“In less than five years”: Rehab Bassam interviewed by Caroline Rooney, Dar Al-Shorouk, Nasr City, Cairo, April 2010

Abstract

Rehab Bassam is a young Egyptian woman blogger whose blog was published in Arabic as the best-selling Orz Belaban L’shakhseen [2008; Rice Pudding for Two]. The interview was conducted at the Dar Al-Shorouk publishing house in Cairo, for which Rehab works. The discussion attends to the culture of blogging in Egypt, and its role in developing activist networks and forms of democratic consciousness. Towards the end of the interview, there is an expression of optimism in the growing movement for social justice, an affirmation of the observed momentum of what was to become, less than a year later, the Egyptian revolution.

Keywords:

• blogging
• youth culture
• activism
• Egyptian revolution

Notes

1. The general strike was called “The Egyptian Intifada”, and was organized through the Internet and mobile phones. The Facebook group had about 54,000 members, and membership of the April 6 movement continued to grow after the strike, arguably the most significant strike in the lead-up to 2011.