Arrested at the beginning of the 1970s, on his way to prison the popular Sudanese poet Mahjoub Sharif wrote a fervent prayer:

When will it clear

The sky of our dear Khartoum,

When will it be healed

The country’s wound?

Some decades later, it appears his question is being answered. On the morning of December 25, the Sudanese capital woke to the resounding clamor of protest, involving various opposition forces in the largest and most imposing demonstration that the country has known since current President Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist movement arrived in power via a coup d’état in 1989.