Our generation grew up on the memoirs of political detainees in the prisons of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, in the sixties and seventies.
We also heard about the tragedies of prisons and detention centers in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's rule in the eighties and nineties.
Then we woke up to the massacre of "Abu Salim" prison committed by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in the mid-1990s, which killed at least 1,200. We have lived over the past decade, and we are still, with the horrors of Bashar al-Assad's prisons, whether in "Palmyra" or "Sednaya" prison .
Now, we are living in a real tragedy, in which tens of thousands of Arab men and women are spending their best years behind bars in one of the worst stages of shame and disgrace in modern Arab history.
In Egypt alone, thousands of young people lie behind the walls of nearly 65 prisons, more than half of which have been built since the coup of 3 July 2013, in order to accommodate thousands of detainees, especially from the "Muslim Brotherhood" group, who are spending the flower of their youth in prisons for nothing other than expressing their rejection of the Sisi regime. .
The names of prisons, due to their frequent frequency in the public space, became more famous than the names of Egyptian cities.
Prisons such as "Mazraat Tora" prison, "Scorpion" prison, "Al Azouli" prison, "Wadi Al Natroun" prison, "Al Marj" prison, and "Burj Al Arab" prison have become known to the public and the private because of the thousands of cases and sentences issued against their detainees.
You listen to these young people as you try to hold back tears that are about to fall, not only sympathy and solidarity with their pain and painful memories, but rather grief and oppression against a cruel country, and a sadistic regime, which is carrying out an organized and systematic process of destroying its best children, for nothing except in order to gain power and stay in it. what ever the price.
However, what hurts the soul the most is to know what is happening behind the walls of these prisons in terms of tragedies and crimes, and to listen to them as they are being spoken by their owners and victims.
Over the past days, I have listened to a number of horrific stories told by a number of young Egyptians who have been detained since Al-Sisi's coup, and who have spent years undergoing psychological and physical torture.
This was through meetings organized by a group of former detainees' youth on the "Clubhouse" platform, in which they talked about their personal experiences and experiences from the moment of their arrest until their release from detention, whether by acquittals or pending cases, some of which are still standing, but they were able to leave Country.
Most of these youths are under the age of 25, and some of them were arrested as a boy under 16 years of age, and spent periods ranging between 1 and 7 years in prison, until their cases were decided.
Some of them narrated about the psychological and physical suffering inside the prison and their exposure to beatings, humiliation and humiliation in order to break them, and to take revenge on them because of their political and intellectual backgrounds, and how they tried to adapt to life inside the prison, whether in relation to sleeping, eating, or going to the bathroom.
You listen to their stories as they tell them in their tongues, not from them, so you become silent from the horror of what you hear, and your imagination runs away, and you feel as if you are watching a horror movie or black comedy that takes you to another world.
At the same time, you cannot avoid comparing what you hear from these young men, and what you would have hoped to hear from them had they not been arrested.
Instead of hearing painful stories of imprisonment, torture, intimidation and humiliation, you would hear these young people’s plans for the future, whether in terms of studies, work or travel.
Young men and women of a young age talk about deprivation of sleep, eating, visits and seeing family, as if they are in a zero-sum struggle with an external enemy trying to get rid of them, and seeks to kill their dreams before exhausting their bodies.
You listen to these young people as you try to hold back tears that are about to fall, not only sympathy and solidarity with their pain and painful memories, but rather grief and oppression against a cruel country, and a sadistic regime, which is carrying out an organized and systematic process of destroying its best children, for nothing except in order to gain power and stay in it. what ever the price.
Young people talked about their experiences in detention, and in their conversation a cure for them and their pain, even if only a little, while the heart squeezed pain over what had afflicted them with no guilt other than their standing in the face of the machine of oppression and tyranny.
Some still have panic attacks, fear, and disturbances in sleep and thinking.
Prison, its tragedies and its experience are not permissible for them, in their sleep and wakefulness, they try to overcome them, sometimes by running away, and at other times by laughing at them, and at the paradoxes of life inside the prison.
While they do so, a part of them has been broken, and will not be repaired except with complete justice that does justice to them and takes revenge from their torturers, no matter how long the time is.