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Welcome to Manal And Alaa's space, where
we record our thoughts and feelings, keep
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Every now and then we write a post in
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English Posts category.

2. Letter to Om Khaled
Thu, 2011/12/15 - 03:16 — Manal Om Khaled,
My partner, my friend, my half, my all, my love, the mother of my child, my
support in life. I MISS YOU I LOVE YOU.
The only reason I can bear being separated from you is your support.
I just got the photos, I'm confused about my feelings now but I'm mostly
happy. It's so unfair that I can't be with you to comfort you, it's so unfair
that I wait for you to get well and get back to comforting me. It is beyond
unfair that I can't hold Khaled for hours the way I've held countless other
babies, I gave so much love and attention to sons and daughters of friends
and family. Yet I can't do the same to my own child.
I wonder how old will Khaled be when I finally get out of here, I wonder
what else I will miss? His Sobo3? The first time he grips your fingers? The
moment you realize he is focusing his eyes on you? Or is going to be even
worse and I'll miss his first smile?
What does it feel to hold him? How does he smell? How does he sound
when cries?
My son, our son, our little Khaled.

3. I showed the photos to everyone in the cell, they're genuinely happy for me but
like everything in this cell it is all subdued, made me feel more alone and lonely.
I've been thinking a lot about our life in South Africa the bliss of just being
together having an easy comfortable life, yet still doing good work. We used to
comment a lot on how Egyptian youth only aspire for a home and a family and a
job to support them. Turns out as usual al sha3b got it right, the day we can
enjoy just being a family in Egypt while secure in the future, content in our
comforts and fulfilled in our jobs is the day that revolution is complete.
Until then we'll make do by sticking together facing whatever life throws at us,
knowing that as long as we are all one all is fine.
I miss you so much it hurts, I guess you know the feeling, I'm overwhelmed by
how unfair it is, how meaningless it has become at this stage, but I know we are
both in good hands, Khaled is blessed with the unconditional love of not just his
parents but large extended families and hundreds of aunts and aunties, I hope
he grows to appreciate it all.
Alaa,
6-12-2011
cell 6/1 ward 4
Tora prison Read more »
Free Alaa
Khaled
prison writing
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4. Fri, 2011/11/11 - 13:30 — Manal English Translation

5. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2011
Translation: Alaa Abd El Fattah on the Night of
Maspero
This piece was first published in Arabic in al
Shorouk on October 20th. It is widely felt to
have been one of the triggers for Alaa Abd El
Fattah's summons to the Military Prosecutor,
and his subsequent incarceration.

6. To be with the Martyrs, which is better by far
Two days we spent in the morgue; two days with bodies
fighting to hold onto the title of “shaheed”, martyr. Fighting
the entire Mubarak regime, not just the Mubarak military that
crushed them with the armoured personnel carriers, nor the
Mubarak media that deprived them of their rightful title and
described them as killers, nor the Mubarak Prosecution that
wriggled out of doing justly by them; the bodies fought to hold
onto the radiance befitting martyrdom – in a poor public
hospital with no facilities. They fought against the superstition
of the Mubarak era that said an autopsy is a desecration of the
dead not an insistence on their rights, they fought against the
authority of the priests and sheikhs of the ruler who suggest
that if you seek justice in this world you renounce it in the
next, they fought against the Mubarak sectarianism that made
the poor find enemies in the poor rather than in those who
steal the bread from the poor.

7. Two days in the company of merciful death and a
shame without mercy. Why, my Lord, are most of our
shuhada poor? How do the gun and the APC
distinguish? The blood’s the same and the grave’s the
same and yet martyrdom rejects us again and again.
Egypt is choosy; she’ll only pick the best amongst us,
and Mina Daniel is her choice. Without him we would
not have won in the morgue.

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