Homage to Shady Habash and those who have suffered and will continue to suffer the same fate
by someone privileged (in this case) enough to be able to write this
Preface: I have put-off publishing this because I have been the recipient of distressed calls from my mother about doing so; afraid of so many things that I won’t depict here, but I imagine them to be things that Shady, his friends, and those like them were/are afraid of. This while I’m not anyone that someone would pay attention to AND I do not live in Egypt. How much more must have been felt by Shady and those around him? Shady makes mention in his last letter (I have insert a link where you can find it in its original Arabic and a translation[1]) the fear that he assumes his friends were feeling that made them resist advocating for his cause. I do not say this at all to compare because, as aforementioned, I am aware of my privilege as I write this. But if I almost didn’t publish this because of apprehensive calls from my mother, I can’t begin to imagine the pressure not to speak out by those around Shady.
The passive brutality of Shady Habash’s death is almost worse than violent brutality. Dying the slow death of neglect and loss of hope is a condemnation more agonizing than that of physical means. Because physical means have a clear delineation of beginning and end.
But how preposterous is it that I’m discussing preferable ways to die for a man whose’s only crime was practicing his profession? How preposterous is that we had a revolution where thousands died to remove a despot only to return to ground zero? How preposterous is it that there is still a man in prison by the name of Mustafa Gamal for association with the same musician (he helped Ramy Essam verify his Facebook page), who hired him the same way he would have any media developer?
I do not echo the calls of western media that are shaped by exceptionalist and culturally essentialist views. I echo the calls of Egyptians who took to the streets in 2011 and are now coerced into silence so they don’t share Habash’s fate.
Habash was 24, 22 when imprisoned. He could have been me. He could have been any young person with hope and earnest that there could be an Egypt where freedom of expression exists and the punishment for it does not far exceed the act (a deliberate misstatement). What is so menacing about art and pen hitting paper that the consecutive regimes that take power in Egypt can’t seem to be but threatened by?
I don’t know. And I’m tired of trying to understand, nor do I care to anymore. Egypt you are the love of my life, but you are also my greatest disappointment. There’s potential in every corner of you but your tunnel vision can’t help but see that potential as a threat to your status quo.
Shady died in the most heartbreaking way — a death of a loss of hope. I can’t think of anything more tragic. I can’t imagine the pain his family and friends are enduring. And I wish I had something to say to console them. The only thing I can muster is that he is likely in a place that is better than where he spent the last two years. And that I’m sorry. I’m sorry that your country, your home, did this to your loved one.
