Author: Bab Masr

Remembering Hani Shukrallah (1950–2019): the Egyptian journalist, leftist thinker, and poet of the impossible. Hani Shukrallah would often repeat Salah Jahin’s famous line: “I, who am seduced by the impossible.” This was not merely a verse he admired; it was an expression of his life and an embodiment of his constant infatuation with the impossible. Such was the life of Hani Shukrallah (1950–2019): an endless wager on adventure and defiance. Though he left us eight years ago on this day, the wound of his absence has not aged among those who loved him and his friends, nor even among those who only…

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Amira Howeidy remembers her editor Hani Shukrallah: the man who saw her before she saw herself and transformed Al-Ahram Weekly into a golden era of Egyptian journalism. I don’t remember my first meeting with Hani Shukrallah, my boss during the more than twelve years we worked together at Al-Ahram Weekly. I search my memory, but it is dark. There is no scene of meeting him, no first impressions. It is as if Hani’s impact on my development as a journalist was something I recognized as a given, like the great certainties we grow up with before we fully understand them.…

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