'Nothing to lose' Mother's defiance on hunger strike over son jailed in Egypt

Laila Soueif, lying shrunken on a hospital bed at St Thomas' hospital in London, on the 247th day of her hunger strike in pursuit of freedom for her son, the imprisoned British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, is locked in what may prove to be her last of many trials of strength with Egypt's authoritarian regime.

- Patrick Wintour

A remarkable, witty and courageous woman, she has the self-awareness to admit: "I may have made a mistake, God knows," but she will not back down, and anyone looking back at her rich life has little reason to doubt her perseverance.

Speaking from the hospital yesterday, Soueif said: "My message is: use my death as leverage to get Alaa out. Don't let my death be in vain."

Fattah was arrested in September 2019, and was sentenced in December 2021 to five years in jail for "spreading false news and harming Egypt's national interest". A UN panel found the allegation stemmed from Fattah sharing a Facebook post about the death of a prison inmate. She told the BBC: "It's something that I passionately don't want to happen. Children want a mother, not a notorious mother - whether the notoriety is good or bad - but if that's what it takes to get Alaa out of jail and to get all my children and grandchildren's lives back on track, then that's what I'm going to do."

Soueif talked to the Guardian about her life. Born in Britain in 1956, where she lived until she was two, she comes from an academic family. Her father, Mostafa Soueif, was the founder of Cairo University's psychology department and founder of the Academy of Arts.

Her mother, Fatma Moussa, was a professor of English literature at Cairo University, an accomplished translator of Shakespeare and Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian Nobel prize-winning novelist. Her sister Ahdaf is a distinguished novelist and essayist.

Her parentage gifted her a love of literature. At the age of 11, bedridden from typhoid, she was given a copy of War and Peace to keep her quiet and now even in hospital a novel has always been on her bed.