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Articles of the author Youssef Rakha
The parable of the riots and the intellectual
First there was a riot, a kind of street fight with the police. Killings led to a sit-in that led to power changing hands. No one took issue with the hangman's noose swinging symbolically at the maidan, though the riots were supposed to be silmiyyah. The killers never hanged in the end, and no one (...)

11 - 06 - 2013
Her damask cheek
Early one morning in the summer of 2011, a good few months after the ouster of Hosny Mubarak, I received an international phone call. It was an unknown number that began with 00963. I could tell this was the country code of some Arab state, though I didn't know which. After some hesitation I picked (...)

12 - 03 - 2013
Hail, Prince of Believers
Towards the end of 2009, I completed my first novel, whose theme is contemporary Muslim identity in Egypt and, by fantastical extension, the vision of a possible khilafa or caliphate. I was searching for both an alternative to nationhood and a positive perspective on religious identity as a form of (...)

16 - 01 - 2013
Eat your words
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 individuals, non-Islamist political leaders, the catalysts of the revolution itself… But, in the political context, this group is to all (...)

19 - 12 - 2012
Lost in affirmation
The night before the ridiculously so called 24 August revolution—the first, abortive attempt to “overthrow the Muslim Brotherhood”—Intellectuals gathered in Talaat Harb Square to express discontent with the new political status quo. Much of what they had to say centred on the draft constitution (...)

14 - 09 - 2012
Lost in affirmation
Against "the threat of Islamisation", culture is said to be Egypt's last line of defence, writes Youssef Rakha. But what on earth do we mean when we talk about Egyptian culture? The night before the ridiculously so called 24 August revolution--the first, abortive attempt to "overthrow the Muslim (...)

13 - 09 - 2012
Something wrong with the wires
Youssef Rakha considers revolution and Ramadan Revolution gives way to security breakdown. The people vote for the Sheikh. The Israeli Embassy is ringed with protesters, but so -- eventually -- is its Saudi counterpart. False prophets take over Tahrir Square. Thousands die; millions grow beards. (...)

02 - 08 - 2012
Please, God, give us books to read
By Somehow I was a teacher; somehow I considered that natural. For this reason I began to bow to words I did not say; and to communicate my respects to my children. I tried to make them understand that it was absolutely necessary for someone to read, to review with his parents-- while he hurls his (...)

02 - 08 - 2012
God's Books: Interview with the Vampire
Mohab Nasr, Ya rabb, a'tina kutuban linaqra' (), Cairo: Al Ain, 2012 "Any pretence of having specific reasons to stop writing poetry at one point or to return to it at another will be a fabrication," says Mohab Nasr (b. 1962). "All I can say for sure is that I was surrounded by friends who used up (...)

02 - 08 - 2012
No renaissance for old men
Last week Youssef Rakha questioned the idea of resistance. This week he thinks about the Islamists' catch phrase It is the word that Tunisia's Muslim Brothers chose for their harakah (or movement) and in which the Egyptian jama'ah (or group) couched its presidential programme; it dates all the way (...)

12 - 07 - 2012
The menace of resistance
Youssef Rakha thinks about the Brotherhood, the military and the modern state A long time ago -- it must have been 2000 -- I was briefly in trouble at work for apparently belittling the achievement of Hezbollah against Israel in an article I had written. The censure came from a left-wing, (...)

05 - 07 - 2012
Dumb from human dignity
Youssef Rakha refuses to assess the cultural life to be expected So like a bit of stone I lie/Under a broken tree./I could recover if I shrieked/My heart's agony/To passing bird, but I am dumb/From human dignity. - William Butler Yeats After the first round of presidential elections, the bleak (...)

14 - 06 - 2012
The Tao of the elections
The wisdom of the Tao has been demonstrated time and again in post-25 January Egypt, writes Youssef Rakha Doing something about a seemingly sticky situation isn't always going to make it less sticky. This was especially relevant to the supposed urgent need for a president but few realised that when (...)

07 - 06 - 2012
Watermelon republic
Ensconced online, Youssef Rakha plays sportscaster In the last few weeks cyber politicising has of course centred on the presidential elections. Apart from a few smallish boycott campaigns on Facebook, few have discussed the significance of what -- were it not for the Washington-blessed (...)

17 - 05 - 2012
Don't shoot the jester
In an unprecedented development, writes Youssef Rakha, comedy superstar is facing a possible three-month prison sentence for alleged "contempt of religion" in several of his films This week the sentence was temporarily revoked awaiting the outcome of a second appeal, but the writers and directors (...)

03 - 05 - 2012
Twittotalitarian
I began following the news online, relying on tweeps who were either already in Abbassiya or on their way there. For the first time since the start of the sit-in, I also paid attention to what the star activists (Alaa Abdel Fattah and Nawara Negm, in this case) had to say about developments—in the (...)

03 - 05 - 2012
Protestophilia
Pacing up and down the arena of cyber-politics, Youssef Rakha searches for the Islamist homunculus secretly ensconced in the minds of liberals who covet a role in history more than anything history might actually give It's been an aeon since Egyptian cyber-activists decided to try grafting the (...)

25 - 04 - 2012
In the Name of the Father
On the first anniversary of the initial referendum on constitutional amendments, Youssef Rakha remembers his father My father did not live to see 9/11. I don't know what he would have thought of the so called war on terror, let alone the equally so called Arab Spring. Though not particularly old, (...)

22 - 03 - 2012
Slumdog bookfair
Trekking through what looks more like a refugee camp than a cultural venue, Youssef Rakha goes on a wild goose chase to Tunisia Founded in 1969, the last year of Nasser's life and reign, the Cairo International Book Fair is perhaps the largest book-centred event in the Arab world. Year after year (...)

02 - 02 - 2012
The book of laughter and forgetting
A year after its outbreak, Youssef Rakha lists seven of the more revealing flights of humour that have punctuated the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath A picnic at Hyde Park and Shafik's Pullover By 25 January, the idea of a revolution with a predetermined time and venue had already solicited (...)

26 - 01 - 2012
The honourable citizen manifesto
Fragrant beards, valiant soldiers: Youssef Rakha presents a very common viewpoint We, honourable citizens of Egypt -- pioneers in every field, one hundred million nationalists and three great pyramids -- declare our absolute support and inexhaustible gratitude for those valiant and chivalrous (...)

22 - 12 - 2011
Tahrir and its discontents
Responding to recent Facebook "notes" by the poet Mohab Nasr -- an Alexandrian schoolteacher turned Kuwait-based journalist and, since 25 January, perhaps the most honest critic of the Egyptian human being -- Youssef Rakha unpacks the concept of the People Back in January, my friend Mohab (b. 1962) (...)

08 - 12 - 2011
My friend the poet and I
Back in January, the poet Mohab Nasr (b. 1962) was more sceptical than I was about what was then called, without the least hesitation, Revolution. Today, in his own profoundly dusky way, Mohab is more enthusiastic about social-political transformation. What strikes me is that he is less shocked (...)

08 - 12 - 2011
THREE REASONS I WILL NOT VOTE
1-The Martyrs. It seems utterly insensible to start holding this “national wedding” – as Egypt's first “free” parliamentary elections have been called – within hours of the death of over 40 demonstrators at the hands of both police and military, the latter also being the overseers (with unequivocal (...)

03 - 12 - 2011
The Martyr and the Nude
Youssef Rakha marvels at the revolutionary body 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 stressing individual freedom and breaking with their overtly (...)

01 - 12 - 2011
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