My Family’s Story

Basically, I am a guy who is in his early twenties, so I’ve experienced everything from the revolution until now and even before, but have very few memories about anything pre-2014 not related to school since I was still a child and wasn’t aware about the world. Recently, I’ve been talking with my family about that era and how it was like living in Egypt and raising me and my sister, and my mom told me a very wild story. For context, nobody in my family except my very old grandma wears hijab.

Basically, my mom told me that it was extremely tough raising me and my sister since she was extremely scared everyday sending us to school and not knowing if we would return or die. Moreover, she told me about how, during the era of the Muslim Brotherhood, she was sexually assaulted and beaten up by MB members for simply walking on the street without a hijab and was sexually assaulted again for participating in a protest against the MB’s condemnation of the UN women’s rights memorandum. Moreover, she was extremely scared to walk alone at night out of fears that she’d die or be sexually assaulted. She was also scared when my dad went to the cafe when watching a football match out of a fear that he’d get murdered due to terrorism. She also told me that she was scared to tell her friends to visit Egypt and she told me that there were no basic services such as gas, electricity, or water and that we didn’t go to Alexandria in May 2013 because we couldn’t fill up our gas tank and that the economy was starting to get fucked (not as much as now, but it was still starting to be bad).

As for that, this (and the fact that they also beat up my uncle and he had to go to the hospitalbecause he was vocally anti-MB in his workplace) is the reason why I have PTSD from them even in 2024.