On the night of October 8, 2000, I left my university campus in downtown Cairo and drove to Giza, where I was to meet for the first time Ahmed Fouad Negm, the legendary leftist colloquial poet whose words had inspired some of the most iconic Egyptian and Arab protest songs since the late 1960s.

Negm had heard of me and asked to meet after learning of my role in organizing the mass student protests that swept the country with the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada. As I made my way through the crowded streets, I realized I was being followed. Suddenly, two cars cut across the road, and gunmen in plain clothes dragged me from my car, blindfolded me with the Palestinian scarf I was wearing, and shoved me into the back seat of one of their vehicles. They sped off to Lazoghly Square in central Cairo, to the compound housing the Ministry of Interior and its secret police, the State Security Investigations Service (SS).

For four days, I endured a torture odyssey of beatings, sleep deprivation, and verbal abuse, blindfolded and stripped naked, threatened with rape. The final two nights were spent in a cramped underground cell with detainees labeled “jihadi” suspects. My SS interrogators believed they could intensify the pressure by locking a Marxist in with “Islamist terrorists,” hoping those hours between torture sessions would be unbearable. They would likely have been disappointed: I was treated with kindness.