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Port Said in Revolt
![[A protester throws a tear gas canister back at police during street battles outside Port Said's Security Directorate. On the right, poster of a protester killed in January's clashes visible. 7 March 2013. (Photo by AFP/Jonathan Rashad)]](/content_images/3/sm_04.jpg "[A protester throws a tear gas canister back at police during street battles outside Port Said's Security Directorate. On the right, poster of a protester killed in January's clashes visible. 7 March 2013. (Photo by AFP/Jonathan Rashad)]")
Tears in the eyes, bullets on the ground, and blood on the pavements - as injustice prevails. That is Port Said. The city has witnessed unrest again in March in response to an Egyptian court ruling that sentenced twenty-one Port Said residents to death for alleged involvement in killings that happened during a 1 February 2012 football riot, which left seventy-four dead . More than forty-six were killed in Port Said over the past two months during clashes. [Riot police throw rocks at protesters from the rooftop of Port Said's Security Directorate. 7 March 2013 ...
Keep Reading »Alexandria Re-Imagined: The Revolution through Art
![[Revolutionary martyrs painted on walls of Alexandria. Photo by Amro Ali]](/content_images/3/sm_Cover.jpg "[Revolutionary martyrs painted on walls of Alexandria. Photo by Amro Ali]")
On 24 January 2011 – a day before the arc of Egyptian history would be altered – the film Microphone was screened. Microphone documents Alexandria’s pre-revolution underground scene of artists and musicians fighting a passive oppression that suffocates their ability to nurture their creativity. Khaled (played by Khaled Abol Naga), who has returned to Egypt from the US, wishes to aid the youth by providing them with a venue and funding for nurturing their talents. In one scene, Khaled is conversing with an official at the state’s cultural office to request support for his project. The dialogue proceeds as follows: Official: What is this graffiti? Is our role to ...
Keep Reading »The Swallows of Syria
![[Jdeideh, Lebanon - Karam, twenty-eight, from Homs]](/content_images/3/sm_sosMatildeGattoni1_8158695965_o.jpg "[Jdeideh, Lebanon - Karam, twenty-eight, from Homs]")
[Note: The views and testimonies herein are the refugees’ own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author or of Jadaliyya.] Somaya left Homs, Syria after finding the corpse of her tortured son in a sewage ditch. Zaynab escaped with her family when she discovered that Syrian soldiers kidnapped, raped, and killed three of her schoolmates. Aziza fled after snipers killed both her husband and sister-in-law. Reports indicate that refugees and residents have also been subjected to abuse and assault by unknown, non-regime, fighters. Thousands of other Syrian women like them have escaped to Lebanon and are hiding in small villages within a few kilometers of the ...
Keep Reading »Living Under Threat of Expulsion: Palestinian Women Photograph Life in Susiya Village
![[Members of the Nawaja family in their tent. Image by the women of Susiya/Activestills.]](/content_images/3/sm_Susiya1_8158771870_o.jpg "[Members of the Nawaja family in their tent. Image by the women of Susiya/Activestills.]")
These photographs were taken by women residents of Susiya village from the Nawaja family, ranging from teenagers to the elderly. Here are their names: Wadcha, Basma, Iman, Iam, Hitam, Ula, Rabicha, Samicha, Sane, Samma, Hadija, Sanaa, and Khitam. In 2011, the women of Susiya documented their lives as a part of a participatory photography project conducted by Activestills photographer Keren Manor and guest photographer Mareike Lauken. This project was one of many activities of the village’s Creative and Learning Center. The Palestinian West Bank village of Susiya is again under threat of demolition by Israeli government authorities. Around four hundred people ...
Keep Reading »The Syrian Refugee Crisis Intensifies
![[A Kurdish flag waves as Syrian refugees arrive in the Domiz refugee camp in Dahuk, Iraq, Aug. 13, 2012. Image by Khalid Mohammed/AP Photo.]](/content_images/3/sm_AP93631663249.jpg "[A Kurdish flag waves as Syrian refugees arrive in the Domiz refugee camp in Dahuk, Iraq, Aug. 13, 2012. Image by Khalid Mohammed/AP Photo.]")
Over three hundred thousand refugees have fled across Syria’s borders to Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon, according to the latest UNHCR statistics. This number accounts for only those who have registered with the UN or are waiting to register. The UN also estimates that one to one and a half million people are internally displaced within Syria. If correct, then nearly ten percent of the population of the country (twenty-two million) no longer lives in their homes. Inside Syria as of mid-September, the World Food Program increased its target for food rations from 850,000 to 1.5 million people in all fourteen governorates. According to the UN Office for the ...
Keep Reading »Families of Kidnapped Lebanese in Syria Cut Off Access to the Airport in Beirut
![[The Moqdad familly and eleven kidnapped Lebanese block the old airport road in Beirut. Image by Natalia Sancha.]](/content_images/3/sm_maqdefamillyand11kidnappedlebaneseblockoldairportroad15082012-23.jpg "[The Moqdad familly and eleven kidnapped Lebanese block the old airport road in Beirut. Image by Natalia Sancha.]")
In an irony of history, the old Lebanon, feared in the decade of the 1970s for its hijackers, is now the victim of kidnappings. The confusion is greater when Lebanese are kidnapped in Syria and Syrians are kidnapped in Lebanon as a deliberate proxy war between pro-Syrian regime groups in Lebanon, and detractor groups in Syria. [Families of the eleven Lebanese kidnapped respond to press and ask for immediate release of their relatives.] The media reports began to filter in on Wednesday afternoon with the news that either four or eleven of the Lebanese kidnapped last May in Syria had died after the shelling of Izaaz by the Syrian army. Relatives of the eleven ...
Keep Reading »Recalling the Past: The Battle over History, Collective Memory and Memorialization in Egypt
![[A memorial in Tahrir Square, February 2011. Image by YasminMoll/Flickr.]](/content_images/3/sm_5430480089_83d4c7cf9a.jpg "[A memorial in Tahrir Square, February 2011. Image by YasminMoll/Flickr.]")
History is inescapable in Egypt. Foreign tourists drawn to the abundant physical remains of Coptic, Pharaonic, Hellenic, and Islamic cultures are reminded of the contemporary past as they head downtown from the Cairo airport past the triumphant October War Panorama, a war museum commemorating the 1973 war with fighter jets parked out front. Numerous place names—Sadat City, the Twenty-sixth of July Street, Talaat Harb Square, the Sixth of October Bridge—are constant evocations of persons and events raised to iconic status by former regimes. In the past year, a new, unsanctioned layer of historical memory has been added to Egypt’s villages, towns, and cities in the form ...
Keep Reading »Tahrir Protests Continue (Photos and Video)
![[Talaat Harb Square. Image by Hossam El-Hamalawy.]](/content_images/3/sm_7158053987_4f50412478_b.jpg "[Talaat Harb Square. Image by Hossam El-Hamalawy.]")
Hundreds of thousands took part Tuesday in protests across Egypt, calling for a "political isolation" law to be implemented against General Ahmad Shafiq and remnants of the old regime. Protesters in Tahrir Square and elsewhere demanded the retrial of Hosni Mubarak, his sons, and the police leaders in front of revolutionary courts. [Protesters denouncing Shafiq in Talaat Harb Street. Image by Hossam El-Hamalawy.] [Talaat Harb Square. Image by Hossam El-Hamalawy.] [Tahrir Square. Image by Hossam El-Hamalawy.] [Protestors in Tahrir Square on 2 June 2012. Video by Hossam El-Hamalawy.]
Keep Reading »"We Are the Eight Percent": Inside Egypt's Underground Shaabi Music Scene
In the heated den of the Greek Club on Emad el-Din Street in downtown Cairo, sweating bodies heave and move to the infectious reggaeton fused with a tabla beat, as Amr Haha, DJ Figo, and Sadat swing their mics back and forth, bantering, ad-libbing, and cheering. One takes a swig out of his Stella, another dips the mic into the sea of eager hands as the jolly crowd sings along to the simple, lewd lyrics of “Aha el shibshib daa’!” or “F***, I’ve lost my slippers!” Haha’s lyrics are profoundly profane; his specialty of Arabic electronic music is called “mahraganat,” which literally translates to “festival music.” The high-pitched, auto tuned vocals are as vulgar as ...
Keep Reading »Egyptian Parliamentary Protests in Pictures
![[Protesters marching on the Egyptian Parliament to protest the Abbaseya crackdown. Image by Hossam el-Hamalawy.]](/content_images/3/sm_Hamalawy3.jpg "[Protesters marching on the Egyptian Parliament to protest the Abbaseya crackdown. Image by Hossam el-Hamalawy.]")
Thousands marched on the Egyptian parliament Monday, denouncing the army's crackdown on revolutionaries in front of the Ministry of Defense in Abbassiya. A week long sit-in conducted largely by Salafis and leftists was subject to repeated attacks by armed thugs, and was finally suspended by force on Friday, with hundreds detained, tortured, and referred to military prosecution. Keep Reading »
Visualizing Revolution: The Politics of Paint in Tahrir
On 2 April, the Center for Translation Studies and the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo hosted “Visualizing Revolution: The Epic Murals of Tahrir.” Three artists, Alaa Awad, Ammar Abo Bakr, and Hanaa El Degham, spoke about their work along with journalist and collaborator Ahmed Aboul Hassan. I coordinated the event with Samia Mehrez to provide a space to think about the kinds of interaction the murals inspired, moving beyond the circulation of impressive images online to engage the political motivations and street-level consequences of public art in Cairo. We hoped the panel would provoke dialogue—and debate—about the ...
Keep Reading »An Emerging Memorial Space? In Praise of Mohammed Mahmud Street
![[Mohammed Mahmud Street wall. Image from the author.]](/content_images/3/sm_mona18.jpg "[Mohammed Mahmud Street wall. Image from the author.]")
Mohammed Mahmud Street, also known as sharei’ uyuun al-hurriyyah (the street of the eyes of freedom), is becoming an iconic space. The street has been recently discovered by numerous photographers and passersby, not only for its mesmerizing graffiti but also for the curiosity it has raised; for the remembrance of the martyrs who were killed there; for journalists who still want to investigate the violent events that took place around that area during the course of the past year and follow-up on how the quarter is coping with the barricades and walls erected by security forces; for its dwellers who suffered not only from skirmishes but also the use of lethal- ...
Keep Reading »The Dramaturgy of A Street Corner
Much like the ongoing revolutionary struggle in Egypt, this short piece is part of an in-progress work to chronicle the evolution of revolutionary art on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, also known as the “street of the eyes of freedom”—nicknamed as such since many protesters lost their eyes on that same street after being targeted by professional snipers during protests in 2011. (See previous articles on this subject by clicking here, here, here, here, and here. Also see interview with artist Alaa Awad on the ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Nadje Al-Ali and Deborah Al-Najjar, We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War
Nadje Al-Ali and Deborah Al-Najjar, editors, We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2012. Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book? Nadje Al-Ali and Deborah Al-Najjar (NA and DA): The idea for this book first emerged in 2006, when Iraqis were generally portrayed either as passive victims or as perpetrators of horrific violence. In the midst of an ongoing humanitarian crisis and the violence, destruction, killings, and widespread sufferings ...
Keep Reading »Imagining Tahrir
I. Egyptians saw themselves for the first time through their own eyes in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in January and February 2011, and reveled in that encounter. Participating in and recording that experience was to become part of the consciousness of a community that was ready to move heaven and earth to restructure Egyptian society for the better. The consciousness was individual in that it established one person’s experience among the crowd, it was moral because recording everything became imperative for ...
Keep Reading »City, Space, Power: Lahore’s Architecture of In/Security
Casualties of War Lahore today looks like a city at war. One of the greatest unacknowledged casualties of the United States’ “war on terror” has been the cities—and citizenry—of Pakistan. The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the Taliban from power in response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.[1] In 1985, sixteen years prior, President Ronald Reagan equated the Taliban mujahideen who had defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan as “the moral equivalent of America’s founding ...
Keep Reading »Demolishing Palestine
Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began in 1967, Israel has demolished about 27,000 Palestinian homes and other structures crucial for a family’s livelihood, according to Israeli government statistics (Compiled by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions). Almost half of these were carried out in just the last twelve years. So far this year, 702 people have been displaced and 140 homes demolished. The government categorizes many demolitions as the consequence of not ...
Keep Reading »Syrian Refugee Photo Essay
As the crisis in Syria continues to escalate, refugees are fleeing to the surrounding countries in huge numbers. According to the UNHCR, as of August 8 there are over one hundred thirty-eight thousand refugees registered for assistance – roughly fifty thousand in Turkey, thirty-nine thousand in Jordan, thirty-five thousand in Lebanon and twelve thousand in Iraq. Many other displaced Syrian civilians are not registered, and perhaps over one million are displaced within Syria. Neighboring countries, local ...
Keep Reading »The Revolution's Barometer
The Mohammed Mahmud wall remains alive and kicking through its graffiti, which is getting altered by the hour. The walls continue to be whitened thanks to the efforts of Egyptian authorities. Yet drawings keep on appearing layers after layers to cover the older ones and the white paint. Not only have the walls of Mohammed Mahmud Street become “a memorial space,” as I have noted in a previous contribution, but also a barometer of the Egyptian revolution. The murals seem to be vividly narrating the most ...
Keep Reading »Anti-Shafiq Protest in Tahrir
Hundreds of protesters marched on Tahrir today, calling for the execution of presidential candidate General Ahmad Shafiq, Mubarak's former prime minister and head of the air force. The demonstrators accused the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces of rigging the vote in the first round of elections. [Abu Mustafa, father of one of the martyrs who fell on Egypt's Friday of Anger, 28 January 2011, taking part in protests in Tahrir Square. Image by Hossam El-Hamalawy]
Keep Reading »The Buraqs of "Tahrir"
The aesthetic and political significance of the murals and the graffiti of Mohammed Mahmud Street continue to draw much attention due to their mesmerizing beauty and their crucial significance for the visual and artistic narration of the revolution. It is not only the murals’ aesthetic appeal that has captured the imagination of many observers, but also how they exemplify a fascinating fusion between a variety of cultural artistic traditions that portray Egypt’s rich history, namely Pharaonic, popular ...
Keep Reading »Outside Looking In
City of Mirages: Baghdad 1952-1982. The Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, New York, NY, 22 February – 5 May 2012. City of Mirages: Baghdad 1952-1982 is an exhibit of design work produced by world-famous architects and firms for the booming Iraqi capital during the mid-twentieth century. Beginning from the year that the Iraq Development Board was established to channel seventy percent of state oil revenues into modernizing schemes for national development, the exhibit traces a thirty-year ...
Keep Reading »The Seven Wonders of the Revolution
Around the corner from Tahrir Square, the heart of Egypt’s eighteen-day uprising, Mohamed Mahmud Street bears the scars of a turbulent political year in Egypt. The once-bustling street off of Tahrir Square has seen its share of violent battlefields--beginning with 28 January 2011 and ending with the February 2012 clashes following the Port Said massacre. The pavements that once carried students from the American University of Cairo (AUC), Lycee Francais and Deutsche Schule Der Borromaerinnen have ...
Keep Reading »Bedoon Rights: An Online Reference on Statelessness in Kuwait
Bedoon Rights is a network founded by stateless Kuwaiti advocate Mona Kareem putting together contributions by a number of stateless volunteers mostly based in Kuwait. The network is the only online reference in English devoted for the case of statelessness in Kuwai. It provides relevant official documents translated, reports made by international organizations, daily reporting, videos, photos, and it offers help to journalists, correspondents, and bloggers interested in spotlighting the ...
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