Oppression is not a point of view
By Hisham Matar The New Yorker, 12 September 2011 There is an hour in the Arab Mediterranean when the sun, as if in a state of indecision, hovers a palm’s length above the horizon. What a few hours earlier was a blinding star is now weak enough to look at directly. Its sideways light holds everything in a soft orange
» Read moreBy Omar Robert Hamilton Jadaliyya, 16 February 2016 Multiple fractures, cigarette burns, abrasions, fingernails forcibly removed and every finger bro-ken, dozens of lacerations all over the body, on the soles of feet and ears all ending in a broken neck and suffocation. Giulio’s body was found semi-naked by the side of the road. The marks of Egypt’s security services
» Read moreOmar Robert Hamilton The Guardian, Monday 25 January 2016 I didn’t take my camera out with me the night Hosni Mubarak was overthrown. I stood in Tahrir Square among tens of thousands of Egyptians and told myself I would enjoy the moment, I would not divide myself from the night’s magical reality with a lens. I had filmed up until then because it
» Read more21 August 2013, Mada Masr By Sherief Gaber “You want to see the bodies? Ok then, here!” the man working at the morgue said, holding me and a friend by the arm and practically pushing us into a humid room filled with bodies, lying on slabs or on the floor and in various states of decay. We had been
» Read more09-10-2013, Mada Masr By Sherief Gaber Two years ago today, just after sunset, the Egyptian army murdered 28 people in the span of perhaps fifteen minutes. Many were shot, several were run over by armored vehicles zigzagging up and down the Corniche, and all this took just fifteen minutes. Bodies were carried into the lobby of an apartment building,
» Read moreOmar Robert Hamilton Mada Masr, 2013-07-10 13:46 I am neither a supporter of Mohamed Morsi nor of the Egyptian military. To place oneself in either camp is to assert an allegiance to hierarchy, patriarchy, capitalism, secrecy and violence. The military and the Brotherhood are not two poles that encompass Egyptian society, they are two elitist organizations with vast domestic networks, international
» Read moreOn prisons as sites of violations, extremism and boredom Friday, August 21, 2015 By Ahdaf Souief Alaa Abd El Fattah, outspoken software tecchie, blogger and political activist, has spoken to the media for the first time since he began serving his latest sentence at Tora Prison. Abd El Fattah is serving a five-year prison sentence for being at a civil gathering in
» Read moreChannel 4 News, 14 August 2013 Actor and director Khalid Abdalla gives his personal response to the deadly violence gripping Egypt following operations to clear pro-Morsi camps in Cairo. I’m disgusted by the blood, and resisting falling prey to a polarised narrative. I don’t believe the sit-in should have been cleared, but I’m against what the sit-in stands for.
» Read moreby Wiam El-Tamami Jadaliyya, 30 July 2013 We were on the edge of Tahrir Square on Wednesday 3 July when the army made its announcement. The square burst into jubilation. A member of our team checked his smartphone. He shouted over the din of drumbeats and squealing vuvuzelas: “Morsi’s gone. They’ve appointed the head of the constitutional court in his place
» Read moreWiam El-Tamami Granta, 6 December 2011 In the first of a two-part diary, Wiam El-Tamami writes from Cairo about the violence that continues to engulf Egypt. Photo by Gigi Ibrahim. Monday 28 November I woke up in a rage about the elections. A violent, sputtering rage, bordering on revulsion. I felt like a dog that had been fed a
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