The Last Efendi is a long-term mixed-media project inspired by my late father’s notebook, which I found inside his personal briefcase when I returned to our house in Khartoum after two years of displacement caused by the war. Within its pages, I uncovered a political story about his life, tied to a major event in Sudan’s history, that he had never spoken about before. This revelation opened a window onto a silent past unspoken within the family yet deeply connected to a broader national history.

Through this project, I revisit the relationship between personal and collective history, between what is private and what is public. The Last Efendi is my response to loss and survival. It’s my way of asking: What happens to memory when it’s scattered by conflict? And how do we carry stories when those who lived them are no longer here to tell them?

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