A patient waits for doctor's assessment at the triage ward of a cholera treatment center, in Kosti, White Nile State, Sudan, March 7, 2025. (Doctors Without Borders/Handout via Xinhua)"The family album, the carved wardrobe, the children's toys, their schoolbags ... everything is gone," said Abdel-Hafeez. The sole surviving treasure was a torn photo of her and her missing husband.As the war enters its third year on April 15, the numbers are staggering -- over 29,600 dead, more than 15 million displaced, and about 25 million facing hunger. A UN official called the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Sudan an unprecedented one of "staggering scale and brutality."by Fayez ElzakiKHARTOUM, April 15 (Xinhua) -- A video from my neighbor popped up on my phone without warning. Grainy footage showed armed men kicking down the door of my Khartoum apartment and ransacking the rooms I know by heart. My throat tightened, and my hands shook as I stared at the screen, assuming that my family must have been scattered elsewhere, seeking refuge.A journalist without a home, documenting the destruction of a nation he no longer recognizes -- this is how I found myself two years into the conflict in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.As I traveled across the nation trying to gather what survival looks like, I passed hollowed-out buildings and streets littered with unexploded ordnance, I smelled the air of burnt concrete and despair, and I met my fellow countrymen clinging to fragments of their former lives.In Karari District, Omdurman, I encountered 50-year-old Asiya Abdul-Rahim. The aluminum teapot in her hands gleamed dully as she wiped it with the edge of her faded black robe. Behind her, the skeletal remains of her mud house stood as a silent witness to the unrelenting war. When her granddaughters' stomachs growled, she could only offer water."Last night, we ate the last little bit of sorghum flour, and today, all we have is water to fill our stomachs," she told me, her calloused hands resting on a child's distended belly.Abdul-Rahim's story unfolded with the brutal familiarity I'd come to expect: a son lost 14 months ago to artillery shelling, a roadside hut of branches and straw offering no real shelter, a faltering tea business beneath falling bombs, and little grandchildren to feed."A cup (of tea) costs only 500 Sudanese pounds (about 20 U.S. cents on the parallel market), but who would want to drink tea under the bombardments?" she wondered aloud.The question hung between us. I had no answer.Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan (in the vehicle), chairman of Sudan's Transitional Sovereign Council and commander of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), departs from the Presidential Palace in Khartoum, Sudan, on March 26, 2025. (Photo by Tariq Mohamed/Xinhua)Further north in the Shambat neighborhood, I met Nawal Abdel-Hafeez, 48, who was sitting on a cold stone and quietly scrubbing old pots and pans she had brought back from a shelter. The woman and her four children had just returned from Atbara city after being displaced to find "no trace of life" but only rubble where her home once stood."I couldn't recognize where my house was," she told me.Each day, Abdel-Hafeez would sift through the wreckage, hoping to uncover pieces of her home to hold onto. "The family album, the carved wardrobe, the children's toys, their schoolbags ... everything is gone," she said. The sole surviving treasure was a torn photo of her and her missing husband."We miss him so much, we long for that warm home, and we pray he's still alive," she whispered, tears in her eyes.People carry food for the Ramadan street Iftar in Wad Nimair village, south of Dongola, Sudan, March 20, 2025. (Photo by Magdi Abdalla/Xinhua)A kilometer east, 80-year-old Omer, who didn't disclose his full name, was watering okra seedlings in a cratered courtyard when I encountered him. His son was taken by the war, and his grandson fled to Egypt. He returned home alone from a shelter near the city of Ad-Damir, with nothing but a torn blanket, and found that water, electricity, and daily services were no longer available in his neighborhood.Every day, Omer has to drag his aging body to collect food aid from a charity, fetch water from a kilometer away, and gather firewood for cooking."My grandson loves okra," he murmured, the watering can shaking in his hands. "When these seedlings grow, maybe he'll come back."At his age, the silence of loneliness is perhaps even more terrifying than death. Omer often sits at his doorstep at night, reminiscing about the old times and crying alone as the evening wind whistles through the broken window frame."I'm old, I can't move, and I don't want to walk anymore," Omer said, sighing.Sudanese Armed Forces are seen at the presidential palace in Khartoum, Sudan, on March 21, 2025. (Xinhua/Mohamed Khidir)Over the last some 700 days, I've walked through broken streets and seen pitiful souls, encountering fathers clutching photos of sons killed, mothers desperately searching for their children separated during escapes, and hollow-eyed youths who lost entire families in a single explosion.As the war enters its third year on April 15, the numbers are staggering -- over 29,600 dead, more than 15 million displaced, and about 25 million facing hunger. United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher called the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Sudan an unprecedented one of "staggering scale and brutality."Yet these numbers didn't capture Ali Mustafa's face when his son asked the father of three where mom is, why they live with another family in a small tent in River Nile State, or when they can return home. They also didn't convey Halima Adam's fear of losing her five children "at any moment," as they survive on one daily meal in a cramped and suffocating self-dug underground shelter in El Fasher.Two years into this war, we've all become "experts" in loss. We measure it in missing family photos, in children's growth stunted by hunger, in the way our voices catch when we say "before the war."The video from my neighbor still haunts me in my dreams -- those shadowy figures storming the rooms that once held the laughter of my beloved ones.As I'm writing this, my heart struggles to accept a fact: War doesn't just steal lives. It also steals the proof that those lives matter.