Rest in peace, Mohamed Aboelgheit

“Go slowly, life, so I can watch you through all the loss around me. How I let you slip away from me in your own currents while searching for you and myself. And whenever I would come to grasp one of your secrets, you would harshly reply: ‘How ignorant you are!’”

Journalist Mohamed Aboelgheit laid the foundational stone of his blog Gedarea with this passage from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “Now, In Exile.”

And now, in exile, Mohamed Aboelgheit is absent from our world. The short-lived and deeply moving journey of one of our generation's most insightful people has come to an end, leaving those who knew him or came across his work in mourning and gratitude for his presence.

Aboelgheit wrote for Mada Masr a few times, but that is not why we mourn him. Had he not published with us at all, we would still be inclined to give him the farewell he deserves in gratitude for his transparent humanity, which some of us personally witnessed, and in recognition of the impressions he made on our world through his journalism.

In 2011, Aboelgheit, a doctor at the time, began his journey in journalism with a blog entry titled The poor come first, you sons of a bitch. He plunged himself into the field, experimental and influential, moving between different roles — writer, programmer, investigative journalist — before his journey ended with sublime, honest writing that helped him overcome his illness for a time. He wrote as if he feared his chronic illness would be an experience lost if not documented, gifting us with writing brimming with emotion, knowledge and literary expression.

We mourn him, a friend we crossed paths with on our journey and a companion in our defeats and longing.

We extend our deepest condolences to his family, Israa and Yehia, to his extended family, which starts in Assiut and does not end in London, where he left us, and to his friends, colleagues, loved ones and all the hearts his departure has touched.

Darwish concludes the poem from which Aboelgheit chose his passage with:

“Tell absence: You have reduced me

and I came to complete you.”