I’m learning how to get back into life, Alaa Abdel Fattah tells BBC

“I’m learning how to come back to life,” says freed British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah as he recovers after more than a decade in prison in Egypt.

“I’m doing much better than I expected,” he told the BBC from Cairo, speaking publicly for the first time since his release last month. “It’s much better than most people expected.”

Alaa Abdel Fattah, 43, was Egypt’s best-known political prisoner until September 23. He was released after being pardoned by the president on September 23. This came after a long campaign supported by his family, celebrities including actors Judi Dench and Olivia Colman, and lobbying the British government.

Now she’s busy enjoying “the little things that become big things”: watching her two-year-old niece Lana dance and seeing her 13-year-old son Khaled’s excitement over music.

“It’s the little things that matter,” he says. “And diving right into them was amazing, amazing. Still amazing.”

After dark days of despair in prison, he described the “sensory overwhelm” of being free: feeling the sun of Cairo on his skin, seeing the moon in the night sky, and receiving hugs from his family after years when the only human touch he had was the guards searching for him.

Abdel Fattah, an author, intellectual and software developer, rose to prominence during the 2011 uprising that forced former president Hosni Mubarak to resign.

He was a familiar face in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the focal point of the demonstrations, and voiced the protesters’ demands. He was arrested in October of the same year after writing an article about the killing of protesters by the Egyptian army.

He was arrested again in 2013 and sentenced to five years in prison. In September 2019, six months after his release, he was jailed again after sharing a Facebook post about torture.

He says the worst conditions were at Scorpion Prison, within Cairo’s Tora prison complex, where he was first held.

“It was pure lockdown,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We were never allowed out of the cell; there was no exercise time, no reading, no music, nothing. And it was damp and underground.”

The officer running the prison told him he would be imprisoned indefinitely.

He was later transferred to another facility with improved conditions; here he was allowed to read books, exercise and watch television; this allowed him to watch Premier League matches and cheer on Egyptian footballer Mo Salah.

But there was always a fear for him and his family that his detention would never end.

“At one point I was overwhelmed with suicidal thoughts. It was despair. So I don’t know if I coped. But I survived.”

Alaa Abdel Fattah described how he almost died in 2022 when he escalated his hunger strike and even gave up water until he lost consciousness.

“When I came out of that situation, I stopped the hunger strikes because I was a little afraid of how far I could go,” he says.

This led to a “profound change” in him. “I’m not 100% sure how to express this change, but I’m emerging with a different energy.”

Her mother, Laila Soueif, 69, also came close to death and was twice hospitalized in London while on hunger strike for her release.

She feels a “huge relief” that she no longer has to worry about him now that his fight for his freedom is over. And it is clear that this feeling is mutual.

Mr Abdel Fattah hopes to return to the UK in the next few weeks with his son Khaled, who is on the autism spectrum and attends a special school in Brighton. “I’m looking forward to going to the beach with Khaled,” she says. “I haven’t been to the beach since 2014.”

It is not yet clear whether Egyptian authorities will allow him to travel. Human rights groups accuse them of systematic repression of peaceful critics with “serious restrictions on freedom of expression” and “an atmosphere of impunity,” according to the US State Department’s most recent assessment.

The release of Alaa Abdel Fattah still leaves thousands of political prisoners in Egyptian prisons.

As for his own future as a free man, he has not yet decided what will happen next; but he says the days of street activism are “definitely” over.

“I’m still determined to fight and fight for a better world,” he told the Today programme. “But I don’t know what that means and what form it will take.”

“I’m coming into a very different world and finding my place in it, and I think it’s going to take time to figure out what to do,” he says. “I’m just in recovery mode right now.”