Author: Ahmed Naji -أحمد ناجى
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Ahmed Naji on Nights in Prison: ‘You Started to Believe That You Could Design Your Dreams’
Ahmed Naji: I was in denial. Until I was in the police station I was in denial, and I thought this should be a mistake and something’s wrong. Because as I was telling you, this was the first time that happened in the history of Egypt. The reaction was so…
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Interview with monocle radio: Tahrir Square, 10 years on
Ten years after Egyptians rose up against long-ruling dictator Hosni Mubarak during the first hopeful weeks of the Arab Spring, we look at why it didn’t work out as the protesters might have hoped and ask if the energy of Egypt’s revolution is still alive anywhere. Andrew Mueller is joined…
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A tour in the wild, without leaving your couch
Published first time at Mdamasr: When I am anxious, or heavy, or feeling — like Mahmoud Darwish — that nothing pleases me, I usually put on a documentary about the lives of lions in central Africa, or wild horses in Mongolia, and I let it play in the background as…
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The Arab Spring Isn’t a Historical Event. It’s Our Life
I lived my first 25 years under one president: the one and only Hosni Mubarak. The Egyptian president’s portrait hung in schools, in the street, and at police stations. Every year on his birthday, we sang songs about him, and TV shows praised his greatness, his genius. But he was…
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With Le Monde
Thanks, Le Monde, for giving me the chance to have this conversation with Elias Khory. I enjoyed disagree with him, and your questions pushed me to rethink many other things.I hope such work will encourage other French media outlets to hear and give space for other young Arabs who are…
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Interview with The Rumpus :The Fine Line Between Nihilism and Hope
By Madelyn Reese December 28th, 2020 Ahmed Naji is an Egyptian journalist, writer, and criminal. At least that’s what the Egyptian government thinks of him. Naji didn’t think of himself as a “Writer” with the capital “W” until 2016, when he was sentenced to two years in prison for obscenity…
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Hunting for Art on the Ring Road
1 At the age of 16, I moved out of my parents’ house. I moved to 6th October City, all by myself, to be closer to university. I lived in a distant, working-class neighborhood where rent was cheap. There was nothing there but a small grocery shop and a filthy…
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An Egyptian at the American Protest: the nightmare possibility of losing all over again
Translated by Katharine Halls I don’t even like protests. I don’t like chanting, and within ten minutes I’m usually asking myself, what am I doing here. I walk with everybody else, but I observe what’s happening as if from a distance, even when I’m right in the middle of it.…
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Tool: Portable Bidet, $13.99
Published first at: https://believermag.com/tool-portable-bidet-13-99/ My roommate burst out of the bathroom clutching a thin piece of metal several feet long in one hand and a pair of wire cutters in the other. “I managed to get the pipe out,” he said. “It drives me crazy when I’m trying to pee.”…