05
ABOUT
On January 28, 2011, dubbed the “Friday of Rage,” millions of Egyptians took to the streets shouting a slogan that has rung out across the Arab world: “The people want the downfall of the regime!” All Internet and mobile communication were cut by the state in a far-reaching measure to contain the largest mass protests Egypt has ever seen. Video camera in hand, I joined a protest in the Cairo district of Haram. Two youth carried me on their shoulders as I recorded the images. Thousands of protestors soon swelled to tens of thousands, stretching farther than the eye could see.
I was a witness to the struggle for a civil society in the Middle East’s most populous state, the flood of revolution in 2011, and the tumultuous years that followed. My account is documented in a book entitled Media, Revolution and Politics in Egypt: The Story of an Uprising, published by I.B.Tauris in November 2015. I have written for The International Herald Tribune/The New York Times during the time of the Arab uprisings and their aftermath.
My background is in editing, teaching, and print, digital, and multimedia journalism. I hold a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with a concentration in print and radio broadcast and a graduate diploma in television journalism from the American University in Cairo. In 2010, I completed a journalism fellowship at the University of Oxford, where I explored trends in media censorship.
I began my journalism career in 1998 as a staff writer for Egypt Today and its sister publication Business Today. Since then, my work has appeared in The International Herald Tribune/The New York Times, VICE, World Press Review, TIME.com, CNN, BBC Radio, and Reuters. I was the Egypt field producer for Morgan Spurlock’s feature documentary Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?
reader, writer, revolutionary