Considering what is happening in Gaza and Lebanon, and before them in Sudan, I cannot stop thinking about what took place eleven years ago in the massacre at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square, in the heart of Cairo. The event that I witnessed firsthand, and it was then that a new heart was born within me, one that carries as much pain as it can bear. This is why I have chosen to document my testimony so that the world may know the crimes Egypt witnessed at the hands of those who were supposed to protect the country and its people.
After dinner on Tuesday, August 13, I went out with one of my friends to check the square, which was evolving every day. I hadn’t been there since Eid al-Fitr, so I went to see the children’s amusement rides, the youth platform, Rabaa’s waterwheel, the political forum, and the innovations from different provinces in their tents. At that time, the square was full of life, and joy was visible on the faces of everyone fortunate enough to be there. It was dazzling in every sense of the word. None of us could have imagined what would happen the next day.
It was past midnight, and we were waiting for the tahajjud prayer. During that time, I checked my phone and found confirmed reports about the forces gathering to besiege Rabaa and Nahda squares and the impending dispersal of the sit-ins. There were also reports that the dispersal had already begun in Nahda. I didn’t want to spread panic among the friends, especially since one of them was scheduled to leave on a 6 AM train, right after the dawn prayer, before any dispersal would begin—or so I thought at the time, as we were approaching the dawn prayer. I only informed my older friend and the one who was going to stay with me until the evening, so she could leave if she wanted to. She didn’t hesitate to stay, just as she had originally intended, and I didn’t even think twice about it.
We prayed the dawn prayer, and those who were leaving left. My friend and I remained and dozed off for a bit while reciting our remembrances, as we hadn’t slept well the previous day due to our early departure from Damanhour. I remember the organizers were keen to keep everyone awake, so they played anasheed (Islamic chants) loudly. My friend said to me, “What now? We won’t be able to sleep. Should I go tell them?” I laughed at her comment despite knowing the possibility of an impending raid, then I told her to calm down. It seemed clear that they knew something was happening and wanted to keep everyone awake.
Around 6 AM, I woke up to the voice of someone calling for those in the tent to leave because shooting had started near Tiba Mall. I quietly woke my friend so we could head to the platform, where Dr. Salah and Dr. Safwat were urging people to come out of the tents. Just as we were getting ready to leave, I got a call from my mother: “Duaa, come back right away! They’ve given you an hour, and they’re going to attack.” I didn’t want to worry her by telling her that the shooting had already begun, so I replied, “Don’t worry, Mom, nothing’s happening. I’m still in the tent, and I can’t come right now. I’ve booked a ticket for the 8 PM train.” I tried to reassure her, saying that even if there was violence, the square would be safer than walking out in the middle of it by myself.
I went with my friend to the platform, where we saw thick black smoke coming from the entrance near Tiba Mall, and the sound of continuous gunfire filled the air. Dr. Safwat announced from the platform that we would all march together. I called the other fiends whom we came with to find out their location so we could stay near them. We met them at the tent, and they asked us to stay there, but we refused because the platform had requested that everyone leave the tents. We told them we would join them at the platform.
Shortly after we left the tent, the shooting started at the four entrances, and we learned that the tents, including ours, had been destroyed. Our tent was located at the beginning of Tayaran Street, near the Republican Guard.
Amid all this, the tear gas was being fired heavily. All people were distributing masks, and many had vinegar, Pepsi, yeast, and other remedies to counteract the effects of the gas. But even the water pumps that had been set up beforehand couldn’t keep up with the sheer amount of gas.
After about 40 minutes of the assault, Dr. Salah Sultan announced that the death toll had reached 40 martyrs, at a rate of one martyr per minute, including a baby girl who had suffocated from the gas. Her father carried her body to the platform, and everyone wept with him.
We were still in the middle of the square, unaware of what was happening at the edges, only seeing the thick black smoke rising from all the entrances and the sound of relentless gunfire. Martyrs and the injured were carried past us continuously, and the death toll kept rising. Some bullets reached the platform, targeting the media and photographers first and foremost.
From time to time, they would call from the platform: “A group of young men, head to Tayaran Street // Another group to Tiba Mall // Another group to the monument.” The young men would run on foot, only to return shortly after, either wounded or carried on the shoulders as martyrs.
Those who regularly came to Rabaa knew that the sight of helicopters circling the square was nothing new. But what wasn’t normal that day was how the helicopter would hover in the air, allowing the sniper inside to aim easily at their targets. I swear, at that moment, I felt like our chants were scaring them away whenever we saw the helicopters.
We remained like this until noon, planning to combine the noon and afternoon prayers due to our situation. After the platform announced that the field hospital needed blood donations, I told my friend I would go donate. She was exhausted from the gas, so she sat down in front of the platform and asked me not to be late, as she wanted me by her side in case something happened so I could help her recite the shahada (declaration of faith). Her words frightened me, and I hesitated to leave her, but just then, a young man from Damanhour came to tell me that his cousin, one of my friends, was in the square, and he couldn’t find her. Her phone was off, so I took his number, promising to call if I found her. I left my friend sitting and went to the field hospital to donate blood and look for my friend.
When I reached the entrance of the field hospital, I was shocked by what I saw. The street, once filled with vibrant tents, had turned into nothing but ash, with bullets flying everywhere. What I saw there made me dizzy—it was a mix of ash and water from attempts to extinguish fires, all covered in blood. Bodies and the injured were pouring into the hospital, and it was so crowded that you worried you might block their path. I pulled myself together and went inside, only to find that many had already come to donate blood, and they asked us to leave, saying they had enough donors and that staying in the square was more important. I searched for my friend among the people but didn’t find her, so I left to continue my search outside.
On my way out, I saw the injured lying on the ground, covered in their own blood, as the hospital overflowed with bodies and critical injuries. I stood in place, unable to hold back my tears, loudly cursing those responsible. Those who were guarding the gate, though busy, responded to my curses with “Ameen,” and one of them shouted at me, “Move away from here! Go to the platform!”
His voice snapped me out of it, reminding me of my friend who I had left by the platform. I returned to her, unable to find my other friend, and by the time I got back, sniper fire was reaching the platform, along with tear gas bombs targeting it directly. I was horrified by a scene that would repeat throughout the day: a bullet hit a man standing just inches from us, and it was as if something inside him exploded. We looked at him to see him on the ground, his head shattered, his brain exposed, while his son collapsed at the sight of his father. Then he was carried quickly to the hospital.
At that moment, I couldn’t hold back my tears. I hugged my friend and cried, and she kept telling me to stay strong. I don’t know why I didn’t feel scared, may be because I had a flood of other emotions—shock that an Egyptian could do this to his fellow Egyptians, sadness over what was happening, sorrow for not being chosen by God, and worry about my friend, as I felt responsible for her.
Time didn’t seem to matter that day. It was as if time had stopped, or we had stopped feeling its passage. I only remember that the sun, whenever it grew intense, would be hidden by clouds, making me think it would rain. We didn’t feel the heat, the exhaustion, or even fear. The only dominant emotion was deep sadness, as if we were in the middle of a war.
I remember a man from the security team behind us asking for a Quran. I gave him mine, and he sat down in his post, reading his daily recitations. I thought to myself, “If only they knew, this is our weapon, and what a powerful weapon it is!”
The people, overwhelmed by what they were witnessing, fell silent in their chants. I became angry and started chanting louder until I could barely hear anything else. I was standing at the back of the crowd, and there were two friends in the middle doing the same as me, as if our chants were a reminder to the men standing between us that they had to chant too. It was as if they were saying, “How can we let these young girls chant alone?” I felt that this was my role—to chant, only chant!
We continued like this for hours, the number of which I can’t remember. Between the gunfire that would take down some of us, the gas bombs that would choke us, only for us to neutralize them, and the chants that would rise and fall in intensity, this was aside from the heart-wrenching sounds coming from the entrances, where we couldn’t see what was happening. Some of those standing with us said they were sound bombs, but we later learned that they had bombed the barriers at the entrances with incendiary bombs. So I didn’t know whether the sounds were from sound bombs or incendiary bombs.
As the afternoon approached, the shooting around the platform intensified, and more bullets were reaching it. The tear gas became overwhelming, to the point that our ability to counter it—whether by burning plastic, soaking bombs, or burying them in sand—was nearly gone due to its sheer volume. The effectiveness of the remedies like vinegar and yeast started to wear off, and nothing was reducing the severity of the gas. So we began moving away from the platform little by little, trying to escape the suffocation, until we reached the entrance between the mosque and the media center, both of which had been converted into field hospitals and places to store the bodies of the martyrs.
At that point, I felt like I was about to faint, so my friend—who was in a similar state—and I went inside to get away from the gas and catch our breath. I thought I could use this time to look for my friend, whom I still hadn’t been able to find. I entered the mosque and was stunned by what I saw. The mosque was packed to the brim with women, children, and some men who had been worn out by the fighting and had come inside to rest, as well as the injured.
The mosque was so crowded that there was a fear of suffocation from the heat. In one corner, they had set up a makeshift hospital to treat minor pellet wounds, as the main hospital was already full. In another corner, there was a group of martyrs. I saw their fingers were raised in testimony from under their shrouds, and the smell that emanated from them was like nothing I had ever smelled before. My friend was insistent on seeing their faces, while I couldn’t bring myself to do so. She asked one of those who were standing nearby to uncover one of their faces, and she swore to me that he was smiling a smile she had never seen before.
At that moment, I was heartbroken by the sight of the living, the dead, and the wounded all together in a scene that was far from humane. It was like a refugee camp on the border of a war-torn country. I don’t think even such a camp would look like this!
I continued searching the mosque until I reached the back yard, but I couldn’t find that friend I was looking for. My friend and I stood for a while at the edge of the yard after we had taken the phone of a friend we met there, as our phones had run out of battery. We were trying to call the friend we were looking for, hoping we might succeed this time, though there was no cell signal in the square.
While we were standing there trying to make a call, bullets reached this exposed part of the mosque. The men told us to go back inside to avoid the gunfire. We did, and at that moment, we found our friend we had been searching for. As soon as she saw me, she hugged me and cried, unable to speak, while I tried to stay composed so I could calm her down. I had her call her cousin, who had been looking for her, and then we went outside the mosque to search for another friend that we knew later that she was there too, whom we soon found, thanks to God.
Both had roles in the field hospital inside the mosque, so I asked them to stay there while I went back to the platform to maintain crowds in front of it. One of them screamed, “No, Duaa, don’t go! The area outside is too exposed.” While I was trying to convince her that I needed to be there since I didn’t have a role like hers in the hospital, someone told us, “The platform has been hit.” His words hit me like a blow to the head, and I couldn’t believe it at first. But when I saw the crowds increasing in the area between the mosque and the media center, I realized that the square had indeed been cleared, and people had moved to the edges. At that moment, I thought to myself, if those criminals noticed the huge numbers in this tight space and threw just one gas bomb, it would be enough to suffocate everyone.
I didn’t have time to dwell on this thought for long, as what I had feared soon happened. They began firing gas bombs at us. The bombs had been launched from an armored vehicle with great force since the morning, but I couldn’t understand how they had managed to fire them into such a tight space unless the armored vehicle had actually entered the square, or the bombs had been dropped from an aircraft. But in any case, I assumed that the square had already been breached and that they were now clearing out those remaining at the entrances.
Everyone around us was running, carrying the wounded and the dead. Everyone was crying. Everyone was grieving. My God, the scene was tragic blood everywhere, bullets everywhere!
At that moment, I decided it was time to leave. I began looking for an exit to protect my friends, especially since the role of everyone present had ended, and I felt there was no point in staying any longer. The square had been cleared, the broadcasting vehicles had been targeted, and the photographers had been shot at for some time. Now, we were being hunted down like birds, as one of my friends put it. I started convincing the three friends to leave with me. Since I was the eldest, I felt responsible for them at that moment. I couldn’t bear the thought of any of them getting hurt or coming to harm. It was as if I was convincing myself as much as I was convincing them.
We encountered two of the young party members from Damanhour who had been looking for us earlier, so we asked them about an exit. One of them, agitated, replied, “There’s no way out. We’re going to die here.” He then apologized for scaring us with his words and told us that if the square was cleared, we would leave with them. Honestly, his response stunned us. Between surprise, joy, and sorrow, we were touched by his resolve, but the feeling of being trapped was what saddened us the most.
At that moment, I realized that many had been searching for a way out since the morning, but there was none because, quite simply, they didn’t want anyone to leave. They wanted to exterminate everyone.
I stood there with my three friends at the entrance to the mosque, unable to go in or out because of the overwhelming crowd. The gas filled the air, and people were rushing out of the mosque to escape the suffocation, only to find themselves facing a hail of bullets. A bullet even entered through one of the mosque’s windows, killing a man instantly. At that moment, I felt as if they were fleeing from the frying pan into the fire, escaping the gas only to be met with bullets. The four of us stood at the mosque entrance, unsure of what to do, unable to move, feeling helpless. We surrendered to our fate and remained in place. It was around 4 PM by then, and we performed tayammum (dry ablution) and prayed the noon and afternoon prayers while standing because of the crowd. I didn’t dare ask my friends to recite the shahada (testimony of faith), fearing I might scare them. The situation was already dire. So I asked them to renew their intentions, and they understood what I meant. They began reciting the shahada. I found myself loudly praying, “O Allah, suffice us against them as You will and however You will, for You are capable of everything.” I repeated this prayer, and the people leaving the mosque responded with heartfelt “Ameen.” I wondered when we would see those faces again.
I don’t know how long we stayed like this, with the sound of bullets raining down from everywhere, either in sporadic shots or bursts from machine guns. It broke our hearts. The bullets came from helicopters and snipers positioned on nearby buildings.
As we stood there, someone came to tell us that the women and children would be allowed to leave. I asked him, “And what about you?” He replied, “As for us, God will provide.” I found myself shouting at him, “Why are you staying? They don’t want to clear the square; they want to kill us all. Don’t negotiate just for women and children; negotiate for everyone.”
Eventually, we went to the exit, and people began to leave, but they were told to put their hands on their heads while the shooting continued. The negotiators refused this, so we were sent back to the mosque. Then we tried again, and this time we were allowed to leave, though the shooting continued unabated. I believe they thought, “Since the shooting isn’t going to stop anyway, let those who can leave, leave.”
As we were leaving, a sniper stood behind the mosque and said to one of the friends, who was frightened by the ongoing shooting, “Don’t be afraid, friend.” Everyone mocked him for his condescending remark. Then he yelled at us, “Hurry up, can’t you hear the shooting?” I couldn’t comprehend it at the time—did they have a split personality? You’re the one shooting, and you’re the one telling people to hurry away from the bullets. If you wanted to clear the square, why shoot at those leaving?
What I can’t comprehend to this day is the nature of these people. They certainly weren’t human like us. They didn’t have even a hint of a heart or mind. I can’t even describe them as animals because that would be an insult to animals, which have kind hearts. The only way I can describe them is as machines, programmed to carry out orders without running them through a heart or mind—just programmed to kill.
We left, unable to stop our tears as we were forced to abandon the square in such a way. As we walked just a short distance away, we heard a loud explosion and saw thick black smoke rising from the square behind us. Later, we learned that the criminals had forced the doctors to leave and then burned the field hospital, with the remaining martyrs and wounded still inside.
We left the square with bleeding hearts, saying nothing but, “God is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs.”
We walked for hours after leaving, walking a little and then resting on a sidewalk for a bit. After about two hours, just as the call to evening prayer was sounding, we were sitting with others who had been with us on one of the sidewalks, hoping to find some transportation to our destination. Suddenly, we heard the sound of automatic gunfire nearby, and we glimpsed snipers on some of the rooftops.
I don’t know where we were at that time, but I clearly remember that we had walked a great distance, so why was there shooting there?
I wondered then, were they chasing us, or had we unknowingly walked in circles and returned to the square? I honestly wished that were the case, so we could return to Rabaa. But it wasn’t. They had spread their forces across all the roads leading to Rabaa and beyond.
Were they under orders to finish what they had started, or were they only trying to satisfy their thirst for killing?
What had baffled me that time was, do we have this many human machines programmed to kill?
The day passed, but I doubt we will ever forget the sound of gunfire, the sight of blood, the cries of the martyrs’ families, or the gazes of the martyrs themselves. My God, as time passes, I remember more and more details that I hadn’t recalled before. It’s as if the days are bringing us closer to that day, not distancing us from it.
In the end, anyone who thinks that day was merely a dispersal of a sit-in is mistaken. Those who want to disperse a sit-in shoot to scare the protesters and leave them an exit to disperse. But what happened that day can only be described as a war of extermination. They shot to kill and besieged the protesters from all four entrances, leaving no one a way out.
Reflecting on it now, I realize that if it weren’t for the young men who defended the square with their bare chests and were martyred—after God’s will—Rabaa would have suffered the same fate as Nahda, and it would have all ended in less than an hour. But they couldn’t do that because of the fierce defense of the square by these heroes, to whom we, and all of Egypt, owe a great debt. They are the true soldiers of God, not their killers.
Finally, this was my testimony of that day, a day I don’t believe will ever be erased from the memory of those who witnessed it, no matter how much time passes. I’ve written it down knowing full well that the scene was much worse than this. Each of us only saw it from one angle. Even if we combined all the testimonies, we wouldn’t do that day justice. But all we can say is, “God is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs.” O Allah, avenge us!
