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You Have Not Yet Been Defeated by Alaa Abd El-Fattah

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You Have Not Yet Been Defeated by Alaa Abd El-Fattah

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n early 2011, a generation of Egyptians took to the streets, faced down the security forces and defied the old rule that Egypt's citizens could never be more than cowed, obedient children of a military state. "I am addressing the youth of Egypt today ... from the heart, a father's dialogue with his sons and daughters," the 82-year-old dictator Hosni Mubarak said as he clung to power. In Tahrir Square, tens of thousands of his "sons and daughters" - most of them not yet born when he inherited power from Anwar Sadat in 1981 - found this new intimacy unconvincing after the teargas and bullets, and chanted for his downfall.

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By the next day Mubarak was gone, and the protesters were being hailed by the world leaders who had helped keep him in office for so long. ("Egypt will never be the same," said Barack Obama, whose administration gave the country's military $1.3bn each year.) One of the best known was the 29-year-old programmer Alaa Abd el-Fattah, already a veteran of street protest and imprisonment, and a champion of the online spaces that gave young Egyptians a virtual escape from the stifling political and socialrepression within their own borders. To many, he personified the narrative of a fresh start made possible partly by the new tools of global information sharing - what the international media labelled a "social media revolution".

Ten years on, a military dictator is back in power in Cairo and Abd el-Fattah is back in prison, alongside an estimated 60,000 other political detainees. You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a collection of his writings across that turbulent decade, from essays to tweets to reflections scrawled in pencil and smuggled out of prison, translated and edited by an anonymous collective of supporters. It opens after the euphoria of Tahrir, in the chaotic days of late 2011, veering from fine-grained arguments over a new constitution to visceral reports of the violence the state was still inflicting on those who defied it. "We fought time with slabs of ice and miserable fans," he says of struggling to preserve bodies retrieved from the Maspero massacre of Coptic protesters; the interim military council locks him up again for his efforts.

Abd el-Fattah at his home in Cairo, 2019. Photograph: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

This mosaic of texts builds a picture of both the principles of resistance and democracy-building and the ugly, absurd, frightening, occasionally joyful experience of living by them in a stubbornly unreformed dictatorship. It's also a reckoning with the legacy of his much-loved father, the human rights lawyer Ahmed Seif el-Islam, who was imprisoned and tortured under Anwar Sadat and Mubarak. "From my father, I inherited a prison cell and a dream," Abd el-Fattah writes. In 2011, he is in prison for the birth of his son Khaled, just as his father missed the birth of his sister Mona; in 2014, he misses his father's death, too.

As the public and private tragedies mount up, cracks appear in his usual eloquence and certainty: he describeshis sadness at leaving Khaled to meet his nightly probation curfew; his fears that imprisonment will leave him permanently unemployable; his struggle, in a succession of lonely, decrepit cells, with despair. "Our sin was pride, not treachery," he writes from prison after the military coup that brought Abdel Fattah el-Sisi - later described by Donald Trump as " my favourite dictator" - to power. "We said, 'We're not like those who came before us.'" For the revolutionaries, the state's massacre of more than 900 Islamist protesters after the coup is a brutal turning point "we will never be able to escape". In the end, Egypt's past proves impossible to shake.

But like the success of the revolution in 2011, its defeat isn't only an Egyptian story. The rest of us are the "you" of the book's title, and the speech it is drawn from makes a call to understand and protect the internet as a space for "universal rights and freedoms" - to see and act against tax avoidance, policy interference, the gig economy, algorithms that promote fake news, the exploitation of our data, our reduction to passive eyeballs for advertisers. "Fix your own democracy," Abd el-Fattah encourages us, from his cell; Egypt's rulers attempt to isolate, fragment and conceal resistancebecause it needs a global ecosystem to flourish. What can any one person do with a legacy of pain, struggle and courage? There are no easy solutions here, but You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a heartbreaking, hopeful answer.

You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, translated by an anonymous collective, is published by Fitzcarraldo (£12.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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You Have Not Yet Been Defeated by Alaa Abd el-Fattah review - a message to the world from an Egyptian prison

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n early 2011, a generation of Egyptians took to the streets, faced down the security forces and defied the old rule that Egypt's citizens could never be more than cowed, obedient children of a military state. "I am addressing the youth of Egypt today ...

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From Bla, Bla, Bla To Blood, Blood, Blood by Naomi Klein

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From Bla, Bla, Bla To Blood, Blood, Blood by Naomi Klein

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Holding the COP27 Summit in Egypt’s Police State Creates a Moral Crisis for the Climate Movement

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The ongoing hunger strike of Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abd El Fattah forcefully reminds us that there can be no meaningful climate action without political freedom.

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Why Do We Destroy What Makes Us? by Yasmine El Rashidi

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Why Do We Destroy What Makes Us? by Yasmine El Rashidi

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Ms. El Rashidi, a journalist and novelist, is a long-time resident of Cairo.

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What was left of Cairo's Maspero Triangle, first developed in the 1400s, in April. Credit... Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

CAIRO - There is a district close to the center of downtown Cairo that extends from the banks of the Nile about one kilometer into one of the city's most significant historic thoroughfares. Known as Maspero Triangle, it's a wedge-shaped area of some 85 acres that has been home to 18,000 residents - until this year, when the government started forcibly evicting what residents it could by cutting off water and electricity, and then bulldozing buildings to the ground.

The district's first signs of development date back to the 1400s, with the Sultan Abu El Ela Mosque, which still stands at its northern tip. But its main structures were erected in the 19th century and passed down through generations after that. Over the years, vacant land in the center of the triangle was built up informally, by residents with no formal deeds, slowly becoming part of the architectural and cultural heritage of Cairo. Some of the buildings have - had - facades with elaborate stone corbels, internal marble staircases and palazzo-style apartments of room after room with four-meter-high stucco-detailed ceilings.

Some of the buildings have - had - facades with elaborate stone corbels, internal marble staircases and palazzo-style apartments with four-meter-high stucco-detailed ceilings. Credit... Yasmine El Rashidi

Today, when you drive into the city over the main bridge and look down as you approach Tahrir Square, Maspero Triangle is a mass of rubble and rising dust, reminiscent of photographs of many a city after war. Only a dozen or so buildings remain, some with their top floors destroyed by cranes - a government tactic to then declare the structures unsafe.

As the country's population swelled in the 1960s and people migrated from rural to urban areas, city housing fell in short supply. Cairo grew outward and inward at the same time, with buildings taking over surrounding agricultural land and desert, and high-rises replacing villas or vacant lots in the city's center. Today, Greater Cairo's population is estimated at 23.5 million, and grew by approximately 500,000 people in 2017. Two-thirds of its residents live in informal settlements, according to government and NGO sources. Maspero Triangle encapsulates all that history - the country's history - and the richness, sociological and cultural, bred by adaptation to economic challenges.

In the late 1800s, the district was the property of a wealthy Ottoman nobleman, Sharkas Pasha, who let his servants build houses on the land in exchange for rent. When the Sharkas family left Egypt for Turkey in the 1940s, the land was placed in an endowment that guaranteed the servants' leases for the next two decades. It reverted to the government in 1968 and was sold to Kuwaiti and Saudi investors.

The government started evicting what residents it could by cutting off water and electricity, and then bulldozing buildings to the ground. Credit... Yasmine El Rashidi

But those deals overlooked the fact that by then some of the area's residents had already sold their shares in plots. And they overlooked a 1941 rent-control law under which residents couldn't be evicted nor could their rents be raised.

President Anwar el-Sadat contended with this problem in the late 1970s by ordering a moratorium on renovations or improvements to buildings in the area - the intention being to let them fall into forced dereliction. In the late 1990s, under President Hosni Mubarak, a law was passed that gave the government the right to claim and demolish anything for " public utility."

In 2008, the government entity for physical planning unveiled a development plan called "Cairo 2050" that envisioned the city like a rendition of Dubai. Maspero Triangle was deemed to be a slum and was to be remade instead as "Manhattan in Cairo." The plan was the first of many proposals over subsequent years, and subsequent governments, that were shelved for lack of planning, funds or support.

When you drive into Cairo over the main bridge, Maspero Triangle is a mass of rubble and rising dust, reminiscent of photographs of many a city after war. Credit... Amr Nabil/Associated Press

Then, in 2016, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced that all unsafe informal settlements would be eliminated within two years. Maspero Triangle is among the most visibly contested, partly because of its location and heritage status, and partly because only about one-third of it, according to several urbanists I spoke to, might have been fairly called unsafe. It was an area I walked or drove through every day for years, when I worked at a local weekly paper in a bordering neighborhood; the Maspero bakery, the corner fruit stand, the Italian club and the historic watch shop Hinhayat were all places I frequented.

One can't deny that parts of the city are run down, or that haphazard additions on buildings can be unsafe. But the organic way in which such districts developed, mixing the historic and the makeshift, gives them a unique cultural value. The heritage they represent is tangible, in the form of buildings and trees, and intangible, by way of customs and characters.

Residents in Maspero Triangle would exchange news and recipes across balconies, and passed on disappearing skills like clock repairing from one generation to the next. The neighborhood held on to age-old traditions: During Ramadan, musaharati walked the narrow streets at dawn hollering to observing Muslims to rise for their last meal before the fast. The oral history of these alleyways spans several political eras. When the residents of Maspero Triangle leave, all of this will disappear.

Maspero residents were offered 60,000 Egyptian pounds (about $3,350) per room, a relocation fee of 40,000 Egyptian pounds (about $2,200) and either rent-subsidized housing in Asmarat, a low-income suburb in the desert, or the chance to return to Maspero once it is rebuilt - a possibility that few of them believe in.

In an interview in August a journalist asked Khaled Siddiq, who heads the government's Informal Settlements Development Fund, why the 290 stores in Asmarat were still closed, despite the relocations. Mr. Siddiq said, "We're working on unifying the styles of their facades, so they all look the same and conform to an image of the ideal society. We won't leave any room for randomness to come back to this area again."

Yet randomness is why in Cairo, as in, say, Rome, you might turn a corner or enter a crumbling alleyway and find an ancient ruin.

But even as rising water levels have threatened monuments, such as the Sphinx, cultural landmarks like the singer Umm Kulthum's home are left to be demolished and sold off to developers. Earlier this year, the government began destroying the Grand Continental hotel in downtown Cairo - a majestic building that was the site of Egypt's declaration of independence from the British in 1922 - to make way for a luxury hotel and shopping mall. The pyramids of Giza used to be a long drive of desert stretch away; now the city just about touches their edge.

It may be too late as well to save what remains of Maspero Triangle, but there are two dozen other informal neighborhoods in Cairo alone that are slated for a similar fate and might still be spared. The government must stop looking outward to mimic other parts of the world. Instead it should focus inward - on its own population's needs and human dignity here, and on that piece of the world's heritage that resides in Egypt and that once lost can never be recovered.

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Opinion | Why Do We Destroy What Makes Us? (Published 2018)

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Ms. El Rashidi, a journalist and novelist, is a long-time resident of Cairo. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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Egypt accused of thwarting environmental groups ahead of COP2

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Egypt accused of thwarting environmental groups ahead of COP2

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Human Rights Watch says the government has imposed obstacles ahead of the key climate conference to take place in November.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been repeatedly criticised for Egypt's human rights record [File: Charles Platiau/Reuters]

Egypt's government was accused of severely restricting the work of environmental groups, leaving activists fearful of publicly scrutinising authorities ahead of the country hosting a crucial global climate summit.

Egyptian authorities have imposed "arbitrary funding, research, and registration obstacles that have debilitated local environmental groups, forcing some activists into exile", New-York based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on Monday.

"These restrictions violate the rights to freedom of assembly and association and threaten Egypt's ability to uphold its environmental and climate action commitments," said Richard Pearshouse, the environment director at HRW.

The UN's annual Conference of the Parties (COP) involves nearly 200 countries with hundreds of observers, NGOs and, often, mass demonstrations designed to ramp up pressure on political leaders to tackle climate change. Egypt will host this year's event, COP27, in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in November.

Some of the individuals interviewed by HRW said it was impossible to secure research permits, or interview people about environmental issues, for the fear they or those they speak to could be arrested.

HRW said it spoke to 13 activists, academics, scientists and journalists involved in climate action in Egypt, who all spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Egyptian authorities have lately championed concerns that rich countries - the biggest emitters of greenhouse gasses - have fallen short in helping developing African nations tackle climate change effects - for which the continent shares little blame.

However, for one environmentalist cited by Human Rights Watch, this is "because this intersects with their interests, like the need for more funds".

Rights abuses

Human rights groups have repeatedly condemned Egypt's record under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who removed former President Mohamed Morsi in 2013 before becoming head of state the following year.

HRW noted that interviewees pointed to a "recent expansion of official tolerance for environmental activities that are easily reconciled with government priorities".

But the rights group said activists were fearful of drawing attention to issues including industrial pollution and the military's involvement in "destructive forms of quarrying", as well as big infrastructure projects.

Leading environmental organisations in Egypt "have been weakened severely by government restrictions and a pervasive sense of fear and uncertainty", HRW said, citing several insiders within such entities.

The New York-based group said it was incumbent for the government to provide participants visas on time for COP27, and called for an end to the state's "unlawful surveillance and intimidation tactics".

"The world needs more climate activism, not less, and there can be no such effective activism when the government treats civic groups as a threat, not an asset," Pearshouse said.

"The UN Framework Convention member states and the Secretariat should press the Egyptian government to make sure environmental groups feel it is safe to engage in and beyond the COP".

A request for comment from Egypt's environment ministry was not immediately answered.

Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies

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Egypt accused of thwarting environmental groups ahead of COP2

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Human Rights Watch says the government has imposed obstacles ahead of the key climate conference to take place in November. Egypt's government was accused of severely restricting the work of environmental groups, leaving activists fearful of publicly scrutinising authorities ahead of the country hosting a crucial global climate summit.

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These Bodies of Water By Sabrina Mahfouz

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These Bodies of Water By Sabrina Mahfouz

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Vicious, tenacious, defiant, versatile ... that's how visual artist Aya Tarek has been described along the winding path that has taken her career from politically driven street art in her home city of Alexandria to launching Egypt's first art exhibition curated for an NFT marketplace this week.

Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, are proof of ownership over a digital artwork. The ownership is proven through a secure blockchain mechanism that means that while others can view it and circulate screenshots of it, the original artwork is owned solely by the purchaser.

Who is Aya Tarek?

Although the Egyptian artist is from a traditional fine arts background that involved her spending hours on end perfecting brush strokes and colour-mixing, Tarek's versatility - rooted in a strong urge to remain relevant - emerged early in her career. And in the 13 years since she began to capture her country's attention, she has gone from painting - first on canvas, then murals - to digital art, 3D-motion graphics, feature films and now, NFTs.

Though she was catapulted into the national spotlight because of her political street art produced on the sidelines of the 2011 popular uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak as Egypt's president, Tarek's artistic journey began a few years before that. Many Alexandrians were familiar with her graffiti as far back as 2008.

She also featured in Microphone, a 2011 political film that depicted the lives of artists and intellectuals in Egypt and the challenges they faced under Mubarak.

In the early 2010s, Tarek became fascinated with street art because of the increased visibility it offered. She wanted her work to be seen and appraised by more people than a gallery could accommodate.

Her desire for less control over the space where art is allowed to exist was one of the main reasons Tarek became intrigued by NFTs.

"When I first heard about NFTs, I didn't really understand what they were. Like many people today. I thought, 'How could you sell a piece of digital art exactly?' I had compiled a large collection of digital artwork that I didn't know what to do with," she says.

Tarek explains that NFTs made digital art a saleable commodity, which in turn shone a spotlight on artists who work exclusively with digital media.

That is what led to Token, an exhibition of Tarek's latest work. The show was produced by the B'sarya For Arts in Alexandria, which organised the venues as well as facilitated the creation of the NFTs.

A show only for an NFT market

In a dimly lit art space in the heart of Downtown Cairo, Tarek, through a partnership with a new NFT marketplace called NFTY Arabia, which was founded in the UAE, Token has opened to the public. Curated by Marwa Benhalim and running until December 22, it comprises a mix of physical paintings and digitally rendered pieces that will become the first items sold on NFTY Arabia.

"The bulk of the exhibition deals with consumerism and capitalist tendencies. It revolves around our need to consume things and how that feeds into the way we perceive and interact with everything," says Benhalim.

In one corner of the gallery, one painting, T-bone depicts a delicious-looking steak, which simultaneously makes the viewer's mouth water and their stomach tighten with discomfort upon seeing streaks of red paint dripping off it. In another piece, a digitally constructed man seizes continuously outside a luxury villa.

Tarek delivers her intention with expert precision through the vibrant collection.

"NFTs are a great answer to a gap in the art market. Many artists today don't work with analogue media at all, so all their art is made through digital means. The traditional set-up didn't make room for these kinds of works," she explains.

Her sentiments were echoed by Timmy Mowafi, co-founder of NFTY Arabia.

"I think it's time that Mena region artists were given the space to sell their work and get the recognition they deserve. If new tech like NFTs did one thing of value, it was to empower a lot of people who might have been sidelined or considered misfits in the past," Mowafi tells The National.

"When we sat down and she [Tarek] relayed her vision to me, I realised that there were no NFTs out there that showcased modern-day street culture in Egypt, that's really special.

"We had seen NFTs of ancient Egyptian iconography but very few people were focusing on the country's more modern subcultures."

Unlike other NFT marketplaces, which allow anyone to mint an artwork and upload it for sale, NFTY Arabia retains curatorial rights over their platform. Mowafi says that this was because he wanted to implement a set of quality standards on the art sold by his marketplace.

The platform is set to showcase the work of 50 of the region's top artists in February, when it launches fully.
Token is open at Downtown Cairo's Kodak Passageway until December 22

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Aya Tarek launches Egypt's first art collection for an NFT marketplace

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Vicious, tenacious, defiant, versatile ... that's how visual artist Aya Tarek has been described along the winding path that has taken her career from politically driven street art in her home city of Alexandria to launching Egypt's first art exhibition curated for an NFT marketplace this week.

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he decision to leave Cairo wasn't one Sanaa Seif made lightly, despite the long stretches in prison, vicious beatings and threats of worse to come from Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's repressive regime. For the 28-year-old pro-democracy activist, going into exile didn't only involve saying goodbye to home, friends and family. It meant leaving the country where her brother, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, is jailed and on hunger strike.

"It took a lot of contemplation," she says, sitting at the kitchen table of her temporary London home and reflecting on her most recent time in prison. "I had time to think - this was my third stretch inside." During exercise breaks, there was a tree in the courtyard under which she would sit and consider her options. Opposite were the cells where those facing a death sentence were detained. "I had to accept that could be my future," says Seif. "That's what the authorities threatened. Maybe I'm naive not to have realised it earlier, but Cairo was never going to be safe again."

Seif was barely 17 in January 2011, when the Egyptian revolution started. Raised in the north of the capital, she came from a well-known political family: her father, Ahmed Seif, was a respected human rights lawyer, while her British-born mother, Laila Soueif, was an academic and activist at the University of Cairo. "But I was the youngest child," Seif says. "Nobody spoke about anything serious in front of me. I knew there was inequality, and that my father had issues with the authorities. But I was shielded from the details - a spoiled brat."

History marks 25 January 2011 as the start of Egypt's revolution. Of course, nobody knew then. "I'd heard there were protests happening that day," Seif remembers. "Some of my friends were going. But I had a party that night which I didn't want to miss." Short on money for the evening ahead, Seif called her mother, asking for cash. The teen was given short shrift: "I don't have time for this, there are campus protests, your mother is busy." So Seif headed to the campus to track her down. At the gates, she was detained by police. "I called my mum, who collected me," Seif says. "She wasn't happy: 'Sanaa, I told you this isn't a good day.'"

Rising tensions became clear. As they walked through the university, Seif clung to her mother. "My family had been trying to change things in Egypt for decades," she says. "Something in the air gave people hope, a feeling that this was finally possible." With a few hours until her party, Seif stuck around.

"The marches grew larger," she recalls. "Those who made it past police lines arrived at Tahrir Square, where teargas was thrown." She watched from the sidelines, feeling like an outsider. "When the police started attacking protesters," she says, "I assumed the crowds would disperse." Much to her surprise, they refused. "People were beaten by officers then ran back into the protest. I'd never seen anything like it: their determination made me believe this could be huge."

That evening, Seif remembers, the police temporarily retreated. Rumours spread they would return at midnight to forcibly clear the square. "Still, nobody left," she says. "Instead, women and children were gathered, men formed human barricades. There was so much bravery and resilience." Friends were calling: they were heading to the party; where was she? In the end, Seif never went - she couldn't tear herself away. "From that moment I was in. I was part of the revolution - there was no looking back."

espite the 13 years between them, Seif and Alaa were always close. "Alaa wasn't just an older brother to me," she says. "He was a father figure. A mentor." She checks her phone intermittently, anxiously awaiting news from her mother's visit to Alaa's prison in Cairo.

In the late 00s, as adolescence hit, Self's school grades suffered. "I was this disengaged, bohemian teen," she says. "And there was lots of drama at home." Married and with his own place, Alaa took in his teenage sister. "He studied with me," she says. "Supported me, gave me pocket money. It was his responsibility to make sure I passed school." She stayed there for two years. By 2011, Alaa had relocated to South Africa for work.

Seif and her brother, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, hold hands after they were granted permission to attend the funeral of their father in 2014. Photograph: Hasan Mohamed/AFP/Getty Images

On the frontline in the early days of the Egyptian uprising, Seif knew little of the vital role her brother was already playing in the movement. With the internet in Egypt all but cut off, Alaa - from his home in Pretoria - was sharing news of what was happening with the rest of the world. Since the early 00s, he had been a vocal activist and campaigner; his 2006 involvement in peaceful protests saw him spend 45 days in jail.

Alaa returned to Cairo late on 2 February. Over the following months, the siblings began to see each other differently. "I realised the important role he played to these people," she says. "Speaking to crowds, communicating and coordinating. And he was surprised, too, that his spoiled younger sister was on the frontlines at Tahrir." The country too was in a state of transition. President Mubarak was forced to resign on the 18th day of demonstrations. The military dissolved the constitution, temporarily taking power.

y late 2011, the revolution was in full swing. Despite new laws restricting demonstrations, clashes between protesters and the military were common. "We didn't know it then," Seif says, "but what we witnessed on the night of 9 October changed the direction of both the country and our family." That Sunday, a group of Coptic Christians had gathered outside Cairo's state television offices. "It was over something simple: the demolition of a church," she says. "And the streets had opened up by then; people from all sections of society were protesting. Then the army drove tanks straight into the peaceful crowd." This would become known as the Maspero massacre. Twenty-four people died and more than 200 were injured.

"Neither Alaa or I were there at the time," Seif says. "I rushed there, my brother, too. When I arrived, the tanks had left. Some of the bodies were being carried away; others were surrounded by distraught families." Seif realised she knew one of the men killed. "I was in a state of shock," she recalls, unable to comprehend the devastation in front of her. "It shook me to my core, and changed my entire understanding of what the military was willing to do."

Meanwhile, Egyptian state television was reporting that Christian protesters had in fact attacked the army. That fictitious version was initially picked up by the likes of the BBC and CNN. Seif is clear: "That was bullshit. The military was trying to incite sectarian war, to create instability to tighten their grip on power and not let go. I, Alaa and others there could see."

As people with sticks gathered to attack the grieving demonstrators, Alaa stepped in. "He organised human shields to surround the bodies and mourning families," Saif says. "He was one of the most prominent voices - making interventions on TV, writing a newspaper article setting out the truth." Ultimately, the authorities were forced to row back. "The plot failed," Seif says. "And that was because of the efforts of people like my brother."

That month, Alaa was arrested and brought to a military tribunal. "He was accused of commandeering a tank, and assaulting soldiers that day," Seif says. "The state narrative changed from 'Christians attack military' to 'Alaa was impersonating the military to damage their reputation'. At one protest during Alaa's incarceration, Seif was arrested. "I was taken to the parliament building, and beaten badly. Soldiers kicked me with their boots, smacked the back of my head with guns and batons until I bled."

After much public outcry, Alaa's case was transferred to a civilian court, rather than one controlled by the military. No evidence against him was ever presented, and soon afterwards he was released. All the charges were eventually dropped.

At the time, the harshness of the response Alaa faced seemed inexplicable. But in retrospect, Seif sees a clear cause and effect. "It was one of the first times the military tried to create a conspiracy to destabilise the country, to not have a civilian ruler," she says. "Alaa was one of those responsible for stopping them." At the time Sisi - now Egypt's unelected president - was head of military intelligence. "What they're doing to Alaa now is revenge for when he scuppered the military council's plans."

ver the 11 years that have since passed, Alaa has mostly remained locked up - one of the country's most high-profile political prisoners facing a barrage of spurious charges. In 2014, he was sentenced to five years, found guilty of a list of offences related to unauthorised protesting.

In 2019, he was arrested again, this time for "spreading false news". He was also charged with joining and funding a terrorist organisation. To date, not a single piece of evidence has been produced; Amnesty International has labelled the terror charges "unfounded". After two years of pretrial detention, last December he was sentenced to five years for the false news charge. Amnesty called the trial "grossly unfair", stating that "prison and security officials have subjected him to a catalogue of human rights violations including torture in reprisal for his role in the 2011 revolution ".

"Alaa's priorities had totally changed with fatherhood," Seif says. (He became a father in 2011.) "He wasn't a major figure in any other resistance. But the personal vendetta Sisi has against Alaa meant he was never left alone." Senior figures in Egyptian society appealed directly to Sisi for Alaa's release. "Politicians, journalists, cultural figures and celebrities all tried," says Seif, "which was unprecedented. Each time, Sisi made it clear Alaa's case was not up for discussion."

Seif after being released in 2016. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

At a 2014 protest demanding her brother's release, Seif was again arrested. Alongside 22 other human rights activists, she was convicted of breaching a law banning unauthorised demonstrations. A group of UN special rapporteurs called for their immediate release. This marked the start of three periods of political imprisonment. At this stage, her family's status still offered some protection. "From my cell I could hear and see people being tortured," Seif says. "Prisoners questioned, then cursed and beaten. I heard screams from electrocution, and did all I could to try and stop it." Officers, frustrated they couldn't physically harm Seif, found other ways to torment her. "They would purposely torture people where I could hear," she says. "Officers would enter my cell with a woman prisoner and then beat her up in front of me. They did what they could within their means."

She was transferred to Qanater prison, on the edge of Cairo. "It was dirty," she says. "There was no privacy, including the toilets. You're thrown in and forgotten about. Basics like medication and clothing have to be hard fought for." This first period of imprisonment lasted 15 months.

Seif's father died during that stretch. For 72 days, she was on hunger strike, only consuming water and rehydration sachets. "You become weak, but not hungry," she says. "By day 60 I was fainting. While unconscious, I'd be put on drips, which I'd remove when I woke up."

Seven months after her eventual release, Seif was rearrested. "I don't even remember the stupid reason they gave for sending me to prison that time," she says. (In fact, she was sentenced to six months for "insulting the judiciary ".) "In essence, it was to shut me up and scare me. They wanted me to stop making a fuss about Alaa." At one stage, a quasi-government body offered to pay for Sanaa to study at the New York Film Academy. "But of course I didn't take their money. I couldn't leave Alaa locked away."

Seif's most recent arrest came in June 2020. It was the height of Covid. Not only had visits been stopped in Alaa's prison, he wasn't allowed to send letters to his family. "We had no idea if he was even alive," Seif says. "So my mother, sister and I protested outside the prison. One night the police opened their barricades and women poured in to attack us. We were beaten with sticks and stones." Seif was the violence's primary focus. "My head was wounded; my body covered in bruises. When we went to the public prosecutor to put what happened on the record, I was arrested again, this time on terror charges."

Seif was accused of spreading false news, misuse of social media and incitement to terrorist crimes (for which no evidence has ever been presented), then placed into pretrial detention. In March 2020, she was convicted of spreading false news, misusing social media and insulting a police officer. At the time, Amnesty International said the "Egyptian authorities arbitrarily arrested Seif and have now imprisoned her on bogus charges stemming purely from her peaceful criticism".

During this third and final term of imprisonment, Seif concluded that leaving Egypt was her only option. "The cell I'd been in the first time housed seven of us," she says. "This time, we were 82 women in the same space." Now charged as a terrorist, her treatment also changed. "I was interrogated for hours, with only light clothes on while the AC was on its coldest setting. Neither I nor my lawyer knew what I was being accused of. I was told that whatever happened, nobody would hear or believe me." To this day, Seif has never been presented with any evidence of her supposed offence. "I couldn't comprehend how Alaa was experiencing this for so long," she says.

Most of all, though, Seif had to accept that inside Egypt she was unable to help her brother. "It's not only that the personal price was too high for me," she says. "It's that there was little point. A year and a half in prison over protesting about letters?

Alaa Abdel Fattah and his mother, Laila Soueif, in Cairo in 2014, after Seif was sentenced to prison. Photograph: Mohamed El-Shahed/AFP/Getty Images

"My presence wasn't even useful for my family," she says. "My mum would get lost between the logistics of both of us being in prison. I had to go." Seif's mother was born in England, so the three siblings were able to acquire British passports. On completing her sentence, she was released last December. In March, she left for England.

Now the walls of her London kitchen are covered in lists of meetings and interviews that she must do, and people she needs to contact. She has just returned from Washington DC, where a third round of state department meetings yielded few tangible results.

With Egypt set to host Cop27 next month, Seif and her sister, Mona - also now based in the UK - have once again ramped up efforts for their brother, calling on the British government in particular to increase pressure to secure Alaa's release. On Tuesday, Seif will start a sit-in at Whitehall outside the Foreign Office. "By sitting on their doorstep," she says, "they won't be able to shrug me off any longer. When the British government goes to Egypt next month for Cop, they must return with my brother."

Under Boris Johnson's premiership, the British government was engaging in diplomacy: the case was raised in Johnson's final call with the Egyptian president. In her final days as foreign secretary, Liz Truss wrote to the family, calling the situation a "high priority" and affirming a commitment to securing Alaa's release. Despite this, Seif is adamant more can be done. "There are precedents for prisoners with dual nationality being transferred to their other country," she says. "It has happened with Americans, Australians and French political prisoners. But for it to work, the British state needs to push hard."

A government spokesperson wouldn't comment on whether plans were in place regarding Alaa's case and Cop, instead saying: "The government is working hard to secure Alaa Abd El-Fattah's release, and we continue to raise his case at the highest levels of the Egyptian government. The foreign secretary most recently raised his case when he met Egyptian foreign minister Shoukry at the UN general assembly last month."

Adjusting to life in London over the past seven months hasn't been easy for Seif. "It's more comfortable than prison here, yes, but in some ways it feels like a continuation. It's lonely. All I can focus on is my mission to secure my brother's release. Only when he's here with us can we start to try and make this country home."

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'From my cell I could see people being tortured': Sanaa Seif on fleeing Egypt - and fighting to free her brother

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Since becoming swept up in the revolution of 2011, the British-Egyptian dissident has been imprisoned three times. Now in London, she is campaigning for the release of her brother, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, one of the country's most high-profile political prisoners

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Tourism Threatens Rare Wildlife and Major Biblical Site

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Tourism Threatens Rare Wildlife and Major Biblical Site

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St Catherine's is the world's oldest functioning Christian monastery

It is one of the world's most sacred sites and a safe haven for hundreds of animal species - including a critically endangered leopard. But now there are concerns that the untouched peace of St Catherine Protectorate, a national park in Egypt's Sinai desert, is being irreversibly damaged by a government mega-development that involves the erection of hundreds of new buildings.

The park includes Mount Sinai, where the Bible says Moses received the 10 commandments from God. And next to the peak sits the world's oldest functioning Christian monastery, St Catherine's, which Unesco granted world heritage status in 2002.

This is one of the few areas in the world revered by Muslims, Christians, and Jews. It is where Pope John Paul II visited in 2000, hoping to pray alongside Jewish and Islamic leaders as they entered the new millennium.

And it is home to rare wildlife such as the endemic Sinai Baton Blue - one of the world's smallest butterflies, dependent on unique thyme that grows on mountainside patches within the protectorate. Also present are the Sinai leopard, ibex and caracal.

Now there are fears that these species and hundreds more are threatened by disruptive development includes the building of five hotels, a theatre, a convention hall, an "outdoor celebration plaza", a museum and a youth centre only a few kilometres from Mount Sinai.

Ministers have been reported as saying that their scheme, known as the "Great Transfiguration Project", aims to provide more tourist facilities and link the area to Sharm el-Sheikh. The Red Sea resort, just 50 miles away from St Catherine's, will host global COP27 climate change summit in November.

The first stage of the development is due for completion this month at a cost of four billion Egyptian pounds (£175m). But monks living at St Catherine's Monastery claim to have received no consultation or even notice before construction workers arrived at the site. A monastery spokesperson said the damage caused would be irreversible.

The government's approach to the local Bedouin community has become another source of controversy.

Members of the local Jebeliyya tribe, otherwise known as "The Guardians of St Catherine", have inhabited the area since Roman emperor Justinian built the monastery 1,400 years ago. But government machinery has now bulldozed their cemetery and homes unannounced, say Jebeliyya members.

A local NGO founder, who did not want her name published because she fears for her safety, said: "The landscape of their home is being irretrievably altered. The survival of Bedouin culture in the face of social exclusion has been a matter of concern for decades. The current development of St Catherine threatens to be the final nail in its coffin."

One report suggests a lack of funds could prevent further progress in the current project. But other buildings belonging to the Jebeliyya are due for demolition and they fear retaliation if they were to oppose the development.

A government spokesman said the project would maximise the area's archaeological, environmental and religious value. "Services should be provided for all visitors to this unique place while maintaining the environmental and visual character, besides paying interest to green landscapes, agriculture and urban co-ordination," he said.

But experts in the region's heritage, as well as local communities, are calling for international intervention to stop the project before any more damage is done.

Conservationist John Grainger, who helped to establish the protectorate in 1992, told i: "I'm appalled by what's happening to it. It runs counter to every sense of good taste and appreciation, whether you're a believer or not."

The park is home to many animals including Sinai leopard, ibex and caracal

Joseph Hobbs, an American geography professor who has written books about the area, believes the government's actions risk provoking conflict with the Bedouin. "What do they think is going to be the result, that these are going to be happy campers?" he said. "They're going to be more marginalised and more desperate and poorer than ever because they've been dispossessed.

"The Monastery of St Catherine, Jebel Musa [Mount Sinai], the village where all the Bedouin live - all of that area is part of the site. One of the incumbencies upon World Heritage Site governments is that they keep the values associated with that site in place. This completely throws it out the window.

"It's called the 'Great Transfiguration Project' and that's a good name, because they're going to disfigure this entire area in a way that's just heart-breaking."

Egyptian journalist and researcher Mohannad Sabry notes the personal interest that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has shown in the project, but argues that it is a mistake. "The appeal of St Catherine is the fact that it's absolutely virgin," he said. "You don't have lavish hotels, and all the services that you get, you get from the indigenous people."

Most of the area#s visitors are religious tourists who want to escape conventional tourist hot spots for something quieter, according to Sabry. "It goes completely against the logic of St Catherine and the appeal that makes it a distinct tourism spot in Egypt," he said. "It is a spot that has nothing else like it on God's green Earth."

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A new tourism development threatens rare wildlife and a major biblical site in Egypt

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It is one of the world's most sacred sites and a safe haven for hundreds of animal species - including a critically endangered leopard. But now there are concerns that the untouched peace of St Catherine Protectorate, a national park in Egypt's Sinai desert, is being irreversibly damaged by a government mega-development that involves the erection of hundreds of new buildings.

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The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights have condemned fracking by Shell, Apache and Dana Petroleum in Egypt as dangerous and called for an immediate end to the practice
Fracking has faced criticism worldwide due to concerns that it contaminates drinking water and triggers earthquakes. Now, Egyptians have launched a campaign against Shell's hydraulic fracturing operations in three wells in Egypt's Western Desert. In a press release the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) state that Shell has failed to carry out an environmental impact assessment and is putting local freshwater resources at risk of contamination. They have also asked the Egyptian government to place an immediate moratorium on fracking until it is independently declared safe.

Reem Labib, the Environmental Justice researcher at EIPR explains: "Fracking threatens Egypt's drinking water but Shell and Dana's drilling is mired in secrecy. We don't know the ingredients of the toxic cocktail used, where they plan to source water from, or how the poisonous slurry will be disposed of. The government hasn't published any regulations specific to fracking, the local geological conditions, or how and whether it will monitor and evaluate the impacts of fracking."

Dana Petroleum are fracking in the Nile Valley and EIPR state that leakage of any toxic waste could result in poisonous chemicals flowing into the Nile. This would threaten the lives and livelihoods of the 70 million people who are clustered along the river downstream. As well as concerns about contamination, many worry that Egypt simply doesn't have the water reserves to support such the water-intensive practice of fracking.

EIPR has called on the Egyptian government to place an immediate moratorium on fracking "until appropriate regulation has been developed and comprehensive independent scientific studies have assessed the potential effects based on local geology, including the possibility of fracking chemicals leaking into the groundwater."

Shell has already faced protest for its fracking operations in South Africa, Pennsylvania and New Mexico for contaminating drinking water and lobbying aggressively. Even so, there was a heated debate on Twitter over this was the best use of campaigners time and whether Egyptians should be focusing on more pressing environmental concerns in the country such as poor public transport, over-crowding and pollution.

In an ideal world, there would be time and support for all these concerns. Sadly, there isn't but that shouldn't mean that we criticise any campaign that comes along for not doing enough - we should be encouraging it to make links to the wider problems and helping it raise a more general sense of environmental awareness. Fracking may not be an issue affecting the lives of many Egyptians right now, but I'd rather see a forward thinking campaign looking into (and trying to avoid) the dangers rather than waiting for a fracking-related disaster to make it more relevant to the average Egyptian.
:: Platform London
: Image via Cybergeddeon/openclipart.org
For more on fracking see: Ex-Shell Scientists Insists Israeli Oil Shale Is Still A Possibility Hunting for Fossil Rock in the Arabian Desert Israeli Black Globe Award Went to IEI for Oil Shale Agenda
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Frack Off Shell! Egyptians Launch Anti-Fracking Campaign

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The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights have condemned fracking by Shell, Apache and Dana Petroleum in Egypt as dangerous and called for an immediate end to the practice Fracking has faced criticism worldwide due to concerns that it contaminates drinking water and triggers earthquakes.

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As Cairo Transforms, Egyptians Fight to Save Their Trees

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As Cairo Transforms, Egyptians Fight to Save Their Trees

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As Cairo Transforms, Egyptians Fight to Save Their Trees

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A few months ago, Choucri Asmar decided he wasn’t ready to give up hope. So he led a group of residents in “a peaceful demonstration to protect the trees” of his Cairo neighborhood.

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In the Egyptian desert landscape of Wadi Natrun, 200 students and activists worked in the blistering heat to send a message to world leaders heading to Cancan for the latest climate conference. Placing large black strips on the ground and using florescent jackets, the image of a scarab holding a sun with '350' inside slowly emerged and could even be seen from space. The enormous scarab was a call for leaders to agree to a fair and effective climate deal and also symbolized the potential of solar power as a renewable resource to power Egypt's future.

The Cairo event was designed and organised by the local artist Sarah Rifaat and was one of 12 events around the world by the 350 campaign. Rifaat told the BBC that it was "important that Egypt joined this global call" to tackle climate change.
Devastating Impacts of Climate Change On Egypt
Egypt has a lot to lose from the effects of climate change due low sea levels and scientists have warned that the Nile Delta, which provides a lifeline to the country through agricultural activities could be at stake. In fact, a study commissioned by the Arab Forum for Environment and Development warned that Egypt would be one of the worst affected amongst the Arab countries with 12 million Egyptians at risk due to rising sea levels. Much like the entire MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, Egypt is also at risk of increasing water scarcity.

Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali explained at a recent conference that water scarcity "constitutes a source of deep concern for most Muslim countries given their water poverty, imbalanced demographic growth, arbitrary exploitation of water resources, aggravated pollution, and severe and frequent climate changes, together with associated problems of drought." He added that resolving this issues was one of the 'most important duties' of our time. According to reports, around 1,000 Egyptian youths took part in the climate art event backed by the 350 campaign, which included photo exhibitions to highlight the issue of climate change.
Using Art To Inspire Change & Awareness
The 350 campaign is run by Bill McKibben who spoke to Green Prophet last month and hopes the events will demonstrate the massive public support for bold climate action and the role that art can play in inspiring humanity to protect the planet. "Art can convey in a different way than science the threat that climate change poses to our planet," he explained. "The world's best scientists have tried to wake-up politicians to the climate crisis, now we're counting on artists to help."

The 350 campaign is named after the upper limit of carbon that is safe in the atmosphere and works to reduce the current level which stands at an estimated 380-390 parts per million to 350 ppm. Other pieces of climate art installed for the event- which organisers say is the first international climate art project- included an elephant in New Delhi, a flash flood in Sante Fe and a human hurricane in Mexico City.

:: Image via Ahmed Hayman.
For more on 350 and the impacts of climate change on Egypt see: 350.org's Phil Aroneanu On How To Build An Environmental Movement In The Middle East
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Cairo's Climate Art of Epic Proportions - Green Prophet

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Egyptians joined the 350 campaign to create art and demand bold climate action In the Egyptian desert landscape of Wadi Natrun, 200 students and activists worked in the blistering heat to send a message to world leaders heading to Cancan for the latest climate conference.

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Skin Flick

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My fingers distended as honey dripped from your lips and we danced in a circular motion, 360 video, 15 minutes 21 seconds, 2019

Body Firming Lotion (SuX 2B U), video, 5 minutes 3 seconds, 2017

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Sparkling Life, Pure Water, Healthy World, video, 7 minutes 30 seconds, 2014

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Creating With Factory Waste Curated by Art D'Egypte

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Creating With Factory Waste Curated by Art D'Egypte

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A man on camelback rides past installation work Greetings from Giza at the Great Pyramids of Giza on October 25, 2021 in Giza, Egypt. The work was presented by Art D'Egypte. Photo: IC

In an industrial district close to Egypt's northern coast, colored lights and nine massive luminous artworks made of factory waste materials by seven recycling artists brightened the night.

The artworks, mostly made of scraps of iron, plastic and wood, are on display at the first edition of the Alamein Art Festiva. The festival being held at an industrial park owned by Industrial Development Group (IDG) in the Mediterranean resort city of New Alamein was organized by Art D'Egypte, an Egyptian platform for art and heritage.

The one-month festival, which kicked off on Thursday, seeks to promote the concept of environmental sustainability through art, said Nadine Abdel-Ghaffar, founder of Art D'Egypte and chief organizer of the festival.

"Through their eco-friendly art installations, Egyptian contemporary artists call on people to be aware of conserving the environment and the climate," she told the Xinhua News Agency, adding the event could be seen as a prelude to the 27th session of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) that will be held in Egypt in November.

One of the artworks on display features two large leaves standing side by side inside two opposing metal frames, resembling two pages of an open book. One of the two leaves has a mauve frame and is painted in red, while the other has a red frame and is painted in mauve.

"I connected the two panels of a scrap iron fence to form a shape of a page, sketched a shape of a leaf inside each page and chopped off the surplus materials," veteran Egyptian sculptor Omar Tossoun explained how he created his sculpture A Leaf.

"It sends a message to factories that the materials they deem scraps can be used for good purposes by artists in creating artworks, which can make a place more beautiful," said Tossoun.

In the center of the open-air exhibition area, visitor attention is drawn to a colorful 6-meter-tall shining object that resembles a jellyfish.

It took a month for Marwa Magdy, an artist and assistant professor at the Faculty of Art Education, Helwan University, to finish the artwork called Jellyfish, which took half a ton of wasted iron.

"I use a jellyfish as a symbol for marine life and other organisms living in oceans, as they suffer a lot from environmental pollution. I think we need to recycle all waste in an eco-friendly way and be aware of other organisms' living conditions," Magdy told Xinhua.

The waste materials for the artworks of Magdy and other artists were collected by them during trips to several factories a month before the opening of the festival. The trips were organized by IDG.

Visitors have been impressed by the concept of recycling waste materials into artworks.

"If you look around, the artists have really done very nice works. It is such a brilliant idea to use something that should be discarded and make it into a beautiful piece of art," said Yehia Hamad, one of the visitors.

Art D'Egypte, a privately owned Egyptian multidisciplinary company that provides art consultancy services, has concluded many international art festivals and exhibitions over the past few years.

In 2021, its fourth international exhibition of contemporary art, called Forever is Now, was held at the Pyramids Plateau in Giza, demonstrating the deep global influence of Egypt.

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Egyptian recycling artists turn factory waste into creative artworks

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A man on camelback rides past installation work Greetings from Giza at the Great Pyramids of Giza on October 25, 2021 in Giza, Egypt. The work was presented by Art D'Egypte. Photo: IC In an industrial district close to Egypt's northern coast, colored lights and nine massive luminous artworks made of factory waste materials by seven recycling artists brightened the night.

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Chronicle of a Last Summer By Yasmine El Rashidi

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Chronicle of a Last Summer By Yasmine El Rashidi

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Longlisted for the 2017 PEN Open Book Award

"An eloquent first novel. . . . El Rashidi's portrait of the unrest in her country is brutally vivid." -The New York Times

"A wonderfully observed novel of personal awakening and politics in Cairo." -The Washington Post

"El Rashidi offers a sharply perceptive and judiciously accurate portrait of Egypt's complex culture." -The New York Times Book Review

"Beautiful. . . . Illuminating. . . . Chronicle of a Last Summer's casual, almost offhand form conceals an impressive density of observation. El Rashidi has a great deal to say about the cycles of thawra-revolution-and reaction in modern Egyptian life, and the way those cycles are circumscribed by the larger wheels of family and tradition." - Robert F. Worth, London Review of Books

"El Rashidi finely conjures the world through a child's eyes, with the abruptness and surreality of that perspective. . . . The novel is rich in its quiet implications. . . . An entire nuanced world emanates from these apparently offhand recollections. . . . Chronicle of a Last Summer wastes no words. Every sentence has meaning. . . . In El Rashidi's novel, as in life, the familial and the societal are ultimately inseparable." - Claire Messud, The New York Review of Books

"A remarkably clear, generous, and elegant reading of metropolitan life in Cairo. Yasmine El Rashidi has an extraordinary eye for detail: on the streets of Cairo, at school, at home, in the realm of politics, she captures everything and in the process gives one of the most uncannily clairvoyant and astute portrayals of today's Egypt. The streets are exceptionally dirty, life can be stultifying, cruel, and unsafe, the buildings couldn't be uglier, and the secret police lies in wait just about everywhere. Rashidi has always been unsparing in her frequent bulletins about the Arab Spring and its aftermath in The New York Review of Books. Here she is no less penetrating, though this also happens to be a moving and lyrical account of a young woman's maturation from early girlhood, through adolescence, and adulthood​." - André Aciman, author of Harvard Square

"Yasmine El Rashidi's debut is politically minded, but with a beating heart at its core-a beautiful alchemy between an achingly human coming-of-age story and a political examination of a country with a deep, nuanced history." -ELLE

"A moving and memorable portrait of a girl growing up under a repressive regime, struggling with its imposed silences, and finding her voice. In clear and elegant prose, Chronicle of a Last Summer probes the space in which the personal and the political meet and, at times, collide." - Laila Lalami, author of The Moor's Account

"A moving novel about a woman's coming of age in a country that tried to silence her." -Travel + Leisure

"An elegant snapshot of how one life is lived within the historical storm." - Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

"Original and provocative." -Los Angeles Review of Books

"El Rashidi is a sculptor of language, using words and silence to examine some of our most profound questions about love, family, and the cost of freedom. Chronicle of a Last Summer is more than a story about a young woman's life, it is a testament to the stubborn endurance of hope. Read this beautiful book not to better understand a nation, but to discover a new vocabulary with which to comprehend our complicated human condition." - Maaza Mengiste, author of Beneath the Lion's Gaze

"El Rashidi paints a landscape of life growing up in Cairo that feels so vivid and all-consuming that the reader could simply melt into the narrator and be present. Any American reader who's felt that news stories, like those about Egypt's 2011 revolution and what's followed, seem distant and baffling will finish Chronicle of a Last Summer with a new depth of empathy and understanding."" Chronicle of a Last Summer offers a window on ordinary Egyptian life-both personal and political-across the decades, haunted by the ghosts of the dead and the missing." "A shimmering, nuanced personal and political coming of age story." -BBC.com

"Chronicle of a Last Summer is an elegy for a city and a story of growing up submerged in other people's memories. There are novels that stay with you long after you turn the last page. This is one of them." -"Subtle, powerful. . . . Chronicle of a Last Summer sets itself against any absolutism: it refuses to subsume individual details into grand narratives, especially those promised by the heroic language of revolution."

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Chronicle of a Last Summer by Yasmine El Rashidi: 9780770437312 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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Longlisted for the 2017 PEN Open Book Award "An eloquent first novel. . . . El Rashidi's portrait of the unrest in her country is brutally vivid." -The New York Times "A wonderfully observed novel of personal awakening and politics in Cairo."

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The City Always Wins by Omar Robert Hamilton

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The City Always Wins by Omar Robert Hamilton

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Omar Robert Hamilton is an award-winning filmmaker and writer. He has written for the Guardian, the London Review of Books and Guernica. He co-founded the Mosireen media collective in Cairo and the Palestine Festival of Literature.

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Omar Robert Hamilton author of The City Always Wins | Faber

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Omar Robert Hamilton is an award-winning filmmaker and writer. He has written for the Guardian, the London Review of Books and Guernica. He co-founded the Mosireen media collective in Cairo and the Palestine Festival of Literature.

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The Square, A Documentary by Jehane Noujaim

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The Square, A Documentary by Jehane Noujaim

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Buy Me Filter

"Water will"is an Egyptian company that aims to develop innovative, sustainable Water filters made from natural resources and treated with nano particles to solve the color, taste, smell, bacteria, viruses and impurities of the drinking water of africa in addition to be eco friendly where it can be recycled after using into the production again.Buy me filter is an initiative by the social startup "Water will" where individuals, businesses and organisations can buy a water filter and it will be Gifted to a family that doesn't have access to clean water in Rural Egypt.

get Buy Me Fil...

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Buy Me Filter "Water will"is an Egyptian company that aims to develop innovative, sustainable Water filters made from natural resources and treated with nano particles to solve the color, taste, smell, bacteria, viruses and impurities of the drinking water of africa in addition to be eco friendly where it can be recycled after using into the production again.Buy me filter is an initiative by the social startup "Water will" where individuals, businesses and organisations can buy a water filter and it will be Gifted to a family that doesn't have access to clean water in Rural Egypt.

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Nyombi Morris, a climate activist from Uganda and a UNOCHA Ambassador, told the BBC: "When polluters dominate climate negotiations, we don't get good results. As an African activist, I am concerned that more of our lakes are going to be filled with plastics again."

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COP27: Activists 'baffled' that Coca-Cola will be sponsor

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Nyombi Morris, a climate activist from Uganda and a UNOCHA Ambassador, told the BBC: "When polluters dominate climate negotiations, we don't get good results. As an African activist, I am concerned that more of our lakes are going to be filled with plastics again."

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Greenwashing A Police State by Naomi Klein

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Greenwashing A Police State by Naomi Klein

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o one knows what happened to the lost climate letter. All that is known is this: Alaa Abd El-Fattah, one of Egypt's most high-profile political prisoners, wrote it while on a hunger strike in his Cairo prison cell last month. It was, he explained later, "about global warming because of the news from Pakistan". He was concerned about the floods that displaced 33 million people, and what that cataclysm foretold about climate hardships and paltry state responses to come.

A visionary technologist and intellectual, Abd El-Fattah's first name - along with the hashtag #FreeAlaa - have become synonymous with the 2011 pro-democracy revolution that turned Cairo's Tahrir Square into a surging sea of young people that ended the three-decade rule of Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak. Behind bars almost continuously for the past decade, Abd El-Fattah is able to send and receive letters once a week. Earlier this year, a collection of his prison writings was published as the widely celebrated book You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.

Abd El-Fattah's family and friends live for those weekly letters. Especially since 2 April, when he started a hunger strike, ingesting only water and salt at first, and then just 100 calories a day (the body needs closer to 2,000). Abd El-Fattah's strike is a protest against his imprisonment for the crime of "spreading false news" - ostensibly because he shared a Facebook post about the torture of another prisoner. Everyone knows, however, that his imprisonment is intended to send a message to any future young revolutionaries who get democratic dreams in their heads. With his strike, Abd El-Fattah is attempting to pressure his jailers to grant important concessions, including access to the British consulate (Abd El-Fattah's mother was born in England, so he was able to obtain British citizenship). His jailers have so far refused, and so he continues to waste away. "He has become a skeleton with a lucid mind," his sister Mona Seif said recently.

The longer the hunger strike wears on, the more precious those weekly letters become. For his family, they are nothing less than proof of life. Yet on the week he wrote about climate breakdown, the letter never made it to Abd El-Fattah's mother, Laila Soueif, a human rights defender and intellectual in her own right. Perhaps, he speculated in subsequent correspondence to her, his jailer had "spilled his coffee over the letter". More likely, it was deemed to touch on forbidden "high politics" - even though Abd El-Fattah says he was careful not to so much as mention the Egyptian government, or even "the upcoming conference".

That last bit is important. It's a reference to the fact that next month, beginning on 6 November, the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt will play host to this year's United Nations climate summit, Cop27. Tens of thousands of delegates - world leaders, ministers, envoys, appointed bureaucrats, as well as climate activists, NGO observers and journalists - will descend on the city, their chests bedecked in lanyards and colour-coded badges.

Which is why that lost letter is significant. There is something unbearably moving about the thought of Abd El-Fattah - despite the decade of indignities he and his family have suffered - sitting in his cell thinking about our warming world. There he is, slowly starving, yet still worrying about floods in Pakistan and extremism in India and crashing currency in the UK and Lula's presidential candidacy in Brazil, all of which get a mention in his recent letters, shared with me by his family.

There is also, frankly, something shaming about it. Because while Abd El-Fattah thinks about the world, it's not at all clear that the world heading to Egypt for the climate summit is thinking much about him. Or about the estimated 60,000 other political prisoners behind bars in Egypt, where barbaric forms of torture reportedly take place on an " assembly line". Or about the Egyptian human rights and environmental activists, as well as critical journalists and academics, who have been harassed, spied on and barred from travel as part of what Human Rights Watch calls Egypt's "general atmosphere of fear" and " relentless crackdown on civil society".

The Egyptian regime is eager to celebrate its official climate "youth leaders", holding them up as symbols of hope in the battle against warming. But it's hard not to think of the courageous youth leaders of the Arab spring, many of them now prematurely aged by more than a decade of state violence and harassment from systems that are lavishly bankrolled by military aid from western powers, particularly the US. It's almost as if those activists have just been substituted by newer, less troublesome models.

"I'm the ghost of spring past," Abd El-Fattah wrote about himself in 2019. That ghost will haunt the coming summit, sending a chill through its every high-minded word. The silent question it poses is stark: if international solidarity is too weak to save Abd El-Fattah - the symbol of a generation's dreams - what hope do we have of saving a habitable home?

ohammed Rafi Arefin, assistant professor of geography at the University of British Columbia, who has researched urban environmental politics in Egypt, points out that "every United Nations climate summit presents a complex calculus of costs and benefits". There is the carbon spewed into the atmosphere as delegates travel there, the price of two weeks in hotels (steep for grassroots organisations), and the public relations bonanza enjoyed by the host government, which invariably positions itself as an eco-champion, never mind evidence to the contrary.

Yet there are also benefits: the fact that, for those two weeks, the climate crisis makes global news, often providing media platforms for powerful voices on the frontlines, from the Brazilian Amazon to Tuvalu. And there is the international networking and solidarity that takes place when local organisers in the host country stage counter-summits and "toxic tours" to reveal the reality behind their government's green posturing. And, of course, there are the deals that get negotiated and funds that are pledged to the poorest and worst affected. But these are non-binding, and as Greta Thunberg so memorably put it, much of it has amounted to little more than "Blah, blah, blah".

With the upcoming climate summit in Egypt, Arefin tells me, "The usual calculus has changed. The balance has tipped." In addition to the carbon and the cost, the host government - who will get the chance to preen green before the world - is not your standard double-talking liberal democracy. "It is," he says, "the most repressive regime in the history of the modern Egyptian state." Led by Gen Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, who seized power in a military coup in 2013 (and has held on to it through sham elections ever since), the regime is, according to human rights organisations, one of the most brutal and repressive in the world. Since taking power less than a decade ago, it has built more than two dozen new prisons.

Of course, you'd never know it from the way Egypt is marketing itself ahead of the summit. A promotional video on the Cop27 official website welcomes delegates to the "green city" of Sharm el-Sheik and shows young actors - including men with scruffy beards and necklaces clearly meant to look like environmental activists - enjoying non-plastic straws and biodegradable food containers as they take selfies on the beach, enjoy outdoor showers and drive electric vehicles to the desert to ride camels.

While I was watching the video, it struck me that Sisi has decided to use the summit to stage a new kind of reality show, one in which actors "play" activists who look remarkably like the actual activists who are suffering under torture in his rapidly expanding archipelago of prisons. This summit is going far beyond greenwashing a polluting state - it's greenwashing a police state.

The Egyptian communities and organisations most affected by environmental pollution and rising temperatures will be nowhere to be found in Sharm el-Sheikh. There will be no toxic tours, or lively counter-summits, where locals get to school international delegates about the truth behind their government's PR. Organising events like this would land Egyptians in prison for spreading "false news" or for violating the protest ban.

International delegates can't even read up much on current pollution and environmental despoliation in Egypt in academic or NGO reports because of a draconian 2019 law that requires researchers to get government permission before releasing information considered "political". (The whole country is gagged, and hundreds of websites are blocked, including the indispensable and perennially harassed Mada Masr.) Human Rights Watch reports that groups have been forced to rein in and scale back their research under these new constraints, and "one prominent Egyptian environmental group disbanded its research unit because it became impossible to work in the field". Tellingly, not a single one of the environmentalists who spoke to Human Rights Watch about censorship and repression was willing to use their real name because reprisals are so severe.

Arefin, who conducted extensive research on waste and flooding in Egyptian cities before this latest round of censorious laws, told me that he and other critical academics and journalists "are no longer able to do that work. Egypt's environmental harms now happen in the dark." And those who break the rules and try to turn on the lights end up in dark cells - or worse.

Abd El-Fattah's sister Mona Seif, who has spent years lobbying for her brother's release and for the release of other political prisoners, wrote recently on Twitter: "The reality most of those participating in #Cop27 are choosing to ignore is ... in countries like #Egypt your true allies, the ones who actually give a damn about the planet's future are those languishing in prisons."

So, unlike every other climate summit in recent memory, this one will have no authentic local partners. There will be some Egyptians at the summit claiming to represent "civil society". And some of them do. The trouble is that, however well-intentioned, they too are bit players in Sisi's beachside reality show; in a departure of usual UN rules, almost all have been vetted and approved by the government. That same Human Rights Watch report, published last month, explains that these groups have been invited to speak only on "welcome" topics.

What, for the regime, is welcome? "Trash collection, recycling, renewable energy, food security, and climate finance". What topics are unwelcome? "Those that point out the government's failure to protect people's rights against damage caused by corporate interests, including issues relating to water security, industrial pollution, and environmental harm from real estate, tourism development, and agribusiness," according to the report. Also unwelcome: "The environmental impact[s] of Egypt's vast and opaque military business activity ... are particularly sensitive, as are 'national' infrastructure projects such as a new administrative capital, many of which are associated with the president's office or the military." And definitely don't talk about Coca-Cola's plastic pollution and water use - because Coke is one of the summit's proud official sponsors.

In short, if you want to put up solar panels or pick up litter, you can probably get a badge to come to Sharm el-Sheikh. But if you want to talk about the health and climate impacts of Egypt's coal-powered cement plants, or the paving over of some of the last green spaces in Cairo, you are more likely to get a visit from the secret police - or from the Ministry of Social Solidarity. And if, as an Egyptian, you question Sisi's credibility to speak on behalf of Africa's poor and climate-vulnerable populations, given the deepening hunger and desperation of his own people, you had better do it from outside the country.

o far, hosting the summit has proved nothing short of a bonanza for Sisi, a man Donald Trump reportedly referred to as my "favourite dictator". There is the boon to coastal tourism, which crashed in recent years, and the regime is clearly hoping its videos of outdoor showers and camel rides will inspire more. But that's just the beginning of the green gold rush. Late last month, British International Investment (BII), which is backed by the UK government, giddily announced that it was "investing $100m to support local startups" in Egypt. It is also the majority owner in Globeleq, which ahead of Cop27 has announced an $11bn deal to build up green hydrogen production in Egypt. At the same time, the BII stressed its "commitment to strengthen its partnership with Egypt and increase climate finance to support the country's green growth".

This is the same government that appears to have done very little to secure the release of Abd El-Fattah, despite his British citizenship and his hunger strike. Unfortunately for him, Abd El-Fattah's fate was for months in the hands of Liz Truss who, before becoming Britain's spectacularly callous and inept prime minister, was its spectacularly callous and inept foreign secretary. She could have used some of those billions in investment and development aid to leverage the release of a fellow citizen. (Last week, Gillian Keegan, minister for Africa at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, reported that she had met Egypt's ambassador to the UK for the first time, and "raised the case of Alaa Abd El-Fattah".)

Germany's moral failures are equally dismal. When Green party co-leader Annalena Baerbock became the country's first female foreign minister last December, she announced a new "values-based foreign policy" - one that would prioritise human rights and climate concerns. Germany is one of Egypt's major donors and trading partners, so, like the UK, it certainly has a card to play. But instead of pressure on human rights, Baerbock has provided Sisi with priceless propaganda opportunities, including co-hosting the Petersberg Climate Dialogue with him in Berlin in July, at which the ruthless dictator was able to rebrand himself as a green leader.

And given the difficulties caused by Germany's reliance on Russian gas, Egypt is eagerly positioning itself to provide replacement gas and hydrogen. Meanwhile, German giant Siemens Mobility has announced a "historic" multibillion-dollar contract to build electrified high-speed trains across Egypt.

The international injections of green cash are flowing just in time for Sisi's troubled regime. Facing a tsunami of global crises (inflation, pandemic, food shortages, increased fuel prices, drought, debt) on top of its systemic mismanagement and corruption, Egypt is on the edge of defaulting on its foreign debt - a volatile situation that could well destabilise Sisi's rule. In this context, the climate summit is not merely a PR opportunity - it is a lifeline.

Though reluctant to give up on the process, most serious climate activists readily concede that these summits produce little by way of science-based climate action. Year after year since they began, emissions keep going up. What, then, is the good of supporting this year's summit when the one thing it is set to absolutely accomplish is the further entrenchment and enrichment of a regime that, by any ethical standard, deserves pariah status?

As Arefin asks: "At what point do we say 'enough'?"

or months, Egyptians in exile in Europe and the US have been pleading with NGOs to put their country's political prisoners on the agenda of negotiations leading up to the summit. But that was never prioritised.

They were told that this is "Africa's Cop" (Cop stands for Conference of the Parties, or signatories to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change); and that, despite all the prior failures, this Cop, the 27th, would finally get serious about "implementation" and "loss and damage" - UN-speak for the hope that the wealthy, high-polluting countries will finally pay what they owe to poor nations, like Pakistan, that have contributed next to nothing in carbon emissions, yet are bearing the bulk of the soaring costs.

The clear implication has been that the summit is too serious and too important to be sidetracked by the supposedly small matter of the host country's human rights record. But is Cop27 really going to champion climate justice? Is it going to bring green energy and clean transit and food sovereignty to the poor? Will the summit truly confront climate debt and reparations, as many are claiming? If only.

The case for climate reparations is obvious, writes Egyptian journalist, film-maker, and novelist Omar Robert Hamilton, in a magisterial essay. "The harder question is how to design a system of reparations that does not entrench authoritarian state powers" - one that ensures that the funds actually contribute to genuinely post-carbon policies. "This should be at the core of Cop negotiations between southern and northern countries - [but] the ones doing the negotiating for the south tend to be authoritarian state powers whose short-term interests are even more graspingly fragile than those of oil executives."

In short, despite the talk in climate circles of this being the "implementation" Cop, Egypt's summit will probably achieve as little by way of real climate action as all the others before. But that does not mean it won't achieve anything: when it comes to propping up a torture regime, showering it with cash and image-cleansing photo ops, Cop27 is already a lavish gift.

Abd El-Fattah has long been a symbol of Egypt's violently extinguished revolution. But as the summit approaches, he is becoming symbolic of something else, too: the "sacrifice zone" mentality at the heart of the climate crisis. This is the idea that some places and some people can be unseen, discounted and written off - all in the name of progress. We've seen the mentality at work when communities are poisoned to extract and refine fossil fuels and minerals. We've seen it when those communities are sacrificed in the name of getting a climate bill passed that does not protect them. And now we are seeing it in the context of an international climate summit, with the rights of the people living in the host country sacrificed and unseen in the name of the mirage of "real progress" in the negotiations.

If last year's summit in Glasgow was about "blah, blah, blah", this one's meaning, even before it starts, is more ominous. This summit is about blood, blood, blood. The blood of the roughly 1,000 protesters massacred by Egyptian forces to secure power for its current ruler. The blood of those who continue to be assassinated. The blood of those beaten in the streets and tortured in prisons. The blood of people like Abd El-Fattah.

There may still be time to change that script, and for the summit to become a searchlight that illuminates the connections between surging authoritarianism and climate chaos around the world - like the way far-right leaders such as Italy's Giorgia Meloni stoke fear of refugees, including those fleeing climate breakdown, to fuel their rise, and how the EU showers brutal leaders such as Sisi with cash so that he continues to prevent Africans from reaching their shores. There is still time to make the case that climate justice is impossible without political freedoms.

"Unlike me, you have not yet been defeated." Alaa Abd El-Fattah wrote those words in 2017. He had been invited to deliver a speech to RightsCon, the annual confab about human rights in the digital age sponsored by all the big tech companies. The conference was taking place in the US, but because Abd El-Fattah was behind bars in the notorious Tora prison (it had been four years at that point), he sent a letter instead. It's a brilliant text, about the imperative to protect the internet as a space of creativity, experimentation and freedom. And it is also a challenge to those who are not (yet) behind bars, who have the freedom to do things like travelling to conferences to talk about justice and democracy and human rights. In that freedom lies responsibility. A responsibility not just to be free, but also to act free, to use freedom to its full transformational potential, before it's too late.

As tens of thousands of relatively free Cop27 delegates prepare to fly to Sharm el-Sheikh, checking the average November temperatures (highs of 28C), packing appropriately (light shirts, sandals, a bathing suit - because you never know), Abd El-Fattah's words about the responsibilities that come with being undefeated take on a new urgency. Given the intensive surveillance and threat that Egyptians attending the summit will be facing, how will the foreigners attending deploy their freedom? Their state of being not yet defeated?

Will they behave as if Egypt is merely a backdrop, not an actual country where people just like them have fought and died for the same freedoms they have, and against the same economic interests that are destabilising our planetary and political climates? Or will they find ways to bring some of the gruesome truths of Egypt's prisons into the green glitz of the conference centre? Speak some of the names of the prisoners? Will they search out the few remaining civil society organisations in Cairo - such as those who came together under copcivicspace.net - and see how they can help?

Abd El-Fattah would be the first to say that what's needed is neither pity nor charity. Rather, as a committed internationalist who has stood in solidarity with many struggles, from Chiapas to Palestine, he called for comrades in a battle that has fronts in every nation. "We reach out to you," he wrote in that RightsCon letter from prison, "not in search of powerful allies but because we confront the same global problems, and share universal values, and with a firm belief in the power of solidarity."

Anti-democratic and fascistic forces are surging around the world. In country after country, freedoms are precarious or slipping away. And all of this is connected. Political tides move in waves across borders, for better and for worse - which is why international solidarity can never be sacrificed in the name of expediency for some greater goal of "progress". Egypt's revolution was inspired by Tunisia's, and in turn, "the spirit of Tahrir" spread around the world. It helped inspire other youth-led movements in Europe and North America, including Occupy Wall Street, which in turn helped birth new anti-capitalist and eco-socialist politics. In fact, you can draw a pretty straight line from Tahrir to Occupy, to Bernie Sanders's 2016 US presidential campaign, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's election to Congress and her championing of the Green New Deal.

here human rights are under attack, so too is the natural world. After all, the communities and organisations facing the most severe state repression and violence around the world - whether they live in the Philippines or Canada or Brazil or the US - are overwhelmingly made up of Indigenous peoples trying to protect their territories from polluting extractive projects, many of which are also driving the climate crisis. Defending human rights, wherever we live, is therefore inextricable from defending a liveable planet.

Moreover, the extent to which some governments are finally introducing meaningful climate legislation is also bound up with political freedoms. The US Senate and the Biden administration have finally been dragged into passing the Inflation Reduction Act - flawed as it is. This happened as a direct result of public pressure, investigative journalism, civil disobedience, sit-ins in legislative offices, lawsuits and every other tool available in the nonviolent arsenal. And, ultimately, lawmakers got together to pass the act because they feared what would happen when they faced voters in November if they came to them empty-handed. If US politicians did not have to fear the public, because the public had a greater fear of them, none of this would have happened at all.

One thing is certain: we will not win the kind of change that the climate crisis demands without the freedom to demonstrate, sit in, shame political leaders and tell the truth in public. If demonstrations are banned and inconvenient facts are criminalised as "false news", as they are in Sisi's Egypt, then it's game over. Without the strikes, the protests and the investigative research, we would be in far worse shape than we are. And any one of those activities would be enough to land an Egyptian activist or journalist in a dark cell next to Abd El-Fattah's.

When news came that the next UN climate summit would be taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egyptian activists, inside the country and in exile, could have called on the climate movement to boycott it. They chose not to, for a variety of reasons. But they did ask for solidarity. The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, for instance, called on the international community to use the summit "to shed more light on the crimes being committed in Egypt and urge the Egyptian authorities to change course". There were high hopes that North American and European activists would push their governments to make their attendance and participation conditional on Egypt meeting basic human-rights requirements - including amnesty for prisoners of conscience in jail for "crimes" such as organising a demonstration, or posting an unflattering statement about the regime, or receiving a foreign grant.

So far, with less than a month before the summit starts, the response from the global climate movement has been muted. Many groups have added their names to petitions; a handful of articles about the human rights situation during the summit have appeared; climate activists in Germany, many of them Egyptian exiles, have held small protests with signs saying "No Cop27 Until Alaa is Free" and "No Greenwashing Egypt's Prisons". But we have seen nothing like the kind of the international pressure that would worry Egypt's rulers.

It's hard to overstate the totalising nature of Sisi's war on civil society. Human Rights Watch reports that, "In 2014... Sisi amended, by decree, the penal code to punish with life in prison or death sentence anyone requesting, receiving, or assisting the transfer of funds, whether from foreign sources or local organisations, with the aim of doing work that harms a 'national interest' or the country's independence or undermining public security or safety." The death sentence for receiving a grant. And yet all of the major US and European foundations will be in Sharm el-Sheikh, meeting with groups that they fund, and others that they might consider funding, inside a country where taking any of that money to tell the truth about environmental despoliation in Egypt can cost you your life.

This is all a bit baffling. Why invite funders and green groups to Egypt when the regime has such obvious hostility toward these very activities domestically? The truth - uncomfortable for all who will be in attendance - is that nothing would serve Sisi more than to turn Sharm el-Sheik into a kind of nonprofit petting zoo, where international climate activists and funders can spend two weeks shouting about north-south injustice before the cameras, with a few state-approved local groups thrown in for authenticity's sake. Why? Because then Egypt would look like something it most emphatically is not: a free and democratic society. A good source for your natural gas. Or a country suitable to entrust with a new IMF loan.

By all accounts, the Egyptian government is frantically building a bubble in Sharm el-Sheikh, where it will impersonate something that looks sort of like a democracy. The question facing civil society groups is: will you play along - or will you do what you can to disrupt the show?

n all the plans for next month's Coca-Cola-sponsored climate summit, the most chilling detail is surely the announcement that this will be the first such gathering to have a Children and Youth Pavilion inside the official venue: a dedicated space that "will provide a convening place of talks, education, creativity, policy briefings, rest and relaxation, bringing together the voices of young people across the world". This will allow youth to - get this - "speak truth to power".

I have no doubt that many young people in that pavilion will deliver powerful speeches, as they did in Glasgow and at climate summits before. Young people have become true climate leaders, and they have injected desperately needed urgency and moral clarity into many official climate spaces. That same moral clarity is needed now.

A decade ago, young Egyptians didn't have a state-sanctioned pavilion. They had a revolution. They flooded Tahrir Square demanding a different kind of country, one without the ever-present shadow of fear, one where teenagers didn't disappear into police dungeons and reappear dead, their faces swollen and bloodied. That revolution overthrew a dictator who had ruled since before they were born. But then their dreams were crushed by political betrayals and violence. In one of his recent letters, Abd El-Fattah wrote of how painful it is to share his cell with teenagers who were arrested when they were children: "They were underage when they were put in prison and are fighting to get out before they reach legal adulthood."

One of the teens who helped take over the square in 2011 was Abd El-Fattah's extraordinary younger sister Sanaa Seif. Just 17 at the time, Sanaa co-founded a revolutionary newspaper, Al Gornal, which published tens of thousands of copies and became a kind of voice of Tahrir. She also was an editor and camera person on the Oscar-nominated 2013 documentary film The Square. She has herself been imprisoned multiple times for speaking out against human rights abuses and for demanding her brother's release. In an interview, she told me that she has a message for the young activists headed for that pavilion: "We tried. We did speak truth to power." Now, she says, many activists are spending their 20s in prison. "When you go, remember that you can be the voice of other young people ... Please, let's maintain that heritage. Please do actually speak truth to power. It will have impact ... eyes are on you."

But as the climate summit draws near, and Abd El-Fatah's hunger strike wears on, Sanaa is losing patience with the large green groups that have so far been silent, seemingly out of fear of losing their badges or being stopped at the border. "Honestly I'm fed up with the hypocrisy of the climate movement," she wrote on Twitter last week. "Outcries have been pouring from Egypt for months warning that this #COP27 will go far beyond greenwashing, that the ramifications on us will be horrible. Yet most are choosing to ignore the human rights situation."

This, she pointed out, is why climate activism is often seen as an elite exercise, disconnected from people with urgent daily concerns - such as getting their family members out of jail. "You're guaranteeing that #ClimateAction remains an alien notion exclusive to the few who have the luxury to think beyond today," she wrote. "Mitigating climate change and fighting for human rights are interlinked struggles, they shouldn't be separated. Especially since we're dealing with a regime that is propped up by companies like BP and Eni. And really, how hard is it to raise both issues? #FreeThemAll #FreeAlaa."

It isn't hard - but it does take courage. The message activists should bring to the climate summit, whether they travel to Egypt or engage from afar, is simple: unless political freedoms are defended, there will be no meaningful climate action. Not in Egypt, nor anywhere else. These issues are intertwined, as are our fates.

The hour is late, but there is still just enough time to get this right. Human Rights Watch argues that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat, which sets the rules for these summits, should "develop human rights criteria that countries hosting future Cops must commit to meeting as part of the host agreement". That's too late for this summit, but it's not too late for all of those who are concerned about climate justice to show solidarity with the revolutionaries who inspired millions around the world a decade ago, when they toppled a tyrant. There might even be time to scare Sisi enough with the prospect of a green PR nightmare by the Red Sea that he could decide to open the doors of some of his dungeons before all those cameras arrive. Because, as Alaa Abd El-Fattah reminds us from the desperation of his cell, we have not yet been defeated.
This article first appeared in the Intercept Damian Carrington, Tess Khan and Ed Miliband will discuss Cop27 and the commitments that might be made there at a Guardian Live online event on 9 November 2022, 8pm-9pm GMT. Book tickets for the live stream at theguardian.com/guardianlive

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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Greenwashing a police state: the truth behind Egypt's Cop27 masquerade | Naomi Klein

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The long read: Sisi's Egypt is making a big show of solar panels and biodegradable straws ahead of next month's climate summit - but in reality the regime imprisons activists and bans research. The climate movement should not play along

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British Museum Urged To Drop BP Sponsor Deal For Egypt exhibition

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British Museum Urged To Drop BP Sponsor Deal For Egypt exhibition

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Campaigners including the musician Brian Eno, the author Ahdaf Soueif and the actor Miriam Margolyes have criticised BP's sponsorship of an exhibition of Egyptian artefacts at the British Museum.

The exhibition opens shortly before the critical Cop27 climate summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh this November.

The campaigners argue that "BP has partnered closely with successive governments and regimes in Egypt," and that laws restricting freedom of expression and protest rights have quashed any potential pushback against BP's fossil fuel extraction projects in the country.

In an open letter from Culture Unstained, a campaign group which focuses on ties between fossil fuel companies and the arts sector, to the British Museum signed by Eno, Soueif and Margolyes among others, the group said the institution "should not celebrate Egypt's cultural past while ignoring the human rights situation in the present, or the climate impacts Egypt faces in the future".

Culture Unstained protested against the opening of the exhibition by reading extracts from You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, a book of essaysby jailed British-Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who will reach 200 days on hunger strike in protest at his detention conditions in the weeks prior to Cop27. Abd El-Fattah, a figurehead of Egypt's 2011 uprising, recently warned his family that he expects he will die behind bars.

The British Museum, which houses many treasures from ancient Egypt due to be displayed as part of an exhibition on hieroglyphs including the Rosetta Stone, has drawn extensive criticism for its ties to BP since the British multinational fossil fuel company began sponsoring the museum in 2016, including from its own staff.

BP has strong commercial ties with Egypt, partially due to the country's large natural gas reserves. An Egyptian government report of a visit earlier this year between BP's chief executive, Bernard Looney, and the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, described how Looney had lauded the president's "wise leadership and ambitious vision".

Since coming to power in a military coup in 2013, Sisi has overseen a profound crackdown on free expression and human rights. Under his rule, public dissent is all but prohibited, although Egypt has tentatively stated it will allow protests during Cop27 in an area adjacent to the conference centre.

In the period after the coup that brought Sisi to power, BP announced an exploration project worth $240m (£215m), and it has since established deep involvement in at least two key Egyptian natural gas fields in the Mediterranean.

This includes natural gas projects in the town of Idku near the Egyptian coast, which drew protests prior to Sisi coming to power that were quashed after the coup. "BP sponsoring this exhibition is playing into an image that the Egyptian regime would like us to buy into, and helps BP to present its expanding gas operations in Egypt in a positive light," said Chris Garrard of Culture Unstained. "But we know that communities there resisted and opposed this on the ground, and we want to shine a light on what they did."

Garrard said his organisation was seeking to provide a platform for protests that couldn't take place in Egypt, particularly around the fate of Abd El-Fattah, despite the exhibition aiming to focus on Egypt's distant past. "I think the responsibility of those of us in the UK is to think critically, we learn about ancient Egypt and the pyramids in school but we need to look beyond this," he said.

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The British Museum told the Guardian: "BP are a longstanding corporate partner, and their current contract with us runs until 2023. Museums today have a mixed funding model and we need corporate and private money to fulfil our public mission, to deliver unique learning experiences. The past couple of years have shown how precarious the financial situation can be. Support from the corporate sector is essential for museums and arts organisations in times of reduced funding. This support means we can successfully plan exhibitions long-term and deliver public benefit for millions of people."

David Nicholas, a spokesperson for BP said: "BP has supported the British Museum for over 25 years - this has included supporting around 20 special exhibitions as well as displays and touring exhibitions, covering a wide variety of subjects. And we have been operating in Egypt for almost 60 years supporting Egypt's growing demand for energy, and are one of the largest investors into its energy industry."The author Omar Robert Hamilton, one of the signatories of Culture Unstained's letter to the British Museum and a cousin of Abd El-Fattah, said: "The Egyptian regime relies a great deal on the country's ancient past to obscure their present horrors. BP, on the other hand, works hard to rewrite its past to obscure future horrors. The British Museum seems happy to help on both fronts, and has long been a useful accomplice in laundering both their reputations."

Egypt is due to host the UN's conference of the parties, or Cop27, in early November. "As hosts of the summit, the Egyptian government is seeking to present itself as a progressive leader on climate change. In reality, the ongoing violent crackdown and restrictions on freedom of assembly and expression severely undermine the meaningful participation of civil society at the summit," said Culture Unstained.

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British Museum urged to drop BP sponsor deal for Egypt exhibition

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Campaigners including the musician Brian Eno, the author Ahdaf Soueif and the actor Miriam Margolyes have criticised BP's sponsorship of an exhibition of Egyptian artefacts at the British Museum. The exhibition opens shortly before the critical Cop27 climate summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh this November.

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In post-revolution Egypt, a fierce fight over coal imports

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In the months following the overthrow of former President Mohammed Morsi in July 2013, the biggest, most public cabinet-level political battle in Egypt wasn't about terrorism, human rights or the ongoing political transition. Instead, it was about something seemingly far more prosaic: coal. The fight to preserve a long-standing ban on coal imports galvanized Egypt's [...]

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Goodbye To The House My Grandmother Built by Yasmine El Rashidi

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Goodbye To The House My Grandmother Built by Yasmine El Rashidi

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Ms. El Rashidi, a journalist and novelist, is a long-time resident of Cairo.

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Credit... João Fazenda

CAIRO - I spent the three days of Egypt's presidential elections late last month packing up and carrying out, with my brother, the final items of our lifelong home - a 22-room villa my grandmother had built in Cairo in 1940, along the banks of the River Nile. It was where my mother was born and lived her whole life. And I as well.

My grandmother, Esmat, had dreamed of a house that would withstand generations, and when she married, she forewent standard bridal gifts in exchange for money to save toward building it. First, in 1938, she bought the land; then, she had the concrete and metal fence constructed around it. Soon enough came the house itself.

It took up almost an entire block on the residential island of Zamalek, with extended and (at first) unobstructed views of agricultural lands and the Nile. The gardens were lined with mango trees; a fig tree and an olive tree stood at opposite corners, planted out of the belief that they would give the house a longer life.

Back in the 1920s, modernism embodied the imagination of a newly independent state, and in the 30s, the early years of Egyptian nationalism, my grandmother, a politically inclined and strong-willed feminist, commissioned the architect Ali Labib Gabr, the dean of Cairo University's architecture school and a pioneering architect in Egypt, to design the house under her direction.

The author's grandmother at the back door of her home in 1942. Credit... Yasmine El Rashidi Family Photograph

He mixed large arches and multileveled floors, majestic wood-and-glass-paneled doors that disappeared into the walls, vast windows that brought the garden into the house and small windows of different shapes and configurations. It was Modern verging on Art Deco, with the exception of two grand rooms for entertaining that were embellished with ornate cornices and other detailing in the French Beaux-Arts style still most widely favored at the time. Every aspect was carefully considered, including the bathroom tiles that curved at the corners rather than meeting at the edges.

The house came to be widely documented, and listed as part of the city's architectural heritage, legally never to be altered or demolished. It became a landmark in the neighborhood, as well as, perhaps, the most dominant character in all our lives.

Growing up, I always thought of the house as ours. My mother, the youngest of four siblings, had been the last to marry, and when that time came, rather than leaving her aging, widowed mother to live alone, she stayed. The house was formally divided into two floors, and my mother moved back from the south side of the house into the bedroom she was born in, now with my father. It is there that she slept - alone again, after my parents divorced in 2001 - during all the years until she moved out on March 23.

I grew up upstairs with my parents and elder brother, and my brother and I occupied the house like it was ours alone. We ran up and down the backstairs two steps at a time, played hide-and-seek everywhere - taking cover in fireplaces and secret rooftop rooms, squeezing into a dumbwaiter - and opened the doors of the garden each afternoon to play with neighborhood children. We took over the basement for experiments; my brother housed a mini-zoo on the roof, with gazelles, rabbits, pigeons, guinea fowl, myna birds and parrots. We spent hours, which made up weeks of our lives, tapping at walls, floors and steps in search of an echo that might reveal the cavity where my grandmother was said to have buried a box of treasures.

It was after my grandmother died in 1984, just a few years into President Hosni Mubarak's three decades in power, that I came to learn the house would never be entirely ours. Inheritance laws adhered to Islamic jurisprudence, and Esmat's one son would get more than my mother or her two sisters. Many cousins soon got involved.

In those years, other nearby villas were sold and demolished, and the cityscape around us drastically changed. High-rises replaced gardens, two or three to a single plot of land. Our house was sought after - not for its architectural value, but because developers saw it as sitting on prime land along the Nile. Second to buying it out ourselves, which we couldn't afford, placing it in the hands of a buyer who would preserve it was the best we could do, and that task became a mission for my mother, pitting her against her family in a standoff that lasted 30 years.

In my early 20s, as the country was beginning to reform economically and I was starting to write, I moved downstairs, inhabiting my grandmother's floor, and my brother and I took on the cause of protecting the house ourselves. We searched widely for possible patrons who might make our home their own or turn it into a cultural center, a library or a museum. The interest that came, when it did, was always from abroad. Egyptian businessmen and patrons of culture seemed intent on investing in new developments, suburbs and multimillion-dollar modern homes, but not the center of the historic city, not the heritage already there.

For 30 years the garden bell rang with real estate agents promising "respectable" buyers. Every deal fell through, and it seemed like the house might stay in this limbo forever. I wrote the house into my novel in 2014: It was the only true-to-life character in the book, and the only thing in my life, and the neighborhood, that seemed unchanged through the revolution of 2011, as our hopes for real change after Mubarak's fall first rose only soon to be shattered. Ours was the last of family homes still inhabited by its original owners, and everyone remarked how it was the one thing that they could depend on always being there.

And yet, when I wrote it into fiction, I conjured the moment where we might, indeed, pack it up.

On April 1, the day that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's re-election was confirmed, we handed the house to its new owners, who had circled it for two years, admiring it. My mother had at last found her buyer, a woman whom she felt would be the next best custodian to the house and its legacy. We walked through its every room together on that last day, and once the handover papers were signed in the garden, I returned inside alone to close all the doors, windows and shutters. I then led myself out of the main door, locking it behind me.

Those final moments walking out, as well as the months that preceded - as we sifted through nearly 80 years of a family history, packing and throwing out and giving things away - felt like a closing, the end of an era, both for my family and for modern Egypt, independent since 1922. The house now has foreign owners, and the country - perhaps at its most conservative and repressive - is a far cry from what I ever expected it to become. The latest elections came and went, for me, unacknowledged, too farcical to consider. What might have been a turning point, a political opening, became an end.

My mother's new apartment overlooks her old garden; from her balcony, I see what used to be mine. The new owners haven't moved in yet, but their groundsman and his family occupy the basement of our old house, and spend their days sitting on the plastic garden chairs we left behind. When the sun is setting, shutters left open offer a glimpse into my brother's childhood bedroom; I forgot to roll them down, and the room's white muslin curtains still hang. I feel shut out of our home, my lifelong prism into the city, and out of the future of this country.

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Opinion | Goodbye to the House My Grandmother Built (Published 2018)

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Ms. El Rashidi, a journalist and novelist, is a long-time resident of Cairo. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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A Safety Guide For Activists Attending COP27

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A Safety Guide For Activists Attending COP27

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The Youth Climate Movement (YCM) is one of the most important activist movements of our time. COP27 is an exciting moment where we get to come together and speak up on what we expect from our leaders, but participation also presents certain risks. Our campaigning can put us at odds with powerful forces, so it is important that we take care to ensure both our safety and the broader sustainability of our movement.

The level of risk we face as youth climate activists (YCAs) varies based on many factors, including our lived experience and identity factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and country of origin (to name a few). Some risks we have no control over (e.g. a road accident caused by a third party). For other risks we can take steps to either reduce the likelihood of an incident taking place (e.g. protecting our accounts and devices from hacking with strong passwords and antivirus software) or to reduce the if an incident occurs (e.g. by having access to legal support in the case of an arrest, using the 'disappearing messages' function to protect old chats from being read if your phone is searched).

Thinking and talking about risks in advance creates a space for us to understand each other's risk levels and perceptions, gain knowledge about the risks we face, and develop our capacity to respond.

COP27 is taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, from the 6th to 18th of November 2022. Egypt is a unique context for COP27 and has different risk implications compared to previous COPs. The Egyptian Government as host has publicly committed to a progressive approach on climate issues, but has typically been repressive of activism domestically. Being well prepared and knowing who to turn to if an incident occurs will help ensure safe participation for all YCAs at COP.

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The Youth Climate Movement (YCM) is one of the most important activist movements of our time. COP27 is an exciting moment where we get to come together and speak up on what we expect from our leaders, but participation also presents certain risks. Our campaigning can put us at odds with powerful for…

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The Egyptian Human Rights Coalition on COP27

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The Egyptian Human Rights Coalition on COP27

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COP 27 Sharm El-shikh No climate justice without open civic space The Egyptian Human Rights Coalition on COP27 Read More OVERVIEW The COP27 will be held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt in November 2022. It presents a unique and timely opportunity to leverage the mobilization of the global climate movement to build cross-movement solidarity with [...]

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The COP27 Coalition is led by Egyptian, African, and Arab civil society groups with the primary goal of centering climate justice and voices from the Global South at COP27.

We are inviting partners from the across the continent and around the globe to join us, and work together as an alliance to ensure governments respond to our demands .

Together, we can coordinate our actions and speak with one voice in the run-up to and during the COP, and strengthen the solidarity of our movement across Africa, the Arab World, and world-wide.

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The COP27 Coalition is led by Egyptian, African, and Arab civil society groups with the primary goal of centering climate justice and voices from the Global South at COP27. We are inviting partners from the across the continent and around the globe to join us, and work together as an alliance to ensure governments respond to our demands .

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Yasmine El Rashidi - Place  by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Yasmine El Rashidi - Place by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Yasmine El Rashidi is the author of The Battle for Egypt: Dispatches from the Revolution and Chronicle of a Last Summer a coming-of-age novel that was long-listed for the 2017 PEN Open Book Award. She is a regular contributor to the The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, and a contributing editor to the Middle East arts and culture quarterly Bidoun.

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Miray Sidhom – Protest by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Miray Sidhom - Protest by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Miray Sidhom is an Egyptian-born writer, theatre-maker and performer. Her practice combines elements of film, soundscapes, poetry and movement to create socially engaged, thought-provoking performances. She produces work that confronts social issues whilst celebrating duality and her cross-cultural experience. Miray's writing has been featured in LegalAliens' audio series Things I Am Not, and the Black Gold Arts Zine.

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Aya Tarek – Street Art by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Aya Tarek - Street Art by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Aya Tarek is renowned for the giant murals painted in public spaces, whether in their home town of Alexandria, in 2011 during the revolution and most recently in countries including Brazil, USA & Geneva.

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Yara Mekawei – Sound by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Yara Mekawei - Sound by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Yara Mekawei has always had a passion for recording the sounds around her. An artist, scholar, electric musician, and producer of Radio Submarine she draws inspiration from the dynamic flow of urban centres and the infrastructure of cities. The music you hear on this series is Yara's, Feed on Wasted Energy is from her LP 1963.

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Adham Faramawy – Nature by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Adham Faramawy - Nature by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Adham Faramawy is an artist based in London. Their work spans media including moving image, sculptural installation, and print, thinking through issues of materiality, touch and toxic embodiment to question ideas of the natural in relation to marginalized communities. They lecture at both Goldsmiths University, London and Ruskin School of Art, Oxford.

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Hazem Header – Dance by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Hazem Header - Dance by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Hazem Header is an Egyptian contemporary dancer and choreographer. With a BA of Physical education, studies of Personal training, Biomechanics and Kinesiology and a long career as a personal trainer and volleyball coach, Hazem decided to focus on contemporary dance in 2009. Hazem studied at the governmental center "Cairo Contemporary Dance Center (CCDC)" at Cairo Opera House.

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NADINE ADBDEL GHAFFAR - Cultural Heritage

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NADINE ADBDEL GHAFFAR - Cultural Heritage

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Nadine Abdel Ghaffar – Cultural Heritage  by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Nadine Abdel Ghaffar - Cultural Heritage by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Nadine Abdel Ghaffar is the curator and founder of Art D'Égypte. Creating work with sustainability in mind, her organisation works to preserve and create access to cultural heritage whilst presenting a contemporary view of Egypt to the world. Art D'Egypte @artdegypte Artists | Ideas | Now is produced by Liverpool Arab Arts Festival in collaboration with Artists on the Frontline.

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Sarah Rifaat – Community by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Sarah Rifaat - Community by Artists | Ideas | Now - Egypt and the Climate Crisis

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Sarah Rifaat is an Egyptian graphic designer, photographer, theatre performer, and environmental and climate activist. Sarah was the Arab World Co-ordinator for 350 and participated in the first Arab Youth Climate Movement. Sarah founded Khoyout Troupe which uses theatre as a tool for development and social change.