Missionary José Javier Parladé must be taken out of bed for this interview.
At 4:00 p.m. there is a knock on the door of his room, he opens his eye, they urge him, but he asks for a little more time:
—Let me wash myself, I have dirt on me...
The father finally appears at 4:20 p.m., dragging his step, hunched over.
Just a few hours ago he landed in Madrid, exhausted and sensitive.
This 81-year-old Sevillian is one of the 34 Spaniards evacuated from Sudan along with 38 other civilians from other countries who were able to board a Spanish military plane and flee the powder keg that the country has become.
Since Saturday, April 15, the armed clashes between the Sudanese armed forces and the main paramilitary organization have put the international community on guard, the future of the conflict, which has already claimed more than 400 deaths and more than 3,700 wounded, is uncertain and worrisome.
But Parladé, who has spent more than half a century in Sudan and, later, in South Sudan, did not want to leave.
They convinced him.
"In my life I have escaped from a bad situation," he says.
The missionary, from the Comboni Congregation, had already been living in Khartoum, the country's capital, for a year, a quieter destination when he grew older.
In the city the religious order has schools and a university.
His parish was caught in the crossfire between the rebels and the Army.
Opposite the church, on the other side of the Nile River, is the presidential palace.
Behind, a few meters away, in a half-built house, the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces who want to overthrow the coup government of Abdefatá al Burhan had installed themselves.
“On Saturday, suddenly, a very strong shooting began.
The bombardments began and they have been fighting against the palace all this time to take it, which has already been destroyed, ”he recalls.
More information
Spain evacuates 104 civilians from Sudan in an operation involving 90 soldiers and two planes
Since the first shot rang out, Parladé had to take refuge in his house, attached to the temple, with two other missionaries.
No water and no electricity.
And without being able to go out for food: "These people won't let you move."
Without diesel, they had to ration the use of the generator to one hour in the morning and another hour in the afternoon, the formula they found so that the food they kept in the freezer would not spoil.
The situation, for a man who says that he is never afraid, was not yet critical, until on Sunday, after mass in the morning and in the middle of breakfast, a noise was heard.
“Suddenly, boomm!, there was an
explosion
of those really fat ones.
It was so big that we were sure it had been in the house and, indeed, it was a bomb that had fallen in the sacristy.
The roof was on fire, ”he recounts.
“There was no one to contain it and there was no water to put it out.
Each one gathered their few things, ready to go,” she recalls.
But the fire, it is not explained how, did not spread, and they were able to drown it with sand.
And he gave them time to make one last meal, "because God knows when we were going to be able to do it again."
With full stomachs, they called some nuns from the convent across the street, took some white sheets and got into three cars to flee.
“Look at the
piece of
white flags we made,” she jokes.
In his briefcase he put some clothes, an electronic book and a computer "as old" as he was.
He fled to another area, convinced that the Spanish plane had already left.
In the end, he was not like that and, assisted by the Spanish military (and convinced by his environment), he embarked for Djibouti and, later, for Spain.
“I think I was pretty hungry because they gave me three sandwiches and I ate them on the spot,” he says with a sneer.
Parladé has once said that he already feels more Sudanese than Spanish and that in the 52 years he has lived through conflicts between ethnic groups, famine and death, he has not felt fear.
If he is pressed, he recognizes just two moments of terror in his life, not so much to die, but to impotence.
The first was in the 1980s, when he was imprisoned in the 1980s without knowing why and without the certainty that they would keep him alive.
The second has been now.
“What has happened now is something that has touched me.
All the cannons were [pointing], all the walls trembled.
The times I've been a little scared have been when I realized that I couldn't do anything to defend myself.
I was eliminated, ”he describes.
The priest does not like goodbyes.
He gets excited.
He feels ridiculous if he cries.
He carries his rule to the end.
When he left the community in which he had lived in South Sudan because he was already old, when he considered leaving everything forever and returning to Spain to dedicate himself "to being old", he left almost secretly.
Without saying goodbye to anyone.
He says that they still blame him, but this time he hasn't said goodbye either.
And that's when the glassy and red eyes of exhaustion let the first tears escape.
But the missionary, remember, is on
vacation
and will return.
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