We were at Ozone, a café in Khartoum 2, an area of the city popular with expats. I didn’t like the place. It was a well-watered fantasy, full of Khartoum’s favored families and the busy heads of humanitarian agencies. Yet there I was. Everyone wanted to meet at Ozone. The best waffles in the world, people said. Another such café, in a nearby neighborhood, is called Atmosphere, and I couldn’t help but think that the nomenclature reflected a dimly repressed awareness of the vast distance separating these spaces from the world outside. Diplomats often asked me with furrowed brows what “the street” wanted, as if it were a mysterious Sphinx whose motivations were unknowable to mere humans. The street, I wanted to tell them, was literally just beyond the café’s walls—you could walk there, if your driver wasn’t picking you up. At Ozone, politics was a soap opera played out by high-profile individuals, to be gossiped about over lattes. Will Hamdok make a speech? Is Minnawi still high?