Postcards from Germany

Living in exile / a diary of life in Germany / 2026
contributed by Sudanese photographers in Braunschweig, Walldorf, Berlin, Fulda, Aachen, Verden and Hamburg

The ‘Postcards from Germany - living in exile’ is the continuation of the project Postcards from Khartoum, Cairo and Kampala. Many people fled to the neighboring countries or to Europe after the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023. The following pictures and texts were created in an online workshop on behalf of the Goethe Institut Sudan. Over a period of 3 months, 8 Sudanese photographers photographed their everyday life in exile in Germany.

curated and conducted by André Lützen

in collaboration with the Goethe Institut Sudan

Contact: [email protected]

While people can be biased at times, the system in Germany is built to be fair. That is what is special about this place. I hope the Germans will manage to keep it this way.

Amel Alhassan

Between shifting train stations, quiet empty rooms, and borrowed routines, I was there - but not entirely, swallowing Vitamin D with a cup of coffee. Returning to familiar faces, and warmer days, felt like returning to someone I almost forgot, to that part of me, in a life once full of color and laughter.

Marwa Almahdi

Here in Germany, time moves with the precision of a ruler, and the streets speak a language far removed from the vibrant clamor of our markets back home. The cold is biting, the rhythm is fast and sharp, and the faces around me are strangers. But, when I stand behind my lens to contemplate the faces of my sisters and their children, I see the Nile flowing in their features, and I hear the echoes of our neighbors' laughter in their voices and finally, I feel warm.

We are here, trying to bend our slow Sudanese rhythm to fit the speed of this new land, while the little ones run between two languages and two worlds, weaving a new identity between two shores. These faces are the 'homeland' I carried in my suitcase when the earth closed in on us; they are the only truth remaining from 'there' amidst the fog of displacement and the shadows of war. These photographs are my attempt to mend what the war has broken, and to say that Sudan dwells within us, even if we no longer dwell within it. Despite the diaspora and the distances, we still hold the light, and we still have each other.. wherever we go."

Salma Abusamra

In the beginning, the journey felt like a faint call echoing deep within me—a call that carried the promise of another life, broader and less confined. When my feet first touched the soil of Germany, I did not feel entirely like a stranger; rather, it was as if I were stepping into a new chapter of myself. A country that welcomed me warmly, granting me something I had long been missing: peace undisturbed by fear, security that demands no compromise, and stability untouched by minor storms. Here, everything seemed possible; rights are protected, and freedoms are practiced like invisible air—unseen, yet essential for life. For the first time, I felt I could breathe without looking over my shoulder.

Yet, not all beginnings were warm and effortless. The enthusiasm I carried with me crashed, like waves against rock, into the silent wall of bureaucracy. Papers, appointments, stamps, and long waits measured not in hours but in nerves. I had to learn a new kind of patience—one unlike anything I had known before. Then came the housing struggle; searching for a room or an apartment felt like wandering through a maze, where doors are many but rarely open. I searched, with a persistence born of necessity, for a place near train stations—those I quickly realized were the lifelines here, connecting cities the way hope connects to reality.

As for the people, they were another chapter of the story. A society that, from the outside, appears reserved and cautious, weighing its words before speaking. At first, I felt as though I was moving in a silent circle—no one drawing closer, no one drifting away. But with time, and a measure of courage and sincerity, the walls began to crack. You enter their conversations, and they enter yours, and suddenly you realize you are not as foreign as you once thought. They see you as an ordinary human being—someone who loves life and people, who carries fears and concerns, who takes a step forward and another back, yet never stops trying. In those small moments of genuine chatter, an unexpected familiarity is born.

Despite all the opportunities and better choices for life that I found here, there remains a void in the heart that nothing can fill. The warmth of family life—those small details only appreciated in their absence—my home in Sudan, where the walls once held our laughter, where time moved with an intimate slowness. And there is also that noble longing, stretched tight like a string, for The beautiful brunette beloved who left a mark on my soul that distance cannot erase.

Thus, life goes on between two shores: the shore of the present, with its safety and freedom, and the shore of the past, with its warmth and longing. And between them, I stand—trying and never cease to balance my heart, to create meaning from this contradiction, and to turn this journey into a story worth telling.

Wissam Aldeen Mahadi

When I left home I was afraid on beeing an „Ausländer“ and to be forgotten. After a while I realized I created the fear myself. I found my way, my people, my community here and I always carry my home and loved ones with me like they also do. „Habe keine Angst vor der Angst, sonst weißt Du nie was Du kannst.“

Eythar Gubara

After moving across Sudan…from one place to another, from one fear to the next…holding on to small acts of care through social and artistic work, and trying to support women and children in the middle of war… I finally arrived in Berlin.

I didn’t come here as someone starting fresh. I came carrying Khartoum with me....its noise, its tension, its unfinished memories. The war was still happening, and the goodbye I left behind never really had the chance to become real. It felt like part of me stayed there, suspended somewhere between what happened and what I still don’t fully understand. These images are not really about the city. They are about what it felt like to exist inside it. Even though I speak German......though I studied it for years....it wasn’t enough. I could understand everything, but I couldn’t feel my place within it. The language that once felt like a bridge became another kind of distance. I spoke, I explained, I answered… but something in me remained quiet.

In the beginning, everything felt heavy. Daily life, unfamiliar faces, even silence had a weight to it. I walked through the streets as if I was learning how to be again…how to exist, how to find a place to land, without ever quite arriving. Displacement wasn’t just something I thought about. It was something I lived, in every detail. But slowly, something shifted. In this distance....in all its difficulty and unfamiliarity.......I found a space I hadn’t chosen, but somehow needed. A space to step outside everything that once defined me. To gather the scattered parts of myself. To begin, quietly, to understand who I am when nothing around me feels known. The pictures hold that process. Not just exile, but what grows within it. The fragile space between loss and becoming. Between what is left behind and what is still possible.

Berlin may not feel like home. But I am learning....gently, slowly....how to be myself, even in a place that does not resemble me.

Sahar Salah

Life here moves so fast, everything is always in motion. I find myself constantly running. Running, literally, to catch a bus or running through work and endless German language classes. Here you have to keep running so you don’t fall behind. But within the rush, there are always soft, beautiful moments that slow everything down. A warm meal shared with loved ones, the sun shining in a playground, filled with children's laughter, a nice colleague wishing me a good weekend, and a stranger telling me how good my German is.

Amna Ibnomer Eltigani

They say the devil is in the details. But so is everything else…

And it has always puzzled me: how do I see the whole picture without attending to its parts? How do I understand where I am without noticing the shadow that falls differently than it did in Khartoum?

The sunset that arrives an hour earlier than in Cairo? The moon that looks farther away than it did in Kerima, the frost on a German window that never existed in my former life?

I find myself caught in contradictory feelings that no one prepared me for. Creating new memories while drowning in nostalgia. Demanding justice while learning to be present. Fighting the label while living its reality.

I am angry, and I am also here, calm, noticing the sky and its different shapes every single day and the way light moves through my window.

Both are true. Both exist in the same breath.

These are questions, not declarations. Can you be curious and grieving, alienated and belonging, free and constrained, all at once?

The holistic view that everyone wants, the neat narrative of before and after, struggle and triumph, requires forgetting the details. But the details are where I live now: in the contradiction, in the question, in the act of looking closely at a world that wants me to look away from myself. In the resistance to external labelling, the wrong narrative, that comes through the intimate act of internal noticing.

The devil may be in the details, but so is the dignity of choosing what you see.

These postcards are my attempt to balance between the detail and the totality, between the specific moment and the enormous, drastic, changing world that brought me here.

These are postcards I'm sending to no one and to everyone. Not postcards of welcome or rejection, but of the space between: the uncertainty of a life, the curiosity, the agency, the nostalgia that coexists with newness.

This is my Germany, seen through a lens that refuses to simplify. The one I'm learning detail by detail, shadow by shadow, sunset by sunset. The one I'm questioning into existence, the questions of dignity, identity, and choice, one frame at a time.

Hind Sourig