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Under Bashir, an entire generation grew up in the shadow of the war, where the threat of torture in "ghost houses" has never been so far and where freedom of the press was nonexistent.
The girls grew up looking over their shoulders for gangs of marauding "morality policemen" ready to flog them just for walking down the street with a male friend.
The northern boys grew up in fear of being dragged from their homes to fight the civil war in the south.
Bashir taught everyone to live in fear. But he also taught them what they did not want and, even under his decades-long oppression, they still incredibly imagined a democratic society.
After taking control during a coup in 1989 and becoming president in 1993, Bashir proved that he was an accomplished political survivor. He led an ethnic cleansing campaign in Darfur, while making himself indispensable to the Gulf States and to the West through military campaigns and cooperation in the fight against terrorism. .
Almost overnight, everything changed
I was 11 when Bashir came to power and I remember waking up one morning to find the empty streets of Khartoum. People stayed at home for days. After that, life changed very quickly.
Sudan has moved from a very normal country to a country where every aspect of our lives – from our clothes to the society we were dealing with – was suddenly examined with terrifying consequences.
The school uniform outfits were to be under the knee. Our gym kit had to include full trousers. The mere fact of being in a car with an unrelated boy would warrant flogging. This is how Bashir exercised his control in Sudan and that everything concerning my maturity was decisive.
The 1990s were marred by the interrogation and detention of his opponents, real and imaginary, by Bashir in infamous "ghost houses".
You would have a hard time finding a Sudanese family to whom no family member is sent to one of these torture chambers. Indeed, my uncle was sent to one of them because he had been a communist at the university.
For years, the president even tried to ban the music and the parties were held at 11 pm. curfew. But people always found a way to play music. It was one of the few crackdowns not to stick.
Now, the music and songs that are such an important part of the protest movement can not be silenced either.
Bashir has been ousted, but the protesters are not leaving their sit-in anytime soon. There is a real fear that this uprising will stop here, that the same power structure will remain in place.
But part of his loss was to centralize his rule. The tools that Bashir used in the past – to get rid of those who, in his view, were actually responsible for corruption or atrocities – were now in his inner circle and were increasingly difficult to eliminate.
In the end, it was the youth of his country who acted while the rest of the world did not.
Sheena McKenzie contributed to this report.
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