When A Story is Blocked

Conversations on an empty stomach: The stories of Laila Soueif, part 1

This is a mother of my age. Her son is the same age as my son. I am not on a hunger strike but she is. I wanted to share this on my page on Facebook, but for some odd reason, it wasn’t working, so here it is.

”Laila Soueif is on a hunger strike in her seventies. The idea itself is terrifying to all. This is Laila, the mother, putting her body on the line yet again as a final defense for her son, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who has been imprisoned since Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime came to power. After serving his second sentence — now a total of 11 years in Egyptian prisons — the authorities are not satisfied and want more. They may steal more days from Alaa’s life, but not without Laila raising her voice and resisting. Body for body, and a soul by a soul’s side.

I once tried a hunger strike myself, just for a few days. I vividly recall the clarity of thought that came after the third day without food, as if layers of awareness and memory were peeling away, revealing the raw activity of the mind beneath. It felt as though food coated our consciousness in layers of fat.

There’s something about Laila that constantly pushes the spirit — how to mold it to please it, so it can resist and find its way. On the third day of her strike, as stories and memories surfaced, brought on by the company and the moment, and most of all, the stripping away of mental layers as the body fights to assert its existence, I began to see something full in these details. They offered a new perspective on Laila, reshaping her image from within. Stories shape us. We owe them loyalty by documenting, retelling and securing their place in history.

I wanted our conversations to flow naturally, guided by the moment and her still-vivid memories. Each time I left her home, I would write down notes, and then write about our conversations as soon as I returned home. I looked forward eagerly for the day I could hand her a copy of these conversations to read and give feedback. I felt a mix of excitement and fear — excited for her to see these records of her thoughts during this time, and fearful of the moment when the stories would stop.

Day three of the strike
Wednesday, October 2

Present: Aida Seif Eddawla, Alaa Soueif and his wife Soheir, Ahdaf Soueif, Ahmed Doma and Samar.

It is the beginning of a new academic year, and we talk about students’ wishes for university enrollment, and how studying something one dislikes feels like imprisonment. Laila recalls:

“I was in primary school when I realized I wanted to study mathematics. I told my father that solving math problems made me happy and didn’t feel like work. He replied, ‘Then you can specialize in pure mathematics when you grow up.’ I didn’t understand what that meant at the time, but I liked the idea, and it stuck with me. When I was in high school, my mother wanted me to pursue medicine. I refused. She insisted I achieve the grades for medical school and then decide. I agreed, scored the required grades, and chose to study mathematics in the Sciences Faculty.”

She was the middle child of an academic household. Her parents were both prominent figures at Cairo University. Her mother, Fatma Moussa, was a renowned professor of English literature and a pioneer in modern translation, while her father, Mostafa Soueif, was the first head of Cairo University’s Psychology Department and founder of the Academy of Arts. Both her parents authored defining publications in arts and sciences. Though neither was politically active, they encouraged their three children to choose their own paths, which spanned literature, engineering and teaching pure mathematics.

The conversation shifts to the last hunger strike Laila and Aida had undertaken together at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center in 1999. They were protesting a restrictive NGO law that curbed freedoms of association. The strike ended after a week with promises to amend the law. These promises were never fulfilled.

Day five of the strike
Friday, October 4

Present: Just the two of us.

We talk about our friend Salma, her son Zein and the struggles of modern motherhood. Laila says, “I put my children in daycare from the age of three months. I had my master’s, PhD, teaching responsibilities, and political activism. I didn’t really experience motherhood.” I’m struck by how early she separated from her infant. I ask her, was it easy?

“The only one who stayed home for six months was Alaa,” she says, “because Ahmed [Seif, her husband] wasn’t working then and decided to spend all his time with him. It got to the point where I was annoyed with him. He was like those women who do nothing but cling to their child. Our roles were a bit reversed.” She laughs, heartily. “After six months, I put Alaa in daycare and told Seif he needed to find something to do with his time. He was going through a rough patch, like most of our generation, during the early 1980s and the beginning of the Hosni Mubarak era. It was a hard time. But the problem was, when he finally left the house and got involved in political activism again, he went straight into founding an armed organization. From being idle at home to forming an armed movement.” She laughs for a long time.

“You should’ve kept him at home with the baby,” I joke. Then I ask why her generation turned to arms — was it a reaction to political defeat? She categorically dismisses the idea. “We didn’t see it as a response to defeat. It was part of global liberation movements at the time. The logic was: if the regime uses weapons and repression, it’s legitimate to fight back with weapons.”

This leads me to another question: when did her generation feel defeated? I recall how, with my peers in 2014 and 2015, we began to feel the weight of collective defeat. Youth were scattered between prisons and exile, leaving so few of us to confront the tyranny. “The true defeat was incurred by the political project of the left after all the student and labor movements of the late 1960s and throughout the tumultuous 1970s. We faced defeat gradually, realizing it when the Muslim Brotherhood began winning all the elections in syndicates and clubs in the early 1980s. This happened after our long struggle to open up spaces, like our battle during the first elections of the Cairo University Teaching Staff Club. Back then, elections were not rigged. Government candidates would lose, and the list known as Shadia al-Shishini’s list swept the elections. Shishini was a professor of chemical engineering at Cairo University, and the list included several left-leaning, independent and reputable academic names. After a major battle against vote-rigging that we alone waged, and that we won, the Muslim Brotherhood came in the next elections and reaped the fruits of our efforts to wrest the club from state control. This pattern repeated across most syndicate battles. It was exactly like what they did during the revolution. That’s why I can understand the resentment many from my generation feel toward the MB,” she says.

A group of friends joins us, and we talk about the constant presence of informants outside Laila’s house. These surveillance waves ebb and flow, but the most intense came after Sanaa, Alaa’s younger sister, returned from the UN climate summit in 2022. The informants lingered outside the house until the family’s visit to Alaa in Wadi al-Natrun prison. Laughing and struggling to get her words out, she says: “they watch us even as we’re going to them.”

I recall that during this period, after we concluded the sit-in we organized as Egyptian journalists (Eman Ouf, Mona Selim and I) at the syndicate in solidarity with Alaa’s hunger strike, the first place we went was Laila Soueif’s house. We brought along our own informants, who then joined the ones already stationed outside Laila’s house, forming an all-star team of informants under her building.

Laila tells a story about the stupidity of informants across generations. In the mid-1980s, after a gathering at friends’ house in the Talbiya neighborhood, Laila and her husband Seif were heading back to their home in Faisal. They noticed an informant driving a taxi following them. So, they decided to walk all the way home. The informant trailed them slowly in his car, almost as if he wanted to say, ‘Why don’t you let me drive you so we can both be done with this?’

Day seven of the hunger strike
Sunday, October 6

Present: Just the two of us.

She seems exhausted. She’s not going to the university; it is a public holiday for the anniversary of October 6. She has a master’s thesis to review for one of her students. She sits in the living room with the papers, leaning her head back briefly to rest, then sips coffee and continues working. I offer to handle some chores so she could focus. She finally relented and asked me to hang up Alaa’s white prison clothes.

The task catches me off guard. I hoped to clean the kitchen or prepare food for Toka, her dog companion. Instead, I find myself with Alaa’s white clothes, preparing them for the next visit. I carry them to the drying rack and shake out each piece forcefully. I see his presence in the clothes and his image that has been stuck in white for over a decade. I get anxious and rush through the task, then go back inside, and we smoke a cigarette together.

Everywhere, we hear nationalist propaganda songs celebrating October 6. I complain about the morning assembly noise from nearby schools that has been waking me for a while. Laila reminisces about her first day in high school, which coincided with the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser. At the morning assembly, she found girls crying hysterically, many fainting. Her first day was spent carrying fainted classmates in the courtyard. Laughing, she says, “I still don’t know how fainting relates to sadness — it seems like it was just a trend to display grief at the time.” We laugh for a long while.

From there, she starts talking about Abdel Nasser. “Compared to what’s happening now, Nasser was the most progressive leader we’ve had since. I understand the decay that began in the 1960s in every aspect, but the country could have achieved much more than what had been fated to us, unfortunately.”

The conversation shifts to the new education minister, who, like his predecessors, spoke of reforming the education system by focusing solely on high school education. She says that whenever an official avoids addressing the need for projects targeting primary education, it’s clear the reform will be useless. They insist on misallocating resources, as has been the case with every failed reform effort.

She shares her own dream, which she had envisioned during the early days of the revolution — a time when there was hope, when projects were actively being proposed for the country’s development. Many had nominated her for the higher education minister, but that was never her ambition. Her dream, which she had worked on during Khaled Ali’s presidential campaign, was to develop public primary education. She wanted to invest in teacher salaries, limit class sizes to 25 students and have teachers guide the same group of students from first to fourth grade. She also wanted to involve local communities in supporting education infrastructure, providing daily meals in schools and finding suitable learning spaces if the state can’t provide enough classrooms.

Day 12 of the hunger strike
Friday, October 11

Present: Mai and Mahienour al-Massry

“I thought of you yesterday after finishing my first lecture for first-year students,” she tells me. “I wanted to tell you it went well, and the students showed up, and I had energy.” We exchange smiles, and I ask about the students, whether they were engaged in their first university class. She says she loves first-year students. “From the first year, you can tell who is focused and will persevere.” On the first day, she gives them advice. Knowing most students have jobs to cover living and tuition expenses, as families are no longer capable of doing so, she advises them to focus on what they can manage, spread out their workload and defer some courses if necessary to avoid continuous failure, which would drag down their GPA. Her department is tough, but those who succeed in math can excel in many areas and are often exceptionally gifted, she says.

She recalls a student who juggled university while serving in the military, attending her 7 pm lectures after a full day at his unit. She adjusted her schedule to accommodate him. Many professors still support diligent students like this. This is how universities once had the capability to actually shape students’ futures, she points out.

“Next year, the faculty will celebrate its centennial. It was established right after the founding of Fouad I University. The state’s focus on science was evident at that time. The university was a progressive hub for Egypt, attracting thinkers and scientists. Women were admitted to the Sciences Faculty from the very beginning, unlike other faculties that delayed women’s enrollment. This was thanks to progressive leadership at the faculty. When the Medicine Faculty rejected writer and politician Sohair al-Qalamawy, Taha Hussein welcomed her into the Arts Faculty. Similarly, without physicist Mostafa Mosharrafa, atomic scientist Sameera Moussa might not have joined the Sciences Faculty. Even the enrollment of women in the Agriculture Faculty wasn’t easy.”

She remembers that if it hadn’t been for the monthly excellence bonus she received from the university, she wouldn’t have been able to advance in her steps as quickly in her first marriage. She would spend the bonus on herself, just as her husband, a top student, did. The fact that she got married for the first time during her first year of university was new information to me. How did she get married at such a young age, and how did her father and mother agree to it? She did it, and her family respected her decision. She was wedded in a small room at her parents’ house. I laugh and ask her, “What were you rushing for?” She replies, “What was stopping me from marrying someone I loved, as long as we could support ourselves and take responsibility, while excelling in our education?” The marriage lasted throughout their university years.

She couldn’t stomach any herbal drinks during the strike except from aniseed, sage and sometimes hibiscus. She prefers only tea and coffee, but it’s the strike and its rules, she says.

The friends leave the gathering, and Ahmed Doma joins us. We briefly discuss the contempt case filed against him and the dozens of complaints he received from anonymous figures, even though we know the parties behind these complaints are far from anonymous.

Day 14 of the strike

Sunday, October 13

Present: Ahmed Doma

I visit her in the middle of the day, contrary to my usual evening visits. She has department supervision at the university from 5 pm, so I decided to go at noon and drive her to the university.

I bring up her first marriage again and how she later met Ahmed Seif, who was a well-known student in the student groups at the Economics and Political Science Faculty at that time. She says that Seif was a friend before they started their romantic relationship, and they respected each other because he was a refined, understanding and progressive person among his peers. During the arrests following the 1977 bread uprising, when dozens of students were detained and others were being pursued, Seif was among those who fled until his case was referred without his name being included.

Case referrals took a long time then. Things weren’t like they are today in the legal process. The prosecution wouldn’t accept transferring weak or fabricated cases. That’s why referrals could take months, or sometimes even a year or two, if there was no strong evidence. “During this period, I tried to help those who were in hiding, including Seif. I wasn’t arrested, nor was my name added to the wanted lists, because I was one of the few who attended my lectures regularly. I didn’t sit for hours in the cafeteria every day like all the leftist students did at the time.” She laughs loudly and stumbles over the rest of the sentence, and I laugh along with her. “The informant assigned to monitor them didn’t know me or see me with them much, so I escaped the pursuit.”

We leave the house. My car is parked a long distance away, and I try to convince her to wait while I bring it, but she refuses. She walks slowly, dragging her feet, waving to shopkeepers, building guards and neighbors in the area. We get into the car and head to the university, passing through the Bein al-Sarayat area. She says she loves this area and used to frequent it to buy vegetables and meat when she lived in the Maboutheen City.

I ask her about the number of homes she lived in with her family, most of which are in Giza near the university. Five homes so far. We arrive at the university gates. The security personnel recognizes Laila’s face, and allows my car to enter the campus. With her vast experience, we manage to reach the university’s back doors. When we arrive, she points to a small green door and laughs. “See that small green door? There are many like it around the university and in the faculties. I taught Seif all of them when we were students so he’d know where to wait for me or escape the security.”

Day 16 of the hunger strike

Tuesday, October 15

Present: Khaled Ali and Mohamed Fathi

Lawyers Khaled Ali and Mohamed Fathi join us to check on her before her trip. Earlier, I asked Laila about the archive of cases Seif worked on, thinking it might be time to document these cases, just as Seif did with some of prominent lawyer Nabil al-Hilali‘s cases, especially the armed organization case. When Ali arrived, we asked him and tried to map out the likely locations of the case documents.

I remember meeting Ali more than 25 years ago at the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, which served as a legal university for the younger generation of lawyers and researchers that Seif mentored. Ali always has unique stories about his godfather.

The conversation turns to Seif’s relationship with money, and Laila mentions that they had gone through various crises because “what he had in his pocket wasn’t really his.” Ali intervenes, “We used to watch Seif get his salary and distribute it to his siblings and friends before he even put it in his own pocket. We often used to pool money together, and when he got paid, he’d say, ‘Give it to so-and-so.’” Laila adds, “That’s why our children didn’t inherit a piaster from Seif, and we did this willingly. Even though we were always exhausted by expenses, we managed.” She continues, “When Seif inherited from his father, he refused to take even one piaster and decided to distribute it to his sisters, whom the family had deprived of education.” She pauses briefly before adding, “Honestly, Seif wasn’t the least bit patriarchal.”

Ali and Fathi leave, and we begin preparing for Alaa’s upcoming visits. We enter the disorganized kitchen, and I listen to Laila’s plan for packing and arranging, following her instructions as best I can. Sometimes, I would suggest things, and sometimes, she would accept my ideas. Laila had a special system for preparing for the visits — a system she had been following for 11 years.

At first, she would place fresh vegetables, fruits and sweets in a high corner of the kitchen, away from Toka. Cleaning supplies, books and magazines would go in another corner on the dining table, and then she would move on to the cooked food. Everything had to be transferred into tightly sealed plastic containers, and then she would move to the fridge. She would completely clear out the freezer and begin stacking the containers of cooked food to freeze, so they could withstand the long journey to Wadi al-Natrun. My role is simple: I’d pick some containers, empty some foods and arrange some in the fridge. During this, Laila continues to offer me to taste some of the special dishes available, and I do so with love, though feeling slightly awkward.

Once we finish the task, the dog Toka began barking sharply to go out. I suggest taking her to the street, but Laila suggests we go up to the roof so Toka could relieve herself while we smoke a cigarette. Laila finds a spot on the brick fence she knows well. She sits there, we light our cigarettes, and chat. As we watch the rooftops, I tell her about the final chapters of my struggles to find an apartment in Cairo.

Day 18 of the hunger strike
Thursday, October 16

Present: Just the two of us.

Laila planned to finish all the university work today before traveling. I spoke to her on the phone. “You’re not a stranger, come let’s have a cigarette together and take a break,” she said. The ritual of smoking with Laila became like a new story she loves to tell. We didn’t rush the conversation at the rate of our burning cigarettes, but the stories ignited as if they had just happened yesterday, not 20 or 30 years ago. She started to understand that I love this routine, and I looked forward to this special moment of the day. So we both prepared for it.

Today’s story required several rehearsals, like the ones we had in the previous days, stretching out the conversation and finding the right space. The discussion opens up with the details of the assault on Doma in a street in Zamalek and the possibility that the authorities orchestrated the incident.

“When will they realize that this young man won’t be broken this way?” she asks. I’m angry, seeing the story as being more than just a direct fear of authority — they want to make us afraid to even walk the streets and focus only on our personal safety, which is a far worse evil than a direct confrontation. She tells me she had been confronting the authorities for 40 years, and from the very first moment, when an officer tried to approach her, she told him that the moment he thought of touching her was the moment it could be her last, and she wouldn’t allow it. She says they were always aware of who would strike back and start the battle, and who would fall.
"
https://www.madamasr.com/en/2024/12/25/feature/politics/conversations-on-an-empty-stomach-the-stories-of-laila-soueif-part-1/