"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Henley wan an influential poet in the Victorian era, a major theme in literature prior to this era was human powerlessness against fate, The poem celebrates the concept of free will, declaring that the individual can choose to live with courage and dignity even if the circumstances are beyond his control, Henley himself suffered from bone tuberculosis which lead to him spending too much time in hospitals and finally resulting in a below knee amputation of his left leg in his late teen years or early 20s, which inspired him to write this poem and didn't prevent him from living a full life and becoming an acclaimed poet, Invictus is Latin fro "unconquered".

Revolution..."To be continued"

Gaza still weeps

I made this video a couple of years ago, the sad thing is nothing really changed, Palestinians are still being attacked and murdered and Gaza is Still being bombed...

First they came...

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

-Martin Niemöller

Happy #NoSCAF day!

Today, or i should say yesterday May 23rd was the #NoSCAF day which many Egyptian bloggers have been promoting and calling for quite some time now on Twitter, facebook and anywhere they can, the idea was simply to publish blog posts criticizing the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) to break the fear barrier and media silence over it's violations. I was supposed to write this post earlier but i got stuck at the hospital and went straight to bed when i got back so i'm writing this now, sadly it's gonna be extra short cause i have to be up in less than 4 hours and be back at the hospital so here goes. Looking a few months back, when we started the revolution on January 25th, the main goals were to free people from their fear from the system, letting people know that a president's main role is merely as a manager or an executive that the people hired to run the country and he's not a God like figure not to be criticized and breaking that taboo and many other goals of course but those where the ones high on my list, the idea of being able to express my opinion without the fear that i might get locked-up or tortured, it was giving everyone a chance to speak up without worrying about the consequences that might follow. Let's take a look about what we acheived on the past few month after the revolution:

• Hosni Mubarak: stayed in a palace in Sharm EL Sheikh protected by his own forces, and when he was supposed to go to trial he acted all sick like a kid who's skipping school and went to Sharm el sheik's hospital, and he's still there.

• Suzanne Mubarak: Released from detention after throwing away some chaneg (24 millions), also was admitted to the same hospital after a presumably panic attack.

• The SCAF issued an Anti-protest law.

• Protesters and detainees are facing military trials not civil ones although martial law is not applied.

• The SCAF started acting like the previous regime, keeping all the decision making to themselves with no representatives whatsoever of the people who made the revolution in the first place.

• The SCAF, more than once used violence against protesters and detainees , starting from beating them down, tying them, keeping them in non-humane conditions, cutting their hair and cussing them to using electric sticks, tasers and even live ammo against them.

• Protesters went to military trial for having a sit-in in front of the israeli embassy after being detained by the army.

• The same army forces who just stood there during the revolution while protesters were attacked and killed by thugs in Tahrir and other places and who were not-so-fashionably late during the Imbaba incident are the ones who didn't waste anytime in beating up and attacking the protesters in front of the israeli embassy and apprehending them and in Tahrir too before that.

• The usage of the Egyptian museum as a torture chamber by the army in many occasions.

• Not taking any action or showing the initiative to investigate these actions.

That's all i could think of right now,and from that we conclude that the revolution is far from over, we still got a long way to go and yet some people are wondering why many activits called for returning to Tahrir square on may 27th.

The revolution is still alive...

The Vienna incident

This happened more than a year ago, Summer 2009 in was in Hungary for a month in a student exchange program, i traveled to Vienna, Austria for a couple of days and this happened when i was there, and since i'm writing this now it won't be 100% accurate cause some of the details are foggy due to my "awesome" memory.

We were a group of 6 traveling together, 2 turks, 2 english girls and me and my friend from Egypt, one of the english girls wanted to stay behind in Vienna so we were supposed to be 5 people traveling together to Prague and we had reserved the bus tickets online and everything was going fine, the bus was supposed to leave at 6:30 so we decided that morning that everyone should go do whatever he/she wants and that we all should be ready by 5:30 and meet at our hostel to pick up our bags and all.

And so we did we met the turks at the hostel while we got a text from the english girl that she will be meeting us at a certain subway station and which line to take, so it was almost 6 and we were about to take the subway to that station when i got another text from her saying that the bus station is not near the station we were gonna meet at and that we should meet at another one that's nearby the bus station, luckily we got that text in time just before we boarded the train so we started looking at the subway lines map they got to check the shortest and fastest route to our destination, and while doing so we ran into our English friend which had a bit of a surprising news that she's not sure where's the bus station we should be taking our bus to Prague from!

So we took the subway to the 2nd station she mentioned and it was past 6 by that time, 6:10 may be and we started asking random people about the bus station which was called"International bus station" or something like that as i recall and of course nobody knew what the hell we were talkin' about let alone not everyone could speak english, so we started going out in the streets, trying to get any information we can but again we got nothing, then our english friend decided to ask a friend of hers which lived in Vienna for help, she called him and luckily he knew the bus station and volunteered to go there and try to hold the bus till we arrive and it was 6:25 by then.

So now having less than 10 mins to catch the bus we started running in the streets with our luggage and all, through gardens and highways with speeding cars, the turkish guy almost got hit by one, the turkish girl tripped and fell down, the english girl took off her flip flops and started running bare foot, and then it started raining as if that wasn't enough already, it looked like a scene from a bad movie, except it must have been fun to watch.

Luckily we made it just before the bus leaves, we were the last group that boarded the bus, remembering all of that now i can't help but having this huge smile on my face, GOOD TIMES!

Quote of the day

There will always be that one person who doesn't even know you exist,but has the power to shatter your heart into a thousand pieces.