Book Review: YOU HAVE NOT YET BEEN DEFEATED by Alaa Abd el-Fattah

You Have Not Yet Been Defeated by Alaa Abd El-Fattah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All eyes are on Egypt this week as they host this year's UN Climate Change Conference (COP27). But while the powerful wine and dine in fancy hotels, an old lady stands outside a prison with written permission from the state prosecutor, begging to be allowed to see her son who has been on complete hunger and water strike for several days. Some days she has to use crutches because the cold has seeped through her bones, so long has she waited. But she persists. She has done this before, as have the son's sisters. As they have done to see their late father.

This is the incredible bravery of author Alaa Abd el-Fattah and his family. 

YHNYBD is a collection of Alaa's writings, and it took nearly two weeks of slow reading to finish. But there is no sense of achievement or completion, on the contrary, I feel that it is a mere introduction to this intellectual's work. Alaa was once an IT professional turned political prisoner. Why is he in jail? Because the state that claims to be a democracy fears his writings so, they have kept him in prison, book-less, voice-less, for the better part of ten years. His son is growing up fatherless, with a father growing old behind bars as he is kept in "preventive detention," where Egyptians can be kept in prison without being convicted of any crime, renewable for as long as the authorities deem fit.

Apart from being a crash course in recent Egyptian political history, there is much international readers can learn from this book, written by one who made the democratization of the internet his life's work. 

Alaa writes of the need for intelligent discourse, to resist the infantilization and trivialization of social media algorithms. If words are important, and the miracle of the internet and the possibilities of instant communication so powerful, then why are we wasting time on dumbed down language, choosing emojis to express ourselves? Spending inordinate amounts of time dancing on Tiktok? Why do we fixate on the absurdly meaningless, and shy away from complex issues? "Resist the algorithmic pull of the trivial," Alaa urges, "and assert your right to be a creator not a consumer." Alaa is forever thinking of "the ways technically free people are nonetheless confined and entrapped," our imaginations captured by capitalist advertising. He is a modern-day prophet warning us of technology's Panem et circenses, and we can all learn from this patriot's example.

His words stem from personal experience, of being part of a genuine movement for reform, and a brief moment when it seemed a better tomorrow would come to pass, only to endure the defeat of having an even worse regime replace the old one in his beloved Egypt.

Alaa writes of the necessity of never losing hope,"with faith in a better future despite knowing that tomorrow still holds a lot of pain." And while success isn't guaranteed in our lifetime, "all that's asked of us is that we don't stop fighting for what's right."

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