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How a Puppet Play About a Lost Child Gave Me Release from the Grief of War

I wrote a tale about Ramla, a little girl who searches for her family after they disappear

THE FIRST PUPPET I made was almost my last. In 2008, I left a government job to try my hand at the artist life. The following year, I signed up for a marionette-making course, in which I learned how to make a simple scarf marionette: a Styrofoam ball for a head, a square piece of cloth for the body, weights on each corner, and strings attached to a control mechanism made of two crossed sticks.

It began with a child’s love for puppetry, shaped by Sudanese and English traditions. I spent my early childhood in London, UK, where I attended puppet plays featuring that infamous duo, Punch and Judy. In the late ’80s, after my family had returned to Khartoum, I recall attending a mawlid festival, where marionettes in traditional Sudanese bridal wear were used in street theatre performances.

My puppet was basic and crude, and my hand–eye coordination was clumsy to start, but soon the puppet’s jerkiness smoothed into limited but discernible movements: a strut, a hand wave. My body mapped itself onto the puppet’s as I unconsciously mirrored its gestures. I later learned that this was a beginner’s response to manipulation—before a puppeteer learns to channel, rather than enact, a puppet’s movements. I had brought the puppet’s character into being, and my........

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