Here in Egypt, to protest is to risk prison. But we must speak out for our Palestinian neighbours | Ahdaf Soueif

The pain of those on the other side of the Rafah border is keenly felt: we know that their rights are inseparable from our own

On the steps of the journalists' union in Downtown Cairo last Thursday evening, a woman held up a poster that showed eight babies: four parcelled up into small, green packages, four in just their nappies. Dead, all dead. The woman next to her held her own precious baby tight and jumped and stamped as we called out: Open up the Rafah border!" There were maybe 100 of us.

A hundred people sounds like nothing compared with the multiples of thousands marching in cities across the world. But in Egypt, protests were outlawed in November 2013; 57 people who took part in protests after 7 October are currently in detention pending investigation. Everyone on the steps was demonstrating for Gaza and at the same time making a claim for the right to protest, their chants amplifying what you constantly hear in homes and on streets.

Ahdaf Soueif is the author of Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground

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