Chapter one

In 2009, long before the world knew the name Crocodile, I was just a quiet boy sitting beside my brother’s wife, holding a pencil without knowing what it could do. She looked at me and said softly, “You can draw.”

I didn’t take it seriously. Out of boredom, I sketched Jerry, the little mouse from the old cartoon, and for the first time, a line carried something alive. I didn’t realize it then, but that simple moment planted a seed that would later grow into my entire world. 

A few days later, I was sitting on the edge of my mother’s bed. The air was still, warm, and safe, the kind of comfort only a mother’s presence can create. Again, I picked up a pencil, just to kill time. But when the lines began to form, she smiled, and in that smile, something inside me woke up. 

That moment was quiet, but it changed everything. 

Years passed. Life pushed me in directions far from art. I worked as a carrier at Pepsi, helped a friend’s father with painting walls, studied, and tried to keep moving. But deep down, I always carried that memory of my mother’s smile, the warmth of that room, and the strange feeling that drawing could mean something more. 

Then came 2017, the year I finally listened to that voice inside me. 

I picked up the brush again, not to escape boredom this time, but to find myself. 

The first painting I created was of a girl dancing freely, light, and alive, everything I wanted to feel but couldn’t express in words. When my mother saw it, her eyes lit up with pride. She didn’t say much, just whispered:

“It’s beautiful.”

And that was enough. 

From that quiet whisper, my journey began, a journey that would take me through light and shadow, loss and rebirth. 

That night, for the first time, I didn’t sleep thinking about work or life’s weight…

I slept thinking about colors.

Chapter two

There wasn’t a single reason that made me start painting; it was everything all at once. A way to escape from a reality that felt too heavy, a small window of light in days filled with noise, arguments, and pressure.

Around that time, my circle of friends began to shrink. Home was still standing, and my parents were alive, but it wasn’t peaceful anymore. Despite all the fights, though, there was still a sense of safety, something warm that held me together, something I would only understand after they were gone.

That’s when I began to draw, not as a hobby, but as a survival. My first real piece, at least what I considered art back then, was a simple portrait sketch I still keep. 

It wasn’t perfect, but it felt alive. It felt like me.

I didn’t start like most artists do, with brushes, canvas, or fancy tools. My journey began digitally, born out of limitations and persistence. I used a small mobile phone, an old ASUS, and painted with my fingers on Autodesk Sketchbook. It was clumsy, unusual, even funny to look back at, but it was mine. Every stroke was a rebellion against the idea that you need perfect tools to create beauty.

I remember how I used to stare at my work and wonder:

“Am I really talented? Or is this just… energy trying to escape?” At that time, I didn’t know if I was a true artist or just a worker trying to build something out of exhaustion.

Back then, I was working as a house painter, a "naqash" earning 70 pounds a day, later 100. Every day, my hands were covered in paint, but not the kind I dreamed of. 

People around me didn’t understand. Some even laughed:

“What is this nonsense you’re drawing?” But I kept going. Quietly. Secretly. Because deep inside, I felt that something was waiting for me on the other side of persistence.

I used to read a lot, too, anything I could find. Mostly Dr. Mostafa Mahmoud’s books. I couldn’t afford to buy them, so I downloaded the PDFs. Those nights were strange my body tired, my mind restless, but my soul quietly building its world in silence.

I didn’t yet paint from my subconscious that came years later.

But the seed of curiosity was already planted.

By the end of 2019, I met someone who would unknowingly become part of that journey.

Chapter three

I didn’t become an artist because life was kind to me. I became an artist because, in 2020, life started taking everything away. 

When the world shut down during the pandemic, I began posting my work on Facebook: simple sketches, portraits, and digital paintings I made on my phone. I didn’t expect anything, but the reaction was overwhelming. My drawings of celebrities went viral. Many of them even saw the pieces themselves. For the first time, I felt something shifting, a tiny door opening in a world I didn’t know I could enter.

Of course, there were voices that tried to pull me back down. Some said I was using “clip masks.” Others insisted digital art wasn’t real art, that anyone could do it. But there were also supportive voices, artists who reached out, people who believed in what I was doing. I built a community around my work, one that didn’t last long, but it mattered at the time. Then life changed its tone.

It started quietly, the way disasters always do.  My mother, the warmest part of my world,  was diagnosed with cancer.

I still remember the exact moment everything inside me cracked: I lifted her scarf one day, and all her hair had fallen out from chemotherapy. 

I smiled at her, gently, trying to pretend it didn’t hurt. But inside, I was breaking. 

It was the beginning of a battle we all knew the ending of. From that day on, my life turned into a cycle of waiting, waiting to see if she was still breathing, still alive, still here. I wasn’t thinking about art anymore. I wasn’t thinking about success. I was thinking about survival, hers and mine.

During those months, something inside me began to shift. I started questioning everything I was doing.

Was this really art? 

Or was I just a craftsman, a worker trying to escape through lines and colors?

On November 2, 2020, I wrote in my notes: “I want to document my feelings, my life, my reactions…

the hidden black creature behind the stillness of my face.”

At the time, I didn’t feel like an artist. I felt like a man struggling to understand his own soul.

And things only got worse.

Painkillers didn’t help her anymore. She couldn’t eat without vomiting. Her face became all bones, her skin darkened from exhaustion and medication. In her final months, we carried her to the bathroom. I slept beside her every night, trying to hold myself together while watching the person who raised me disappear piece by piece.

A week before her death, she began losing her memory completely. She stopped speaking.  Four days before she left, she lifted her hand and pointed at me. I went to her. She pulled me into a hug. That was the last time she recognized me.

Six months before that moment, while we were eating together, she said:  “I’m sorry, my son… I won’t be there for your wedding.”

I stood up from the table and couldn’t say a word. Then came January 26th, 2021.

Around 6 a.m., my niece woke me up, crying. I knew instantly.

I walked into the room and found her… still, quiet, gone.

I didn’t have money for the burial. A friend met me on the street and handed me what I needed. We went to the family cemetery in Menoufia and buried her.

Through all of this, I didn’t shed a tear. Not one.

I stood still, calm, as if my body had turned into stone and grief had frozen somewhere deep inside.

But when I returned home, when I opened the apartment door and instinctively called her name,  my legs stopped. The world stopped.

I went to my room, collapsed, and cried until I fainted. Twice.

When I woke up, I walked into her room. I cleaned it, touched everything with shaking hands, unable to see from the tears. Then I took a shower, trying to wash away something that wouldn’t leave.

Three days later, I called my father.

“Come stay with me,” I said. “I can’t be here alone.

The days that followed were filled with a silence I can still hear when I close my eyes.

But somewhere inside that silence… something new was born.

I painted an abstract piece capturing the last hug between us. That was the moment I transformed — from someone who drew pictures to someone who painted raw emotion. I stopped creating art because I wanted applause. I started creating because I needed to breathe.

My mindset changed. My style changed.

My entire relationship with art changed.

Two paintings from that time documented the turning point, the last embrace, 

and the moment I finally understood what art meant to me.

Chapter Four

"In March 2021, grief didn’t leave alone; it took the very roof over my head with it. My father, whom I had invited to ease my loneliness, decided to start a new life a life that had no room for me. He remarried, signed the apartment over to his new wife, and in a heartbeat, the bonds of blood stripped of all meaning, I found myself on the street.

The street wasn't just a place; it was a shocking reality. For three days, I slept on the pavement, watching passersby and wondering: How did we get here? My three siblings my own flesh and blood chose silence. Not one of them reached out to save me from the exposure.

But the 'Crocodile' does not die easily. To find a place to sleep, I took a job at a local café. It wasn't just for the money; it was for 'cover' at night, a corner to shield me from the biting cold of the sidewalks. I was homeless, but I was surviving, painting in my imagination what I couldn't yet put on paper.

Amidst this wreckage, 'She' appeared. A love story began—one that felt like a lifeline at first. I didn't know then that this love would later lead me, in March 2024, to a hospital bed with four strokes caused by pure heartbreak and betrayal. But at that time, she was my only reason to stay alive.

In November 2021, while struggling against the harshness of life in that café, I sketched 'Engineer Naguib Sawiris.' I didn’t even like the piece; it felt as pale and grey as my days. I posted it on Twitter (X) and mentioned him, with zero expectations. It was just a scream into the void... but this time, the void decided to answer."

Chapter Five

"I fell asleep that night to the usual exhaustion of the café, only to wake up to a different world. Twitter (X) wouldn't stop buzzing. Engineer Naguib Sawiris hadn't just seen the painting; he loved it and followed me back. It was the first time I felt my voice crossing the café walls to reach the top of the pyramid.

Our artistic connection continued. I painted his late mother as a tribute to his feelings, and he acquired the piece. All this time, he had no idea that the artist he was patronizing was living in displacement. In a moment of raw honesty, I sent him a message: 'I am not just a painter; I am a man living through this and that...' His shock was profound, and that’s where the transformation truly began.

Then, an art collector entered my life. He began buying my work, and though I knew it started as a form of support, he eventually became the greatest believer in 'The Crocodile Museum.' From late 2021 until mid-2023, it wasn’t a journey of art for art’s sake; it was a 'journey for survival'—an attempt to reclaim my dignity and a roof over my head.

By July 7, 2023, I felt I had finally conquered it all. I got engaged to the girl I loved, the one who had been the light in my darkest days. I wore my suit, smiled for the cameras, and believed that the tragedy of 'The Crocodile' had finally reached its end.

But life was hiding another chapter. Six months into the engagement, the very thing I feared most came to pass."

Chapter Six

"In December 2023, the final mask fell. I discovered that the love which had been my lifeline was nothing more than a meticulously crafted 'play,' staged by her and her mother. It wasn't just emotional betrayal; it was a dagger in the core of my existence. I documented that disillusionment, transforming the chapters of treachery into paintings drawing the deceit exactly as I saw it.

On January 26, 2024, on the anniversary of my mother’s passing, everything collapsed. We broke up, and I found myself alone once more, but this time, the rubble was falling directly onto my head. The old grief, the memories of the street, the loss of my mother, and the betrayal all these monsters united to wage war on my body.

In March 2024, my body surrendered. I woke up in the hospital to find I had survived four strokes. The doctor told me, 'You’ve been given a second life.' To this day, I don’t know who paid the hospital bills; it was as if heaven refused to let me die just yet.

From that hospital bed, a different person emerged. The kind artist looking for hope was gone. The 'Dictator' was born—the man who decided to lock his heart completely, to face the world with the thick, impenetrable skin of a crocodile, and with a gaze that knows no mercy for falsehood. Art was no longer a tool for connection; it became a weapon for confrontation and a museum to document human cruelty."