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Fuloulophobia
What I talk about when I talk about 30 June Nearly a week ago, some little known Kuwaiti newspaper reported that President Mohamed Morsi had negotiated, it wasn’t clear with whom, “a safe exit deal”...
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Pathetic Braveheart
25 January, 30 June — and, very personally, Youssef Rakha I had almost reprimanded myself for anticipating civil conflict in the wake of major protests against the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) President...
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Death makes angels of us all: Fragments
Jim Morrison died on 3 July, as young as most of the casualties of the Egyptian revolution of 2011-13 (let’s assume it’s been one string of events for simplicity’s sake). Play a few Doors songs to...
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The Terrors of Democracy
For the Western media and Western policy makers, it seems the story of what’s been happening in Egypt is a simple one. Having deposed and taken into custody a democratically elected president on July...
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To Wake the People: Egypt’s Interminable Haul to Democracy
“The People are asleep my darling” So she’d tell him; He, too, Was careful not to wake the People, To endure its dreams Like a kid’s kicks, To ape its slack tongue like a fool, To crawl before it on...
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The Atlantic: Requiem for a Suicide Bomber
Reflections on the meaninglessness of terrorism in post-Arab Spring Egypt: Youssef Rakha Feb 18 2014, 11:31 AM ET In early October, a suicide bomber affiliated with Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis drove his car...
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One Flew Over the Mulla’s Ballot
@Sultans_Seal wallows in his lack of democratic mettle Time and again, since 30 June last year, I’ve come up against the commitment to democracy that I’m supposed to have betrayed by appearing to...
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Hoarseness: A Legend of Contemporary Cairo
The White Review . U. Mubarak It kind of grows out of traffic. The staccato hiss of an exhaust pipe begins to sound like record scratching. Skidding and braking, the vehicles resume their car horn...
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Angelus Novus: A Letter from Hilary Plum
Dear Youssef, A few days after you proposed that I write you this letter, a man was killed, his execution public enough that despite the five thousand miles between us we both could look on. This man,...
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The Barbarians Within Our Minds
Reading the senior journalist Hisham Melhem’s recent obituary of Arab civilization, one is compelled to ask when it was ever alive. Al-Ahram Weekly, 25 September The Nowhere, Cairo 2014. By Youssef...
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Catch 25
The (un)culture of (in)difference: a family reunion At a recent family gathering, someone happened to mention the case of Albert Saber: the 25-year-old proponent of atheism who had been tried and...
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Nukhba? Who the fuck is Nukhba?
Egyptian intellectuals and the revolution Egypt has had Islamists and “revolutionaries”. So who are the nukhba or elite routinely denigrated as a “minority” that “looks down on the People”? Educated...
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Three Versions of Copt: Sept 2011/Doors: April 2013
-I- Yesterday evening, while I sat at this desk dreaming up cultural content for the pages I am in charge of, Twitter began turning up news of protesters being fired at and pelted with stones – but not...
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Fuloulophobia
What I talk about when I talk about 30 June Nearly a week ago, some little known Kuwaiti newspaper reported that President Mohamed Morsi had negotiated, it wasn’t clear with whom, “a safe exit deal”...
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Youssef Rakha: The Nude and the Martyr
By Youssef Rakha Some time in February, the literary (and intellectual) Generation of the Nineties started coming up in intellectual conversations about the Arab Spring. Some people theorised that, by...
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