It was an ordinary day for 18-year-old twins Makarem and Ikram when their school was attacked.
Makarem was in English literature class and Ikram was in science class when they heard "strange sounds" coming from outside their school in Sudan.
Then the shelling began.
Makarem says she "dislocated" her shoulder when she was shot.
Screaming, her classmates crouched on the floor to avoid the grenades and find somewhere to hide.
"We found cover behind the wall."
"The girl who stood in front of me put her hand on my shoulder and said, 'Your shoulder is bleeding.'"
In the general chaos, two sisters, who were in separate classrooms, tried to find each other, but they could not because of the shelling.
Later, Ikram looked for her sister, not knowing that she had already been taken to the hospital.
Like others who were wounded, she was taken to the hospital by locals who drove the wounded in carts and animal-drawn carts because there were no ambulances in the town where her school, El-Obeid, is located.
In the end, the teachers and classmates had to convince Ikram to give up the search and go home.
It was only when Makarem returned home from the hospital later that day that her family learned she was still alive.
"I was waiting for her outside the door and when I saw her coming, I cried," says Ikram, who was in a part of the school that was not hit and was therefore unharmed.
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The English teacher who taught Makarem and Ikram, along with 13 of their classmates, were killed and dozens of others were wounded in the shelling of the Abu Sita Girls' School in El-Obeid, North Kordofan State, in August 2024.
The school usually has around 300 students.
Regional authorities accuse the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is at war with the Sudanese army, of firing the grenades.
RSF never commented on the incident and did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.
It is not clear whether the shelling of the school was intentional.
Makarem says half of her schoolmates were killed, while the other half were wounded.
In addition to her injured shoulder, she also suffered a head injury, but was released from the hospital after receiving first aid.
But a few days later, due to severe headaches, she had a CT scan that showed a piece of shrapnel lodged in her head.
“It hurt a lot and I had to take a lot of painkillers,” she says.
The Sudanese civil war broke out in April 2023 and has since killed more than 150.000 people and displaced millions.
The United Nations says the country is currently experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
An estimated 13 million of the 17 million school children remaining in Sudan are not attending classes, according to the UN.
The Abu Sita school was closed for three months after the attack while it was renovated.
Makarem and Ikram say that at first they couldn't imagine returning to the place where their friends and professor were killed.
"But when I saw my friends coming back and telling me everything was okay, I decided to go back," says Ikram.
However, returning to school brought back painful memories.
“I would close my eyes on the way to the classroom to avoid looking at the part that had been shelled,” says Ikram.
A large number of students received psychological support at school when they returned, says school principal Iman Ahmed.
Beds and nurses were also provided at the school to enable the wounded students to take their exams.
Despite El-Obeid still being subjected to constant drone attacks, schoolgirls were playing and laughing in the courtyard when the BBC visited them in December.
The school principal describes the girls' determination to continue their education, despite what happened to them, "as a form of defiance and loyalty to those they lost."
But the situation for children trying to study in El-Obeid remains difficult.
The city lived under siege by the RSF for more than a year and a half, until the Sudanese army regained control of it in February 2025.
Although there is now relative peace there, dozens of schools have been converted into shelters for people fleeing the war.
El-Obeid has housed nearly a million displaced people in various shelters, according to the state's humanitarian aid commissioner.
Ibtisam Ali, a student at a high school that was turned into a shelter, says she cannot leave her classroom for the rest of the school day because the school grounds are full of displaced people.
"Even going to the bathroom has become a problem for us," she says.
Walid Muhammad Al-Hasan, the Minister of Education in North Kordofan state, said that the presence of displaced families in schools had caused problems, including with hygiene, but that these were "conditions of war and the price of war."
'I have hope for the future'
Despite the war and everything that has happened, Makarem and Ikram, now 19 years old, hope for a brighter future.
Ikram graduated from high school and is now studying English at the University of El-Obeid.
She was inspired by an English teacher, Fatija Khalil Ibrahiem, who was killed in the attack.
The deaths of her friends solidified her belief that she should finish her studies, she says.
"I kept reminding myself that we should persevere in our ambition to achieve what they cannot."
Makarem, meanwhile, wants to become a doctor like those who treated her when she was injured.
She passed her high school final exams, but did not have the grades necessary to be accepted to study medicine at university.
Makarem says the shrapnel stuck in her head, which cannot be surgically removed, initially made it very difficult for her to study.
"I could only study for an hour and then I had to rest for another hour. It was very difficult."
Dr. Tarek Zobier, a neurologist from Sudan, says the medical consequences of shrapnel lodged in the head vary from case to case.
Some people have no symptoms and can live without medical intervention.
But if they experience more severe symptoms, such as spasms, they may need surgery.
For Makarem, the pain is no longer constant, although it gets worse in the winter when it's cold.
He relies on painkillers whenever necessary.
She decided to repeat the school year so she could retake her final exams.
"I believe I will be able to get the grades I want."
"I have hope for the future," she says.
Additional reporting by Salma Katab
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