Oppression is not a point of view
Wiam El-Tamami Granta, 7 December 2011 The second and last installment of Wiam El-Tamami’s diary of the ongoing turmoil in Egypt. Read the first part here. Monday 21 November On the metro home, a man (one of State Security’s many informants?) was swearing that he’d just been at the midan and that there was nothing going on, that it was all lies. The
» Read moreWiam El-Tamami Granta, 31 October 2013 I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. – T. S. Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’ I can tell you about my sister’s balcony, overhung with old trees that quiver with birdsong in the morning, a rare treat in this city. I can tell you about her sofa, lump by lump; about the dining table
» Read moreby Sarah Carr 2 July 2015, Jadaliyya The prevailing characteristic of the time before the revolution, all those moons ago, was Egypt’s political moribundity. There were elections of sorts, or at least votes went in ballot boxes but their provenance was not always from voters. Political parties did politics, sort of, following a script. There was a parliament. But
» Read moreWIAM EL-TAMAMI 28 JANUARY 2015 I left Cairo on 19 April 2014. I was so glad to have left, so relieved and slightly disbelieving that I had finally loosened myself from the grip of Al-Qaahira – in Arabic the name, quite fittingly, means ‘The Oppressor’, ‘The Crusher’, ‘The Vanquisheress’. I knew that I could not be there then, but that I was
» Read moreSunday, January 25, 2015 Yasmin El-Rifae Yesterday they shot and killed a woman on Talaat Harb Street. She was walking, along with other members of the Socialist Alliance Party, through downtown to commemorate those killed since all of this started four years ago. Many of them were carrying flowers, wreaths to lay in Tahrir. Photos of Shaimaa Sabbagh in
» Read moreOCTOBER 28, 2014 Sharif Abdel Kouddous عربي In a bid to stamp out any last vestiges of revolutionary fervor and hold at bay the threat of collective empowerment, the Sisi regime has taken concrete steps to quash dissent, silence opposition voices, and consolidate control over the body politic. Under the guise of a war on terror and restoring
» Read moreSally Toma Monday, October 13, 2014 A nurse and her staff have tamed the men in a mental health ward into becoming compliant patients. They spend their days and nights in a medicine-induced state of fogginess that prevents them from rebelling against the petty rules and regulations that govern the ward. A smug guy believing he is free arrived
» Read moreMona Prince Translated by Samia Mehrez English edition Sep 2014 200 pp. Paperback $16.95 /LE90 ISBN 978 977 416 669 3 “For thinking about how the collective memory of revolution is being created right now, even as the revolution regains its steam, there is no better place to start than with Mona Prince’s remarkable memoir of the 25 January Uprising. . . . Revolution is My
» Read moreby Philip Rizk Tuesday, January 28, 2014 – 17:42 Editor’s note: If the Palestinian struggle has taught us one thing, it is not to forget, to remember, to retell our stories of resistance over and over again. And it might be that Egypt’s revolutionary voices have hit a point, where remembering, revising and retelling is at the epicenter of their
» Read moreBy Omar Robert Hamilton Tuesday, December 24, 2013 – 01:14 The light is different in Zeinhom. The narrow street, arching trees and gentle slope of one of Cairo’s only hills combine to soften the bright, direct light that casts the city in her familiar monochrome. The light comes at you at an angle. Maybe it’s the hill. Or maybe it’s
» Read more