#SidiBouzid & #Jan25
[#SidiBouzid was the Twitter hashtag for the Tunisian uprising that began in the town of the same name; #Jan25 was the hashtag for the day in 2011 the uprising in Egypt began, and also happened to be my 50th birthday.]
@manal
@alaa
@Dima_Khatib
@3arabawy
@GSquare86
@angryarabiya
@d_sights
Meena Daniel
These are nine people I've never met; if human connection is deepest by blood, then by physical proximity & intimacy, then by city, then by nation, since I share none of these with these nine people, I'm not connected to them at all. But I know which one was detained when his first son was born, and which ran the Arab Techies Collective & brought the baby to him in prison, and which worked with the Egyptian labor movement long before #Jan25 & listens to Ghosts Wear Clothes, & which was born in Long Beach & fights close to the barricades & spends the nights beside him—& which spent a New Year's Eve in Tahrir with #Jan25 painted on the back of her hand, & which spoke up for her activist father on the streets of Bahrain & now speaks up for her neighbors in prison, & which is a yogi in Damascus with a hidden face, who smells the jasmine in the night air & notes that the danger isn't only at protests anymore, it's everywhere—& which was called Che sometimes by his friends, for whom they shouted while they carried his body for the last time, O Marshal here comes another bridegroom from Tahrir—& which is spending her life defending the network of lies & murder that holds all these people, all of us, in its web.
#Jan25 & #SidiBouzid are not only about Egypt & Tunisia, and the work they were a sign for is far from finished. They're about Bahrain & Yemen & Libya & Syria, & of course somewhere about Palestine, & about some new world trying to get born. They're the signatures of the people trying to see this through.
Half an Hour With Khaled: Alaa Abd El Fattah
@angryarabiya Letter from a Bahrain Prison
“It’s true that Egypt is not the Midan. But we have not understood the Midan. What do we do in the Midan? Well, we meet, we eat, we sleep, we discuss, we pray, we chant, we sing, we spend effort and imagination to sustain ourselves, we rejoice and cheer at a wedding, we grieve and weep at a funeral, we express our ideas, our dreams, our identities, we quarrel sometimes, sometimes we’re at a loss and confused, searching for the future, we spend each day as it comes, not knowing what the future hides for us.”
“Is this not what we do outside the Midan? Nothing is exceptional in the Midan except our togetherness. Outside the Midan we think that we rejoice at a wedding because we know the bride and groom—in the Midan we rejoiced and celebrated at the wedding of strangers. Outside the Midan we think that we grieve at a funeral because we know the deceased—in the Midan we grieved for strangers and prayed for them.”
“Nothing is new in the Midan except that we surround ourselves with the love of strangers...We rejoice at a wedding because it is a wedding. We grieve at a funeral because it is death. We love the newborn because he’s human and because he’s Egyptian. Our hearts break for the shaheed because he’s human and because he’s Egyptian. We go to the Midan to discover that we love life outside it, and to discover that our love for life is resistance. We race toward the bullets because we love life, and we go into prison because we love freedom.”
“As for their state it is for an hour. Just for an hour.”
Alaa & Khaled / Photo by Rasha Abdulla
“ DUDE WHO ONCE TORTURED MY FATHER HAS BEEN ARRESTED #SIDIBOUZID”
“MABROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK ”
[ ...which means Congratulations...]
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