 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch and Globe Trotter. I've just finished reading a terrific book by Allah Abdul Fattah called You Have Not Been Defeated. It's a book of essays and speeches and Facebook posts and Twitter posts written by a remarkable young man, a person who should be one of the key intellectuals of our time on technology. Unfortunately for the past decade, he has been in and out as the guest of the Egyptian state in its various prisons. The book is sincere. It is beautiful. It is charming. It's a book that people must read. It's an incredible honor for us at People's Dispatch and Globe Trotter to be joined to talk about the book Egypt Hassan to be joined by Leila Saif, a professor of mathematics at Cairo University, somebody who herself knows a lot about protests having been a student militant in the 1970s, having been a militant through her entire career, including I Gather Leila being pushed and shoved in 2005 in a quite important protest movement against Hosni Mubarak. Welcome to People's Dispatch. I'm honored. Well, first let's start by talking a little bit about your son. He has been, as I said, for the crime of being a democratic person. He has been in and out of prison recently, sentenced again to five years. How are you feeling about this, about having your son in this situation? Basically, I'm very angry. I'm very, very angry. This is I'm angry and tortured because it's my son, but I'm also angry because what's happening to my son is happening to so many other young people. It is a banner of the repression that is everywhere now in Egypt. I mean, I have been protesting against the government, the different governments, Egypt's ages, the 70s, but the presentation is really far, far more than anything we have ever seen. This is also, it's like madness. A regime that imagines that it can stop every single, this is a voice, in a country of 100 million. I mean, I know in India it's much bigger than that. 100 million maybe doesn't sound very big to Indians, but still 100 million is 100 million. I'm a politician and I know that in 100 million, there will always be 10, 20, 30,000. There will be far more distance than that, but there will be 10, 20, 30,000 to really not be silent at any price. So, trying to silence absolutely every different voice, beyond the pale. It is beyond the pale and yet it's what the government has tried to do. The book by Allah starts with his writings around the 2011 January 25th revolution when the people of Egypt were able to get rid of a person that you have been protesting about for decades before, for 29 years and that was Hosni Mubarak. What is the residue of those protests of the 25th of January? Does it, does any of the residue of that stone in Tahrir Square where you protested in 1972, does the residue of January 25th which brought Allah to the international stage, does it remain? Yes, it remains. It remains in people's consciousness. It remains in, yeah, of course, I mean, this revolution has been vanquished and there is very, very, very strong depression, very violent depression. So, as can be expected, people are afraid, afraid to protest, afraid to voice their, but still, people think differently. They are not the same as they were before 2011. Many, many values, many of the values for which we try to work in the 80s and 90s and which we try to propagate in very small groups now are actually what very large groups believe in. Very good people shut up and are afraid. They do not believe in what they came out for in 25. And I guess evidence of that all the time, I mean, every, every time, every single day as I walk down the street, people stop me, tell me that they are thinking of Allah, that they hope he will be out soon, that just any people, you know, taxi driver, a guy, a delivery guy, et cetera. So, there are tens of thousands out there, probably even more than tens of thousands, probably in the millions who have, you know, who think, who, okay, they always knew that we were living in unfair times, but who have sort of crystallized their thoughts, who understand that what is happening now is repression, that it should not be so, it is not natural, this is not the natural order of things. And among young people in particular, or any, when they think that this is the natural order of things, they think, they also think that there will come a time when they will try to change. There will come a time when there will be an opportunity to change it. I mean, okay, all of these people, when they think that things are bad, they think that things are bad and probably will stay bad. You may be the best of what you have, but young people, they're not like that, they want, they want a better future. And of course, a lot of them are trying to get out of the country to find the better future elsewhere. But after all, again, this is, we're talking about 100 million, 60% of whom are young people. So there's no way all of these are going to, they have to find, they have to find the future here. And they found, they're looking for it, they're not, okay, they're bound to the wind for the moment, or getting out of the storm or whatever, I didn't say no lie, but they are not, they have not given up, they have not given up on change. And they know, and that's the difference with January made, they know many faces who speak for them. They know that faces like Aleh, like they have already used all of them, like Khaled Ali Aleh's lawyer, that these people do speak for them. It's a good reason that Allah's book is called You Have Not Been Defeated. I think that's what you're talking about. Your husband in prison in 1983, in prison because he was a member of a left organization trying to drive democracy becomes a lawyer, the rule of law. I mean, what you're saying that the situation after January 25th and perhaps after Rabah Square, the terrible massacre of 2013, people don't want to return to the days when they don't have an obligation to rule of law or democracy or what you said very movingly right now, the future, 60% of young people need a future, they need to believe in something. The Arab Network for Human Rights Information says that there are 65,000 political prisoners in Egypt, Leila, 65,000 political prisoners. It's important that you say people want to believe in something and yet the state is imprisoned, 65,000 people not on criminal grounds but political grounds. How does one even understand that? We live in a terrible crime, sweetie, all over the world. For one thing, all the so-called democratic states, which are certainly more democratic, but you're in India, you know, how many failures there are in democracy, all these states are either dear to the right or even in the end, it's a whole new capitalist system, new liberal system that has the world in its grip and that is making it impossible for the moment, hopefully it won't be impossible forever, otherwise you're going to lose the whole planet, not just Egypt yet, making it impossible to try to change, making it impossible to protect future generations from, I mean, the excesses, making wars, making the privileged of those who are privileged more, far more important than the lives of those who are underprivileged. These are the times we live in and it manifests itself in a different way. In Egypt, it manifests itself in a very crude way, exactly because we had the revolution, because we had the revolution, it was a popular revolution, and we saw the possibility, we saw the, you know, another world is popular, stuff like that, and so it takes this very, very, very brutal expression to make people, for a regime to hope that this can make people give up on that. Okay, you can hold on to power like that for a long time, it really depends on the circumstances, but you cannot stabilize a society, you cannot stabilize it. Egypt is not stabilizing, Egypt is going from one crisis to another, from one crisis to another, and the way that its team manages to strike is by depression, by ignoring the core causes and just handling the manifestations and so on. You know, that's absolutely true what you said, you can keep control over a society, but you don't necessarily stabilize it, I think that's important. And in a way, I want to return toward the end to your son's book, which Fitzcarraldo has brought out, you have not been defeated, because, you know, in a sense, in his book, what comes out is an extraordinarily sensitive young man. I mean, here he is, he's in prison, he's had a beautiful son, Khalid, who he writes about with great feeling, he visits Palestine in one of the moments when he is out, he goes to Gaza, and the last essay in the book, Leila, is about Palestine, where he says Palestine, you are always on my mind. He's an incredible person, can you just tell us a little bit about this extraordinarily sensitive and kind young man who should not be sitting, well, nobody should be a political prisoner, but certainly not this sensitive soul. Tell us a little bit about your son and why you are so angry that this young man is behind bars. Well, I think anyone who needs the book can see that Allah is very knowledgeable about many things, very bright. He was a hell of a good, and I hope he will be again a hell of a good software developer, and I don't know how to describe this, but he looks at things in depth. For example, the three articles about Uber, I'm very proud of these articles, because they came up at a time when none of this was obvious yet, and he was sitting there in prison, he wasn't even and he could analyze the situation and see how this kind of cooperation was going to work out. It's a really pity that he should be in prison, and during this particular time, this last imprisonment started in September 2019, he's been prohibited completely from receiving any books on his paper. He has not been allowed to read a single sheet of paper except my letters once a week for two and a half years. This is torture. I mean, it's not torture like electrifying people on top, but it is torture. It is meant to break it. It's a pity because he has a lot to give the word. Every time he works on something, he puts something new in, he has a new point of view that is worth to do and worth trying. And of course, there is also the fact that his son really, really needs him. His son is now 10. His son really needs him. All these things. He was out of jail for six months from March 2019 to September, but he had to spend every night in the police station, in his own probation. These six months, the things he did for Khaled, the amount of activities they did together, the difference they made to Khaled were unbelievable. Even though he could only spend a few hours a day with Khaled. You can spend the night with him. He's got a lot, and he wrote some of the articles of this book that he did during these six months. What is the most beautiful article, the one about regeneration? He's got a lot to give the word. It's a real pity that he's just locked up and silent. He uses every opportunity that he gets to get his voice out there. Every time he has appeared in court, he's made very big statements, very extensive statements. He appeared in court for renewal of his detainment order, and he pointed out to the judges as he came in. There were children working inside the court area, working at renovations and building and so on. This was against the law. Child labor is against the lawyer's order. You know this as a complaint. So he doesn't let one opportunity go without pointing. He sees these things actually. Most people just walk by with children and they don't even think about it. He's busy and then he doesn't let the jobs go without pointing out. Well, that's a tribute to you and to your husband because you've raised three extraordinarily sensitive children. Each one of them seems to keep putting their foot into it and saying, I refuse. Your daughter's Mona and Sana, one follows their various activities. So well done to you. That piece you mentioned, regeneration. I want to just read a little bit from there because it is really beautiful. He writes, you can become an agent of history instead of its victim. Make of your pain a revolution. Your suffering is resistance. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. So bravely put. He's so brave and I mean, I want to say that on behalf of people's dispatch, Globetrotter and so on, we're very grateful for you for joining us. We're very grateful for your family for helping put this book together. But more than anything, Laila, we are very much hoping to be in Cairo with you to welcome the end, the quashing of all the cases against him and perhaps the opening again of that stone in Tahrir to reveal for Egypt a better future. Thanks a lot for joining us. Thank you, I'm honored.