At the counterrevolution in Egypt.

• Author: Kouddous, Sharif Abdel

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THE CORPSES LAY IN NEAT rows on the floor of al-Iman mosque--more than 230 of them, wrapped in bloodied white sheets with names scrawled across in felt pen. Clusters of portable electric fans and the occasional spray of air freshener did little to overcome the smell of death that pervaded the summer heat. Family members gathered around the bodies of their relatives. Some stood in silence, others wept openly, their wails of grief rising through the halls of the mosque that had been transformed into a charnel house.

Osama Said, a skinny nineteen-year-old in a T-shirt and track suit bottoms, knelt over the body of his older brother. He gently pulled the shroud aside and stared at his face. A thin line of caked blood ran from his brother's nose to the top of his ear. Abdel Rahman Said, twenty-three, was shot and killed on August 14, taking a bullet to the heart when army soldiers and security forces stormed the encampment at Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, the epicenter of support for the deposed president Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Another large sit-in at Nahda Square was also stormed the same day in a display of brutal force that Human Rights Watch described as "the most serious incident of mass unlawful killings in modern Egyptian history." At least 638 were killed across the country, according to official tallies, though many suspect the toll to be higher.

"There was tear gas and live ammunition being fired everywhere," says Said, who rushed to Rabaa when he awoke to the news of the government attack. "Someone would be standing next you, and the next moment he would fall." He found out only later that morning that his brother had been killed.

Scores of bodies were brought to the nearby al-Iman mosque hours after the raid ended when police allowed people to re-enter the site and retrieve their dead. With no ambulances allowed in, volunteers were forced to ferry the bodies over in their own cars. Many of the corpses were charred beyond recognition, blackened in the fire that burned down the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque and adjacent field hospital when the final assault came.

"It can't be that after hundreds die we give up what we began fighting for," Said says. He covers his brother's face with the shroud and places a block of ice on his chest to try and slow the decay. "God willing, we will continue."

Two and half years after millions of Egyptians took to the streets, shaking off the fetters of decades-long autocracy to call for "bread, freedom, and social justice," in a movement that inspired citizens across the globe...