18 Days
“Mubarak’s regime was like a dark cloud that covered everything my generation could aspire to be”
Mosa’ab Eshamy, photojournalist
Illustration by Kit Lloyd
Ghada Najibe gathers her high school friends into a circle, sits them down and smooths out the flare of her skirt. “Have you heard of Zaki Badr?” she asks the women huddled around, staring at her intently.
By day, Ghada is secretary of the student union, a leader in the class of 1987. At night she watches her mother read articles published in Wafd newspaper, the signature green oblong at the top right-hand corner, the red headlines glaring out from the page.
When she finishes, Ghada studies the crisp print herself, inhaling the twists and turns of the Mubarak regime and his men.
“Zaki Badr, our interior minister, tortures people” she tells her friends. She pauses, awaiting their reaction, then raises her voice. “Are we going to be silent about his crimes?’
“No,” they reply. “No, we’re not.”
The five women around Ghada buy paint brushes and use them to daub slogans on the walls decrying police brutality. They print flyers which they distribute at the local Pepsi factory. The group grows, until there are 60 of them with a simple goal: to spread the word about fighting for human rights and justice.
But the momentum is short-lived and Ghada is called to the head teacher’s room. She pushes the door slowly, enters and as the space opens up, she sees six men in the office.
“What’s your relation with politics?” one of them asks her. From their stiff grey suits, she gathers they belong to the intelligence services. “Who helped you?”
“You are a student,” another chips in. “You have a task, politicians have their tasks.”
Eventually the men leave and her teacher spins around and squares up to her.
“Do you realise the situation you put me in now?” She walks to the desk and slams her bag on top of it. “You were about to get all your teachers, colleagues and family disappeared. How dare you do that to us?”
Ghada is suspended for three days and stripped of her student union’s post. But the burning desire for change has not been extinguished – it lives within her from that day onwards.