I grew up in Cairo under Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled for longer than I had been alive.
asserted
I → grow → Mubarak
I was 15 when the revolution erupted in January 2011, a high school student just coming into political consciousness as the streets around me cracked open with possibilities for otherwise futures.
asserted
streets → erupt → futures
Two years later, politics had permeated our homes, our friendships, our classrooms, our morgues.
asserted
politics → permeate → homes
In July 2013, the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, overthrew Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
asserted
who → lead → Brotherhood
Over the following weeks, Morsi’s supporters camped and protested in eastern Cairo near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque.
asserted
supporters → follow → mosque
In August 2013, the military and police opened fire on the protesters in what came to be known as the Rabaa massacre.
asserted
what → open → massacre
The father of a dear friend was among those killed.
asserted
father → kill → those
Enraged, I joined the street movement against the coup.
asserted
I → enrage → coup
On Oct. 6, 2013, I was arrested at a mass protest near Tahrir Square and spent the next six years and three months as a political prisoner.
asserted
I → arrest → prisoner
Released by a chance miracle in 2020, I fled Egypt for the United States.
asserted
I → release → States
Gen. el-Sisi crowned himself field marshal and president and continues to rule Egypt.
asserted
himself → crown → Egypt
The revolution has been crushed, tens of thousands remain imprisoned, and economic hardship has broken the backs of Egyptians.
asserted
hardship → crush → Egyptians
When I look back at my country, I see an Egypt structured by ghosts: four relentless hauntings that explain what has become of the country in the wake of those fleeting blue mornings in January 2011, when we were last touched by a dream.
asserted
we → look → dream
That bridge in Cairo
Something always draws me back to Qasr El-Nil bridge.
asserted
Something → draw → bridge
Even in my prison cell, I often closed my eyes and returned to the faded bronze of the two lions at its threshold.
asserted
I → close → threshold
Throughout the clip, security forces push the protesters back; armored vehicles accelerate to drive bodies back.
asserted
vehicles → push → bodies
Tear gas canisters sizzle through the air, leaving cloudy trails as they sail toward the advancing sea of bodies.
asserted
they → sizzle → bodies
Water cannons slam into protesters, catapulting them backward.
asserted
cannons → slam → them
Rubber bullets crack bones.
asserted
bullets → crack → bones
Yet something wondrous keeps happening: each time the police push the protesters off the bridge, the protesters surge forward again.
asserted
protesters → happen → bridge
And each time they return, they push and trespass farther.
asserted
they → return → ?
Until something ruptures: the masses start running not away from but toward the forces.
asserted
masses → rupture → forces
And you can tell that everyone on that bridge feels the rupture rip through the air, because for a split second, even the police freeze, confounded.
asserted
police → tell → second
And once the rupture takes hold, the soldiers—those who have never been run toward—turn and flee.
asserted
who → take → hold
The crowd erupts—cheering, screaming, cursing—as if shocked by the very movement of their bodies, the bodies they have always moved but have never moved this way before.
asserted
they → erupt → bodies
I begin with the second because I write from and toward the rupture.
asserted
I → begin → rupture
The eagle family
To grasp Egypt's ghosts today, we must understand its first haunting: the Eagle Family.
asserted
we → grasp → haunting
Since the Free Officers overthrew the monarchy in 1952, Egypt’s political order has remained, in practice, under military rule.
asserted
order → overthrow → rule
Officers emerged from that coup as the architects of the new state and cast themselves as the custodians of its national interest.
asserted
Officers → emerge → interest
The military’s authority has been sanctified over seven decades, and that exalted status extends to the broader security apparatus: police, prosecutors, judges, and intelligence officers.
asserted
status → sanctify → apparatus
Together they form the Eagle Family, named after the emblem on the Egyptian flag that also adorns officials’ uniforms.
asserted
that → form → uniforms
The eagle became shorthand for an implicit social contract: those who bear it personify the nation; those outside its ranks are expendable.
asserted
those → become → ranks
Then, the expendable subjects rose up in revolt on Jan. 25, 2011.
asserted
subjects → rise → Jan.
After decades of repression, Egyptians were shaken by the brutal 2010 torture and killing of Khaled Saeed, a 28-year-old from Alexandria, who the police claimed had died after swallowing a packet of drugs.
asserted
police → shake → drugs
The photographs of his bashed-in face surfaced online, and the images became one of Egypt’s earliest cases of social media virality, igniting public outrage that helped coalesce into the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
asserted
that → bash → Mubarak
The revolution was an unthinkable event: one that fundamentally contradicted the ruling order’s conception of the relationship between civilians and eagles.
asserted
that → contradict → civilians
As protests intensified, state media unleashed a frenzied smear campaign, casting Egyptian protesters as foreign agents and outside agitators.
asserted
media → intensify → agents
State media claimed that revolutionaries had been trained by Israel and tied them, simultaneously, to the United States, Iran, Hamas, al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and international NGOs.
asserted
revolutionaries → claim → States
State media outlets even circulated the absurd accusation, later immortalized as a running joke, that protesters were being fed and financed by Kentucky Fried Chicken.
asserted
protesters → circulate → Chicken
Protesters went on to torch police stations across the country, overrun national security headquarters in multiple governorates, storm torture chambers, and unearth archives of horror and abuse.
asserted
Protesters → go → horror
…and 92 more, not listed.
The Aporia
