Interviews with Mahmoud Salem

A thing about my issues with my mother is this. I did not live with her; I lived on my own. And I did not inform her of my activities. And I made sure that she remains as technologically illiterate as possible. Because, forget everything else– Egyptian moms are naggers, man. They nag. I didn´t want her nagging. One of the worst things about Twitter right now is that I have both my father and my sister following me. And I tried blocking them once, and then they got another account, and it just became tedious, because it´s impossible to go through your list and try to guess, “Is that your father? Is that your sister?” You know, and so, no, it sucks because they know where you are.

Like Twitter is such a draconian thing. There is a big button that says, “Follow me.” You know, and just– you make the job of the security agencies or your family members easier, depending who you are or whatever they want most. So no, she did not know anything until the revolution happened. And, until now, I don´t think she understands the situation. Despite, yeah, all those years and the success and micro celebrity status, being very known in very small circles, my mother actually never knew anything about this.

The effect of my participation in the revolution was very interesting, family-wise. Because my mom, a few months earlier, had already been fighting very much with the NDP. She was very much on the outs with them. But the day I got arrested, that´s when she firmly joined the revolution, really. She started, “They´re like those bastards.” You know, which is fine. It´s interesting, because she keeps getting phone calls from other NDP people, and they´re trying to get her in their new NDP Party or whatever. And, so far, she has stood her ground. And, for that, I´m actually proud of her. Because they are staging a comeback thanks to the involvement of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces.

On the other hand my sister and my dad, they actually had different reactions. My sister was just you know, she didn´t know anything. And, suddenly, her brother was famous. So she was just happy, “My brother is famous. Everybody knows my brother. Everybody likes my brother, so that´s cool.” My father shifts between fear over me and the fact that he has actually had about, I don´t know, three or four girlfriends who dated him specifically because he´s my father. ´Cause they´re fans. So, suddenly, like it opened up an entire dating scene for him. So that was sweet.

Mahmoud Salem is a blogger, activist, writer and a business development consultant. His blog is the most prominent English-language Egyptian blog, entitled: “Rantings of a Sandmonkey” it won the best Middle East and Africa blog awards in 2006 and 2007, and Best English Blog in the Deutsche Welle Best of Blogs award in 2011 and has over 6 million unique views and his Twitter account has over 87,000 followers. His human rights activism areas have been in freedom of speech, human rights, religious rights, and women’s’ rights.

In 2005, he started the first anti-terrorism demonstration in Cairo, and participated in monitoring the Egyptian parliamentary and presidential elections.

In 2006, he was the principal organizer of the first Egyptian anti-sexual harassment demonstration and marsh after the Eid sexual harassment incidents. Incensed by Police torturing Egyptian people on videos and sparing them, he and friends collected the videos, posted them online and pushed for a public persecution of the police officers who committed those acts, leading to the unprecedented convictions of two police officers.

In 2007, he was a stage speaker at the Atlas Foundation’s 25th anniversary conference, head of the new media panel in the Qatar Foundation democracy conference and started the Tafkir project, an Arabic language blogging website to facilitate and promote ideas and online dialogue.

In 2008, he was an organizer and a team leader of 8 Egyptian bloggers for the “Egypt blogs America” project, which monitored the US elections and created a documentary film about it.

In 2009, he was picked for the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow conference and the US Islamic Forum conference, and started the IRIS social campaign company.

In 2011, he was one of the leading voices of the January 25 revolution that brought down Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, ran for Egyptian Parliament, started the Tweetback initiative which developed two impoverished communities in Egypt with a population over 700,000 and raised millions of pounds for social entrepreneurship projects. He also initiated the “Egyptian Bill of Rights Project,” which was later on sponsored by Mohamed El Baradei.

He co-authored two books – “Tweets from Tahrir” and “18 Days” and founded “7etan,” the first Graffiti School in Egypt. His writings have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Guardian and various online websites.