The Wonder Chronicles: 25

On Twitter

Peter Hapak for TIME

This is part of a running series. Read the previous Wonder Chronicle: On Brothers

In 2011, Twitter saved my life. 

At a protest near Tahrir Square in November, Egyptian riot police beat me, broke my left arm and right hand, sexually assaulted me and dragged me to the Interior Ministry where their supervising officer threatened me with gang rape. I was held incommunicado by police for about six hours, during which I managed to tweet out “beaten, arrested, interior ministry,” thanks to an activist who let me use his phone. Seconds later, literally, the phone was out of battery power.

Unbeknownst to me, #freemona was trending globally within 15 minutes of that tweet, The Guardian and Al Jazeera reported on what had happened to me, and the U.S. State Department responded to my tweet saying they were looking for me.

I found all that out later because after my six hours in police detention, Military intelligence officers took me against my will to their headquarters where they blindfolded and interrogated me. 

In 2012, Twitter saved my life again. 

The New York Police Department arrested me in September after I spray painted over a racist, pro-Israel ad on the walls of 42nd St-Times Square station. I was jailed overnight and at my arraignment the next morning, attorney Stanley Cohen told me dozens of activists from the Occupy movement had written to ask him to represent me. I was charged with criminal mischief, making graffiti, and possession of a graffiti instrument. I refused a plea deal and chose to go to trial. He was my attorney, pro bono, for the next two years until a judge dismissed my charges in the interest of justice.

In 2015, Twitter helped me find love.

I had tweeted in January that my goals were to learn to box, learn to swim, and fall in love and asked if anyone had had luck with the 36 questions to make anyone fall in love. “Where’s the line?” Robert Rutledge tweeted back. We have celebrated nine years of love, so far.

In 2018, Twitter helped me save someone else’s life.

A Saudi teenager was holed up in a Bangkok hotel room, fighting being forcibly returned to her abusive family in Saudi Arabia. I kicked up enough of a fuss on Twitter to help her find asylum in Canada.

In 2024, I’ve just been banished from Twitter (I still won’t call it “X.”). 

Hackers successfully phished me and I gave them enough information to take over my account. Since joining Twitter in 2009, my account–verified since 2012– has accrued 380.4 thousand followers.

It’s been a week and the support help centre will not take seriously my attempts to regain control of my account. 

And it might be one of the best things that have happened to me. I feel violated. It is not an exile I chose. And I feel liberated–present and in the moment.

Someone tell Elon Musk to fuck himself. And step off the Twitter carousel. 

My goal: that you are found by wonder.

My wish: that you intensely live. 

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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.  

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