At the age of 81, missionary José Javier Parladé says he had no intention of leaving Sudan, despite the fact that the bloody fighting between the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces is littering the streets of the capital with corpses. “But they convinced me for safety; I have agreed to come on holiday to Spain until the conflict is over”, says the Sevillian with shame hours after landing at the base of Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid), where the complicated military operation ended managed to evacuate 72 civilians – 34 are Spanish – without incident.
The non-combatant rescue operation – NEO, for its acronym in English – began on Friday with the pre-positioning of an A400 aircraft in Djibouti, which was later joined by an Airbus A330 and two other A400s. An alleged three-day ceasefire at the end of Ramadan led to speculation that the operation could begin immediately. But security conditions did not allow it until Sunday afternoon. Inside Sudan, the Spanish embassy coordinated the regrouping of people who asked to leave the country.
Parladé, who lived in Bahari – one of the areas most affected by the guerrillas – was promised that a vehicle would come to pick him up. To him and more volunteers with whom he had gathered. But the car never appeared. “We were there at twelve noon, but they didn’t arrive.” “After lunch we went there, and neither”, he remembers. And while waiting, his building was bombed, leaving it without water or electricity. “We decided that we had to escape no matter what”. With two canes and a white sheet, they improvised a flag that they took out of the car in which they drove to Omdurman, a large neighborhood with more than a million people in Khartoum, where Italian residents who wanted to leave the country were gathering .
With the windows open and without speeding up much so as not to raise unfounded suspicions, the Comboni missionary, who had been living in Sudan for more than half a century, saw bleak images. “No one was to be seen. The Sudanese have disappeared, they have gone to their villages of origin in horror”, he describes. He does not specify the exact time that that ordeal on wheels lasted, but he does remember that the paramilitaries who have taken over the city stopped them at every corner, and they had to explain to them that their house had been bombed and that they knew about it they had to go Of course, he assures that at no time did he fear for his life: “First, because I’m old and I’m ready for anything. Second, because I’ve never had this kind of fear.”
Parladé met yesterday afternoon in Omdurman with a group of Italians who were also evacuated. “I thought we had lost the plane,” explains the missionary.
The armed forces had positioned at Wadi Seidna military airport, north of Khartoum, an A400 with two Vamtac (all-terrain vehicles intended for the military) and special operations personnel to protect the convoy. “When I saw the planes, the first thing I asked was if there were Spanish soldiers. They said yes, and they immediately took me to a doctor interested in my health.”
Yesterday, “already rested”, Parladé said that his intention is to return. “I had everything there.”
