Under a pseudonym in December 2011, I published an article titled “al-Jaysh wa-l-Iqtisad fi Barr Misr” (The Army and the Economy in Egypt) in Jadaliyya. I wrote it after months of participating in numerous protests in Cairo against the government of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), which took power upon President Hosni Mubarak's abdication in February 2011, and of searching fervidly for the political sources that had allowed the military to prevail over civilian forces. In addition to the tanks and fighter jets, I found some of these sources hidden in a gigantic business empire that the military had clandestinely developed for years. In early 2012 the editor of an online edition of a widely read Egyptian newspaper, a revolutionary female journalist who would later be arrested and detained, invited me to write a series of articles on this business empire, this time using my real name. The first work in decades to be published on this taboo topic, this became the foundation for my later book-length study. As a scholar, this was my humble contribution to an ongoing revolution.

在2011年12月，我以化名的名字在Jadaliyya发表了一篇题为“ al-Jaysh wa-l-Iqtisad fi Barr Misr”（埃及的军队与经济）的文章。。几个月后，我参加了在开罗举行的针对最高武装委员会（SCAF）政府的抗议活动，该委员会于2011年2月在侯斯尼·穆巴拉克（Hosni Mubarak）总统退位后掌权，并进行了热烈的搜索，以寻求政治上的支持。军队战胜了平民部队。除了坦克和战斗机外，我还发现了一些隐藏在军方秘密开发多年的庞大商业帝国中的资源。2012年初，埃及一家报纸的在线版本的编辑，一位革命性的女记者，后来被捕并被拘留，邀请我为我写关于这个商业帝国的系列文章，这次是用我的真名。此禁忌话题数十年来的第一部作品，这成为我以后进行书本学习的基础。作为一名学者，这是我对正在进行的革命的不起眼的贡献。