Cairo: My City, Our Revolution by Ahdaf Soueif - review

Soueif famous of the Egyptian capital city

was at 15 days of the Egyptian revolution that I first met Ahdaf Soueif in Tahrir Square. He wore large round sunglasses who swallowed his face, and a black scarf covering her head and fell on the shoulders. It would have been easy to dismiss as any revolutionary spirit, but a flock of protesters grew colleagues around him, and follow-up, and it stuck.

"Write, write," one man urged him. "I live in one room, I have six children. Please bring a television and film from my house. I am ready to work, ready to earn a honest, willing to put in long hours. "

"I have no documents, proof of what they did, the government," began another.

I came to myself when I also realized that she was, she spoke first of these extraordinary women and their role in the revolt, and then looked into my eyes and told me that 'he had dreamed of this. "I had a vision of revolution is happening on Tahrir Square - Liberation Square .." If Soueif actually dreamed the revolution in its present form - as many have claimed - or just want more widely to the release, never knew. However, to read his new book is to understand that the novelist and commentator had long wanted to if it is not a release, or even reconciliation, at least one closure and one way to meet their desire for the city of his Youth.

aa Much of the fiction Soueif over the years has felt overwhelmed by the sadness of Cairo, which became his second home after the marriage took her to London in 1984, and it begins this new book with an almost chilling admission: "Several years ago, has signed a contract to write a book on Cairo, Cairo, but my last year, and I could not write when I tried to read as an elegy, and I would not write an elegy for my city .. ". For anyone who has experienced the fall of Cairo in recent years under the Mubarak regime increasingly corrupt and despotic, the sense of loss, the purpose, has become an important part of the urban fabric of the place because he was become a state of mind. Cairo, felt strong. "The streets were dug up and paved left. Sidewalks disappeared. Key Historic Parks and Sites has become. Street lights dimmed. Nothing has been serviced or repaired. The old houses were demolished and construction of monstrous towers in place .. . The day the Cairo Tower has lost its discreet white uplighting and was caught in a web of colored dots flashing cried. "

Cairo

These details, which are inserted in the record of the revolution, Ahdaf capture a cultural memory that is shared by many. Also documents the events and the fate that both your problem and finally came in January 25: "A quarter of a million children living on the streets and some people build shelters for them and some pictures and some The police stole his kidneys and corneas. ran racketeering and drugs. people have fallen steadily over interrogation windows or have had heart attacks in custody ... senior judges of the country set for two hours in the silence in the street outside the club of judges with their scarves and ribbons and medals on his chest. Then we knew that the judgment would surely be. "

In this book, which is much more like a chronicle of the judgment, or the revolution, than anything else - a personal testimony of time and place and experience - introduces us to a writer feels lighter, freer, less conscious of the weight of his prose and the story unfolds to tell.

• There are many documents of the Egyptian revolution, but

Cairo

takes us on an intimate journey that goes far beyond the 18 days of Tahrir Plaza, to the places of his memory: his aunt Lazoghli dishes, keeping the center of the battle of the security; Maspero, where he took his first job, and now

tip

aa Mubarak's regime, and many rooms and sites and places that bring back memories of his mother ("I can not tell you how many people in the Plaza I hear, can you imagine if your mother was alive now then how? would have liked? "). We have local access only - and a well-connected - can provide, and we have an idea of ??a world that only a family member could provide Soueif: sister Soueif brother-in-law, nephews are all experienced campaigners and prominent, and in the course of the narrative, we hear the blows and arrests and detentions and disappearances. It provides an overview of past and future and present . From January 28, 2011, wrote: "On the night of Friday to come to be known as the Day of Wrath, the regime killed hundreds of young people of Egypt ... Families can discover and months of agony trying to show how they were killed brave doctors and lawyers speak for them

Dakhleyya (interior ministry) will continue - at the time .. I write -. to deny responsibility "

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