By an Egyptian student in her mid-twenties. She began studying law but was imprisoned instead of being able to pursue her studies because of her arrest during a protest movement at the university. She chose to write anonymously for protection. 

I am now free from the prison clamps and repression of guards and prison watchwomen.

After years of oppression, at a maximum, the concept of freedom for me has become limited to leaving the prison cells, being free when the door opens, being able to leave my room, going into the street and raising my head, and being able to see the sky without iron barriers and at my timing, not a time set by the whim of the prison officers or orders from political authorities.

Today I recall my experience inside the depths of Egyptian women’s prisons, in order to document what happens every day to Egyptian women and girls behind walls and bars where no one witnesses the injustice and torture occurring to them. Here I am, returning to the outside world from prison, with one conviction firmly established in my mind — this place does not look like me! I was inside there like a broken-winged bird trapped in an iron cage. I always wondered,

When will all of this end?

How do I get out of here?

Will life compensate me for this limitation and humiliation?

Will I remain silent in order to survive, or will I remain a loud voice, fearing nothing?

The memory always brings me back to the beginning of that painful experience. I had just turned eighteen and my journey as a student had begun within the gates of my university where I was ecstatic with a set of principles that I was ready to defend as long as I lived! I still wonder how rejecting injustice and enthusiasm for the truth could lead its bearer to a place where they become classified as a danger to society so much so they must be imprisoned.

My story as a political prisoner began when I was taken from the university to the police station, and since the moment I entered, I have been treated as the most dangerous person to humanity. At that time, all laws and rights were absent, and only insults, beatings, and torture were present. Then, I was thrown into a tight cell, not knowing what was happening outside of it. I thought that my fate would become unknown, until the next day when I was presented to the Public Prosecution.

I was charged with a series of charges — of which I was innocent. The charges were a gift from the police to anyone who entered the police station as one of ‘those political ones’. Not only did the prosecution charge me with acts of violence, rioting, destruction, and assault, but they also added to the recipe for ‘inflicting suffering’ numerous false reports filed against me from people I didn’t know. I am certain that they had never heard of me, but they signed on to them anyway only to worsen my legal position.

For the sake of a word, I was prosecuted with the protest bill, which had not yet been enforced. It then became firmly established in my mind that my reality was that I was a citizen in a country plagued by tyranny in which I have no right but what the “Sultan” wants.

We were transferred to El Qanater Prison to live in the in-processing ward. Housing in the wards was no worse than the search we had to endure where the sanctity of our bodies was violated. Once we entered prison, we spent months in in-processing. We were denied all of our rights and were crowded into a space not designated to receive that many prisoners. This was all in addition to establishing a reality of slavery by obliging us to serve “el nubatshias”.

Later, we were transferred to a ward designated for political prisoners. Although we obtained some of our rights and a measure of freedom in treatment and speaking while we were there, it did not last long. When we went on hunger strike due to the daily ill-treatment at the hands of prison officers and the rest of prisoners, we were subjected to systematic torture for two consecutive days by the Prison Administration, security forces, and other prisoners. A number of prisoners were transferred to other prisons, and the rest of us were ‘displaced’ and sent to the bathrooms of other prison wards. I was sentenced to imprisonment with labor and a fine. It’s ironic that the verdict issued against me was invalid and the court did not respect any of the conditions of the litigation or the integrity of procedures.

We argued for the invalidity of the verdict in all the degrees of litigation that we passed through but in vain. The laws were applied — as usual — only in so much as to serve the practice of continued imprisonment. After this verdict, I spent three years in prison, moving between many ‘non-political’ wards, until, finally, the Court of Cassation ruled that I was innocent.

I came out into the world with the conviction that prison is not the walls and iron attached to it. Instead, it is the conditions that the executioner creates to make reality harsher than mere ‘confinement’. We are all imprisoned in the outside world, simply living our lives according to what authorities plan for us.

These experiences create fear and terror and cause people to make their words about what they have been exposed to a catalyst for permanent silence. Discussing their experiences becomes a punishment for their memory and intimidation of others. This is exactly what the executioner wants and what makes a person a permanent prisoner.

We Document, Lest We Forget!