Baheyya: Egypt Analysis and Whimsy بهيّة

When I read the sad news of Youssef Chahine’s passing, a stream of images from his films passed through my mind’s eye, fragmentary and disjo...

Mahmoud Mokhtar, Return from the River Limestone, 1928

It’s now widely recognized that social protest has become a staple of Egyptian politics, what some journalists and researchers have taken t...

Mahmoud Mokhtar, al-Huzn Basalt, 1927

A broad coalition of blue- and white-collar national forces has called a general strike for tomorrow 6 April to demand decent living conditi...

Salah Yousri, "Spring" (1954)

Like many others, I’ve been riveted by the Real Estate Tax Collectors’ strike and sit-in. How did these civil servants manage to launch such...

Since Monday, thousands of tax collectors from the Real Estate Tax Authority have made a downtown street their home. They've converged o...

Thursday’s sentencing and fining of four independent newspaper editors is not particularly new or surprising. And neither is the impending ...

Hasan Sulayman (b. 1928), Alley in Cairo (1955)

I was a bookish child, and spent endless hours immersed in fantastic stories, tales peopled with strange and wonderful characters getting th...