Inside the Fortress

A short memoir from the aftermath of the January 25, 2011 revolt … the day we stormed into our very own Mordor, the state security headquarters in Nasr City. Open the pdf to read the full account, first published in the April issue of Egypt Today, 2011. 034-035_VU_AmnDawla

The wheezing, rickety Mubarak machine

The fact that ikhwan are fascist c**** doesn’t mean that I would ever forget how bad and miserable Mubarak days were, how his politics broke me and killed the dreams of many people, and scared the shit out of others. If you were happy or OK during Mubarak days, rejoice, you must have been one …

Cheap, plastic, tacky constants

When I was in Shaolin China, in a temple town in Henan province, I always felt it was like a dream simply because everything was different. There was no one I knew, my decision to go there was sporadic so I went with little research, there was nothing that I related to at first or …

Religion: An afterthought

Just to be clear to readers, regarding my previous post “Religion,” when I say the word ‘religion’ in any post I’m generally referring not just to the current Islamic religious institution (except in cases when I clearly name Islam straight up), but to other orthodox religious institutions as well, including the Church for instance. For …

Religion

When the word ‘religion’ is mentioned, because of some conditioning and what it has come to be defined as, I can’t help but think ‘restrictions.’ My body even reacts to the word; I instantly feel closed up, claustrophobic, I could feel it in my chest; breathing becomes shorter and my jaws tense. For me, the …

The Buddha: The State Before an Explosion

Some books recounting the life of Buddha, especially of Western origin, tell the story of Prince Siddharta Guatama like a fairy tale, a myth. Not this play, by Paul Carus. It thoroughly dwells on the mood and the state of mind of Buddha before the enlightenment, before the mystical transformation, the crossing of man from …