As Alaa Saad was walking along a street in Giza, outside Cairo, two years ago, a young man suddenly began shouting abuse at her. Contrary to what men usually expect in such situations – for the woman to carry on walking pretending not to hear – Alaa stopped, grabbed hold of the man, and, with […]

My dear Awatef, Before marching off to their guillotines… More than fifty days have passed since Amr Rabie was kidnapped and the Egyptian authorities are still not willing to reveal just where the engineering student is. Amr was snatched from Cairo’s Ramses Square and for fifty days neither investigations nor questions by those journalists who’ve […]

The phrase “Yes Sir” is the title of a revelatory new book about Egypt’s security apparatus. Correspondents spoke to its author Mohamed Hosni Abu el-Ez. The phrase “Yes Sir” is the title of a revelatory new book about Egypt’s security apparatus. Correspondents spoke to its author Mohamed Hosni Abu el-Ez. In his new book Yes […]

Gang member Muhammad Amro Sayyed was not quite forty years old when he was first sentenced to prison in 1969. His wife was still pregnant with their youngest son and Gamal Abdul Nasser was president. Known as the “leopard of the Egyptian prison system”, Sayyed would not experience life as a free man for another […]

My dear Awatef, The world’s getting to be too much for us… My dear Awatef, The world’s getting to be too much for us… Facebook’s full of advertisements for Factory Girl—that’s director Mohammed Khan’s latest film, Awatef—and it looks like we’ll get to see some great cinema at last. Three whole years, and not a […]

“May misfortune hit you as you harmed us,” shouted Rida Hassan, a motorbike and spare part shop owner. His frustration was directed at the government’s latest decision to ban imports of motorbikes and tuk-tuks for one year (motorbike parts for three months), because motorbikes were used in recent terrorist operations including the fatal drive-by shooting […]

Khaled Ali, prominent leftist lawyer and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) counselor, has decided not to run for president. The youngest would be candidate, 42, criticized the upcoming elections as being a sign of the army’s overreaching involvement in political life.  Ali is also wary of the fragile political and social climate under which the […]

It is still not clear which of Egypt’s presidential candidates can be taken seriously, which ones have made up their minds about running, and which ones are merely seeking their ten minutes of fame— particularly businessmen. Take businessman Ahmad Mukhtar, whose “candidacy” has spread across the 6thOctober City’s graffiti even though he has not been […]

It was Islamic architecture and Arabic writing on mosque walls that first attracted Ahmad Fares to Arabic calligraphy. His father noticed this passion and he bought his son a book about Arabic calligraphy when Fares was in preparatory school.  From that point on, Fares began imitating everything he saw in that book. Fares’ religious upbringing […]

It was almost 3:00 pm when 42 year-old housewife and mother of five, Attiyat Abdul Mohsen, turned on the water faucet in her home yet nothing came out. She was forced to ask her neighbor for a jerry can of water to cook for her husband, a taxi driver in the Nile coastal city of […]