By Isadora Bonilla, School of Authentic Journalism
I search for words to describe and tell
Of that bleak unfamiliar picture of Cairo
That only I am seeing
But the words will not come to my rescue...
When Ghada Shahbender talks about her life, she doesn’t focus on her
work as a leader in Egypt´s civil resistance movement. Mainly she talks
about those she loves as she describes herself as a mother, a sister, a
wife and an aunt.
However, as Shahbender describes her life and work, she also talks
about her “Tahrir family” – the people she organizes with and those lost
in this nonviolent struggle for a Democratic Egypt and greater human
rights. They, in turn, have special name for her: Khalti Silmya, or Aunt Peaceful.
“I have a huge family that I call my Tahrir family” (named for Tahrir
Square, the epicenter of the 2011 revolution that brought down Hosni
Mubarak after thirty years of his dictatorship) she says, noting that
after almost one year of protests that have left more than 3,000 dead,
she derives her strength from this family and those who have sacrificed
for the struggle.
“´Freedom, dignity and social justice’ is the slogan of our
revolution and until we get it we have to keep on going,” she told Narco
News during the 2012 School of Authentic Journalism in Mexico, where
she participated as a professor. “So is it painful? Yes. Scary? Yes. But
will we continue? Yes. Otherwise all these deaths would have been for
nothing.”
Although mainstream media made it seem as if Egypt´s civil
resistance movement started when nonviolent protests broke out in
Cairo´s Tahrir Square in late January 2011, Shahbender knows better.
Her interest in changing her country started about seven years ago
when her four children were ages 16 to 22 years old. After a vote on an
article in the Egyptian constitution, women who protested were attacked
and sexually harassed by the police. Shahbender says she was surprised
her children accepted the women being attacked, while she felt it was a
direct attack to her values.
See also:
Simple participation in Egyptian public life remains subject to undeclared prohibition. Ghada Shahbender describes the challenges faced by those who refuse silence
Of that bleak unfamiliar picture of Cairo
That only I am seeing
But the words will not come to my rescue...
