One thing you’ll get from this episode – and from reading Abdelrahman’s memoir Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becomingrecounting his six years in Sisi’s nightmarish prisons in Egypt – is a lot of empathy, not just towards what he went through, what others like Ayman Moussa – who was 19 when arrested in 2013 and is still serving a 15-year sentence – are still going through, but the sense that Abdelrahman himself remains empathetic, and dare I say hopeful. I was really struck by not only how eloquent he is, but how he’s able to navigate extremely difficult topics that must still haunt him with dignity. You’ll see what I mean in this episode.
The episode includes a reading of Huna by Abdelrahman himself.
This is part of a two-parter on the Egyptian dictatorship led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Check out Imprisoning a Revolution: Writings from Egypt’s Incarcerated by Collective Antigone with a forward by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
Abdelrahman’s Recs:
- The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney
- Poetics of Relation by Édouard Glissant
- From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures by Lara Sheehi
Elia’s Links
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The Fire These Times
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From The Periphery
TFTT is a proud member of From The Periphery Media Collective. Check out other projects: Politically Depressed | Syria: The Inconvenient Revolution | From The Periphery Podcast | The Mutual Aid Podcast
Credits:
Elia Ayoub (host, sound editor, episode design), israa’ (host), the rosa artist (TFTT theme design, 2026-), Rap and Revenge (Music), Wenyi Geng (TFTT theme design), Hisham Rifai (FTP theme design), Molly Crabapple (FTP team profile pics) and Antidote Zine (Transcriptions).
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