El Haga Salha – Muslim, 50 years old – has spent her life involved in local and international humanitarian actions, for example, in Sudan. She took part in the Egyptian revolution and was injured in both eye and leg on January 28, 2011, in Tahrir Square on the first day of the violent clampdowns. As soon as the bleeding from her eye was stopped at the improvised ‘hospital’ on Tahir Square (exclusive interview with the duty surgeon, February 3, 2011), she immediately began working in a clinic near Tahrir Square to bring relief and help to other victims.

For the last year she has been working for Heba El Suidy, a fellow Egyptian who, in view of the massacres perpetrated by the police on her own people, decided to come to the aid of those in need by paying for their treatment from her own funds.

 “Salah and I have got to know each other very well, having shared intense moments of humanity with wounded Egyptians and Libyans in this same French-financed Kasr El Aini hospital. The spirit here is a worthy representative of the true inner Egypt: full of the joy of life, courage and compassion. We have also accompanied Mohamed Sharaf of the “Association for the support of the heroes of January 25”, and the founder of the Netherlands NGO “Sticyching vrienden” (“Friends”) in providing a new motorized wheelchair for a patient who was hit in the neck by a bullet and is now tetraplegic.”

What major advances would you like to see happening in Egypt in the coming years?

“I would like to see the construction of a great and strong Islamic country, with mutual respect between all our brother and sister Egyptians, whatever their religion.”

In the past 2 days in Cairo and Suez alone, 3 dead and more than 1689 wounded have been added to the already-too-long list of victims and martyrs of the revolution.

For more information on the injured and their legitimate demands click here.

Photo & text by Gaël Favari

(Photo © Gaël Favari for The Global Journal)