Our mother Maryuma… When the question about a woman becomes a question about an entire homeland

The story of our mother Maryuma could have passed as one of the many war stories that reach our phones, stir our anger for a few hours, and then disappear under the rubble of the news.

But she did not.

Perhaps because Maryuma was not a fleeting image of war.

She was a Sudanese woman (from Kambo Naim Allah in Sudan — Al-Gezira) who lived among simple farmers, and from that generation that had lived long enough to know the meaning of home, land, and neighbourliness, and then suddenly found herself inside a merciless war.

There was something in her story larger than the details of the incident itself.

There was in her a question about the country we have reached.

How can a war make a woman of our mother Maryuma's age vulnerable to all this fear and violation (verbal, physical, and sexual)?

How does weaponry reach a civilian woman's home, and then she herself becomes part of the battle?

And what happens after the cameras finish filming?

Here begins the story we do not know enough about. Because Maryuma is not alone.

There are other women whose names we do not know, and perhaps we will never know them if the silence continues.

And in war, disappearance is not merely absence. Disappearance places the entire family in a state of endless waiting.

The phone remains on, and every unknown call could carry news that changes life. And thus war becomes present even inside homes that no longer hear the sound of gunfire.

Why is Maryuma important?

Because her story reminds us that violation does not always choose its victim on the basis of age, status, or what a person has given throughout their life. Even an elderly woman can find herself facing armed force. Even the age that is supposed to grant a person some measure of respect was not enough to protect her. And this is the cruelest part of the tale.

That war reaches a woman who was supposed to be far from all of that. That a woman's body and dignity become part of the chaos of weapons. And that her name afterwards becomes material for debate among people, while the real question remains hanging:

What happened to the human being herself?

We do not need another narrative

Perhaps Maryuma does not need a new narrative written about her. Nor does she need us to add to her story a new rumour or information for which we have no evidence.

What her case needs is something simpler and more difficult at the same time:

The truth.

The truth that does not change with a change in political position. And the truth that does not need to be on this side or that. Because human rights are not measured by the side to which the victim or the perpetrator is attributed.

These are not political demands that can be negotiated according to the balances of war.

These are fundamental rights.

And who counts the women?

In Sudan, we have figures about the dead, the displaced, and the refugees. We know the extent of destruction in the cities. We know the names of some battles.

But what about the women who do not appear in the statistics?

Perhaps this is one of the most painful gaps in our war. That we know so much about the frontlines and do not know enough about the people who have disappeared behind them.

A state that wants to recover must know where its children are

No peace process can be completed while there are mothers waiting for their children and children waiting for their mothers and families who do not know whether their loved ones are alive or dead.

And we cannot speak seriously about justice while the fate of detainees and missing persons remains a postponed file. For justice does not begin on the day courts are established.

For this reason, the issue of detained and missing women in Sudan must be transformed from scattered stories on social media into a documented national issue.

And any verifiable information. Not for the purpose of defamation. And not for the purpose of revenge. But so that the truth does not disappear with its bearers.

Our mother Maryuma is not the end of the story

Perhaps this is why the name of our mother Maryuma has remained present. Not because her story is the only story.

But because she made us see something we sometimes try not to see:

That war is not limited to the cities where the lines of control change.

Therefore, the question about Maryuma must not be a search for new news that stirs people for a day or two.

The real question is:

Perhaps it is time to start from here.

To collect the names of women whose families have lost contact with them. To document cases of detention. To ask about their whereabouts. To demand that the authorities controlling the ground disclose the detainees in their custody. And to refuse that the fate of a Sudanese woman be a secret that no one has the right to ask about. Because war will end sooner or later.

But the Sudan we want after the war cannot be built upon an incomplete memory, nor upon unknown graves, nor upon women who disappeared and then we grew accustomed to their absence.

Our mother Maryuma is not just one of the stories of war.

She is our reminder that behind every name there may be a mother waiting, a daughter searching, and an entire family that does not know how to sleep.

And the question that must remain open is not only:

What happened to Maryuma?

But rather:

Where are our women?