Healing the Pain in the States of the Country of the Ousted

Shefaa El-Mawgoo’ fi Ahwaldawlet Al-Makhlou’ (Healing the Pain in the States of the Country of the Ousted) by Gamal Fathy, Cairo: Rewaq Publishing, 2011. Gamal Fathy follows life across the remote illegal squatter settlements of Cairo, noting the pain of hundreds of thousands living in slums with the bare minimum to survive. According to Fathy, these are the options left open for the poor and destitute in the country of Mubarak, the ousted president. The most significant features captured by Fathy are the complete lack of privacy, where the public and private space mingle into one large conglomeration, and the tendency to live from hand-to-mouth, trying to do everything in instalments.