Ayman moussa biography for kids

Abdelrahman ElGendy, an Egyptian writer and former political prisoner, is a Dietrich fellow at the University of Pittsburgh’s nonfiction writing graduate program.

“Does the world even remember us, brother?”

The question came tucked in one of the letters our mothers smuggled to us in our separate prisons.

Ayman moussa biography for kids

I’d met Ayman, the author of the letter, one evening in October 2013 in a prison cell in the Egyptian desert. There were 64 of us crammed inside, a jumble of bodies hemorrhaging sweat, all arrested earlier that day at a protest against Egypt’s military coup.

The authorities had charged us with “unlawful assembly,” the standard charge levied against protesters, and in a mass trial that felt like absurdist theater, we were given 15-year sentences. Six years and three months later, thanks to a miracle, I was released.

Ayman hasn’t been as lucky.

A little after midnight on that October night, a cell door opened a