Why a 22 year old female put her own nude pictures online
Aliaa Elmahdi fled Egypt after being threatened for publishing a nude picture on the Internet, a symbol of Arab Spring
When this story published, Aliaa Elmahdi have covered her tracks and took off to place unknown. Continue your flight, dreading the day when a man from his country to find his trail and appears before her to take her. Aliaa Magda Egyptian Elmahdi, 22, is a persecuted for two reasons: because she took a photo with the self timer on her digital camera and posted it on the Internet. In that picture she was wearing only socks and shoes. Aliaa Photo made an icon of the Arab Spring. Millions of people saw the picture in the early days of its publication. For a couple of weeks, Aliaa became a star. gave an interview to CNN. Then came the death threats.
Some say that Aliaa mocked the laws of Islam, which is a shame for Egypt, a w***e. Muslims around the world sent her death threats. A radical Islamist tried to get her Egyptian citizenship withdrawn. For many other people, from the time Aliaa is a hero. She fled the country and hid. Aliaa lived recently in a Swedish village which is reached after an hour's drive through the woods. It is a place where strangers rarely stop. The meeting is a coffee. Aliaa grew up in Cairo in Heliopolis, a neighborhood well. Her parents, bill, were not particularly religious and do not go to the mosque. The mother was an accountant. The father, an officer in the Egyptian army who beat her since she can remember. Because sometimes contradicted him or because she wore his hair uncovered, and sometimes, just because. After classes at a private school in the locked house: because outside she could lose her virginity. Is kept as an expensive lamb, come on, be auctioned to the highest bidder.
Her parents explained that a decent woman could not pose for pictures, could not wear flowers in your hair, no hair showing her legs, not wearing tight dresses and painted lips. At 13 Aliaa learned to lie and distort her plan to conquer freedom during school hours. Mind you it was easy to lose virginity.
After school, Aliaa won a place to study art at the American University of Cairo. Her parents came to pick her up every day. When the mother wanted to see if the hymen preserved, Aliaa grabbed a kitchen knife and said she was leaving home. The father changed the locks on the doors to enclose her.
Aliaa said she could not breathe at home. It was as if the oxygen will not reach the lungs. On one occasion, being alone in the house, put your camera on a lot of things, lips painted red and undressed. She put a pair of socks and a flower in her hair. It was photograpshed in various poses. Did the photos for herself, she says today, as a form of silent protest against their parents. Then she forgot about them.
A few weeks later, Aliaa left the classroom during class. Wearing a backpack in which the morning had put some clothes. She took the bus to downtown Cairo. I knew that I would never live with my parents. She had shown that she would not be treated like an animal. She moved into a friend's house, then went to live with a man. I was 19 and felt free.
The year was 2011. In Egypt, the population rose up and rebelled against the dictator. Aliaa was twice in Tahrir Square. She lived her personal liberation parallel to the liberation of his country, and had to feel that again and had much to do. Therein lies the germ of his misfortune. In October 2011 she downloaded the photos from your digital camera to your laptop. She found that she had taken nude, chose the most beautiful and rose to Facebook.
Facebook prohibits pictures as Aliaa. Clearly, the nude is also taboo in certain parts of the West. Administrators erased photo hours after she had risen. But Aliaa not want anyone to forbid anything ever again, and included it in her blog, where everyone could see it.
Wars and revolutions such as those of Egypt require symbols pictures as the militiaman falls during the Spanish civil war, the Vietnamese girl fleeing the napalm or the Warsaw ghetto boy raising arm. Those photos simplify the world. Policy to reduce feelings : fear, horror, hope.
But who remembers the name of the Vietnamese girl? A icons occur to them that are larger than the fate of an individual. And they all have something in common : they show victims.
The photo of Aliaa acted as evidence against it. She was not a victim. It differed little girl fallen in Vietnam or was she who had taken and posted soldier. Aliaa experienced how the photo, which was published in many Western media, was getting bigger.
She enjoyed the attention, she says, but through Facebook received messages from men who announced they were going to kill her. Threats disturbed her, but in any case it was an intense time. Wshen, a few weeks after publishing the photos, her cat disappeared, did not suspect what it meant. A man called and said she had found the animal. She went to look for one. The man was waiting with a friend. She closed the door of the house and tried to rip her clothes off, saying she had won because she had published online a nude picture. As Aliaa defended, she stole the purse and mobile. In the morning they let her go.
After that night, Aliaa sensed that the picture could destroy his life if she stayed in Egypt. Ten days later boarded a plane and fled to Sweden. It was March 2012. After his escape, Aliaa sought political asylum in Sweden for half a year and barely left the house. Drew the curtains, and every time I heard a loud noise she feared that his pursuers were. Behind the curtains thinking what would become of her. She had no family, no job, no homeland to return to. She had no friends in Sweden. His life was in ruins.
It would have been understandable that Aliaa had changed his name and tried to leave the past behind. She chose otherwise. Sought an organization you join and found in Femen, a group founded in Ukraine to fight against religion and equal rights for women. Women Femen were announced by undressing during public events. Looking to build icons in series.
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