Exposing flesh: the hypocrisy of it all - Najla Seed Ahmed

Quote: In a country crippled by hunger, poverty and injustice a woman stood out, combating not only a tyrant regime, but disciplinarian traditions that are riddled with contradictions. The eloquence of her reflections was elegantly put not by a list of well-rehearsed words, but sharpened by a clear and honest lens. A lens that mirrored what she saw, and what she saw was what many of us, craved for after years of reading in the dark grew accustomed to believing that reading numbs the senses. On a bad day, I needed to write to free my mind from those lingering thoughts; it was a bit like puking words, after which I felt mentally better and went on to my daily chores. By the same token, many of what I read resembled that. I read oodles of eulogies, homages and tributes, and continued with my normal daily routines. I scanned thousands of pages describing others’ suffering, and it did not stop me from having my morning coffee or teaching accounting! At times, I could not believe how insular I have become. How could I read about someone being shot without flinching! It’s as if by going through the excruciating pains of reading such bad news all my adulthood, my brain decided to limit its exposure to such stimuli and change the state of my latent inhibition from low to high. I guess for some this state also goes by the name “apathy and then came Najla. A woman so ordinary was portraying the extraordinary with pure brilliance. I cannot recall reading much for Najla. She was not the kind who fills online board with boisterous commentary or rowdy presence. The facts that she was “one of us” made many have faith in what she saw and presented. With a name so common that you could not make out who she was without suffixing her name with the word “camera”, Najla started posting images and videos of events and people. She brought us closer to home, as well as restored some of those lost feelings back - when they said X was shot dead, I did not want to learn about his/her life, I did not want to read about how oppressive the regime is, and definitely was not keen on being part of another verbal diarrhea that showed me how futile writing could be. I just wanted to see. I wanted to see a coffin. I wanted to picture me in the middle of those mourning crowds, heading to see the deceased’s anguished mother or sister. Najla made that possible cannot say I know what she feels like, going through her daily routine. How worried she must be moving from one place to the other and thinking about her family. It pains me to see what she has to go through on the hands of the regime forces, but it troubles me more to read comments from those whom she pledged to serve, on how she exposed “too much” of her flesh in a photograph that was meant to serve as evidence of the police forces beating her up The hypocrisy of it all is scandalous. Men and women in my country willingly participate in watching hours of TV programs or attending lavish wedding ceremonies where women and men of their families are active participants. There, men and women dress-up and expose not only shoulders, but necks, chests, backs, tummies and legs, in the name of celebration! What Yet, exposing an injured shoulder, discolored, not by intentional attempts to make-it-up beautifully, but by blood blotches, is seductive and deemed “in appropriate” to display. This is how the ritual of witch hunting reinvents itself. Najla is doomed by being called a liar if she does not show her injured shoulder, and damned by hinting to her lack of decency if she did. Both no-choices from hell, a classical catch 22 بالمختصر الممل: نجلاء سيد احمد كشفت شنو ما شايفنو في افراح افراح بتاعة النيل الازرق ولا الاعراس يا منافقين يا من انتقدتم كشفها لكتفها في الصورة؟