crisis is temporary." But no one told us how to carry all this temporary sadness forever.

In the camp, there is no school, no playground, no clean notebook. I'm writing this letter on the back of an old book whose last page says, "The Future of Sudan."

Postman, tell me, does this country have a future? And will this "unknown person" read it if the letter reaches them?

Every night, I remember my small toy. It was a blue car my mother gave me when I passed the fifth grade. I left it behind when we ran away and I don't know if it's still there. But I miss it more than I miss food.

I want to go back to my country, to run in the streets of my neighborhood again, to open my notebook at school and write my name: "Saif El-Din – Sudan."

But what is left of the country? The house burned, the street was destroyed, and the school became a military barracks. I don't know who of my friends is left, and those who remain don't know me. In the camp, we write the names of the dead on the sand and build small houses out of stones. We dream while we shiver. No one hears us.

Postman,

Take this letter and deliver it to anyone who believes in childhood. Don't send it to the warlords, the negotiators, or those who share the destruction as spoils of war. Deliver it to an unknown person who believes that children are not just numbers in the news. We love, we dream, and we are afraid. We want to play, laugh, study, and forget this war.

Tell him that I don't want anything big. I just want to go back, to find my toy in its place, to find my mother laughing and my sister singing. I want to write the lesson "The Future of Sudan" again, but this time, not on the back of a torn book, but in a real school, with a teacher who puts his hand on my shoulder and says, "Well done, Saif, your country is proud of you."

And finally, Postman,

If you don't find this unknown person, then please read it yourself.

Maybe your heart will soften.

Maybe, one day, you'll return to me with a letter

that says, "Sudan is back."

Signed:

From a small tent in a strange country,

Saif El-Din – A Sudanese child writing so as not to be forgotten.