Shaimaa Lotfi, born and raised in Cairo, loves Miley Cyrus and Justin Beiber, speaks near-perfect English, and hopes to one day move to the United States to work. Since February 2011, the soft-spoken teen and her mother have found themselves drawn into the Egyptian political and human rights scene.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

Shaimaa’s uncle, like Jehad Adel’s father, was shot dead while in prison during the opening days of the revolution. Pieces of the campaign for her uncle can be seen scattered throughout her room, with pictures of her deceased uncle in frames and scanned onto the sides of mugs on her bedside table.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

Shaimaa stands in her room in Cairo, Egypt.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

Rasha Ali Abdulraham, 28, was at a protest in Tahrir Square on March 9, 2011 when she and 172 other demonstrators, including 17 women, were arrested and forcefully removed from the demonstrations. After being bound and tortured at the Egyptian Museum for seven hours, she and the others were loaded onto buses and brought to Heikstep, a military detention center. There, the women were forced to divide into two groups: virgins and non-virgins. \She and six others, who identified as the former, were then subjected to ‘virginity tests’ in which military officers examined each woman’s vagina for an extended period of time for the presence of an intact hymen. When she was released four days later, she wanted to press charges against the military for sexual assault, but was unable to do so due to legal reasons. Abdelrahman said it took her months to process the trauma and that months later, she still suffers from stress of the incident.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

Jehad Adel, 18, in her grandparents’ house, where she has lived since her father was incarcerated and her mother abandoned her and her two younger siblings last year. In the opening days of the revolution, Jehad’s father was shot dead while in jail during a rash of shootings in the country’s prisons that left over 100 dead. Though the reason behind the shootings remains unclear, Jehad and her grandparents continue to demand justice, working with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights to bring his case to court.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

On Saturday, January 29, Um Adel watched as her husband spoke on a cell phone to their incarcerated son, Adel Mahmoud, to confirm what his prison mates had conveyed in an earlier call: “officers are shooting us inside the prison, there are dead bodies lying around the cells and prison corridors.” Shortly thereafter, he was shot and killed. She now cares for Adel’s son and two daughters in her small apartment on the top floor of an old and decaying building in Old Cairo. She is also working to bring Adel’s case to court, and has faced a great deal of resistance from the military, who has repeatedly attempted to cover up the incident — from painting over bullet holes to delaying the collection of evidence in prisons.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

The room of Sally Zohney, an employee of UN Women and an active participant in the revolution since its beginning, is dotted with pictures from her world travels and a collection of encyclopedias that she said were her favorite books to read growing up. To her, Tahrir Square was a haven of sorts. “It became surreal how perfect the relationship between men and women was,” Zohney says. “For a month I never thought I was a girl. No one ever looked at me like I was a girl.”
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

Zohney is now part of a group called Tahrir Monologues, which performs stories from the eighteen days in Tahrir Square. She says that the media is far too quick to portray Egyptian women as victims, even though women played an equal part in the revolution. “The woman is either screaming, crying, or being slapped,” Zohney says.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

In the opening days of the revolution, Nadia Lotfi’s brother was one of more than 100 prisoners shot dead by Egyptian security guards while serving a prison sentence. Since Feb. 2011, Lotfi has been visiting the prosecutor’s office regularly to follow up on her brother’s case. “Every time I have gone,” Lotfi says, “they have told me the investigation was still going.” She acknowledges that it will be difficult to see any progress or response from the military, but says that she will continue to push for justice for her brother’s case. Here she is pictured in her home in Cairo with some of her deceased brother’s clothing.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

Lotfi tells the story of her brother’s shooting.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

Mai Hamdi Gheith, who asked that her age not be disclosed, was raised by highly politically active parents. But it wasn’t until this past January that she considered entering into politics, following the path of her father, a prominent opposition figure who had been jailed multiple times for his resistance to Mubarak’s regime. When the protests began in Tahrir Square, she gathered her husband and two kids and went down to the demonstrations. They would regularly spend all day at Tahrir, not returning home until late at night. Now, she is concerned about the direction her country has taken, especially the threat of rising religious and social oppression. She is considering running for office or taking a more active role in politics, saying the fall of Mubarak has opened up a world of possibilities.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

With almost 30,000 Twitter followers, Gigi Ibrahim is considered a member of Egypt’s Twitterati, able to mobilize thousands with 140 characters or less. Having played a major part in organizing the revolution, she has received a great deal of attention from the Western media. Fluent in English and partially raised in California, she says that she is an “acceptable face” to Western audiences. However she has begun to decline interviews, saying that the countless other women — mothers, daughters, sisters, students, lawyers — who came to Tahrir and marched alongside her, whose stories remain untold, need to be highlighted instead. She remains a key presence in the highly active Egyptian Twitter scene.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

Samira Ibrahim Mahmud was one of the women arrested along with Rasha Ali Abdulraham while at a March protest in Tahrir Square. She, like Abdulraham, was subjected to a ‘virginity test’ while being held at the military detention center. But a few months later, she became the first and only woman to file an official complaint against the Egyptian military. “I know that to violate a woman in that way was considered rape. I felt like I had been raped,” Samira says. Since filing the complaint, she says that she has received death threats on a near-daily basis in the form of phone calls and text messages. She knows that the court case — with a verdict expected November 29 — is an uphill battle, and likely a dangerous one, but she intends to fight. Asked if she would ever consider leaving Egypt she responds immediately with “No. No, never.”
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

Human rights activists acknowledge how unusual it is for a woman from rural Egypt to take actions against sexual assault in a country where it is largely a taboo subject, often considered shameful to a woman and her family. But Samira remains steadfast; “all my energy and my thought now is focused now on violations that could happen against women,” she says.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

In January 2011, Mona Seif found herself in the middle of “the tweeting center of the revolution,” as she puts it, where around thirty people worked around the clock to mobilize people on the ground. Since then, she has helped found No Military Trials for Civilians, which is working to end the use of military tribunals in civilian cases. When asked if she’s frightened of the intimidation tactics of the military, she says she’s not – because she’s used to it. “I was raised in a home where the phones were monitored so I really don’t care.”
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

The daughter of Mai Hamdi Gheith, Lamiece went to Tahrir most days during the revolution with her mother, father and brother to protest from early in the morning to late in the evening. Though her grandfather had been an active opposition figure, her family had refrained from becoming involved in politics until this past January. But now that her whole family is mobilized, she feels that she has a much more active role to play in shaping the country’s social and political future.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

Mona Makram Ebeid, who is running for the Upper House of Parliament in Shoubra, watches a press conference by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of Egypt (SCAF). When asked by GlobalPost if she lived in Shoubra, Ebeid responded, “No, I live in Zamalek. I am only running in Shoubra.” Zamalek, one of wealthiest districts of Cairo, houses many of the city’s political and social elite amongst the high-rise hotels and chic Nile-side restaurants and is starkly different from the largely poor and Coptic neighborhood of Shoubra.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]

A mother of five, Abla Farok Ahmed, 36, was never active in politics. But when her son was arrested at a protest on false grounds — he had gone to search for his younger brother who was participating in the demonstrations — the fight quickly became personal. She enlarged pictures of her son and a friend who had been arrested with him and went to the protest to see if she could find any information on their whereabouts. After months of searching, she received news that her son was being detained and tortured at a military detention center outside Cairo. By the time she located him, he had already faced trial and been found guilty on the fabricated charges for which he had been arrested. With the help of Mona Seif and No Military Trials for Civilians, she is pressuring for an appeal. Abla has also begun to organize other mothers to the cause, bringing the group from its original 30 to 700 mothers who protest regularly against military trials.
- [Elizabeth D. Herman/GlobalPost]