Loading ...After Egypt’s Revolution, a New Start in American Exile
By Amr Alfiqy
I was a medical student and political activist when the revolution against the Mubarak regime in Egypt broke out in 2011. While studying in Alexandria, I assisted as a medic during clashes between demonstrators and government forces. A few days before the fall of Mubarak, a young man was shot dead while standing between my friend Hesham and me. We could not save him.
I went to Tahrir Square for the regime’s fall, then returned to my studies. I was arrested several times and beaten by the police before and after the revolution because of my continued activism.
Today, I live in New York and work at a bagel store in Astoria. Over the last two years, I have slept in more than a dozen places, mostly friends’ apartments, although on rare occasions even on the subway or in a friend’s car, as I shuffled through one menial job after another.
Many of my friends who were active in the Egyptian revolution are living similar lives in the United States. I have documented their stories with my phone.
I remember clearly the day I arrived in the United States: It was midnight on Oct. 15, 2014. It was raining and I loved the calmness that enveloped me. I stayed at a friend of a friend’s place in Flushing, Queens. I came here to visit friends, save money, go to Europe and finish my studies.
I soon went to work at a store in Virginia selling T-shirts, putting in 72 hours a week at $8 an hour. Converting the numbers in my head made me rich in Egyptian pounds. I had nothing to lose, and a good amount of money to gain, so my days blurred into each other as my savings grew.
By then, I no longer found any hope in returning to Egypt after the coup. My revolutionary dreams and aspirations seemed childish compared to my newly found practicality and realism. Then I received a phone call from my family telling me not to come back to Egypt: An old politically motivated court case had been reopened, and it wasn’t safe to return.
Now, in a small store in Virginia, I was utterly alone. My carefully planned life no longer made sense. The stench of a failed revolution clung to me like an unwanted relative. No revolution saved me and no democracy protected me.
My low-wage safety net ended when the store’s lease expired. I shuffled on to the next odd job. I moved to Roanoke, Va., to live with some high school friends. Fawzy had been a pharmacist and medical rep at a multinational drug company in Cairo. Khaled had been a dental student who was passionate about philosophy, art and music. (Although he had hoped to be a professor here, he now delivers pizzas in Philadelphia.)
During this time, I began to recognize our parallel narratives, the endless connections that tied us together. I wasn’t alone in my despair, sharing their pains, fears, nostalgia and dreams. As members of the generation of change, we all shared the same great disappointment.
We were tied together by a thread that danced across the Atlantic, mixing our old passions and youthful conversations with the grim reality of our present. At nights, the mask of this new world came off, and in the after-work darkness we briefly felt like victorious revolutionaries. Free.
But every morning reminded us of reality, a new day with the same old fears. Endless questions ran through our heads as we went about our routines. I remember everyone’s face in the morning before going to work.
This mundane cycle made me fear that I was losing sight of my own ambition to be a photographer and filmmaker. I owed it to myself to never let this illusory American dream drain me of my spirit.
I packed my bags and moved to New York City.
I called my friend Hesham to say I was coming to the city in a few days and asked if he could help me find a job and a place to stay. Hesham, then 25, had graduated from medical school and was a general practitioner when he left Egypt in July 2015. When I arrived to New York, he was working two jobs, delivering bread to coffee vendors around the city from midnight until 6 a.m., then working as a physical therapy aide during the day. My friend the doctor was living his American dream.
I bounced between housing and jobs until a friend, Shaaban, a former environmental science student in Egypt and Italy, joined us. He ended up as a deliveryman for an Egyptian restaurant in Astoria.
My story is their story. So I photographed them and others like us, including a few I knew, mostly from high school. They seemed happy, but they were changing, psychologically, like me. I became despondent shuttling between temporary beds and odd jobs while applying to colleges, where my Egyptian education and legal situation made admission difficult.
My self-portraits show different versions of me. The difficulties I endured show on my face. But I knew that I would be a photographer and that these images would one day mean something to me.
In some ways, this is a typical immigrant story. But it’s also about the unrealized Egyptian revolution. And this phase of the uprising also needs to be documented. People keep focusing on what happens in Egypt. But the youths who started the revolution with great hope now live in exile, reduced to washing dishes and delivering food.
In October of last year I met Hadiya, an amazing, smart and strong young Arab-American. She writes poetry, is a committed feminist and is devoted to helping refugees in the United States and around the world. We recently became engaged to get married.
While photographing this, I was often unemployed and ran out of money. But I kept following the stories of my friends who, along with Hadiya, were a great support.
Today I am studying photography and interning at the Magnum Foundation. I still don’t know where I am going, but I believe I’m getting enough love and support to keep me on the right track.
My dream now is to be a photographer. My dream is for our story to be heard and to be seen.