Dreams of a Detainee
after Inji Efflatoun
Sarah Hegazi Malak al-Kashef Nazli and the witnesses Israa al-Taweel Sahar Ali
Sulafa Magdy Hadeer el-Hady Mahienour el-Masry Nora Hesham Renad Emad
Yara Sallam Wafaa Abelqawi Hoda Abdelmoniem Seham Osman Sanaa Seif
Kholoud Said Radwa Mohamed Esraa Abdel Fattah Sama El-Masry Marwa Arafa
Azza Soliman Haneen Hossam Mawada Eladham Sherry Hanem Amal Fathy
Sherifa Refaat Ola al-Qaradawi Hanan Badr el-Din Aisha al-Shater Manar Samy
Eman Al-Helw Menna Abdelaziz Bassant Mohamed Mozn Hassan All of us
Do they still dream and if so tell us of what
because I’m at a loss all awash in darkness or the
recurring dream of being detained imprisoned fined
disappeared tortured solitarily confined killed for the
utterly mundane or the utterly righteous.
For posting a meme, tweet, song, poem
For wanting to keep your ancestral lands
For dancing on the internet while unrich
For your gender or who you have sex with
For having a body that’s looked at by men
For helping the tortured and traumatized heal
For feeling safe enough to raise a rainbow flag
For “debauchery” and disobeying “family values”
For saying the country is ill-equipped for this virus
For saying a pandemic spreads faster in prisons
For saying detainees and prisoners are people too
For being a journalist, writer, translator, publisher
For being a lawyer defending all the above
For being a woman
a woman a woman
a woman a woman a woman
A woman in Egypt with not enough money or clout
to keep you out of the maw of military court
the jaws of a chewing state with a taste for those who
dare believe and act as though they’re free.
They don’t care about the lives of women, why
would they care that we dream.
