My dear colleague, whose name I cannot reveal out of respect for his privacy,

Greetings,

I write this letter after our meeting today, following your long absence on your treatment journey abroad, after one of your eyes was struck by a vile birdshot bullet fired from a rotten heart at your radiant face. I write this letter hoping you never read it—or, pardon me, that no one reads it to you. For I am, in truth, writing it to myself before writing it to the readers here, so I do not forget who I am and who you are, what I offered, and what price you paid.

Yes, I was deeply saddened upon hearing the grim news of your injury, but your triumphant voice at the fall of the tyrant, and your words to me on the phone on the night of February 11—“My eye is for Egypt, it’s nothing”—as well as my overwhelming joy at the fall of that despot, both made me forget, or perhaps blinded me from the reality. The reality that it was not just one eye.

My dear colleague,
How joyful and elated I was today on my way to that café to see you and our fellow journalists, how truly delighted I was to see that hero who is ten years my junior, yet towers over me in stature by uncountable years. That lean newcomer to journalism, who just months ago saw me, in vain, as one of his sources of development in the profession, and who has now become more than a teacher to me—a guide on the path of dignity.

My mentor, yes, I was saddened by your eye injury as you told me in our phone call, but I was calm because of your calm, and content with your acceptance of God’s will and your joyful gratitude at victory. Yet I was the only one unaware that you had misled me with your light-hearted, sarcastic talk about losing just one eye. By God, I didn’t know it was both. Truly, I cannot comprehend your call that night. I cannot understand where you found that strength and that mocking, playful spirit after such a loss. And how you insisted on reassuring all of us that you were fine. Honestly, I don’t know who should be comforting whom here.

My dear colleague,
You have truly paid with your lost sight a heavy price that has shaken the dust of humiliation off our heads—we, the lost ones in wars of words and hollow boasts. And for your sacrifice, my friend, I promise not to let our revolution be stolen from us in the false celebrations of a wedding before victory is complete. I promise not to leave before all those who took part in stealing the light from your eyes end up, unmourned, in the vilest of cells they ever built for us. I will not leave this square from which your eyes lit our consciences and let us taste the first fruits of freedom.

From your colleague who has become your student,
Maher Hamoud
Cairo, April 2011

Note to readers: The colleague mentioned in this letter is real, and his injury in Tahrir Square by police gunfire while covering the revolution is real. His deception of me by hiding the fact that he lost both his eyes—not just one, like many protesters—was not a product of my imagination.

This article was published by SouthPush and translated later by AI into english.