I need your support, to not die; Shady’s letter

Egyptian film director and photographer Shady Habash died in Tora prison in the capital Cairo on Friday, according to human rights organisations. Habash, 24, had been in prison since March 2018 over directing a song mocking Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi…

Shady’s letter
Oct 26th 2019

“Prison doesn’t kill, loneliness does.

I need your support, to not die.

For the past two years I’ve been trying on my own to resist everything happening to me, so that I can come out of prison the same person you’ve always known, but I can’t go on.

Resistance in prison means resisting yourself – protecting yourself and your humanity from the impact of what you see and live each day. It means preventing yourself from losing your mind or slowly dying, because of having been thrown into a room two years ago, being forgotten, without knowing when or how you will get out.

So I’m still in prison. Every 45 days I go before a judge who gives me another 45 days in jail, without even looking at me nor the papers of the case in which everyone else was released 6 months ago. Anyhow, my next court appearance will be Tuesday November 19th.

I need your support, and I need you to remind them of me being still in prison, and that they’ve forgotten me – and that I’m dying slowly because I know I’m standing alone in front of everything. I know that a lot of friends who love me are afraid to write about me, thinking I will be released anyway without their support.

I need you, and I need your support more than ever.
_ Shady Habash ”